In 1986, Marques gathered his favorite older songs and wrote enough new songs to fill up an entire 90 minute cassette. He made this 2-track recording on a 4-track cassette recorder. All copies found so far contain a vocals left/guitar right panning – an indication that the master tape was recorded on 2 separate tracks and once the 4-track rental machine was returned, the ability to mix/pan the tracks was lost.
Copies from the master tape were distributed to friends and labelled “The Bathroom Tapes” by Marques and The Marquettes. Early copies were simply labelled “Marques Bovre, Demo Tape.”
This is a solo performance tape with no other performers and no overdubs. It was finished in early 1987. (It can be dated to this time period because it includes the song Mercenary of Love, which was written at the end of 1986.) Seven copies of this tape have surfaced so far, and the content is the same on all of them. That said, it was a work in progress and Marques rearranged the songs and added/subtracted songs on early versions. There may be alternate versions of this project out there, yet to be discovered.
Twelve of the songs on The Bathroom Tapes would resurface on Marques Bovre and the Evil Twins albums, with seven of them appearing on the 1988 album Living and Dying in the Coffee Generation. This is classic early Marques. If you heard him play his open mic gigs in the mid eighties, you would have heard the songs on The Bathroom Tapes.
