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Shrimper defies description, but it's worth a try. 

Started in 1990, Shrimper has always been a joint effort by founder-musician Dennis Callaci and the artists who make up the Shrimper discography. Shrimper's offerings have included home recordings, recordings made by college radio DJs of local bands, studio recordings by engineers who had their own bands. As Dennis has noted, sometimes these arrangements didn't involve any prior conversation with the artist at all, just the recording coming in.

While dubbing the early tapes, Dennis also ran the legendary Rhino Records store in Claremont. Recently, as of the construction of this page in 2022, high rent in Claremont has forced Rhino out of the space it's held since 1974, to a new location in nearby Montclair. 

Most of the labels discussed on this site started around the same time, but most of them moved along to other things. Shrimper has endured. Though it's not as prolific now (they had reached SHR 101 circa 1997, while the journey from there to SHR 201 lasted until 2020) you can go to http://www.shrimperrecords.com/ any time and see the latest. You should also check out by Bamboo Dart Press (run by Dennis Callaci, and Mark Givens of Wckr Spgt and Pelekinesis) which has published work by member of Refrigerator and Wckr Spgt, and is building a lively community of artists, poets, and writers in its catalog.

Much of the CD output, even the older material, can be easily purchased at Revolver's Midheaven Mailorder service and the Shrimper section at Grapefruit Records. The tapes are trickier. Many of them, I haven't even seen circulating secondhand in several years of looking. You may not be able to find and hear them either, so I'll do my best to get sample clips up and let people hear what some of the hard-to-find releases sounded like.

For now, most of the releases here have overlap in the Refrigerator, DiskothiQ, Franklin Bruno, and Compilations indices. But as this section gets larger, I look forward to showing you the kind of experimental and abstract work that Shrimper has always been a home for. 

At present, my goal is to get pages up for all Shrimper tapes with catalog numbers 100 and lower. I have physical copies of most of these, plus some digital rips sent to me by other people, but I'm focusing on material I have a physical copy of. For a full list of cassettes I don't have physical copies of, please see the Materials Needed page. 

You can listen to audio clips for almost all of the releases below. Some will also link to Bandcamp pages, Revolver/Grapefruit pages, or band webpages for you to listen to the material there. 

As of the most recent update, September 2023, there are over 40 new release pages here and plenty more to come. Still some gaps: there are a number of pre-SHR100 releases I don't have, a few I'm currently digitizing, and some that may not have survived the 90's at all. I'll also be focusing on other sections of the site more for the next big push. In the meantime, check out the releases below. 

All Shrimper releases with an info page on the site, currently:

SHR01 - Various - Winky Dog (1990)
SHR07 - Paste - Drugstore (1990)
SHR09 - Franklin Bruno - Suggestion Box: Home Recordings 1984-1990 (1990)
SHR12 - Sentridoh - Losers (1991)
SHR13 - Refrigerator - Lonesome Surprize (1991)
SHR14 - Wckr Spgt - Drops of Love (1991)
SHR15 - Various - Capgun (1991)
SHR19 - Paste - Pigeon Skin (1991)
SHR21 - Yeast For Veal: The Very Worst of Wckr Spgt vs. The Bux
SHR22 - Lil' Johnny H - One Man Unauthorized Sting Operation (1991)
SHR25 - Refrigerator - Rael (1991)
SHR28 - Various - Pawnshop Reverb (1992)
SHR29 - Bugskull - Subversives In The Midst (1992)
SHR30 - Wckr Spgt - Dance 'Til You Stop(1992)
SHR32 - Various - High Fly Graveyard (1992)
SHR35 - Paste - Cherry Red Radio (1992)
SHR36 - Sentridoh - Most Of the Worst & Some of the Best (1992) 
SHR38 - DiskothiQ - Harmless But Ultimately Unlovable / Loveless But Ultimately Unharmable (1993)
SHR40 - The Bux - Bad Luck Here (Recordings 1986-1990) (1992)
SHR42 - John Davis - Stars & Songs (1993)
SHR43 - The Primordial Undermind - And All Tall Monsters Stand (1993)
SHR44 - Franklin Bruno - Etudes for Voice and Snackmaster (1993)
SHR45 - the Mountain Goats - Hot Garden Stomp (1993)
SHR46 - God Is My Co-Pilot - What Doctors Don't Tell You (1993)
SHR47 - The Ah Club - Squeeze My Cares Away (1993)
SHR48 - Lou B's Acoustic Sentridoh - Lou B's Wasted Pieces '87-'93 (1993)
SHR49 - Soul-Junk - 1950 Free Shrimp (1994)
SHR50 - Buzzsaw and The Shavings - The Wine Lover (1992)
SHR51 - Furniture Huschle - Her Parents Were There (1994)
SHR52 - Creeper Lagoon - Shasta Complex (1994)
SHR54 - John Harrelson - Whorehouse Valentines (1994)
SHR55 - DiskothiQ - The Wandering Jew (1994)
SHR56 - Soul-Junk - 1951 (1995)
SHR58 - Refrigerator - How You Continue Dreaming (1995)
SHR59 - Pie - Seein' Eye (1995)
SHR60 - The Secret Stars - The Secret Stars (1995)
SHR61 - Paul K & The Weathermen - Corpus (1995)
SHR62 - Halo - Star Squared / Honey (1995)
SHR64 - Virgo Rising - San Dimas (1995)
SHR65 - Big Breakfast - Sin, Limpia / Primordial Maracas (1995)
SHR66 - Wckr Spgt - CRTV (1995)
SHR67 - Sentridoh - The Original Losing Losers (1995)
SHR68 - the Mountain Goats - Sweden (1995)
SHR69 - Bingo Trappers - More Soul (1995)
SHR70 - Pork Queen - Recorded Live (1995)
SHR72 - Near Castlegar - In January (1996)
SHR72 - Emil Hagstrom - Show Your Guitar The Contempt It Deserves (1996)
SHR74 - John Davis & Dennis Callaci - Room for Space (1996)
SHR76 - The Ah Club - Kiss The Sky Goodbye (1997)
SHR78 - Patch - Nudeamerica (199X)
SHR80 - The Secret Stars - The Secret Stars (1996)
SHR82 - Amps for Christ - Plains of Alluvial (1995)
SHR83 - Irving Klaw Trio - Live Sh*t (199X)
SHR84 - Furniture One - The Adventures of Pussyman & Cuntboy (1996)
SHR85 - John Davis - I'll Burn (1996)
SHR86 - DiskothiQ - Waterworld (1996)
SHR87 - Amps For Christ & Two Ambiguous Figures - The Beggar's Garden (1997)
SHR88 - Montessouri - Infinityland (1997)
SHR89 - Keslo - The Museum Crumbles (1997)
SHR91 - Bingo Trappers - Sierra Nevada (1998)
SHR92 - Simon Joyner - Songs For The New Year (1997)
SHR95 - Wckr Spgt - Everybody's Dead (Oh No) (1997)
SHR96 - Fishstick - King on Guitar (1997)
SHR97 - Refrigerator - Somehow (1997)
SHR98 - Various - Abridged Perversion (A Shrimper Compilation Of Shrimper Compilations) (1994)
SHR99 - the Mountain Goats - Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)
SHR100 - Buzzsaw - Killer Cassette vs. The Dude (1996)
SHR101 - Refrigerator - Refrigerator (1997)
SHR110 - Big Breakfast - Why Do You Touch Things That Aren't Yours? (1998)
SHR113 - Refrigerator - Glitter Jazz (1999)
SHR128 - Refrigerator - Comedy Minus One (2001)
SHR144 - Refrigerator - Upstairs In Your Room (2004)
SHR147 - Nothing Painted Blue - Taste the Flavor (2006)
SHR148 - Refrigerator - Bottles Of Make Up (2007)
SHR159 - Refrigerator - Dangerous (2011)
SHR165 - The Human Hearts - Another (2012)
SHR172 - Refrigerator - Live At The Pomona American Legion Hall (2013)
SHR176 - Refrigerator - Temple City (2015)
SHR189 - Franklin Bruno - Works From Home: 1995 - 2005 (2017)
SHR194 - Refrigerator - High Desert Lows (2018)
SHR205 - Refrigerator - So Long to Farewell (2021)
SHR701 - Various - Ghost of a Rollercoaster (1991)
SHR703 - Refrigerator - Songs With A Story (1992)
SHR704 - Various - Swing Set (1992)
SHR706 - Refrigerator - Car Alarm (1992)
SHR708 - Wckr Spgt - Cream (1993)
SHR710 - Various - Fantasy Band (1994)
SHR711 - DiskothiQ - Massapoag (1994)
SHR713 - Franklin Bruno - A Sand Dollar Relief Map (1995)

Besides these, there are many many other Shrimper releases, even as I type this in July 2022. You can browse the Shrimper section at Revolver's Midheaven Mailorder service and the Shrimper section at Grapefruit Records to buy those. As many of these are in circulation, able to be bought new, and support Grapefruit & Revolver, I'll hold off on covering them on the site for now.

any images, lyrics, song titles, etc are property of the original artists, where at all possible images are pulled from my own scanned copies and any found/submitted images are noted and credited. this is a fan site without ads, trackers, or even so much as one of those site counters from the late 90's. if you see your intellectual property here and want it removed, email away. thanks