We spent the summer of 1995 camped out at my grandmother's house in SW Fort Worth where I was housesitting for a few months. We filled four reels of 1/2 inch tape with music and some almost music and a lot of someday-to-be music. At summer's end we put together a demo that we thought best represented our efforts and mailed copies away to our favorite record companies. We literally flipped our favorite records over and wrote down the addresses of our favorite labels directly onto some bubble mailers and mailed them to a dozen labels. Vernon Yard. Kranky. 4AD. I think there was a Simple Machines in there. Merge and Matador for sure.
My Mom would come by from time to time and make us dinner. One morning we awoke to find this message from the night before.
Now... even then I would suspect that this was a bizarre conversation. Years later, and having had my own phone conversation with Joel in 2004, I can tell you that this was absolutely a bizarre conversation. Joel asking for our imaginary manager, "Guy". Joel talking to my Mom at all. Also, we didn't have the money to mail out all the demo tapes, so we took the suggestion of our friend, Josh, and mailed them with the phrase "Free Matter For The Blind" affixed to the mailers instead of postage. We then suggested that these record companies fax us. At a fax number. With a fax machine. What did these record companies think? You know... we got at least one fax I recall. I'll have to see who that was from.
Ooo and by the way, this was the same demo that Robert Wilonski reviewed in a Dallas Observer article entitled "Blow Fi". Still steamed over that.
Here's a song from that demo
-AK