Next entry in the off center, lost Chicago bands that time ( or really , the ever moving, increasingly diverse growing Chicago scene) forgot is yet another group that grew out of the WZRD 88.3fm radio station based in the bowels of Northeastern IL. University - REALITY SCARE. RS existed from about the late 80's- early 90's (as far as i know) and were a combination of Pop/ Avant-Experimental, but with slightly more leanings toward Pop , not in a conventional sense like so many so called, buy the books, 'College rock' (later morphed into the commercialized standard term of today's 'Indie rock') bands though . To me they were more interesting than that crowd.
I got their first tape at the old Tower Records on Clark St. in Chicago, where they actually had some decent local music in the cassettes section, much to my surprise. "Electric Blanket Statement" it was called . No two tracks were really alike. "Megamouth " has a tribal-ish type rhythm over Celtic sounding guitar riffing. "Thought & Action" is an almost hip hop (but faster) beat driven track with a rap delivery in the lyrics, with a main sample taken from Aurthur Brown's 60's classic "Fire" ("I Am the God Of Hellfire!!") with synth's and synth. basswork to drive it along. In all ,a real clever and carefully constructed track. It would have been a hit in a perfect world maybe. "Oldsmobile" is a more atmospheric track with middle section interlude narration that sounds like Christopher Lee talking?? Throughout , definitely not a boring cassette.
I'm really not familiar with all of their releases , but they are worth checking out if they are like this tape, which i still own and pull out to listen to on occasion.
Their Discogs entry is sadly lacking updating , but here is all the links i could find on them while doing a Google search :
http://realityscare.com/bio.html
http://www.discogs.com/artist/627474-Reality-Scare
http://realityscare.com/bio.html
http://www.discogs.com/artist/627474-Reality-Scare
I need to upload a track or two by them ( like many others!) but for now here is collaboration with the late Lydia Tomkiw ( Algebra Suicide) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW_YDltuHMA
Pics of ' ELECTRIC BLANKET STATEMENT ' cassette (1991) :
