Heads up.
With the exception of a few cassette demos, the Smoking Section never managed to officially release any music. Doing that required “getting signed,” and remember kids, this was back in the days before smart phones or even laptops — the Internet itself was a pretty novel concept. The Indie Revolution was still in the future, and we didn’t see ourselves as a band that could do our thing on a shoestring budget. We held out for a deal; we came up short and eventually broke up.
Nowadays, getting your music to the public is almost trivial, though seeing any $$$ for it is just as difficult, perhaps more so.
Even though the possibilities with home recording have been taken to a whole new level, nothing has really changed when it comes to producing a quality piece of music. And we always knew we had good material, just unpolished and unfinished in places… and, like, so what? It finally dawned on us that we should just release those demos we recorded and call it an album.
Dave found a box of DATs that contained clean, hi-res mixes of all three demos, with at least one track that hadn’t made it to the finished demo tape (“My Lips”). With some help from Damien Rasmussen, we extracted the mixes and ran them through a quick mastering process, which made them sound less like demos and more like legitimate recordings (i.e. loud and sparkly) and now they’re making their way into the mainstream ecosystem.
I gotta say it’s amazing to have them out there finally. It’s a full-length release with 10 tracks, and it’s cracking. The band sounds fantastic and you get to hear Tony in heartbreakingly clear detail with all his suave character and soulfulness. It’s an instant album and an instant party.
Smoking Section: Smooth & Nasty
- Big FIsh
- Driving
- Yeah, But Will It Sell
- Red Idea
- Water’s Edge
- Blue Day
- Driving (Again)
- Toxic
- Razzamatazz
- My Lips (rough mix)