This whole 14-song concert tape from 1986 is now available in the more popular streaming services, and of course, Bandcamp (our favorite!)
Since this whole business was a sort of archaeological expedition, I will show you the artifact itself:
Paul sent us that photo last year, then the audio, we chatted about it with all our bandmates from that lineup, and all agreed we’d like to release this. So we did!
Kept the cassette theme for the album art:
As I’ve mentioned, quite a few of these songs have never been released in any format. I just counted those, and it’s 7, to be exact, so half of this set, indicated with asterisks in the list below.
1. Miles Away
2. New Day *
3. Step Down *
4. Blistering Blue *
5. Sounds From The Sidelines
6. Burning Sky
7. Footprints In The Sand *
8. Cool Vibe *
9. Faith
10. Physical High
11. Everymind Unseen *
12. Radiation Boy
13. Outback
14. Disengage *
15. Girl On The Avenue
16. No Lies
This was in the period after our original lead singer and frontman Erik Rader had left the band. After a brief attempt at replacing him, Paul and Charles and I took on the vocal duties. During that shift, we wrote a flurry of songs, rehearsed them all and recorded our OUTBACK EP, all six songs of which are also in this set. Burning Sky became a regional hit, and we sold out all of the (cassette!) copies of OUTBACK - almost exclusively at the merch table at our shows.
The only song from our very earliest material here is Radiation Boy - and this is a wildly different version from others previously released. We had this whole intro-outro mojo going by this point, evident throughout the set - improvised on the spot and never the same from one show to the next. So in every respect this time capsule is a one-off, and I’m glad to add it to our public catalog after all these years.
Hope you enjoy, and always look up.
-Eric Din
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