Upstart blues

Another treasure discovered during that excursion for Genesis boxes mentioned from the previous blog post unearthed something else I’ve been looking for off and on for the last few years, but not game related this time as this one is a music album.

The album Rubber Money from musical group Jo Gray is definitely a rarity as I think they may have been a band which failed to ignite a spark into the American music scene.  Makes sense though as I saw them during a school rally while in middle school and has been the only time I ever known of their existence.  If they were charted for success, they wouldn’t have played for free for a bunch of dumb 11-13 year old kids at the school’s cafeteria that also operated as the school’s theatre.

This had to have been early 1997 as I remember being in the eighth grade when they performed for us.  Although they had an album to tour with, interestingly enough they didn’t perform any of their songs.  I can, though, remember them acting more as a cover band as they played a ton of songs from varying artists that jumped between rock, rap, and R&B.  The most memorable moment for me was when they played Metallica’s "Enter Sandman."  During that part, the singer put on a longhaired wig and started began banging whilst the strobe lighting was in full effect.  Being basically the only kid who liked rock music at my middle school, it looked like I was the only one without a puzzled look on my face when they played that song.

After the performance I was impressed enough to where I wanted to buy their album.  During lunch they were selling CDs which I remember being $10, cassette tapes which were $5, and drumsticks for $3.  I bought the cassette version and later when I got home played it I was met with extreme disappointment as I thought it would have included all of the cover songs they played.  I wanted it to be a sort of mix tape of popular songs from around the time covered by them and not original songs.  I quickly discarded the tape and it sunk to the bottom of my music collection.

Years later I must have purged my audio cassette collection to my brother as I found it in one of his storage tubs.  Considering its age and exposed to outside temperatures, I’m surprised how well it survived.  Fortunately I saved one portable cassette player in case I ever wanted to listen to a cassette tape (thanks past me), so I do have the means to listen to it.  The verdict of the me today: not bad at all.  The album has a few really good songs worth listening to.  It has that mid ‘90s pop sound with hint of ‘80s pop which must have been influential for the band.

Since this seems to be the only existence of this album with no signs of it on the Internet, I’ve been thinking about archiving it by making a digital copy, and possibly sharing it?  Though I’m not currently sure on the latter as it’s a copy from an analogue source so it’s probably going to sound crappy, but we’ll see.  Anyways, looking forward to listening to the digital version of this album without the hassles of looking for a track by means of tedious fast-forwarding and rewinding sessions.

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