Blues Band
"Blues In My Soul" demo, early 1985
Princeton, NJ

Conversion:
Original cassette>Onkyo TA-6711>DA-20 (analog/digital conversion)>
Egosys U2A>Sound Studio 2.1.1b3>xACT 1.55
by Dave Mallick; original cassette provided by Hisham ElShakhs

(minutes:seconds.frames) [25:25.55]
01. And So It Goes       [07:58.07]
02. Severe Infatuation   [03:04.31]
03. When It Hits You     [02:37.18]
04. Glory, Glory         [04:34.34]
05. Blues In My Soul     [07:11.40]

Blues Band is:
John Popper - harmonica & vocals
Dave Stern - guitar
Brendan Hill - drums
Sebastian Hill - bass

History:
This is the earliest known demo tape featuring members of who would
eventually become Blues Traveler. John and Brendan had met in school 
in late 1983 and began to jam together at Brendan's house. After 
recruiting Brendan's brother Sebastian as a bassist and a few gigs 
together as "The Establishment", the original guitarist left. Enter
guitarist Dave Stern, and a name change to "Blues Band".

This demo was likely recorded sometime in early 1985, prior to 
Sebastian's graduation from Princeton High School later that year. It
features the only known recordings of "When It Hits You" and the title
track, "Blues In My Soul", studio or otherwise. Blues Band would go on
to record one more demo - entitled simply "Jamdemo" - before changing
bassists and guitarists one more time and becoming "Blues Traveler".

Notes:
In 2001, an auction popped up on eBay with an old classmate selling 
this demo and the 1988 "Let's Travel" demo; after bidding against each 
other for a few days, another fan and I decided to declare a truce and 
split the goods but make copies for each other. We won, he chose the 
"Let's Travel" demo, and I got this one, which I promptly did a pretty
poor transfer of. This re-transfer used my DA-20 as an A/D converter as
well as newly-cleaned heads on the Onkyo cassette deck, so it should
sound a bit better, though the original cassette is over 20 years old
and pretty hissy on any deck.

Thanks to Hisham for being willing to part with a high-school memory,
and to Ken for helping me blow an embarrassing sum of money on two
decrepit cassettes whose combined age exceeds my own...

bluesband1985-??-??t01.flac:bbecacd5e14bc1988aa4d3761f9b534f
bluesband1985-??-??t02.flac:a749ef77afae14076af1dbe9cc5d3a6f
bluesband1985-??-??t03.flac:86ba695310a1dbca75266629aaf98e54
bluesband1985-??-??t04.flac:afb030a9e2caf3c4afde289efca0664a
bluesband1985-??-??t05.flac:64e06e7ed69b587572c1fb481270af78