Thread: Songs of 88
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Old 03-20-2018, 05:17 PM   #39
soniclovenoize
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Over some terrible commutes I had to make this weekend, this thread got me thinking...

The thing about bands is they start with a set of songs, and over time write new ones and replace them with the worst of the old songs. So over time, their set of songs evolves and is refined. So that got me thinking: You could chart out the evolution of all the pre-Gish tracks depending on when they were debuted live (as well as retired from a set), as well as seeing which songs survived over time.

So I did just that:

https://i.imgur.com/IbZI9Kb.png

So what you have here are all of the pre-Gish songs that were played live, based on the spfc.org setlist data, organized by when they were debuted. Wtf does this even tell us?

1) They began 1988 with the remnants of the best of The Marked material, but by the fall they had crafted a new set, basically the first demo tape + There It Goes, Under Your Spell, etc. Only Bleed and My eternity survived... For a while at least.

2) By early 1989, a whole new set of songs started to appear, systematically replacing the 1988 demo tracks. As 1989 progresses, the songs become less Gothy and more psychedelic, riff-oriented.

3) Both I Am One pt 2 and Stray Cat Blues appear in September. Both were recorded at the acoustic Ignoffo Session. Thus it's reasonable to believe that session occurred in September.

4) Mark Ignoffo had called the sessions with him an "on-going project". If we make the assumption that the songs were debuted live approximately the same time they were tracked, we can get a more accurate picture of when the individual Ignoffo Sessions songs were tracked:
- Late 1988: Sun, My Dahlia
- Early 1989: Cinnamon Girl, East (alternate), Snap, Rhinoceros
- Spring 1989: Psychedelic, Love, Daughter, Not Worth Asking, Honeyspider
- Summer 1989: C'mon, Bury Me, I Am One
- Fall 1989: acoustic session

So anyways, if you wanted to postulate what a pre-Gish album would have looked like, it really depends on the time of year. An early 1989 album might have been the Moon tape stuff + Snap, East, Love and Not Worth Asking. A late 1989 would have been like I Am One, C'mon, Bury Me, Try to Try, Razor, I Am My End, plus Rhinoceros, the constant winner of all these songs.

 
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