Shat - Shat (2023 Remaster)

The 1970s were a crazy time for record labels in America. The underbelly of the industry was a veritable wild west, with shady characters setting up imprints as tax shelters, pressing records in small quantities, inflating the costs spent on them, and then reporting huge losses on tax returns. Often releasing albums by unknown artists and demo tapes that had been laying around, these labels never cleared rights to release any of the music and the artists were not informed or compensated. Some of the band names and song titles were even changed and some artists wouldn't discover that their music had been released until many years later. These practices went on into the early 1980s until the IRS caught wind of the scheme and the party was over. These often interesting yet mysterious releases became known as "Tax Scam" albums. An ultra-rare, bluesy, psychedelic rock offering, the self-titled debut album from a trio of vocalists called SHAT was originally released on the tiny Van Dyke Records label, whose known output was limited to a whole three records. Copies of this obscure gem are quite hard to come by as the initial pressing was probably limited to a few hundred at best - and when it shows up on collectors' sites, they sell for upwards of one hundred dollars apiece. SHAT consisted of Billy Adams, Steve Adams, and Bir Dee Fox, who were capably backed by Steve Ross (guitar), Calvin Cobbs (guitar), Billy James (bass), Philip Geertsma (drums), Mad Cat Womick (harmonica) and John Jackson (piano). Not much else is known about this recording except for the fact that the writers of all the tracks were key members of the other two bands on Van Dyke, River Saint and Eclypse - who all seem to have been based in South Florida, recording out of Studio Center Sound Recording in North Miami.