Various Artists – Letters to April

Album #: 87

Recording Dates: 1991

Release Date: 2014

Catalog: Brandto 03

ScratchNotes:

In 2014, this compilation originally released in 1991 (news to me! I had no idea!) was made available. The opening two tracks are by IMF and from our sessions recording with Steve Albini.

You can find “Letters to April” on Bandcamp here.

Here are the liner notes:

“Letters to April” was a compilation we put together back in 1991 and was the third Brandtosaurus release. There were a handful of reasons for doing it – flesh out the Brandto catalogue, gain a little experience putting albums together, promote Dear Dead Delila a bit – and in all honesty, simply find some cool music to listen to. And it paid off in every respect. We enjoyed every band or artist on the compilation, and even built some years-long contacts out of some of them. And re-kindling not only those recurring contacts but contact with *every single band* on the compilation 20 years later is just icing on the cake.

The title and the cover? Well, i’ve always been a bit of an explorer, and one day while taking a van-load of trash to the landfill while at work with Karl (the ‘Fifth Delila’), we spied an old abandoned house down an overgrown driveway a quarter-mile off the back road. Naturally we turned in and took to rummaging through the place. And there on the floor was this nifty little booklet with “Letters to April” on the cover, which was filled with what were obviously letters from a bunch of schoolkids to a classmate who had moved away. While it was certainly the worse for wear, it was in darned fine shape considering the letters were dated January 1969. I snagged it, and still have it to this day. The album cover is the actual cover to that booklet, now quite fragile but preserved in a plastic magazine sleeve (i wanted to make the cover properly rectangle, but BC automatically squares covers off, so i trimmed away ‘from: your classmates’ off the bottom of the image to maximize potential). And due to advances in technology, it looks considerably better here than the multi-shrunk black and goldenrod image on the original cassette. I’d love to find this “April” and give it to her, but the 22-year-old booklet has now more-than-doubled to 45, and alas, i don’t even have a last name to go on…

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Original cassette released 15 October, 1991 

No Track Sampler

Just go listen to it at Bandcamp if you like!