Hello everyone, it's been about a week since I published my first and only blog post, "Ghost Bees' "Demo 2007": The Found Album, And the Elephant in the Room", which goes into detail about twin folk duo Ghost Bees and their history and lost media legacy. Since posting this I have made some discoveries I think are worthwhile to mention in a new post.
First and foremost, I'd like to announce that I have started a new page on my blog dedicated to cataloging every single mention of this band on the web which includes live videos, archived audio performances, music downloads, photos, interviews, etc. I have tried my best to archive all the sites I feel like are vulnerable to takedown, so hopefully none of the links become broken over time. Everything linked here is also linked on my archive page! Please check it out.
The Fate of the Demos
photo by Joe Howell on Flickr
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You may notice that in my updated list there are two colors of highlights. In finding and listening to these demos I made the realization that the two in blue were already found under other names. "Isabelle" is also known as "Happy Now", and "In Rivers Passing" as "For Flannery O'Conner" on my Demo 2007 CD. 'Rebel's Sin', 'A-Minor's Rust' and 'Prophecies From a Sickened Lie' are all new unheard-till-now songs, though. In my last post I made it a point to say Isabelle "may not exist at all" and that I was sure the song was mislabeled but that seems to be thwarted by new information.
What happened here? Well, we know my Demo 2007 CD was recorded in/attributed to 2006/2007 which means it was released before their album Tasseomancy in 2008. I am no closer to finding out where exactly this CD came from but there is more evidence now pointing to it possibly being a CD sold exclusively at concerts in 2007 pre-Tasseomancy. Just for fun, here's a video of them performing at The Casbah in 2007.
In a conversation with Sexint about the origins of the "Demos" collection they said this:
Due to this I am going to safely assume that this collection of demos was available on their Myspace for download AFTER the release of Tasseomancy, when they would have had more motivation to spice up the names and release songs that they had been playing live for at least a couple years at that point. This is backed up by the fact Sexint and their girlfriend have been fans since around 2009 or 2010, when Ghost Bees slowly started to switch their name to Tasseomancy.
TLDR; I believe a few songs in this collection of demos have different names from the tracks on my Demo 2007 CD because they had moved past the "this is all we have" stage to the "here's what we have left over" stage and had more time to give more thought-out titles to these demos. This makes all of the title discrepancies make sense. In the Ghost Bees Exclaim! article the twins even cite Flannery O'Connor as a huge inspiration of theirs, further cementing the thought that the twins /are/ responsible for the name changes and that they are /not/ fan made discrepancies.
Speaking of this change, this is an amendment I'd like to make on my other entry: Tasseomancy (band) and Ghost Bees used the same myspace page, there was just a name change. This is an important distinction to make because despite the huge change in their style when Ulalume released, they didn't exactly immediately bury or destroy everything from their Ghost Bees era and instead saw it as a name change with a new album. This is apparent the more you look into the few years in-between the release of Tasseomancy and Ulalume. In many places like in the audio release of 2009 Pop Montreal they played Ulalume songs in the Ghost Bees style and simply stated "these will be on our new album". It was not an immediate switch like I may have accidentally led you to believe. The above image proves this without a doubt as it shows Tasseomancy's Myspace blog section. It features the exact three blogs whose titles are available on the Ghost Bees Myspace, effectively confirming Tasseomancy was nothing but a name change for a long while.
In earlier interviews re: the name change both Sari and Romy made it clear they were just changing their name. As time went on, though, they would seemingly resent the existence of Ghost Bees and even go as far as to say they didn't exactly like it anymore as it was, in their words, their first album together before they could really settle on a genre or anything. They've "matured" in their sound since then.
I am currently working on figuring out a photo to use for the new demo uploads for YouTube but for the time being you can listen to them or download them Via my Dropbox linked here. The link to download this among other things is also in my Ghost Bees archive page on the righthand side of my blog. I will make further updates once necessary. There is no response from the twins on my email, nor is there one from the other Ghost Bees fan I emailed, BUT I do know of someone who has a vague connection to at least one of the twins so if something comes of that I will be sure to update then.
I am glad that this has a happy ending. So many things that go missing never surface back on the web. I'd again like to thank Lrexie, Sexint (and their girlfriend), Juniperro, and everyone else that helped me uncover these songs and related info!
Woodlands Video
Did The Red Sea Part?
Cover Art by Melissa Federowicz
Next on my list of things to update, I was able to find out where "Did the Red Sea Part?" came from! It was created and released on a digital compilation album from defunct record label Peppermill Records in mid 2008 called "52 weeks: Spring" It was a collection of 52 songs, one for each week of the year, published in seasonal sections. This song was featured on the spring collection. This clears it up! Ghost Bees was also a part of several other compilation collections, only one of which with a CD release, all featuring previously released songs. Please check out the Ghost Bees archive to learn more.
Demo 2007
photo by Joe Howell on Flickr
This part is being added after the initial publishing because I'd like to clear something up without destroying already written content. During my most recent research session I came across the Ghost Bees sonicbids page, and it listed their two releases as "Tasseomancy" and "Ghost Bees EP". While Demo 2007 is NOT a self-titled full album it is PROBABLY a self-titled demo EP given out/sold at shows in 2007 before they released Tasseomancy. Due to this revelation, I will be specifying this in my older entry and my YouTube uploads as well as on Discogs.
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That is all for now! My next blog post will be out relatively soon. It will either be about Cake Bake Betty's two album legacy, a brief overview of Brad Petering (of TV Girl)'s musical past, or a short couple posts about recent concerts i've been to. Thanks for reading!
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