slack - cassette

the post with the three shades of dirty demo solicited some really nice responses, including some from the original members of the band, to whom i've corresponded with a bit, clearing up some of the lineup mystery. namely colin meeder, who is currently involved in an experimental project, entitled write that down, playing trumpet, bass, and performing vocal duties. really good dynamic stuff. be sure to check it out!!
i also garnered a response requesting to post the tracks from the slack cassette, which was also another hated-related project, also featuring dan littleton and colin meeder. much like the three shades demo, the internet is a black hole on any information. the slack material is much like the three shades stuff in the vein of well-presented early 90s indie/alternative, with female vocals presented by jenny toomey, co-founder of DIY DC label simple machines and executive director of future of music coalition, also in washington, dc. some of her other musical projects included tsunami, geek, liquorice, and grenadine, most of which had releases on the simple machines label.

from the tool cassette series page on the simple machines website:
Tool 2: Bates Stamper, Band: Slack - Another Toomey project, this one with Dan Littleton from Ida/Liquorice. Slack was essentially a side project for Jenny and Dan, who were often busy with other bands and only had a limited amount of Slack time. They recorded together but only played a couple of shows before Slack got put on the back burner. With no fan base at all, a full release was a bit ambitious. Instead, Slack's songs ended up as Tool 2, Bates Stamper. Slack eventually transformed into Liquorice.

and why these cassettes are fairly hard to come by:
We started the Tool Cassette Series back around 1991 as an experiment and as a way we could keep some great music "in print" on an as-needed basis without having to spend a lot of money pressing records or CDs, since we dubbed the cassettes as the orders came in. For a long time, this was a manageable and fun project - with 5 cassette decks in the basement and a lot of volunteer help, we kept up with the orders. But everything changed when, first, Nirvana got big enough that the Late tape got some notice, and even more when Dave Grohl released the Foo Fighters record in 1996. Suddenly he was mentioning this post-Scream/pre-Nirvana cassette of his great solo songs in a lot of interviews, and we were flooded with orders, like 100 a month. With very little help and deteriorating master cassettes, we got in touch with Dave about getting the master tapes back together and trying to release the cassette as a CD, not as a quick profit maker, but more to keep up with the demand. Dave was more interested in keeping it as a cassette, so we have honored his wishes.

We tried to keep up, with a caveat that it might take a while to get the cassettes since we had so many orders. But when our two master cassettes for Late came to the end of their useful lives, and with some of the other eight cassette masters in the same condition, we decided to remove the whole tool cassette series from our mailorder. It was good while it lasted.

now i really wanna hear that fabled dave grohl/late! tape. time to start digging!!

slack - cassette
http://www.mediafire.com/?zlnlnttm3oa
mp3 320kpbs vbr [42.38 MB]

01 bates stamp [03:58 8.68MB]
02 word traffic [02:55 6.55MB]
03 shrunken head [03:45 8.46MB]
04 glass man [05:14 10.5MB]
05 basket case [03:45 8.18MB]

if you like what you hear, please check out the simple machines catalog and purchase some of the available titles.