Cardboard Compulsion

Record collecting included a compulsion to keep the mailers they were sent in. Here they are, along with the stories behind them.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Happy Cadavers - Nothing New

(c) Henry Yu 2005
Dave Stimson was associated with Touch and Go in its early days. During the 80's he did Goldmine ads, which is how rare records were sold back then. Auctions were done by mailing in a postcard with your bids written on the back. Anyhow, I feverishly looked for records that were listed on the Forced Exposure want list, one of which was the Happy Cadavers' Nothing New EP. Dave happened to have a copy, and I traded a copy of DOA's "The Prisoner" for it, which was mailed to me in this mailer. Probably not a great trade on my part, but I really liked the record, particularly "Saw My Baby In The Meat Section". Little did I know that year's later, I'd come to find out that David Grubbs (Slint, Squirrel Bait, solo, etc) was in this band with his fellow preppies from one of the Day schools in Louisville. As you can see, Dave had impeccable packaging. He later was found at various WFMU swaps, and now eBay.