The past two weeks, have dealt with hidden tracks that can be found on CD, this week we deal with the way to hide a track on vinyl.

There are a few interesting ways to do this using lock groove or parallel groove techniques. Teenbeat's Flin Flon has used the lock groove technique on A-OK (TB 252) in between every single track, but not with the intention of hiding a track, nor is the technique employed to add an endless loop (a technique impossible on CD), instead the lock grooves are used only to present each song as an "entity unto itself."

Only Teenbeat's Los Marauders has used the lock groove to "hide" a track (though it's cleary pointed out in the cover artwork)

illustration of Normal Groove vs. Lock Groove. From Kempa

The following is an excerpt of quotes from Ed Nehring, dated July 11th, 2004 and found on the Iowa Underground Archives:

Los Marauders (1989-1994)

The three main members of the band were:
Nobody (Jeff Nehring) -Vocals
Johny Aztec (Chris Thompson) - Guitar [this Chris Thompson?]
Edward T. Action (Ed Nehring) - Drum.

We had four upright bass players that we recorded and played with at various times. Los Marauders was a punk, garage, rockabilly band. One moment could be vicious, mean spirited insanity while the next moment could be warm hearted, hilarious insanity. Live the band was a never ending roller coaster ride combined with a three ring circus. The audience would get revved up to near riot levels at times. The songs were fast, short and ingeniously written by Nobody. On stage Nobody was a site to behold. 6’4 skinny as a rail, slicked back pompadour, long sideburns, afraid of nothing and no one. He had a voice like Howlin Wolf. Hecklers (and we had alot of them) were shot down immediately with his sharp as a razor wit and tongue. Johny Aztec played super warm clean lines on a big blond hollow body guitar. He also had a pompadour (we all did) pouty lips and wore a purple cape. I never met anyone like him and never will. He was a naturally gifted guitarist and had crazy,crazy sense of humor. I played a lone snare drum standing up. This gave me the ability to run around the stage and into the audience, which I did often, dragging my drum as I played. We only asked to play somewhere twice.

Once was at Anamosa Prison where we did two shows that we recorded for a single on Estrus records and the other was a battle of the bands being held at the Field House bar where all the university football players and frat guys hung out. At the Field House we pissed off the football players so much that Security had to keep us back stage after the show for fear that we would be beat to a pulp. Then when we were announced as the winners of the battle of the bands I thought the place was going to be burned down. Man were they pissed. And we enjoyed every damn minute of it! Other then those two shows we only played when we were asked to. We were asked to play about once a month but only wound up playing once every two months. About half of our shows were canceled for one reason or another but it was generally related to our obnoxious attitude.

We were banned from several places, and made national news when the Mayor of Iowa City demanded that our fliers be taken down because of obscenity. The City Attorney got involved and made a decision that the posters were protected by the first amendment. We always claimed that it was this publicity that got us our record deal with Teenbeat records. This was not quite true, we got signed to Teenbeat after warming up for Unrest whose singer owned Teenbeat. We walked off the stage and he said “I’m signing you to Teenbeat records”. We said “Uh, OK.” Thats how it was with Los Marauders. We couldn't have cared less about being successful and success just came our way. We didn't cow-tow or ass kiss, hell we didn't even practice. After the records came out we actually started getting fan mail (even phone calls) from all around the world. It was cool but also made me feel kind of weird.

Even though it was alot of fun I started realizing that this was not how I wanted to be living my life. When Johny Aztec moved to Minneapolis with his wife we decided to call it quits. We were asked to do records for many different labels but only put out records on Teenbeat and Estrus. As for the other labels, they either wanted too much creative control or we were to lazy to respond.

"The records we did release were.

You Make Me Cum In My Pants! (TB 82) A 7 inch EP on Teenbeat. 1992 This record came in two versions. There was the regular version and the “adult” version. The adult version was on colored vinyl and came with the Los Marauders board game and an autographed nudie card. The Adult versions are EXTREMELY rare with all the inserts." [If you have a copy of this 7" w/ the inserts please .]

Every Song We Fuckin’ Know! (TB 122). Full length LP on Teenbeat. 1994 Original vinyl is pretty rare. And comes with the “secret hidden single”. The secret hidden single is the last song on the record but the grooves of the record wont advance to it. You have to pick up the needle and set it back down again to hear the last unlisted song. The CD released in 1996 is easy to get but looks awful. We refused to allow it to be released on CD while we were together but once we broke up Teenbeat released it on CD. They took a vinyl version, crumpled it up, threw it on the ground and took a picture of it. They thought it would be a good way to represent our hatred of CDs but in my opinion it just looked bad. This is the record to have. By far the best representation of the band.

Live from Anamosa Womens Prison (Estrus Records). A 7 inch EP on Estrus records. 1996 This was The best selling of all of our records. The initial release of 3000 on blue vinyl sold out in one month. I believe this record is still in production (without our permission) on black vinyl. It is the worst of the three but is still pretty interesting. Half is recorded live at Anamosa Prison. Anamosa is not a womens prison. But Dave Crider, the owner of Estrus, named the record that anyway.

Click for printable .pdf version (11" X 17")

Though it would have been far easier to scan the CD cover, knowing it wasn't presented in the best possible form, I scanned the out of print LP (large format version here) and the included insert.

And, in case you don't know, the song "Hound Dog" was originally performed by Elvis Presley, and was the source of the "first contoversy of his career." More here.