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The lost tapes?

Many years ago, JK possessed a cassette (ask your father) of an impromptu Ashtray Prophets performance in a suite at Wonders Hall, MSU. The cassette's song list was written in pencil. It included renditions of popular AP songs with horns. The blower was a friend of a friend. A second guitarist also joined MH. JK remembers loaning it to MH one day, but that's the last that's been seen of it ...

DPS Guy

"DPS Guy" was the breakthrough hit for Ashtray Prophets, having been the first of their songs to make it on college radio. Written late in their second year at Michigan State University (arguably their most prolific year), "DPS Guy" was written as an anthem expressing the outrage of the seemingly excessive amount of time and resources dedicated by the MSU Department of Public Safety (DPS) to the issuance of parking tickets.

DPS Guy was publicly debuted in MSU Student Union's "Second Annual Coffee House Talent Show" to a sell-out crowd that filled the Student Union's largest hall. This was the Ashtray Prophets second appearance in the show.

After this particular performance, representatives from MTV approached the band to discuss opening for Nirvana at the MSU Greekfest coming in the spring. However, this performance never happened, due to scheduling conflicts which resulted in the entire festival being cancelled by MTV and the MSU Greek Council. This all happened very early in Nirvana's eventual rise to superstardom, but rumor has it that once Nirvana found out they were to be playing for fraternity boys and sorority girls, they simply refused to play the gig.

This recording was part of the demo tape submitted to the MSU Student Activities Board for consideration in the coffee house show.

Download "DPS Guy"

The College Years

This is the cover art for the Ashtray Prophets' first anthology, entitled "The College Years". The artwork was based on an idea from Berdy, who suggested that having God pass a lit cigarette to Adam would be highly symbolic.

This album was a collection of "boom-box demos", recorded with the built-in condensor microphone on JK's boom box tape recorder, and it spans the 5 years of recordings made while the artists were still in college. These recordings were rescued from multiple cassette tapes when MH aggregated and digitized them in his home studio, re-mastering the recordings with much of the tape hiss and noise reduced.

First Post: Purpose

I will soon be posting occasional songs from the glory days of the infamous acoustic college comedy jam band, Ashtray Prophets.