Ean wrote:Oddly, Snake apparently doesn't feature on the Snake demos:
Ah, those August 1990 'Duncan demos' are different from the Snake ones, which are accounted for elsewhere in the timeline (they're back a page, in 1989).
I couldn't remember where I sourced the info about the August 1990 recordings, but I've dug out an old email I sent to someone who was enquiring about them in 2002. I'll reproduce that here as it covers it quite nicely, I think.
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Ah, yes, the old Snake / Duncan demo conundrum. I can pretty much guarantee that, of the tracks you listed, Snake sings them all. There's no mistaking that vocal. Duncan sounds like a kind of cross between Dave Vanian from The Damned and The Cult's Ian Astbury (note: very rough approximation), at least he does on Mournblade's Live Fast Die Young LP, which he recorded before he joined The Wildhearts.
I've not heard the Duncan demos. In fact, I had no idea that they even existed for ages. When the first version of that WH Chronology came out (in the Japanese Moodswings And Roundabouts boxed set), I had no knowledge of any Dunc demos. If you've got the original English or Japanese booklets from 1997, you'll notice that there's no mention of them. However, when I sent the expanded 1999 version to Ginger, who was staying in LA with Ric Browde at the time, Ric knocked a bit more of the demo history into shape.
There was a bit of a debate about the existence of 'the Duncan tapes' on The Wildhearts Mailing List last year, because no one had ever heard them. So I asked Ginger for the lowdown, and he said that the demos did exist, but "they're property of Ric Browde, who paid for them. Pretty fortunate for us really as they turned out fucking terrible. Duncan wouldn't sing unless he was well lubricated on his favorite tipple, Bourbon, so you can imagine how chaotic (but fun) the sessions were! The songs were the same ones as the Snake demos. We used the backing tracks and attempted to put Duncan's vocals on top. Didn't work. End of line-up!"
So, it looks like the 'Dunc Tapes' were never properly issued, and are still locked up in Ric's vaults, which probably explains why, unlike the Snake ones, they haven't been bootlegged over the years.
As for the recording dates... to be honest, four and a bit years after the event, I don't have total recall on where I got some of the dates I included in the chronology. I think that a lot of the demo stuff might have been mentioned in a Record Collector article (the November 1995 issue, if I recall). But they were checked over by Ginger and Ric, and neither disputed them. Not that that means they're definitely correct, but hey, it's all I've got to go on right now!
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by Owen » 7th Jul 09, 21:32 
