Here’s a bunch of recordings by an early 90s band that I had never heard before, Leaf!

The Soundcloud account has a ton of goodies from demos and rehearsal tapes. These were all uploaded 11 years ago.

The account owner doesn’t give away his name. He calls himself the Leafy Leafster. But he does share a biography for the band. A short one:

Leaf was a band I was in from about 1990 to 1995. There were two different incarnations and the only consistent members were me and John Orion (Jorion) Shaw, who passed away in 2007. The first incarnation was actually a reforming of a band called The Natural Order of Things, which was formed by Derek Vanderhorst (who went on to be a sound designer and has worked on literally dozens of major films) and managed by Les Garland (the founder of MTV). Les’ girlfriend Paris was our lead singer and we went through a number of different bass players and drummers. Paris was commuting back and forth between Los Angeles (where the band was) and Miami (where she lived with Les). Eventually that became as ridiculous as it sounds and we replaced Paris with John Shaw and renamed the band Leaf.

That is quite interesting. We have a name, John Orion Shaw. Sadly, as mentioned, he passed away. But I’ll have a look.

It is interesting though the connection with MTV. Right?

Anyhow, we do know a little bit more. We know what recordings each incarnation of Leaf left us.

The first one did demo recordings at Gasoline Alley Records (MCA) in 1992. These include: “Pail and Rag”, “Fragile Nothing”, “Window Scarlet Grey”, “The Beautiful”, “Making of it All”, “Single White Reptile”, “Undefined Belief”, “Death of the Everyman”, “Butterfly”, “Injesting Self”, “Idolize”, “The Warmth of Melancholy”, “Rejoice to be Believed” and “Fear and Trembling”.

For the second incarnation we get a little bit more info:

After we were dropped from Gasoline Alley Records (or, more accurately, they stopped returning our calls) our drummer and bass player left and we started looking for new members. John and I knew Rani and Gil Sharone from a summer camp we were working at. They were both about 17 at the time, but obviously very talented (they have since gone on to form Stolen Babies and work on a number of composing and studio projects). Derek decided to move on to other things, but John and I wanted to keep the band together, so we started playing with Rani and Gil and then recruited John Sherwood (who I played with in an earlier band) to play guitar.

The first four songs in this set were recorded with film composer Michel Colombier in his studio – he was working on an instructional DVD series about how to form a band and used us as the sample band (not sure if he ever finished it). The last three are fairly low quality rehersal tapes – I believe recorded on a boom box stuck in a corner of the rehearsal studio.

The recordings from this time include “Twice the Length of My Will”, “Butterfly”, “Flame”, “Seeding the Clouds” and the four songs from rehearsal tapes “I Dig the Light”, “Sideways Glance” and “Injesting Self”.

I google for Gil Sharone. And says he was the drummer of Marilyn Manson. I am not sure what to say about that. I don’t rate highly that music. But I suppose for a drummer that would be a good opportunity? I don’t know. In any case it seems he left his post as his drummer in 2019.

Rani Sharone, as mentioned was on Stolen Babies. I wasn’t aware of this band. It seems it is a heavy metal band from what I’m reading.

This happens a lot in the U.S., where musicians can switch easily between genres, right? It is interesting.

I couldn’t find much more about the band. I think it would be fantastic if anyone knows who the lead person in Leaf was. They had some very good tunes, Smiths-influenced, that would be great to know more details about them.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Listen
Leaf – Window Scarlet Grey