The Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies released five demo tapes before being signed to Reprise Records.
Buck Naked
Buck Naked is the Barenaked Ladies' first indie demo tape release, and featured only the original duo of Steven Page and Ed Robertson. The first known tape was released in 1988 (though most were released in 1989).
There are four known editions of this tape, each with different track listings. The earliest version, dating from "Fall 1988", features five songs. Its cover is different from later versions: It is green with the faces of Page and Robertson pasted onto photos of Terence Trent D'Arby. This edition of the tape is very rare.
The second, third and fourth editions feature a white cover with a black-and-white photo of Page and Robertson. The second edition has thirteen songs including a five-second outro track called "How's The Level?" The third and fourth editions added one and two additional songs respectively, with a reprise of "Road Runner" removed from the fourth edition. In all, somewhere between 150–600 copies of Buck Naked were made. It was recorded on a four-track recorder. The tapes were given to friends, and sold by the band off the stage.
The different editions feature songs which the band would eventually re-record for later releases. "Be My Yoko Ono" and "If I Had $1000000" would appear on The Yellow Tape and their first album Gordon (both eventually becoming hits). Also recorded for Gordon (as the so-called "naked track") was "The King Of Bedside Manor". "The Great Provider" would be recorded again for the band's second label album, Maybe You Should Drive, and the Bucknaked recording would appear on the "Jane" CD single in 1994. "Night Photographs" would be recorded for The Pink Tape and that recording, with the pitch corrected, would appear on The Ladies Room, Vol. 1 fan club CD single in 1997. "Trouble With Tracy" was performed live, with a live recording appearing as the B-side to the "Brian Wilson" single in 1993. "Road Runner" would be performed live as well, with a live version appearing on The Ladies Room, Vol. 7 fan club CD single in 2003.
The tape is credited for first getting the Barenaked Ladies noticed by college radio stations. Comedian-author Seán Cullen said the band gave him a tape at a Corky and the Juice Pigs show. Cullen recalled that he "listened to the tape and [...] quite liked it," with his favorite track being the band's cover version of Terence Trent D'Arby's "Wishing Well". Cullen subsequently invited the Barenaked Ladies to be the Juice Pigs' opening act for some local and regional college shows.
Track listing, green edition
The second side of the tape includes most of the songs from The Police 1980 album Zenyatta Mondatta.
Track listing, final black & white edition
Barenaked Lunch (The Pink Tape)
Barenaked Lunch (often referred to as The Pink Tape) is the Barenaked Ladies second indie tape release. The title is a pun on the novel Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.
This was the first tape recorded with bassist Jim Creeggan and percussionist Andy Creeggan, whose additions expanded the Barenaked Ladies to a quartet. The tape was recorded as a demo tape in 1990 and is also known as the Pink Tape. About 2,000 tapes were produced but were mastered incorrectly, with the songs playing too fast.
Mitch Potter of Toronto Star wrote that Barenaked Lunch, along with the band's first tape Buck Naked, "overflow with boyish charm, brisk wit and clean, melodic harmonies worthy in and of themselves." Potter added that, "'(You Can) Be My Yoko Ono' and 'If I Had $1000000', riddled with barbed one-liners, leave you in quiet reflection after the laughing stops, while 'Blame It On Me' indicates the songwriting duo is capable of losing the smirk without losing focus." Potter called "Be My Yoko Ono" a "weepy love ballad" whose satire contains "nary a trace of the malice John [Lennon]'s widow draws from virtually every direction," and described "If I Had $1000000" as a "warmly comic comeuppance on the quest for the almighty buck that has the pair trading drop-dead one-liners at the end of each plaintive refrain."
A December 1991 Toronto Star article remarked that twelve months earlier, Barenaked Ladies "were virtual unknowns. Today, they're one of Canada's most popular acts. Think how far they would have gone with songs like 'Be My Yoko Ono' if this indie cassette EP had been a real album, with big-money marketing behind it."