Five Stars For Failure - demo cassette

Let me begin today's addendum to Creation Of Minerals by first saying that I feel weird about doing a blog post on a band which I used to play in; there's just something a bit uncomfortable about the idea of doing so. Hopefully I can handle it...

I'm not going to go very deep into the history of Five Stars For Failure here, because that's what this website is for. Fundamentally, we were a three-piece emo/indie/hardcore band from suburban Philadelphia and we really liked Sleepytime Trio, Spirit Assembly and Four Hundred Years. This tape was the first thing we recorded, and it was comprised of the first four songs we wrote that -weirdly enough- appeared on the demo in chronological order. Our guitarist Jay recorded it (played live, of course) on a Tascam 4-track at our practice space, which also happened to be his bedroom in the house that his grandparents owned (we eventually got our shit together and migrated to the garage). It came out sounding very lo-fi and raw, which makes perfect sense. We were happy with it at the time I guess, but nowadays may be tough to make it through, as I just found out. I have no idea why we thought making 200 copies of this thing was a good idea, but that's exactly what we did. We brought a few demos for consignment to some local record shops in and around the city, sold / gave away a bunch at shows, and send a few off to some zines for reviews. A decent-enough review of this cassette (and then eventually our 7") in issue 24 of HeartattaCk gave us a little bit of exposure, which made us feel nice. Looking back on this band years later, we weren't great or anything, but at the same time I don't think we were that bad either. I'd say I'm happy with what we accomplished: this demo cassette, a four song 7", a few compilation appearances, and 31 shows in total. Not too shabby.

Anyways, we would re-record these four jams at an actual studio, and two of them went on the aforementioned seven inch. After we got tired of each other and broke up, we self-released a 13 song discography cd-r, but didn't include these original versions of the songs on it. If you are so inclined, you can also listen to and/or download the discography right over here. Realistically, the only reason I bothered to do this post is because I can't imagine that digital files of these songs exist in the possession of anyone who wasn't in the band.

I'm still very close to the bass player of FSFF, Justin aka The Reverend. He's getting married next month and has asked me to be his best man, which is honestly a total lie because he didn't ask. He essentially told me that I was his best man and didn't leave me with a say in the matter, which I'm obviously totally cool with. We've also put a new band together, King Slender, and will be recording some jams for a demo tape in a matter of weeks. Hopefully it turns out a bit better than this :)

200 copies were made, and this was recorded by Jay Donahue during June of 1999.

Tracklist:
1) Break, Eye
2) Were It Car Invisible
3) Caterstories
4) Stuffing

- wine coolers -