Roughs From 2nd LP
Roughs From 2nd LP, 5/88 is a 1988 internal cassette tape containing unreleased rough mixes of songs from They Might Be Giants' second album Lincoln. The tape was assembled by the band as a preview of their forthcoming album for record labels, and was not meant for public release.
Background[edit]
Recording sessions for Lincoln took place at Dubway Studios in Manhattan from late 1987 through mid-1988, with Bill Krauss as producer and Al Houghton as engineer. This tape dates to May 1988, the final month of the sessions.[1] The recordings featured on it are unique working mixes, which were not intended to be heard by the public. Krauss commented on the tape in 2024: "Unlike the demos, rough mixes were never meant for any kind of distribution outside the core group. They were for us to listen to the work in progress and help us decide what it needed. One of us must have loaned this copy to someone and never got it back."[2]
Side A of the tape contains early versions of six songs later released on Lincoln. These recordings closely resemble their final album versions, sharing many of the same instrumental and vocal tracks, but include some notable differences in mixing and arrangement. The most significant feature of these rough mixes are the alternate drum tracks. Lincoln was initially recorded with the distinctly harsh-sounding Yamaha RX-11 drum machine, which the band had also used on their debut album. Partway through the sessions, the more advanced and versatile Alesis HR-16 became available.[3] After acquiring the new unit, the band replaced all RX-11 tracks with updated drum parts.[4] These rough mixes predate that change, retaining most of the preliminary drum tracks. Only "Ana Ng" features sounds from the HR-16, though its drum track differs substantially from the final version. Most other instrumentation is identical to the final versions, with a few exceptions. Some songs include additional instruments that were removed from the album ("The World's Address", "Snowball In Hell"), while others lack instruments that were added later ("They'll Need A Crane", "Shoehorn With Teeth"). All vocal tracks match the final versions, except for "Ana Ng", which features an alternate, fairly rough lead vocal take.
Side B of the tape consists of material unrelated to They Might Be Giants. It contains one unidentified pop song, and two isolated tracks of vocals and guitars. The cassette provides no documentation identifying the performers, though it seems probable that the material was recorded at Dubway Studios. The isolated tracks are presented in reverse and at half speed, indicating they had been recorded on a tape machine running at 3.75 inches per second, and were inadvertently left on when the tape was repurposed for general use. The origins of this material remain unclear and no other traces of these songs have been found online.
The cassette is held in the University of Calgary's EMI Music Canada archival collection. It was presumably submitted to an EMI-owned label as a preview of the band's next album. The specific label is unconfirmed, but it seems likely to have been Enigma Records, (potentially via its independent division Restless Records) which distributed Lincoln in Canada. Enigma became a subsidiary of EMI in 1989, possibly accounting for the tape's inclusion in the collection. The EMI Music Canada archives also include two items that may have been paired with the tape: a cassette copy of the band's debut album, as well as a VHS tape of one of the band's appearances on Nickelodeon's Nick Rocks.
Track listing[edit]
| # | Title | Length | Lyrics | Guitar Tab |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ana Ng (Rough Mix) | 3:00
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N/A |
| 2 | Snowball In Hell (Rough Mix) | 2:31
|
|
N/A |
| 3 | They'll Need A Crane (Rough Mix) | 2:33
|
|
N/A |
| 4 | Shoehorn With Teeth (Rough Mix) | 1:10
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|
N/A |
| 5 | The World's Address (Rough Mix) | 2:20
|
|
N/A |
| 6 | Cage & Aquarium (Rough Mix) | 1:08
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N/A |