THE BLACK BOOK BAND - THE UNDERGROUND YEARS

Prior to signing their breakthrough big-time contract with Chicago's legendary Dodeka Records, the BBB released a series of nine recordings on the quirky Half-Asteroid label based in Manistee, Michigan. Comprising seven albums, an extended-play 8-track single, and a very rare elevator-music loop, these recordings are all out of print and nearly to impossible to locate, commanding premium prices when the rare willing seller can be found:

TITLE (Year) - Notes

• Lots in Space (1972) - EP single
  
• Lust in Space (1975) - 60-minute Mew-Zak workplace-enhancement [instrumental, except for the single "Gently, Johnny"]
  
• Lunch in Space (1979)
  
• Lime Jello Luau (1982)
  
• Big Brother Is Watching (1984) - distributed as a flexi-disk with Booker & Fine's annual tax guide for clients
  
• Who Was That Masked Band? (1986) - in another Half-Asteroid marketing innovation, neither the band's name nor their likeness appears anywhere on the disc or packaging. The most-bootlegged BBB title, particularly popular in Iowa and Singapore.
  
• Brain Weasels (1988) - the band's best-selling Half-Asteroid title, despite (or perhaps because of) its repellant cover art
  
• Let's Swim Upstream and Die (1990) - an underground nihilist classic and a minor hit in East Germany, this theme album contains two twenty-seven minute cuts titled "The Fish Ladder" and "The Quiet Pools"
  
• Don't Try This At Home (1991) - a live "basement bootleg," showing the band at its improvisational best and featuring uncredited performances by an assortment of friends and law enforcement officials
  

Discophile Data Points: Hiding behind the inocuous pseudonym Tobor Tnaig, listed as producer on the three earliest BBB recordings, was radio jingle maven Guinevere "Bob" White, creator of the award-winning Loosener's Castor Oil Flakes campaign. Rumors persist that both Eric Clapton and Yngwie Malsteem contributed uncredited tracks to the final Half-Asteroid release.

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Last Revised: March 25, 1996