Dance of the Porcupines – 1989 Demo

Dance of the Porcupines
Demo
1989 Major Drone Records
San Mateo, California, USA

1. Feels Like Rain
2. Little Children
3. Franklin Letterhead

Reed Sutton – Lead Guitars
Danny Webb – Rhythm Guitars / Vocals
Gordon Shales – Bass Guitar
Patrick Roche – Drums

Produced by Dance of the Porcupines
Recorded at Telluride Studios in Menlo Park California
Engineered by Mike Martin
All songs written by Dance of the Porcupines

Another type of post I plan on making (as frequently as I can find them) will be about tapes that have been uploaded to YouTube. These are the best type of posts for you, as you can actually listen to the music if you are interested – or even find ways to download from the videos if you want.

Dance of the Porcupines is a bit of an obscure band – I didn’t have much information about them until a Facebook page for them popped up (https://www.facebook.com/pg/DanceOfThePorcupines/) with some info:

Dance Of The Porcupines was a Bay Area band that was active between 1987 and 1997. Dance of The Porcupines was made up of Dan Webb on rhythm guitar and vocals, Reed Sutton on lead guitar, Patrick Roche on drums and a variety of bass players including Jay Denton, Mike Lund, Dan Fowler and Gordon Shales. Influences were REM, Tom Petty, The Smithereens, Aerosmith and other 70s and 80s bands. The band played local SF area clubs and recorded 2 full length albums during their 10 years in existence.

That second full length was And Why Not?, which you can find full scans of online as well as the occasional copy to purchase. Their first demo and first full length are harder to find. This post features their first three song demo in one YouTube video:

You can see why they were able to keep going after this demo: good late 80s alternative, leaning towards the jangle-pop side of music, but still with a solid complex bottom line and time signatures mixed in with the catchier pop side. The R.E.M. influence is most notable here, but so are the other bands mentioned… especially The Smithereens. They signed to Narrowpath Records after this and released a full length called April Days in 1992 which can also be found on YouTube.