He found a tape in his collection and didn’t know exactly what it was.
So, last month, he sent us an email.
“Hi, after not collecting for a few years, I have now started expanding my Red Devils collection again,” the email from Arjan in The Netherlands began. “Looking at what I already had I came across the cassette in the attached photo. Now I was wondering if this is also known to you because I can’t find any information about it anywhere on Discogs or elsewhere. If not, this might be a nice contribution.”
It’s more than a nice contribution.
It appears that this is the most obscure Red Devils official recording — the Def American “Louisiana Blues” promo cassette from 1991.
Let’s back the story up a bit. The first mention most of us saw about this cassette was from an Aug. 7, 1992, “King King” review by James Lien in CMJ (the former College Media/Music Journal):
If it’s true that Rick Rubin and his Def American henchmen are trying to re-produce and re-create all the great albums of the ’70s over again, one by one, then we’re not quite sure what’s happening here — either Rick’s been getting into those heavy, electrified Johnny Winter/Muddy Waters albums, or The Red Devils are cheating and expanding the second side of ZZ Top’s Fandango to a full LP.
Whatever their rationale or origins (some of you may remember a mysterious cassette single, “Louisiana Blues,” that trickled out some seven months back), The Red Devils are a raw and rootsy electric blues band that’s fueled up and ready to go, and King King (recorded live at the L.A. club of the same name) captures all of the sweat and swaggering glory of hard-edged, amped-up Red Devil prime. But in truth, while so many other bands strive for rote replication, the Devils bash out an uninhibited, cranked-up ruckus (almost on a par with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or Elliot Sharp’s Terraplane at times) that’s totally real on its own terms.
They jus’ cain’t seem to sheck them bluez, even after an hour of wringing out squawking, skronking harmonica-drenched odes to evil women, firewater and love gone wrong. The best of Red Devilment: “Automatic,” “Tail Dragger,” “I’m Ready” (which tops Humble Pie’s 1970 version) and “Dangerous.”
“King King” was released in the U.S. on July 28, 1992 … so this cassette could have come from very late 1991 or early 1992.
We believed that the “Def American Recordings 1992 Preview” cassette was the one mentioned in CMJ. That tape, with a 1991 copyright, contained “The Red Devil’s” version of “Louisiana Blues” alongside songs from Slayer, Dan Baird, Wolfsbane and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”
For many years, it was also a very rare tape to collect. We purchased a copy from Discogs in 2009, before that site became a marketplace. That also pre-dated Facebook or social media for most of us, so there wasn’t yet a real community of traders all on the hunt for this stuff.
Hell, NoFightin.com was only in existence for six months or so at the time!
REAL DEAL: NoFightin.com talks with blues guitar great John Primer
In the back of our minds, however, we wondered if there was something else out there, even more unlikely than the “Def American 1992” tape.
Which brings us to Arjan’s email.
“I bought this on eBay on Nov. 23, 2017, from someone in Hoboken, New Jersey,” he wrote. “I asked him yesterday if he happened to remember how he got it, but he doesn’t remember because he says he buys thousands of items every year for many years.
“I still have the text of the advertisement at the time: ‘tape mint, never played. promo. this cassette represents one of the last frontiers for collecting completists’.”
52nd Street was a tape duplication company that issued promo copies of albums in advance of their official releases, the kinds of tapes that might be sent to magazines or radio stations. If you worked in the music business in the early ’90s, you might have received a promo cassette from Alice in Chains, Above The Law, Slayer or, yes, “Louisiana Blues” from The Red Devils.
Though Arjan has not been able to listen to the cassette yet, the promo “Louisiana Blues” has floated on the internet since we posted a clip of the song from the Def American in 2009.
Our initial impressions of “Louisiana Blues” from 16 years ago still stand:
Make no mistake: This is real, traditional Chicago blues. Where “King King” sonically puts the listener right on stage among the buzzing amps, here it’s easy to visualize the full band sitting semi-circle, with vintage guitars, upright bass and a wooden chair for percussion, banging out one of the earliest of Muddy Waters’ classic Chess recordings. … The band is instantly relaxed, playing a perfect midtempo shuffle, showing a control that only the most disciplined blues bands can muster.
Arjan’s story makes us wonder, again: What other scarce cassettes are out there, and who will find the next one?
No Fightin' 