(c’79-93) This Church Crookham based label was started with a focus on DIY cassette releases for Tim Naylor projects: Controls and Beating Hearts; but started accepting demos and expanded its scope. This included adding another Naylor outfit, Sweet Hooligan, to the roster from ’92-’93.
The Controls first release, the four track EP cassette: “Sock It To ‘Em Dave” [SRT001] came out in early ’80. The follow-up cassette LP, “Don’t Adjust the Controls”, was released on Stupid Rabbit Tapes [SRT002] in July ’80 having been recorded live on 21 June ’80. In ’81, “Late Night Love Songs” [SRT003] carried a further eight tracks from Controls and received a brief review in Sounds, which described it as having “…an awesome latent energy…”. By mid-’83 the labels catalogue included six cassette releases: an ’81 re-release of Controls “Dance” [XSRT003], ’82’s, three track cassette EP from Beating Hearts titled “Retrospective Jealousy” [SRT004], and the cassette LP “Love Beat Kid…On the Nod” [SRT005] that carried 20 tracks by Beating Hearts.
A further live recorded cassette LP from Controls was released in ’84, titled “Searching for the Perfect Partner” [SRT006]. That same year Controls released a further four cassettes: “Dress Dance Demand and Desire” [SRT007], “I Didn’t Know You Were Leaving” [SRT008], “The God Thing” [SRT009], and the cassette single “Keep Me Here” [SRT010]. In December ’85, Controls played the Technical College, Farnborough and recorded the gig and released the live recording under the title “Let’s All Bark Like Labradors” on Stupid Rabbit Tapes in ’86. In ’89, following a five-month hiatus, Handsome Bastards marked their return with the release of a three tracks demo cassette EP, titled “The South is Rising” on Stupid Rabbit Tapes. To the best of our knowledge the Stupid Rabbit Tapes label released at least 17 cassette singles, EPs and LPs.
Keine Namen‘s “The Living Room Tapes” received a super limited release of 10 copies in September ’78; but was licensed by Stupid Rabbit Tapes for a reissued in 2012 on Year Zero Records [YEAR018]. The track ‘Hawaiian Stomp Pt.1’ receiving airtime on WFMU’s Undancing in the Dirt with Thomas Storck on 9 December 2012 and ‘(Shut Up) David’ on Radio Panik 105.4FM (show #316) in 2014.
July 2020 saw the publication of Jerry Kranitz‘s 320-page book ‘Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age’ by German Vinyl-on-Demand (VOD), in which Stupid Rabbit gets a splattering of mentions.
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