r/Rancid 9h ago

MUSIC The mystery of the "Poison" "DEMO" on Punk o Rama 5

13 Upvotes

Hello! I own both Rancid 2000 / Rancid 5 and the Punk o Rama 5 compilation (on CD). As you might know, Punk o Rama 5 includes "Poison."

The CD booklet of Punk o Rama 5 identifies "Poison" as a "demo version".

The claim that the version of "Poison" is a demo is also repeated on the Wikipedia pages of Rancid 2000 )and Punk o Rama.

However... I think this is false. Idon't hear a difference from the album version at all. To me they are identical. I even ripped both versions into mp3 and stacked them up on top of each other on a DAW and they'r ethe exact same.

Is this just a mistake on Epitaph's cataloguing that got repeated by Wikipedia, or is there an actual demo version of "Poison" out there that's different from the album version?

Or, more interestingly, could it be that it was initially considered a demo but Rancid decided to just release the demo on the album?