’96 Shelved Demos

As one can imagine, the furor over Liz’s third album, whitechocolatespaceegg, was still in full swing amongst Liz fans well into 1999 when several demo and studio tracks were unearthed through the efforts of longtime Phair fan, Ken Lee—owner and operator of the Mesmerizing fan site.

Lee received an email from someone claiming to be roommates with Jason Chasko, who was one of the producers off of whitechocolatespaceegg. He offered to burn CD copies of the recording sessions from a total of seven different cassettes, which he then sent to Lee, along with a breakdown of the contents. Lee would later transfer most of the tapes to CD and distributed them through the aid of members of the 6′ 1″ mailing list digest (now known as Support System). They were aptly referred to as the WCSE Sessions, and they included studio recordings from both 1996 and 1997.

However, there were also fifteen demo tracks from the 1996 sessions (separate from the studio recordings) that for whatever reason, weren’t included on those discs. The running order matches the 1996 Studio sessions, but these were recorded on an 8-track and feature many early renditions of songs—many of which have a lo-fi sound that fans of the Girly-Sound recordings are particularly drawn to.

These songs were all produced by Scott Litt, the original producer on whitechocolatespaceegg, before Jason Chasko and Brad Wood would contribute after Litt’s departure from the project.

Many of these songs have since been officially recorded, including “Rocket Boy,” “Stuck On An Island,” and “Freak of Nature.”

Released: 1996 (originally) 1999 (shared publicly)
Label: None
Format: Cassette (originally), Digital, CD-R
Country: US
Availability: Rare

Cover art by Robbie McCown
Photos by Jim Newberry