Sheep Records was a Swiss underground label specialized in Garage-Rock, Surf, Lounge and other Rock'n'Roll oddities. Run by Christian Müller from Zürich, along with friends Andi Frick and Andreas Egi, it was active from 1996 to 2004 and published about 30 releases, mostly on 7" vinyl singles.
In october 2006, after about two years of hiatus, all the contents of the now defunct Sheep Records website were deleted from the Internet, and replaced with a blank page announcing that "Der Kebab ist gegessen" ("The kebab is eaten"), a last goodbye and a reference to the label's cataloguing system that included the prefix "kebab" for vinyl releases and "gigot" for CD releases.
The first Sheep Records release was a split 7" single, limited to 600 copies on green vinyl, featuring the Swiss bands Lombego Surfers on Side A and The Feebles on Side B.
"Wig Out" by Lombego Surfers has a primitive and gloomy feeling, the track has no lyrics but the title is repeated ad libitum through the song alternating with guitar solos.
"Hit the Road" by The Feebles shows a rockier approach that is more structured - but also more reassuring - than the one expressed by The Lombegos.
Here's the track list for this 7" single:
01. LOMBEGO SURFERS - Wig Out (2:43)
02. THE FEEBLES - Hit the Road (2:45)
Both tracks were remastered from vinyl in February 2012 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files, both formats include scans of the original item in PDF format. Please have a look at the comments for the download links.
Here'a short bio of Lombego Surfers sourced from the Internet...
"The Lombego Surfers are not some tanned sunny boys from California but rather the hardest working Voodoo rock punkers with the coolest guitar riffs since the Stooges. The three rock’n’roll pagans from Boston and Basel don’t give a hoot about trends: the rock’n’roll road is straight on, the clubs on the way are old pals where a cold beer is always waiting and the last man standing puts the bones away. That’s the Lombego Surfers’s way. Right now they are on the road with their highly recommended new album Still Got The Night in their duffel bag."
"Just as the puppets in Peter Jackson's adult "Muppet Show", The Feebles are the craziest bunch of individuals of all kind in Switzerlands psychedelic garage rock scene. Influenced by the 80's garage rock, 70's punk rock and the 60's psychedelic mind-twister's beat, the Feebles found their own way to transmit the powers of playing life: "It's fun, feeblish and it sounds cool"."
More information about Sheep Records, Lombego Surfers and The Feebles is available here:
http://www.surfnroll.de/interviews/sheep/sheep.html
http://www.lombegosurfers.com/
http://www.surfnroll.de/interviews/lombego/lombego.html
http://www.surfnroll.de/interviews/lombego/lombego2.html
http://www.feebles.ch/
The Sheep Records story will continue in the next months. All your inputs are more than welcome, if you want to get in touch please write to stereocandies [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment in the box below, thank you!
Thanks for the information. I was just thinking about Sheep Records earlier today, only to find they did in fact go under some years ago. I found them initially via a bar show at Philly's Silk City. The bands that night were The Omega Men (Lancaster PA) and The Space Cossacks (Washington DC). Also on hand was Art Borrasseau, owner of MuSick Recordings (who has since moved to California). He had a table set up where he was selling CDs and 45, and I made a point of buying one of everything he had! This included "PHANTOM RIDER" / "SPOOKY SHORE" by Zurich's own Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited. That was my intro to both one of my top favorite bands of the last 15 years, but also Sheep Records.
ReplyDeleteLater, I found Sheep's website (their first one) where I saw all sorts of fascinating, fun 45 jackets posted. The one that most grabbed my attention was "REVENGE OF THE BLIND MAN" by The Men From S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Took me quite some time to get ahold of that. While S.S.S.U. can regularly be found on Amazon.com (which means you can get it just about everywhere), Sheep Records were-- were the most part-- maddenningly-- ONLY available direct from Sheep Records. And let me tell you, their website was NOT set up in a fashion that I could figure out. For the life of me!!
While I got a couple of their releases thru Double Crown Records (thank God for Sean Berry), a few others I wound up having to get direct from the owner of Sheep, who I contacted via e-mail because the Sheep website was impenetrable (or just couldn't be worked from America, I'm not sure which).
I published a comic-book with a limited print run, STORMBOY, and managed to get it into Amazon's "Advantage" program-- which meant, I later learned, it wound up being listed at COUNTLESS websites who were all linked to Amazon all over the world. It utterly baffled me that if I could do this, if I could figure this out, all on my own, HOW was it possible that Sheep Records never got their stuff into Amazon's system? If only for promotional purposes. I can't help but feel this eventually led, DIRECTLY, to their going belly-up.
Anyway, I did manage to get the first 2 Men From SPECTRE CDs, but also, a set of 45s which are simply among the "gems" of my collection. 2 M.F.S. singles, 1 by Lou Hoffner Trio Minus One, 1 by The Treble Spankers (picked up at that same Silk City show), 1 by Charlotte's Bionic Blimp (who remind me a lot of 80's E.L.O.), 1 by Los Banditos, and 1 by Spookysounds For Beige (really, S.S.S.U. under another name).
I put together a CD comp of these which I titled "ZURICH INVASION", and slapped the poster art from ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE onto it (the painting showing the battle atop Piz Gloria).
I think the world can always use another small label like Sheep, and bands like they put out releases by. The big "corporate" labels have managed to just about run the entire music business INTO THE GROUND (in much the same way as Marvel & DC have done with American comic-books). I say, UP with the "little guys"!!!
Hello Henry, nice to meet you! Many thanks for sharing your story here, your comment ended up in the spam box but I was lucky enough to discover it today.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the reason why Sheep Records ceased its activities, maybe their owners just moved on to something else or maybe they split, but financial/distribution problems could also be a valid reason.
I own a copy of all Sheep Records releases - minus one, but more about this later - and I'm going to post them here. I know it will take long, but anyway...
I got to know the label because Stereo Total had a 7" EP release with them and just like you I was amazed by the cool covers I saw on their website and bought most of their available releases directly from them. At a later date I also bought a few missing pieces on the Internet.
The only Sheep release I miss is the Spookysounds For Beige 7". I guess that with only 100 copies preseed this is their rarest release and it's virtually impossible to find it nowadays.
Since in your comment you mention owning a copy, I was wondering if you could help me providing scans and an audio recording of this item for a future post to be published here on Stereo Candies. And, damn, I would be quite curious to listen to that record since I love Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited too!
If you're willing to help please get in touch with me at stereocandies@hotmail.com, thanks again!
Hi Candyman
ReplyDeleteI believe the Stereo Total 7" was our strongest release. The quality of our releases was in general very high. All of us enjoyed nice art work, coloured vinyl, etc.
Henry mentioned the problem of finding the Sheep releases. By the time we started out there was neither ebay nor amazone. The distribution of our releases was tough and costy too. I believe in these days it would be much easier. But I'm glad to see some people out there enjoyed the Sheep releases. Best, Andi
Hello Andi, many thanks for taking the time to visit the blog and leave your comment! Recently I heard from Christian too and it's great to learn that both of you are glad to see the Sheep Records releases resurface here.
ReplyDeleteI think that you really did your best with the label, both on the production side (vinyl quality, packages, art, etc.) and on the artistic side: of course I have my preferences but there's no Sheep release that I dislike. I'm sure that there is still a lot of people interested into them.
Of course a wider distribution would be easier today but, once again, I'm sure you did your best and I was always able to obtain copies of your releases if they were not already sold-out because of the limited pressings.
Thanks again, best wishes!
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