How to set up a label by accident – Stupid Rabbit Tapes
In late 79, Tim Naylor wrote to Sounds (national UK music magazine) announcing his band ‘Controls’ had released an independent cassette on Stupid Rabbit Tapes called ‘Sock it to ‘em, Dave’ which could be bought for £1 from his home address. Sounds put a small report on their news page in the New Year and in days he was receiving offers for
distribution, publishing, fanzine interviews and punters sending in their £1 payments… unfortunately he had nothing to send them as the tape didn’t actually exist. Armed with a fistful of orders, Jon Monks (rhythm guitar) and Tim spent hours one Sunday going through old rehearsal tapes and by the end of the day cobbled together the 4 tracks that made up the ‘Sock it to ‘em, Dave’ ep (SRT 001). An intro of someone heckling at the band’s first gig was added and an outro lifted from a Star Trek episode. Jon was the only one in the band with any equipment (two Philips portable cassette recorders and a dodgy DIN lead) so he got the short-straw of doing the copies - all in real time and into the wee small hours as the flood of orders and industry requests for demo tapes refused to diminish. Tim designed an insert for the cassette box, a logo and wrote some sleeve notes and Stupid Rabbit Tapes was born. Amazingly, the tape was highly rated by a number of fanzines including Cultural Revolution and Stick it in your Ear. The sound quality is pretty poor but there’s a ton of energy and enthusiasm which obviously struck a chord somewhere and 500 copies of the tape were sold via mail order, gigs and via fanzines. Flushed with success, the label decided to repeat the feat and issued a longer, 10-track album by Controls on Stupid Rabbit Tapes in July 1980. ‘Don’t Adjust the Controls’ featured ten tracks captured live at the bands rehearsal studio (a sports pavilion in Fleet, Hampshire) and mixed via two microphones to a professional cassette deck. Around 100 copies were sold of this tape, mostly on mail order. A third Controls tape featuring tracks by a ‘new’ version of the band was issued in 1981 on Stupid Rabbit Tapes as ‘Late Night Love Songs’ (SRT 003). Stupid Rabbit tapes then formed an alliance/friendship with the Reading-based X-Cassettes label. This label issued a Controls compilation called ‘Dance’ (X-003). The band also appear on two X-Cassette compilations – ‘Anything Could happen in the next half hour’ (X-002) and ‘Bits’ (X-005).”
Another interesting by-product was bands started sending the label their tapes to put out on Stupid Rabbit Tapes – a five track demo from Religious Overdose (from Northampton UK) was eventually issued by X-Cassettes as ‘First Demo’ (X-004, 1981). The following year, Japanese eccentric Naofumi Ishimaru (Yximalloo) sent a tape asking if it could be released on Stupid Rabbit Tapes – interestingly this tape (Be Young! Be Foolish! Be Inconvenient! Sakura Records Y-6915) appears on no listings or discographies about the band. In 81 Beating Hearts started recording for Stupid Rabbit, issuing the Retrospective Jealousy EP, which was well received a steady seller. The band also appeared on the Beyond the River vinyl LP (Open Door Records 1982) and released a posthumous 20 track collection on Stupid Rabbit. In the mid-80s a third version of Controls was born and issued eight tapes on Stupid Rabbit,
putting out a tape every couple of months with a new line-up featuring Tracy Darlington on lead vocals. The label even broke into the pages of the industry rag Music Week on a number of occasions which goes to show a well-honed press release can have just as much effect as a well-recorded demo. Politico-punk band Handsome Bastards issued their debut tape on Stupid Rabbit – a six track mini album – in 1988, followed up by two EPs in 89 and 90. The final band to record for the label, Sweet Hooligan, issued two EPs and a single on the label in 92 and 93 before the band imploded gloriously following a gig on New Year’s Eve 1993. In the intervening years, the label issued some very low run CD compilations to friends and relations, before appearing in a feature on cassette culture in Record Collector magazine in late 2011. In October 2012, Stupid Rabbit Tapes licensed a digital version of Keine Namen’s ‘The Bedroom Tapes’ to Year Zero Records, who described it as: “Something akin to a lost fragment of the Rosetta Stone of DIY Punk.Three chord thrash re-animated as Zero note dirges, or rather a case of playing the right wrong notes. Imagine the bastard offspring of Half Japanese, The Shaggs, and The Prats, and you'd be half way there. True Year Zero music.”
Later in 2014, exciting plans are due to be announced about collaboration between Stupid Rabbit and a well known music industry publisher. Stupid Rabbit Releases:
‘Sock it to ‘em, Dave’ 4 track EP Controls - SRT001 1980
‘Don’t Adjust the Controls’ 8 Track LP Controls - SRT002 1980
‘Late Night Love Songs’ 10 Track LP Controls - SRT003 1981
‘Retrospective Jealousy’ 3 track EP Beating Hearts SRT004 1982
‘Love Beat Kid … On the Nod’ 20 track LP Beating Hearts SRT005 1983
‘Searching for the Perfect partner’ 10 track live LP Controls SRT006 1984
‘Dress, Dance, Demand and Desire’ 7 track LP Controls SRT007 1984
‘I didn’t know you were leaving’ 5 track EP Controls SRT008 1984
‘The Good Thing’ 4 track EP Controls SRT009 1984
‘Keep Me Here’ 3 track Cassingle Controls SRT010 1984
‘Love You More’ 4 track Cassingle Controls SRT011 1985
“always will…” 4 track Cassingle Controls SRT012 1985
“Let’s all bark like Labradors!” 15 track live LP Controls SRT013 1985
‘Ooer missus it’s the…’ 6 track Handsome Bastards SRT014 1989
‘The South is Rising’ 3 track Handsome Bastards SRT015 1989
‘HBs’ 3 track Handsome Bastards SRT016 1989
‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ Naylor/Monks unreleased demo 1992
‘Punk Rock – The Wilderness Years Vol. 8’ 3 track ep Sweet Hooligan SRT 017 1992
‘Fabulous’ Cassingle Sweet Hooligan SRT 018 1993
‘Sitting Sucking Air ep’ 3 track ep Sweet Hooligan SRT 019 1993
‘The Bedroom Tapes’ 8 tracks Keine Namen Superbun 1* 1978
* Licensed to Year Zero Records YEAR 018 2012/1978
