Behold, perhaps the last remaining still-unheard recordings by Soophie Nun Squad: our very first “real” session for an August 1993 demo tape, recorded on 4-track by Joe Cole at his house! It’s free/pay-what-you-want at my Harlan Records archive on Bandcamp.

Why was it unreleased? Because only one of our two vocalists is on the recording: the previous night, we played our third show ever (and track 7 is live from a VHS recording of that show) and I got in trouble for coming home super-late at night. I had just turned 15 years old. My parents found out I was gonna skip out on a trip to Hot Springs with a friend in order to record the demo, and being suspicious of our punk band's activities, threatened to ground me if I still chose to record. Should I have just skated away and gotten in more trouble? YES. But I didn't. So I missed the sesh.

Anyway, this recording features only Mike Lierly, Mark Lierly, Eli Milholland, and Dustin Clark, plus some bonus verbage by Corey, known in Little Rock's hip hop future as 9th Scientist. This demo shows some of the often-lost early musical influences on Soophie: "PJ Sod" distinctively drawing from Downcast, and "Paula" being an explicit nod to Chino Horde, with a kinship to Moss Icon as well.

Unused cover art by Mike Lierly, who also made up the undiscussed demo title in real time while drawing! This was only a couple of months after we self-published our first five comic books. All of this was happening at the same time!