Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Weezer- Opposite Sides Of The Same Good Ol' Fence (Aka: The Kitchen Tape)

 

A couple months ago, I was scrolling news stories on my phone and came upon a click-bate looking article, "100 most valuable cassette tapes" (or something like that?). It listed several pedestrian bands from the 80's and 90's, as well as cool stuff like, Prince's, The Black Album cassette (advance promo copy of withdrawn album) and U2's 1979 demo, with Bono's personal information. Surprisingly, Nirvana's, Nevermind was on the list and if you have an early pressing (which I own) before they made a gazillion copies after it broke, it's worth a bit (aka: not a lot of cash). What caught my attention was an extremely rare copy of Weezer's, The Kitchen Tape demo which Rivers Cuomo made a personal copy to give to sound engineer, Paul De Gru. There were only 15-20 copies made and that particular copy sold in auction for $4350.00, partially crowd-sourced via donations from Weezer forum members. The fan promised to rip a copy of the tape and share it with fans. (Thanks!)

Instead of writing in my own words about the tape or rely of AI writing (haha! never!!), I'll quote from the notes in the music file. By the way, this copy of the tape is available for download (in 24-bit) also on archive.org, a truly amazing source for live music recordings and rare recordings.
 
The Kitchen Tape is the name of Weezer's second demo tape and first proper album. It was recorded in an attempt to create a "serious" demo to hand around local clubs in attempts to generate "a buzz."

Rivers Cuomo made a personal copy of The Kitchen Tape (a demo of which only 15-20 were made) for an engineer named Paul DuGres. He recently auctioned the tape off on ebay. The labels of the tape reveal that Rivers named the tape Opposite Sides of the Same Good Ol' Fence as a reference to his previous band Zoom, serving as an introduction to the sound of Weezer before the first chords of Say It Ain't So begin.

The Kitchen Tape was mostly recorded on August 2, 1992 in The Garage, but the drums were recorded in the kitchen of the Amherst House. Accordingly, it was nicknamed The Kitchen Tape. The demos were recorded using frontman Rivers Cuomo's 8-track tape recorder. According to Karl Koch's article in Weezine Issue #3, the recordings of "Thief, You've Taken All That Was Me", "Let's Sew Our Pants Together" and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" originate from Weezer's first demo and were simply added to the tape. Bootlegs of this demo have surfaced, however only five were surfaced through a copy of the original. Two other songs from the tape (Undone - The Sweater Song and Only in Dreams) were released officially on The Blue Album Deluxe Edition bonus disc, Dusty Gems And Raw Nuggets. The Kitchen Tape's versions of "Say It Ain't So" and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" have not been bootlegged or officially released. 

Definitely worth a listen, especially if you're a hardcore Weezer fan. An interesting comparison to what was released on their debut album.
Enjoy!
 

Please do NOT sell or profit from this recording!
Do NOT convert to lossy format, except for personal use.
Please share!

To be perfectly clear, I do not own this cassette, not my photo.

 WEEZER
Opposite Sides Of The Same Good Ol' Fence (1992)
(Aka: The Kitchen Tape)


A1        Say It Ain't So
A2        The World Has Turned And Left Me Here
A3        Paperface
A4        Undone (The Sweater Song)
A5        Thief, You've Taken All That Was Me
A6        My Name Is Jonas
A7        Let's Sew Our Pants Together
A8        Only In Dreams
 
 

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