Session Information
Mission Impossible continued playing together until the end of the High School year, summer 1985. Guitarist Bryant Mason and vocalist Chris Page both graduated but drummer Dave Grohl and bassist Dave Smith had already dropped out. With Mason and Page headed off to college Mission Impossible were effectively disbanded, leaving the two dropouts in musical limbo.
“Enter Rueben Radding” recalled Grohl. Radding was the bass player for another local punk band, Age of Consent, which had also recently disbanded. The trio headed to Grohl’s house one evening “smoked a whole bunch of pot, wrote four songs and Dain Bramage was born”.
In this new band Grohl remained behind the drum kit, Dave Smith on bass and Reuben took on the traditional frontman role, guitar and vocals. Grohl was very impressed with the speed at which the trio was able to write new songs, and how he himself was growing as a songwriter - “We started writing song after song at an alarming pace. I really started to utilize my growing interest in songwriting: arrangement, dynamics, different tunings. We were experimenting with classic rock clichés in a noisy, punk rock kind of way,” said Grohl of the bands early days.
With a small collection of songs under their belt, the band wasted no time in heading to a recording studio. For Grohl, the choice was obvious – “Like every other band I'd been in, we eventually recorded a few demos with Barrett.”
By early 1986 Jones had moved out of his parents’ house into a new place in Arlington, taking the recording equipment from the laundry room with him. Whilst the studio operation was no longer based in the laundry room at the new house (The bands would play in the living room and the control room was in a large closet) Jones had retained the Laundry Room name.
Five tracks were recorded in this first Dain Bramage recording session via Jones 4-Track Reel-to-reel recorder onto ¼-Inch tape. The master reels are currently in the possession of bassist Dave Smith whilst a recording from a dubbed cassette circulates among fans.
