For every band that ‘makes it’, there’s many thousands more that don’t. Just ask any music media outlet that has to sort through the mountains of submitted CDs and random e-mails daily to find the hidden diamond in the rough that might be tucked away.
In short, sorting the wheat from the chaff means going through a lot of pretty horrific stuff. But how bad does said chaff get?
Enter Robert Popper, a British comic who has gifted the internet with a compilation of demo tapes that – to put it nicely – are unlikely to fetch astronomical prices on eBay any time soon, let alone show the promise of a great artist-in-waiting.
Gathered the best of the worst demo tapes that the business has to offer, as A Journal Of Music Things points out, Popper writes: “In the late 1980s, my cousin gave me a cassette that instantly became an obsession of mine. It was a tape, compiled by a UK record company – and made purely for internal use – featuring the worst songs they’d ever been sent from the thousands of demo tapes they received each year.”
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With its range of progressively sympathetic characters singing their hearts out and attempting to showcase their (lack of) raw talent, the 25-minute super-cut is an unintentionally hilarious horror show of naff ideas and audio hiss.
Opening with a gravely operatic rendition of a morbidly flat ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ (“all the flowers that you plan-ted mother, in theeee back yard”), the parade of pitiful’s highlights are: a scarily shrill-voiced, organ-pounding woman, a guy called ‘Jamie’ who sounds like a children’s TV presenter, the Tim & Eric worthy ‘You Are The Best Thing In The World’, and a late appearance from a track supposedly labelled ‘Foggy Doggy Rainy Janey Sunny Honey Snowy Joey Christmas.’
Sure it might be a brilliantly executed hoax, but it hardly matters, it’s still an entertaining dose of ear-battering cringe. Take a spin of the best/worst demos compilation below and see if you can make it all the way to the barely listenable closing number. Just keep in mind, every musician’s gotta start somewhere right?
Tracklist:
(via YouTube user Sabored)
Track 1 – Nothing Compares 2 U: 0:14
Track 2 – I Need a Sign (by Truly): 4:57
Track 3 – I Need a Girl (by Truly): 6:31
Track 4 – You Are The Best Thing in the World: 7:35
Track 5 – Jamie: 13:03
Track 6 – Alfreston: 15:45
Track 7 – Brown Brown: 18:50
Track 8 – Santaland: 19:19
Track 9 – Foggy Doggy Rainy Janey Sunny Honey Snowy Joey Christmas: 21:41
Track 10 – All the People with the Money: 23:14
