Punk band searching for 36-year-old demo tape finds one on opposite end of the country

A copy of a nine-track EP cassette that London, Ont. '80s punk band October Crisis released nearly forty years ago has been found on the other side of the country. Last month, band members launched a search for the missing EP because a record company wants to include it on a vinyl release of the band's music over the years.  

The tape's owner is Victoria, B.C musician Tiemen Kuipers. Kuipers came across the EP a decade ago while he was running Talk's Cheap, a downtown Victoria record store that specialized in interesting, obscure and hard-to-find records. 

The tape was tucked inside a collection of punk demos a customer had brought into his store. Kuipers was drawn to October Crisis' record by its quality, as well as the fact that it was only now showing up on his radar.

"It's a really decent demo," said Kuipers. "Punk and hardcore fans are rabid archivists, so little known bands are usually well documented. That's why I was surprised to come across something this decent, that was Canadian, that I hadn't heard before."

Kuipers' tape has the original cassette sleeve that the band printed back in the mid-80's. James MacLean, one of the band's founding members, said the sleeve alone brought back memories of the recording he'd forgotten. 

"I'd totally forgotten that on the B-side, there were a bunch of live tracks, four of them, as well," he said of the tape, which he'd remembered as only having five pre-recorded tracks. 

Kuipers is sending the cassette to the band, where it'll be digitized at a studio. MacLean said finding this copy of the punk demo tape is still just the start of their online search, which they began with a February Facebook post on their page. 

"The search continues," said MacLean, adding that documents suggest there are around 200 copies of the demo in circulation. "And hopefully more people will keep reaching out to us."

A planned 'best hits' vinyl record behind search for cassette

Back in '84, a glowing review of the band's music from punk zine Maximum Rocknroll led to the band getting a number of mail orders for copies of their EP. It was also sold at October Crisis concerts across Canada and in the U.S. 

The band said that the EP was really just an entry card for the band to get shows in the United States and get exposure on pre-alternative rock and college radio stations, before recording a full album in 1985. 

"Over the years, you move several times, things get lost in the shuffle," MacLean said.

Now, a record company called Yeah Right records wants to put out a vinyl record of music the band has written over the years. That's why the band launched the search for the missing EP. MacLean says early songs are nice to have for a project like this, because grouped with later work, a band's first batch of songs demonstrates the evolution of their song writing over time.

"I've asked [Tiemen] to treat the tape like an artifact, like a historical artifact that's got to be temperature controlled and bubble wrapped," said MacLean. "So we're going to play around with it and see if we can restore it." 

The band, which was formed in 1983, released what they called post-punk music that often served as social commentary.