When Stephen Carpenter was 15 years old, he was hit by a car while skateboarding. Confined to a wheelchair for several months, he began teaching himself guitar by playing along to bands such as Anthrax, Stormtroopers of Death and Metallica. The driver supposedly paid Carpenter a cash settlement that allowed the band to purchase equipment, but Abe Cunningham commented in a 2007 interview that the story about the settlement was simply "a myth about how our band was started". Carpenter, Cunningham and Chino Moreno were friends from their childhood. All three went to McClatchy High School in Sacramento and remained friends through the city's skateboarding scene. While Carpenter was a fan of heavy metal, Moreno was also interested in hardcore punk bands such as Bad Brains and post-punk and new wave bands such as Depeche Mode. When Moreno found out that Carpenter played guitar, he set up a jam session with Cunningham, who played drums, and the three began playing regularly in Carpenter's garage around 1988. They recruited bassist Dominic Garcia some time after, and the band became a four-piece. When Cunningham left Deftones to join Phallucy, another band from Sacramento, Garcia switched to drums. The band acquired Cheng to play bass, and recorded a four-track demo soon afterwards. John Taylor replaced Cunningham on drums in 1991, until Cunningham's return in 1993. Within two years, the band began playing club shows and later expanded their gigging territory to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where they played shows alongside bands such as Korn. While closing for another band in L.A., after the majority of the audience had left, the band impressed a Maverick Records representative. They were signed to the label after performing three of their songs for Freddy DeMann and Guy Oseary. The name "Deftones" was created by Carpenter, who wanted to pick "something that would just stand out but you know, not be all cheese-ball at the same time." Carpenter combined the hip hop slang term "def," which was used by artists such as LL Cool J and Public Enemy, with the suffix "-tones," which was popular among 1950s bands (e.g., Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, The Quin-Tones, The Delltones, The Monotones, The Cleftones and The Harptones). Carpenter said the name is intentionally vague to reflect the band's tendency to not focus on just one style of music. The name is also a pun on the term "tone deaf."

Answer this question "what was their first recordings?" by extracting the answer from the text above.
They were signed to the label after performing three of their songs for Freddy DeMann and Guy Oseary.