Bear Eats Fish was a band originally called Thieving Winona (this demo was actually recorded when we were still named that). It consisted of Deejay on drums, Brady on bass, myself on guitar, and Jefferson Gustav (the janitor ghost in TGH, Leon in OD) on vocals. The novelty of the band was that all of us were playing instruments we’d never played before with Jefferson never having done any lead singing. We had a decent following in our heyday, thanks to our lead singer who has amazing stage presence. Anyway, we recorded a short five song demo in the basement of Deejay’s house. All vocals are written and performed by Jefferson Gustav and all music was written by various band members. I present it here, in full, for the DL audience. Convince us to get back together

1. Chickenscratch Johnson: The first song for the band that I ever wrote. I remember our first practice and I started playing this, Brady followed along on bass, and Deejay hammered out some drums. This song actually came together pretty well. I had most of it written before we started practicing. I remember working on the bridge a bit. This became a staple and opened all of our shows. It’s rockin’ and let Jefferson go crazy on stage.
2. Science Killer: I just started playing the main hook of this song during practice and what was usually the case, Deejay started bobbing his head dramatically while making a ridiculous face. Science Killer was born. I wrote all of it except for the breakdown, which was Deejay’s idea. And it was a good idea, because the breakdown was one of the most popular components of our live show. Deejay added in the weird hissy static in the recording because he thought it sounded cool.
3. Three Times: This was a Brady song. He came up with the main bass hook and I played some really awful 2-note guitar over the top. I think Deejay and I came up with the bridge. I don’t have many memories of this song.
4. Prescription Anti-Gravity: Probably my favorite recording on the demo (though not my favorite BEF song). I loved the whistling that Deejay and Jeff added to it.  This is  the first, and only, song I ever did a “guitar solo” for.  And once you listen, you’ll know why. I wrote everything except Deejay added the bridge when the vocals say “She floats around the house all day on prescription anti-gravity”, and I really like how that little difference changes the song. One of the trademarks of BEF was that I could never come up with a decent bridge. The bridge was basically the way that we all got to work on the songs together, so it wasn’t just one of us coming in and writing the whole thing.
5. Sweet and Low: Another cool thing about BEF was that we all were polar opposites when it came to musical taste and preference. So this song sounds completely out of character with the rest of the demo. This was my attempt at not “sounding punk” because I hated punk. Unfortunately, all I knew how to play was four chord pop punk This was supposed to be some harder edged rock song, if I remember correctly. I still like the song, I just hate how it was recorded and I’m not too keen on Jefferson’s vocals on this. This was always a song he had trouble writing lyrics for and I think the vocal style changed quite a bit during the live performances of this song. In any event, this song led to “Wormcheck”, which was easily our most popular tune, and everyone’s favorite. So “Sweet and Low” has that going for it, I guess

So there you have it, the original Bear Eats Fish demo. Ultimately, Deejay and I would leave the band and the remaining members would form Awesome Dirtbike. However, I think all of us have a special place in our hearts for those few months when the band consisted of four guys who didn’t know how to play their instruments and didn’t know how to write songs. We just winged it, played whatever came out of the amplifiers and had a lot of fun doing so.

There is only one other known Bear Eats Fish recording in existence, that I know of, anyway. Actually, there are two. One of them is a disc of 7 initial demos that we recorded about a week after we initially formed and which contains 2 songs that we never played at all when Jefferson joined the band as lead singer (None of us could sing and so we spent a few months practicing material until we convinced Mr. Gustav to sing for us). I have this disc and let me tell you, it’s rough. Like, just press record and see what happens, rough. Still, it’s kind of interesting to hear two complete songs that were never played at any BEF practice or gig.

The other is a 9 song live recording from Scenefest, a local festival that was recorded on a soundboard. The recording isn’t great, but if there is enough interest from DL listeners, I’ll post it. On top of the five songs from the demo, we play our metal song, Alphabet Soup, which everybody in the band hated except for Jefferson. He loved it for some reason. Diggin’ a Foxhole was my second favorite song. We recorded it around the same time as Wormcheck and it seemed we were really hitting our songwriting stride, so to speak. Ultra Big Phil which was one of our hardest rocking tunes and High School Rockout, which is our ultimate punk song. Unfortunately, we needed two guitar players to play it and we didn’t have any guitar players in the band, because I don’t call what I did guitar playing

All demo songs recorded in the Fall of 2003

Filed under: Archiving Bear Eats Fish, Archiving The Hot Carls, Dead Lantern News, Music