Jim Shepard

Shepard's Piercing Feedback-Intensive Guitar And Corrosive Lyrical Outlook First Documented On The Barely Released 1977 LP Slit And Pre-Slit. A Series Of Releases Followed -- 1980's The Live EP And 1981's Smudge 7" Among Them -- All Barely Heard Or Acknowledged Outside Of The Ohio Underground Community. Though Recorded A Good Five Or Six Years Earlier The Live Under The Blood Red Lava Lamp Cassette Went Unreleased Until 1986 Followed A Year Later By Basement 2115 Only A Subsequent Feature In Forced Exposure Magazine Brought Shepard And Vertical Slit Any Kind Of National Attention Prompting Collectors To Begin Futilely Scouring Bins For The Band's Long-Out-Of-Print Releases. 1990's Vertical Slit And Beyond Assembled Highlights From The Group's Catalog But Excepting The 1991 Cassette Your Wife Is Licking My Strobe Light And Grinning Shepard Now Focused Virtually All Of His Energies Into His New Outfit V-3 Taking Time Off Upon Completing 1992's Negotiate Nothing After Nearly Losing His Hand In An Industrial Accident. When V-3 Resurfaced In 1996 With Photograph Burns Remarkably Enough They'd Landed On A Major Label American's Short-Lived Onion Imprint. Sadly Shepard Committed Suicide On October 16 1998 He Was Just 40 Years Old. read less