Pocketwatch is a cassette album by Dave Grohl, under the pseudonym Late!, released in 1992, on the now-defunct indie label Simple Machines as part of their Tool Cassette Series.
Background
In the summer of 1991, Dave Grohl went into WGNS Studios and recorded four songs, playing all the instruments himself. The recording was combined with six songs from a previous Upland Studios session recorded in late 1990. Both sessions occurred after Grohl had joined Nirvana. A tape of the songs, given to Simple Machines co-founder Jenny Toomey by Grohl, immediately became a candidate for the label's Tool Cassette Series. The 1990 sessions emerged as Grohl, then the drummer of Scream, requested his producer friend Barrett Jones to record songs on his home 8-track tape recorder. Upon accepting Simple Machines' request for a demo tape, Grohl decided to hide his identity under the pseudonym Late!, "because I'm an idiot and I thought it would be funny to say to everybody, 'Sorry, we're Late!.
The Tool Cassette Series started around 1991 as an experiment and as a way of keeping music "in print" on an as-needed basis without having to finance vinyl or CD pressings, since Simple Machines dubbed the cassettes as the orders came in. The only song officially released on CD was a remixed version of "Just Another Story About Skeeter Thompson", included on The Melvins' 1992 King Buzzo EP, retitled "Skeeter".
Although constantly coupled with Nirvana and Foo Fighters collections, Late! should be considered its own separate project, even though both bands would go on to release new versions of songs from the Pocketwatch album. "Color Pictures of a Marigold" was re-recorded with Krist Novoselic on bass in 1993 and released as a B-side of Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" single, simply titled "Marigold". This version would also appear on the 2004 With the Lights Out box set. Another version of the song appeared on the Foo Fighters live album Skin and Bones. "Winnebago" was re-recorded during the sessions for the first Foo Fighters album in 1994. Despite not making the album, it appeared as a B-side on the Foo Fighters first release, the "Exhausted" vinyl single, and later on the Australian bonus disc to Foo Fighters and as a B-side to the singles "This Is a Call" and "Big Me". A new version of "Friend of a Friend" was first released on a free NME covermount cassette, then the acoustic side of the Foo Fighters' 2005 double album In Your Honor and later the following year on Skin and Bones.