Grog found this on a blog and sent it to me:
OXYMORONS – demo cassette
I had to laugh when I dug this one out. This is definitely a discovery from the dark days of the early ‘90s. Back in 1990, when I was still an avid reader of Maximum Rock’n’Roll (don’t laugh, I intend on writing an article “In Defence of MRR” one day), I’d always pour through their classifieds to find interesting people to write to, zines to buy, cassettes to trade or bands to correspond with. Hey, I was 18, OK? I’d just spent eight years in an all-boys private school and I felt it was my God-given right to search out kindred spirits, and if that meant using the classifieds of MRR, then so be it. One caught my attention: OXYMORONS. I can’t recall what the ad said, exactly, but from memory it noted something about an Ohio punk band who’d give their demo away for free to anyone who’d write to them. I did exactly that and received this tape (with a stack of stickers) in the mail a few weeks later. I wrote to the band a bit over the next couple of years but lost touch by probably ’93 or so. What ever happened to the Oxymorons? Did they ever put a proper album out? Well, strangely enough, this tape still sounds great! As per usual, I gave it the driving test (that is, play it in the car whilst aimlessly – or aimfully – cruising), and it passed with flying colours. Mix up raging drunk-punk shenanigans with a more melodic Husker Du/Squirrel Bait inflection and that the Oxymorons in a basket. Yeah, OK, that probably makes them sound completely worthless, and maybe they are/were, but when the songs are this good, I really don't care. The last track, “Walking Backwards”, shoulda been a hit. No shit. I wonder what these guys are doing now…
Endnote: my good friend Richard Stanley (Dropkick Records/The Onyas) and I howled collectively in laughter a few years ago when we both discovered that we owned this tape, as he, too, as an alienated 18-year-old, had responded to their MRR ad. Great minds think alike, huh? No?…
http://manwithoutshame.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_archive.html
Take a look at the main blog page too. Lots of interesting stuff there.
take care
---Jones
1 comment:
I had forgot that we (or maybe just me) offered free cassettes to anybody who asked. At least we know a few people got them and liked us enough to keep them.
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