Promos 1980

“Some fans have expressed an interest in us releasing the content of the two promo cassettes we made in 1980 to send to Ralph as, following their interest in our Struvé Sneff tape, they asked us to send more material as and when it was available.

In May 1980 we made the ‘Songs From The Surgery’ cassette (Rotcod Productions P.rD2) which featured 7 new songs and, on the B side we included our first live performance that happened just the month before. 3 or 4 copies were made.

This must have achieved something as the following month we received their offer to release an album.

In August 1980, we followed up with ‘Hat’s Off, Gentlemen’ – a 6 track cassette. Again just 3 or 4 copies were made.

Some of the tracks would appear on Songs For Swinging Larvae, while all but one of the others, that didn’t fit with that album, eventually appeared on the 1984 Ralph LP of Struvé Sneff. All the tracks are our original ‘unmastered’ studio mixes and some have slight differences to the final released versions.

Of those differences, a vocal-less version of BPM is possibly the most significant – on that basis the collection may arguably be of more interest to completists and those who like to delve into the detail.

Renaldo & Ted