Saturday, June 28, 2008

Spoonfed


Spoonfed was essentially an emiLy side project. Here is the "Brief History of Spoonfed" that came in the booklet which accompanied the self-titled tape:

Spoonfed began as an excuse for me to play the songs I had written on guitar instead of trying to teach the guitar parts to Joe C. and using them as emiLy songs. For about two weeks of practice and one show, Spoonfed was a 2 piece, with Joe on drums and me playing guitar. We figured out pretty quickly that Joe wasn't meant to be a drummer, and we recruited Ted K., who was drumming for an amazing band called July at the time. Spoonfed played on and off for a year or so, and became a full time band when Mike from emiLy went to London for a semester and July was no longer a band. Spoonfed ended in May of '95 when Ted graduated and moved out of South Bend. This tape is a collection of all the songs we knew, without the songs that weren't worth remembering.

Three of the songs ("(structural)", "Bulletproof", and "Big Boy") had been recorded in early 1994 at Miami Street Studios with the intention of releasing them as part of a split 7-inch with July. The record never happened, so the songs eventually found a home on this tape. One song ("Theme From a Spoon") was recorded in James K.'s dorm room in November of 1993, during a spontaneous session captured on a hand held tape recorder. James provided background noises using a typewriter, record player, and whatever else happened to be available. The three other songs recorded that night were another version of "Bulletproof", "Moment", and "Fourth", the latter two falling into the category of Not Worth Remembering.

The remainder of the tracks were recorded in April of 1995 at the Green House on Justin M.'s (also of July) four track. The cover art is a picture of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge taken during a harbor cruise. The tape came with a 16 page, quarter size booklet featuring lyrics, recording info, pictures, and background stories for some of the songs. It was the 11th release for Rent To Own Records, the label under which the members of emiLy and their friends put out all of our music (hence the RTO 11 on the cover).

A few notes on the songs: "(structural)" is in parentheses because it's supposed to be an untitled song, but we needed something to call it for sake of reference. It was written for someone who was a double major in Architecture and Structural Engineering. "Takeback" was actually written in high school. "New Town" is a song about hometowns. "Last Words" is so titled because it was the last song by Spoonfed.

listen/download:


see also:
Spoonfed on MySpace

3 comments:

theodore said...

i always really dug this cassette. wow, Takeback is a pretty cracking song for having been written in high school. and Last Words... doug, you've always had a knack for knowing just the right way to close an album.

now that i think about it, weren't some of these tunes played solo at Acoustic Cafe every now and again? seems like that's were i remember hearing them first...

doug said...

I know I played a lot of them at Acoustic Cafe. "New Town" and "Last Words" are ones that I continued to play even during the Butterfly Effect years. Heck, the Butterfly Effect covered "(structural)" at our last show. I think those are the three I still know how to play.

And thanks!

Anonymous said...

I missed most of this great stuff while I was in London.