a funny thing happened on the way to the bootleg CD pressing plant
So here's a little story I've heard a few times that may be of interest to fans of the "old ways" we heard about music.
If you're a fan of dance and industrial music, you're more than likely acquainted with Chicago's WaxTrax! Records. Beginning life as a record shop, it eventually became a label with an oddly diverse slate of releases. WaxTrax! is probably best known for being the home of Ministry and their many side projects like Revolting Cocks, Pailhead and 1000 Homo DJs, but they also released records from Coil, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, KMFDM, Meat Beat Manifesto, and Divine to name a few. Yes, that Divine, the one that ate shit in a John Waters movie. And the single she released through WaxTrax! is awesome! But that's all kinda beside the point. What's important to remember is that WaxTrax! were an American independent record label with a lot of popular releases and ties to international labels and distributors like Play It Again Sam, Devotion, Threshold House and others. They were, for their time, kind of a big deal, which is why their legacy is still celebrated to this day.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, Ministry had a record deal with Sire/Warner Bros., but they still issued all their side-projects through WaxTrax!, and there were quite a few of them. Along with the aforementioned ones, there was also PTP, Acid Horse (a one-off collaboration with Cabaret Voltaire), Lead Into Gold (Paul Barker's solo project), and Chris Connelly's various projects. The best known of the side-projects though is probably 1000 Homo DJs, a "band" with a name that's probably designed to offend. The story, as I've read it, is that one of the label heads at WaxTrax! played Al Jourgensen (of Ministry) a bootleg remix of a Revolting Cocks record. Al was upset that it existed, to which the exec (Dannie Flesher I believe, but it could've been Jim Nash too) stated that "only a thousand homo djs would ever hear it" or something to that extent. WaxTrax! being a very gay-friendly label and this being the 80s is perhaps the only reason they decided to issue some leftovers from Ministry's most recent album for Sire under a band name as ridiculous as 1000 Homo DJs.
The story should probably have ended there, but in 1990, Al issued another record under the name, this time a 12" with a cover of Black Sabbath's Supernaut on the a-side. During the sessions for this track, Trent Reznor and his friend and then-roommate, Tom Lash of Lucky Pierre and Hot Tin Roof, dropped in to Chicago Trax Studios to hang out. Al was reportedly so high that he couldn't perform the vocal, so Trent was offered the opportunity to give it a shot. The results were excellent, so Al kept them and the single was readied for release. As is typical with Ministry-related records, almost everyone uses a nom de plume, so Al probably figured no one would ever know it was Trent on lead vocals. Unfortunately for Al though, Trent was feuding with his then-label, TVT Records, and when Steve Gottlieb, the head of the label, heard about this uncleared guest appearance by one of his top artists (let's be honest, Trent WAS his top artist.) he issued a cease and desist to Al and WaxTrax! which forced them to drop Trent's vocals from the track. Al recorded his own vocals for the track and that was the version released.
Now, you might ask yourself, how did Steve Gottlieb find out about Trent's cameo on a yet-to-be-released Ministry-side project? The widely accepted explanation is that Play It Again Sam and WaxTrax! had the same distribution chain and had issued promotional cassettes with tracks from forthcoming releases. Gottlieb must have gotten one of those cassettes, which were pretty widely distributed, and heard the evidence.
The version of Supernaut with Trent's vocals quickly became popular within the NIN fan communities, though there was a lot of confusion about it as the released version, the one with Al's vocals, sounds almost identical. Al even claimed that he never recorded new vocals and had simply messed with Trent's existing vocals, though that seems pretty ridiculous once you compare each version back to back. Nonetheless, Trent's version remained popular and eventually saw release as part of a retrospective box set in 1994 that covered WaxTrax! Records' history. Sadly, this box set, while nice, is flawed by incomplete liner notes, along with it being seen as a dig by Gottlieb at Trent. As Trent was still under contract with TVT but his contract had been bought-out by Interscope, the only parts of the NIN catalog that TVT could issue were Pretty Hate Machine and it's singles, so this looked like Gottlieb was getting a nasty dig in, putting out the track he'd refused to let Ministry and Trent issue several years earlier. Of course, I'm sure Gottlieb would argue it was just business, and it very well may have simply been an intelligent and calculated decision.
But what about the bootleg CD mentioned in the title, you might also wonder? Well, there is an obscure NIN bootleg known as Suck or HALO 00 that contains the Trent version of Supernaut and a live version of NIN performing Suck at Lollapalooza. That version of Suck is taken from a TVT promo cassette released in 1991, and Supernaut is from this WaxTrax! promo cassette. I suppose both of those tapes are pretty cool, but I was always fascinated with the WaxTrax! one as they always had really interesting artists and records. TVT always sucked. Not trying to be cruel, but let's be honest, apart from NIN and their continuing to make the WaxTrax! catalog available, they didn't put out much of interest. Even the album by Modern English they released had the odd feature of a re-recording of their biggest hit, which seems questionable at best. Yeah, they had Gravity Kills, but apart from Guilty, what else do you remember by them? And that's if you remember Guilty. So I've never worried about that TVT tape, but when I had the opportunity to grab the WaxTrax! one, I couldn't say no, and now I'd like to share it with you.
There are some tracks on this tape that were rare or unreleased at one point or another, but thanks to the digital age, everything here has been reissued at one point or another. There are also some odd discrepancies regarding some of the artist and song names, but I left those intact to reflect the nature of the tape. Hope you enjoy!
By the way, as I've seen other people ask about this, in case you were wondering whatever happened to the first WaxTrax! Records sampler, it's here. It seems pretty cool, but probably a bit harder to get, so I'll be happy with my copy of sampler #2.
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