Ragged Soul got together around the year 2000. The band started basically as an excuse to gather at weekends, play hard and drink even harder, which they accomplished real soon! At first they used to play covers of Punk & Rock’n’Roll bands they loved, from Devil Dogs to early AC/DC, but more and more their goal was to get in their own songs. Ragged Soul always revolved around Jose (guitar, vocals & songs) and Miguel (bass, backing vocals & low-life). In the couple of years or so they lasted there were at least three drummers and two or three guitar players, some of whom were gone before you could say “tough shit”! The story of the band ain’t one of easy success, happy-go-lucky girls and pink champagne, just about the opposite actually: they’d only been going for a few weeks when Miguel -pissed out of his head on a Saturday night- suffered a double fracture in a leg. As a consequence, he literally vanished without trace for some 6 months… An auspicious start, some may say. Once they got started again, they were ready to play wherever they possibly could, mostly real shitholes in exchange for booze and -only sometimes- a little bit of money and a sandwich. They couldn’t care less, as they were having the time of their lives, even though most of the audience in little villages and so couldn’t really make out what the band was all about. One example was a gig in a shack turned into a pub in the middle of nowhere, at which the attending crowd was mostly metal-heads. Seeing that the band was getting no reaction whatsoever and people just stood there motionless, Jose responded to that by cursing and flinging abuse at them. What could have been an impending disaster turned into a big party with the boys playing for over two hours and a growing number of free drinks gathering on the stage! In fact that gig got them another one in a big rock festival in the area. Another amusing moment involved a band member being chased into the toilet by a rather amicable girl after a gig, while her boyfriend was cheerfully talking to the others at the bar. Not long after that, there was an incident following another concert, which involved one in the band having a fight at a local disco and then driving his car through the front door of a village house on the way back home… Wild times indeed! It was at the end of 2002 when they entered the studio to record their one and only demo, the recordings you’re now holding in glorious vinyl nearly 15 years later: four songs about breaking up, breaking down and breaking through, if you know what I mean… Even though the resulting demo-CD was very poorly distributed, it did get them a few more gigs, the most memorable being the one the late Kike Turmix -of the infamous Pleasure Fuckers fame- got them opening for the great Wayne Kramer (guitar slinger with the legendary MC5). They struggled on for a while, changing drummers just one more time and even the band-name for one off-gig in their hometown, but that was it really. In the end, Ragged Soul would mutate into The Fishfuckers, who eventually moved on to greener pastures, but that’s another story, a story that must be told somewhere else… 4 tracks!

1. Set Me Free
2. I Wish You Well
3. Never Loved You
4. Changin'