From the age of about fifteen to some point in my mid-twenties I made up a series of compilations which I anarchistically named The Illegal Tapes, and for which I drew covers and everything. It was shite I'd taped off the radio or borrowed from friends - anything which wouldn't fill a whole C60 because I didn't like loose ends. The series ran to 122 volumes before I could no longer be bothered, all of which I still have, you probably won't be surprised to learn. Anyway, having recently discovered that most of them still sound fine despite being forty years old - with the exception of anything recorded on a Sony CHF - I've been working my way through and digitising anything which seems like it should be preserved, notably demos or similar recordings sent to me while I was running my tape label, Do Easy - if someone sent me three tracks on a C90, well obviously I was going to fill it up and include it in the series. So that's what will be happening here for the next month of so...
I have no idea who the Deadly Fish were. I recall it as being one tape of many given to me when my friend Carl cleared out the office of Maidstone College of Art student union, notably including all the demo tapes he'd been sent by people who were after a gig. I assumed that Deadly Fish must have been one of them, except the cover mentions Yelverton, a village in Devon which is one hell of a distance from Maidstone meaning this tape probably came from somewhere else unless the Deadly Fish moved to Maidstone in search of fame and fortune - which seems a bit unlikely. Anyway, I taped over the worst of these demos, but not the Deadly Fish. They sounded sort of shambolic, and hardly the sort of thing which would have done well on an art college stage in 1984 given that we'd all just discovered James Brown and were pretending we'd always liked him, but - I don't know - once you get past the slightly self-conscious cover of Strychnine, I personally find it hard not to be swept along by the general enthusiasm and driving bass of their pissing around in a village hall. Maybe you will too.
1 - Strychnine
2 - Disillusion
3 - Wild Thang
4 - Live in the Living Room
5 - Thrones
6 - Dead Fish are Smelly
7 - (Wilder Than) Wild Thingy
8 - Untitled
9 - Week-End
THANKS!!!
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