I am feeling inspired to start this topic based off of a scrolling session I had today through the Hospital Productions page on Discogs. I started to notice that certain catalogue numbers were missing. After some cross-referencing, I came to realize that these catalogue numbers were in fact assigned to releases on the label, but seemingly have no one who owns the tape that can log it online like "yes, this does in fact exist!" Similar issues have come up when talking about releases on Deadline, where there is tell of a tape, but seemingly no one steps up to verify this.
Now, one could assume that some of them are bullshit, and that guys like Dom and Richard were making up releases to add to the lore of their respective worlds. I am not one of those people though. Instead, my mind started to wander and think, "could it be these releases are just lost to time? The copies that did make it out there have ended up in the trash, in some musty storage unit, destroyed, etc.?" So now we come into the point of this thread...
Releases lost to time; are there any noteworthy ones you have heard of? Is there a story behind this white whale you have long coveted to hear? Have you wondered if maybe asking in a forum about it would yield some stranger who says "yes, I have mine?" I would like those questions to be answered here, as I find myself pretty fascinated by the idea of the releases we have lost simply over the course of noise's growth now.
OK, my note is off-topic but related and maybe useful. Discogs has a bug when it comes to label's discographies, some releases arent displayed in the list although they are on Discogs. It's months like this ! And every now and then i notice they still haven't fixed it. Cant remember when it was last time, but not long ago.
On topic : Yes, forgotten / rare / lost stuff fascinates me too. Even if the music in it isnt top notch, it has an aura, a charm. Cant explain it. Maybe more as an object ? I probably have the only one remaining.
I cant bring names to memory now. But many times i see old tape labels with 2-3 releases known in the database, which all of them are interesting, and catalog numbers that indicate that many releases are not listed, are missing, forgotten. Makes me wonder. This is mostly a case of 90s labels, than 80s. Strange enough.
Edit : example : https://www.discogs.com/label/55175-B-Gore-Records . Catalog number up to 45, Discogs lists 25. Not sure if anything more is listed on Discogs and not displayed cause of the bug.
Edit 2 : https://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/1134380 , maybe fixed now ?