Our good friend Kristofer has recently acquired some previously-unknown Beck demos! Yeah! These are four-track tapes that are possibly – and this is Kristofer’s belief – the original tapes Beck recorded onto. They feature a number of songs that we’ve come to associate with the 1992 Demo and Don’t Get Bent Out of Shape, which appear to be compilations of this and other material (kind of like Fresh Meat & Old Slabs).
The first tape is labeled Are ??? U Positive. There’s a pic below – can anybody figure out what the mystery word is? Kristofer suggests “feeling”, as in “are you feeling positive”. What do you guys think?
Tracklist:
- Are You Postive
- I’ve Just Seen a Facelift
- Trash Can
- Mmmmmmmmmm
- Fuck You Up & Get High
- Tough Fuckin Shit
The second tape is labeled R-Marcel or R-Maxcel or B-Marcel or B-Maxcel or something like that. Any suggestions on this one?
Tracklist:
- Satan Was Way Cool
- Don’t Believe the Joke They Put on You
- In This World
- A Man Named Will
- Whiskey Be Your Lover
- Don’t Get Bent Out of Shape
Some other notes about the tapes:
- They seem to be from 1992, though R-Marcel or whatever might be from eariler.
- Both sleeves feature pictures of a young Beck. Are You Positive‘s sleeve is regular paper, R-Marcel‘s is regular paper covered in tape.
- It’s unclear at this point whether these songs are the exact same versions that we already have from other tapes. Kristofer will confirm shortly after the holidays.
- Kristofer will eventually share these on the hub, once he’s able to digitize them.
Post your questions, comments and suggestions and we’ll try to get everything answered!
If it wasn’t for this site I would never have known about this. Thanks for letting us know and I am looking forward to digital copy.
how did our dear friend Kristofer get ahold of these gems???
hmm, good question. i think he told me awhile back, but i can’t remember. i will ask him.
wow!
what a perfect gift for Christmas!
must say, the words are very puzzling, but the first tape is obviously form 1992 seeing as how 1992 is smudged out on the tape…duh…
and try getting a labtop or some other LCD screen and looking at the words and stuff from different angles, or putting them into a fancy photo editor and screwing with the colors… works for me.
the “r-marcel” may be “B-MAACEL” (second A has a heart over it) and again, try figuring out the words that are scribled out too…
does anyone have Beck’s phone number???
those are the exact same tapes that surfaced less than a year ago on ebay.i told breathemint about till he tipped her off that they were worth more then she wanted more money. No one could figure out where they came from. I still have the ladies email an she told me she has one more tape that has “pay no mind” scribbled all over it. An shes not selling it cause it contains somthing like over 10-20 tracks on it.
??
Looks like “Are U Thinking Positive” to me, can’t wait to hear these new/old tracks.
Yea Jeff I agree that it says “Are U Thinking Positive”, As for “R-Maxcel” I dont really know if it’s an ‘R” or a “B”, but what’s odd is that something on the back of the tape is crossed out.
“An shes not selling it cause it contains somthing like over 10-20 tracks on it.”
Great! I love it when people hoard things!
Shit.
r. marcel
recorded by marcel (who also recorded banjo story)
recorded by marcel! genius! awesome! you’re a superstar.
haha i’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not…
It wasn’t sarcasm, Newt was genuinely excited to figure it out.
That’s how whiskeyclone.net rolls.
I have no idea whether this is a real demo or not, but I can say one thing: those tapes are too new to be from ’92. I used to trade lots and lots of bootleg tapes, mostly Maxell XLIIs but sometimes TDK SA90s, and those tapes are definitely from ’95-’97 or thereabouts. An early 90s XLII would look like http://www.tapedeck.org/400/Maxell_XLII_90.jpg . An early 90s SA90 would probably look like http://www.tapedeck.org/400/TDK_SA90_2.jpg .
Also, not that I’ve never ever done this, but why would you tape over the record protection on a blank tape? Someone has very clearly done that in the second picture of the Maxell tape.
Maybe I’m not looking hard enough, but have the digital copies been established yet?
hey i was just wondering too, are these out to get somewhere? in a digital flavor? great news, even though it’s a year old :-) !!
I checked out the origins of those tapes after strtj posted that the tapes themselves were manufactured after 92 and couldn’t be real.
At this site, which has all TDK tapes and when they first came out, it’s pretty obvious that the TDK SA-90 that R-marcel was recorded on began to be produced in 90-91.
http://vintagecassettes.com/tdk/tdk_files/tdk_year/tdk_year.htm
The picture of the TDK-cassette strtj posted is from 1988.
And then I checked out the Maxell tape, which was harder to find. It’s a Maxell XL II Music cassette. And as far as I can get info on the internet it was produced in the late 80’s or the beginning of the nineties, but it’s all loose info. Couldn’t find it on:http://vintagecassettes.com/index.htm
FOund it on:
http://www.c-90.org/catalogue/tapes/Hitachi%20-%20Maxell/Maxell%20XL%20II%20Music/0
But there’s no info about which year it was produced.