CORN'S CORNER: DEMO DUMPSTER DIVE #1

by Corn
published on 2025-3-5
tags: Columns Articles

I think a lot about the way things get lost: band shirts that evaporate, ignored buildings demolished after you leave the neighbourhood, faint acquaintances delete their social media and you never see them again, digitally or otherwise. Almost all punk demos are like this: tossed off to niche audiences in limited quantities, uploaded to incredibly fragile file sharing sites, and usually eventually abandoned for lack of interest by either the band, the audience or both.

This article lines up roughly with issue #500 of Maximum RocknRoll, so I'm going back into that musty pile of greying newsprint I've been lugging from apartment to apartment, finding some gems of yore (ie 2011) and re-reviewing them here on the Force. Fans of 2010 laptop mic recordings, bitloss, and the smallest JPEGs imaginable won't wanna miss this.

FUSS - Cold Porn - Greensboro, NC

"...VOID influenced stuff that seems so popular with all the troubled teens these days." - Aaron

Real deal teenagers in a basement shit, spazzy and straight ahead. I love the terrible album art and heart on sleeve lyrics, not a huge fan of the nonsensical and offensive Vietnam War sample, but such was the time. The EP they recorded a year later is the real treat I'd say.

THE FUCKING COPS - You Have The Right to Shut the Fuck Up - Cleveland, OH

"A bit too much harmonization for my taste, but if they keep the guitar leads going everything should be OK." - Brad

Felt my Jawbreaker tattoo tingle for this one, deep in the paint "orgcore" shit, the all-dressed hot dog on this tape: tired after work song, political song, song about a city, song about a girl. Pretty perfect.

RAGRAGE / TWAT SAUCE - Discography / Clash of the Tight Ones - Chattanooga, TN

"So apparently there's this new thing called 'crust pop'..." - Kevin

Not a split, but might as well be, seems like they shared members and sent their demos in the same month. Somebody with more skin in the game should write about the Chattanooga / sloppy gay punk scene flowing out of this era, but I think part of the special thing about it that it never coalesced under a genre tag or something easily apeable (crust pop is pretty good though), and so remained specific to a small group of punks, a time and a couple places. Still, these songs all sound like being drunk in the summer and I love it.

FAMILY OUTING - Demo 2013 - London, UK

"... weird and damaged and wrong in a compulsive manner." - Layla

Easily the best thing I found in this dig, mean as shit hardcore. Best tracks were 'Thicko' and 'Sickos', not the same old guitar lines as a lot of bands splashing around in this pool. Same singer as the almighty GOOD THROB, but much more straight-ahead. Already broken up by the time MRR was reviewing this, a classic move. I can't help but love a side project or a one-off. Each tape came with "an individually stamped old postcard from your auntie's crap trip to Ramsgate with her arsehole children", so that's cool.

LITTLE ITALY - Demo Songs - New York City, NY

"It doesn't immediately strike me as garage, but if I had to encapsulate it in one word, I guess that's closest one I could come up with." - Langford

This is the kind of project I started this column to find. No real releases other than a live radio recording that got put on tape, and this bad photo of them playing in a park to three people is everything to me. It seems like they were tight with the mildly more popular outer borough band DIPERS, they played most of their shows with them. Are the songs good? Eh... 'Telephone' is pretty charming, but I think the fact that they're nothing special is why I like them listening back.

PS if anybody in Montreal knows who made the DEVIL'S DICK recording reach out - inquiring minds would like to know who's responsible.