Jerry's Kidz (NM)
JERRY’S KIDZ "COUNTING CALORIES" 18-SONG CASSETTE (ALBUQUERQUE, NM- 1983)
I don't have a picture of the cassette artwork, but here are some old flyers from some Jerry's Kidz shows
This cassette is another one of those instances where I put something on my want list but then realize that it's actually been in my collection for years- doh! About 13 years ago, trusty tape trader J.T. dubbed me a tape, part of which just said "Jerry’s Kidz (NM)- Live and Demo". There were no song titles, nothin. I've always really liked their only vinyl release, the great "Well Fed Society" 5-song EP- the leadoff track, "Marionettes", even made my Top 250 Song posting from a year ago. Now let’s go back about two years- I heard that Jerry’s Kidz "officially" released a cassette back in 1983- before the EP came out- entitled "Counting Calories". I immediately thought, "I have to find this thing!" so I added it to my want list that you will see on the left sidebar. [As a sidenote, if you have mp3’s of anything on my want list, let me know.]
About a month ago I happened to stumble upon a blog that posted the "Counting Calories" cassette. Very exciting. I listen to the thing and then realize "Doh! This is the same as the stuff someone taped for me back in ‘96!". I had digitized the tracks a few years back so I’ve gotten the sound quality as good as I can (the other blog’s posting of the cassette had pretty rough, muddy sound quality).
If you are a fan of the Jerry’s Kidz EP then I you’ll probably enjoy most of these raw tracks. There is lots of fast, urgent-sounding teen HC that is still hummable and melodic at times and it has lots of the lead warbler's great style of singing (good, well-delivered, passionate vocals are always a plus for me). But they refined their approach by the time the EP came out, and I think that disc still stands as their best playing and delivery.
TRACK LISTING
Um, now I still don’t have a track listing for this cassette so I totally guessed at most of the song titles and probably got some totally wrong. My track record of mishearing lyrics and song titles is rather spotty (more on that at another time!). If you have the actual track listing, PLEASE leave it in your comments. Or if you have an original copy of this cassette, let me know that too.
1. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
2. Beat My Head (?)
3-4. Officer Bill / Stereo Turns On (?)
5. Pork Chop (???)
6. Are You Afraid (?)
7. Social Drinker (?)
8. Reagan (?)
9. I Wanna Bong (??)
10. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
11. Mass Destruction (?)
12. If Your Number’s Up (?)
13. Breakout (?)
14. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
15. Bright Light (?)
16. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
17. Blood and Honor (?)
18. Sick (?)
Here is an .rar file of the entire cassette
*And stay tuned because I have some unreleased live Jerry’s Kidz, as well as some songs from a radio broadcast they did, that I will post sometime in the future when I get around to it.
ENDNOTES
Well, I tried with this one but you can only get old cassettes to sound so good. Which brings me to my next point- I am glad that cassette tapes are a dead format, and I do not miss them one bit. I doubt that anyone does. There’s nice to look at, like museum pieces, but now have no practical everyday use- I treasure certain ones like my original, yellow Bad Brains ROIR cassette from 1982. I used to have an original copy of the "Future Looks Bright" cassette comp from '81 with the cool Raymond Pettibon artwork on the front and liked looking at that one too. I have some other rare, cassette-only comps from the 80’s. And some homemade cassette comps with some cool artwork I did by hand. But I don't play em anymore, unless I'm going to digitize them through the computer. Just too much work with crummy analog sound and all that rewinding and fast forwarding that takes forever.
OF COURSE cassettes served a purpose for bands to get out their music without a label per se and there are hundreds and hundreds or rare, self-produced cassettes out there from the 70’s, 80’s and into the 90’s. But I have more bad memories from cassette tapes than good ones. The worst memory of course is having so many cassettes break over the years or get stuck in tape decks and crumbled. I was a broke-ass kid back when I started listening to punk in ’87 so to have a cassette tape break sent me into a mild heart attack 'cuz I didn’t want to see what little money I had go down the drain and into the trash can. I had some vinyl back then but for some reason I bought a fair number of cassettes too. What was a real pain in the ass it was to perform surgery on broken or mangled magnetic tape from cassettes. If the tape was stuck but not broken, I’d carefully unwind part of the tape, put some pencils into the spools and then carefully rewind the tape back in as tightly as I could in an effort to remove the damage. Then of course I’d rewind and fast forward the tape a few times to "get it righted", not that this fixed the garbled sound too many times.
If the magnetic tape broke, this was a whole ‘nother process. I’d first cut down a small piece of scotch tape and put it on the underside of the magnetic tape to see if that would work. I’d rewind and fast forward the cassette a few times to try to “get it back to normal”. If the scotch tape didn’t work (or didn’t play through the tape deck- why would it when you really think about it) then I’d try to do a follow-up procedure by using my tiny screwdriver to take the whole damn thing apart. One time I remember re-cutting the tape but then it somehow got turned around so if you played the cassette it played backwards for a certain stretch before righting itself around- hilarious. Sometimes the outer plastic case would get cracked and prevent the otherwise fine tape from playing so I’d once again have to take the whole thing apart, carefully lift the spools out of the damaged case and reinstall them into a "good" shell. Not that I fucked around all the time with fixing damaged cassettes, but enough times to leave some bad memories.
What this all proves is that vinyl is the most rugged format that will be around in hundreds of years. When CD’s start skipping and become unplayable, when yer iPod crashes, implodes and is unusable, you can still put a needle onto a vinyl record and be assured that it will play. It might be a little scratchy or need a cleaning (I prefer the KAB EV-1 cleaning machine), but the record will play and you can continue to blow out your already-fragile, aging, abused eardrums.
This cassette is another one of those instances where I put something on my want list but then realize that it's actually been in my collection for years- doh! About 13 years ago, trusty tape trader J.T. dubbed me a tape, part of which just said "Jerry’s Kidz (NM)- Live and Demo". There were no song titles, nothin. I've always really liked their only vinyl release, the great "Well Fed Society" 5-song EP- the leadoff track, "Marionettes", even made my Top 250 Song posting from a year ago. Now let’s go back about two years- I heard that Jerry’s Kidz "officially" released a cassette back in 1983- before the EP came out- entitled "Counting Calories". I immediately thought, "I have to find this thing!" so I added it to my want list that you will see on the left sidebar. [As a sidenote, if you have mp3’s of anything on my want list, let me know.]
About a month ago I happened to stumble upon a blog that posted the "Counting Calories" cassette. Very exciting. I listen to the thing and then realize "Doh! This is the same as the stuff someone taped for me back in ‘96!". I had digitized the tracks a few years back so I’ve gotten the sound quality as good as I can (the other blog’s posting of the cassette had pretty rough, muddy sound quality).
If you are a fan of the Jerry’s Kidz EP then I you’ll probably enjoy most of these raw tracks. There is lots of fast, urgent-sounding teen HC that is still hummable and melodic at times and it has lots of the lead warbler's great style of singing (good, well-delivered, passionate vocals are always a plus for me). But they refined their approach by the time the EP came out, and I think that disc still stands as their best playing and delivery.
TRACK LISTING
Um, now I still don’t have a track listing for this cassette so I totally guessed at most of the song titles and probably got some totally wrong. My track record of mishearing lyrics and song titles is rather spotty (more on that at another time!). If you have the actual track listing, PLEASE leave it in your comments. Or if you have an original copy of this cassette, let me know that too.
1. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
2. Beat My Head (?)
3-4. Officer Bill / Stereo Turns On (?)
5. Pork Chop (???)
6. Are You Afraid (?)
7. Social Drinker (?)
8. Reagan (?)
9. I Wanna Bong (??)
10. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
11. Mass Destruction (?)
12. If Your Number’s Up (?)
13. Breakout (?)
14. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
15. Bright Light (?)
16. (Title Completely Unknown, No Guesses)
17. Blood and Honor (?)
18. Sick (?)
Here is an .rar file of the entire cassette
*And stay tuned because I have some unreleased live Jerry’s Kidz, as well as some songs from a radio broadcast they did, that I will post sometime in the future when I get around to it.
ENDNOTES
Well, I tried with this one but you can only get old cassettes to sound so good. Which brings me to my next point- I am glad that cassette tapes are a dead format, and I do not miss them one bit. I doubt that anyone does. There’s nice to look at, like museum pieces, but now have no practical everyday use- I treasure certain ones like my original, yellow Bad Brains ROIR cassette from 1982. I used to have an original copy of the "Future Looks Bright" cassette comp from '81 with the cool Raymond Pettibon artwork on the front and liked looking at that one too. I have some other rare, cassette-only comps from the 80’s. And some homemade cassette comps with some cool artwork I did by hand. But I don't play em anymore, unless I'm going to digitize them through the computer. Just too much work with crummy analog sound and all that rewinding and fast forwarding that takes forever.
OF COURSE cassettes served a purpose for bands to get out their music without a label per se and there are hundreds and hundreds or rare, self-produced cassettes out there from the 70’s, 80’s and into the 90’s. But I have more bad memories from cassette tapes than good ones. The worst memory of course is having so many cassettes break over the years or get stuck in tape decks and crumbled. I was a broke-ass kid back when I started listening to punk in ’87 so to have a cassette tape break sent me into a mild heart attack 'cuz I didn’t want to see what little money I had go down the drain and into the trash can. I had some vinyl back then but for some reason I bought a fair number of cassettes too. What was a real pain in the ass it was to perform surgery on broken or mangled magnetic tape from cassettes. If the tape was stuck but not broken, I’d carefully unwind part of the tape, put some pencils into the spools and then carefully rewind the tape back in as tightly as I could in an effort to remove the damage. Then of course I’d rewind and fast forward the tape a few times to "get it righted", not that this fixed the garbled sound too many times.
If the magnetic tape broke, this was a whole ‘nother process. I’d first cut down a small piece of scotch tape and put it on the underside of the magnetic tape to see if that would work. I’d rewind and fast forward the cassette a few times to try to “get it back to normal”. If the scotch tape didn’t work (or didn’t play through the tape deck- why would it when you really think about it) then I’d try to do a follow-up procedure by using my tiny screwdriver to take the whole damn thing apart. One time I remember re-cutting the tape but then it somehow got turned around so if you played the cassette it played backwards for a certain stretch before righting itself around- hilarious. Sometimes the outer plastic case would get cracked and prevent the otherwise fine tape from playing so I’d once again have to take the whole thing apart, carefully lift the spools out of the damaged case and reinstall them into a "good" shell. Not that I fucked around all the time with fixing damaged cassettes, but enough times to leave some bad memories.
What this all proves is that vinyl is the most rugged format that will be around in hundreds of years. When CD’s start skipping and become unplayable, when yer iPod crashes, implodes and is unusable, you can still put a needle onto a vinyl record and be assured that it will play. It might be a little scratchy or need a cleaning (I prefer the KAB EV-1 cleaning machine), but the record will play and you can continue to blow out your already-fragile, aging, abused eardrums.
Posted by Punk Business Manager at 7/22/2009 9:39 AM 
Categories: Jerry's Kidz (NM)
Tags: Jerry's Kidz (NM)
Categories: Jerry's Kidz (NM)
Tags: Jerry's Kidz (NM)
Nice to see not one, but 2 new posts from you my friend (even if just one of them included some music). The future looks bright again... I can totally relate to your memories of tapes getting stuck in the tape recorder and putting them together with scotch tape after some new damage done by using a pair of scissors to remove the crummy sounding parts of the tape. I still got at least 5 big boxes of tapes in one of my wardrobes and I bought a new tape recorder about 2 years ago, but just like you I rarely play the tapes these days. Got some great memories to lots of them though from hours and hours of walking around with my Walkman listening to them going slower and slower as the machine ran out of batteries.
OK, have to download the tape now to see if I like it better than the EP that I wasn't too impressed with as far as I can remember.
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Since I think the EP is a total classic I was more then eager to hear the tape. THANK YOU Tony!!! This should be pressed on to vinyl I think. Just as you and Martin describes there´s more trouble then joy with tapes. I think the format is really cool and I´ve bought and traded loads of tapes during the years but hardly play after I´ve digitized them. I still like to keep a few: Zero Boys-History of..., Bad Brains roar tape which I think is the tape I´ve played the most. Have a huge box of maybe 500 tapes that I started to go through a couple of years ago. Still to much shit to sell from that box and post on the KBD blog.
Thanks again Tony and please post more often
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Hey man, this is unbeliveable. I didn't even knew that this tape existed. "Well Fed Society" is one of the best EPs I ever heaerd and now this - thank you very much for the upload!
Keep it up.
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Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. I also posted some live Jerry's Kidz stuff back in September of last year so check that out too.
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Wonderful post... Very informational and educational as usual!
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