| Years ago, I seemed to have lost my copy of the tape. Luckily, Tony found his and brought it up for me last week. I spent an hour or so last night converting most of the thing into digital files on my computer. This way, I can throw it all on a CD and hopefully, archive it in a few different places and formats.
I'm pretty sure that, last night, my tape player was playing a bit slow. Everything sounded a little lower and slower than I remember. It was fun to listen to this stuff again anyway. There were a few songs that I had completely forgotten about. In general, everything is pretty rough. There are out-of-tune parts and sections where the rhythms just make no sense. The recording is, of course, pretty sketchy. Most of the songs took more than 4-tracks so some bouncing was necessary which means that there was a whole lot of sound degradation going on. It's also a tape of a tape so that doesn't help.
The songs in general though are pretty good. My style hasn't really changed all that much over my "career" as a songwriter. Some are moody, some are goofy, some are just poppy little numbers. Here is the song listing, off of the top of my head, leaving out the 10 second instrumentals:
- We Go Limping
- Hello, Hello, Hello
- Sit On Roofs
- Where Is My God?
- We'll Take Our Time
- Dead Friend's Name
- Lost Inside My Shoes
- Looks Like I'm Tall
- If I Had A Gun
- The Needed One
- Portable Yardstick
- That's Not Love
- Alpenstrasse
- Institution
- Bible In A Basket
- What's A Guy Like Me To Do?
- Someone In This Room
- Poems Don't Come Easily
- A Boy Is A Curious Thing
- There Goes Rub Wrongways
I'm not particularly ready for anybody to hear this cassette album, but part of me is quite interested in trying to bring a few of these songs into School for the Dead to see what we could do with them. There are some parts that I'm proud of, but I'm pretty sure that I hear them differently than they really sound. I mean, I am able to filter out all the warbling and hiss and mistakes, and my ears follow my brain's lead at remembering how the songs sounded in my head fifteen years ago when I recorded them, rather than hearing what the recordings really sound like.
YOu may have also noticed that the name of the album features the name of our record label Rub Wrongways. Rub Wrongways has been with me a long time and I'm sure he's proud to be featured in more than one place. Good ole Rub.
3 comments:
oh man, that must've been exciting and fascinating to listen to. cool that you still like so much of it; i can't imagine playing anything i wrote 10-15 years ago. it would be fun to record them though... hm. anyway, the talk about bouncing tracks and stuff made me nostalgic for my own 4-track days. maybe i'll have to set it up some day and dump those old songs into garageband.
Although I dug it out for you recently, I haven't listened to that tape in well over five years. So one good way of measuring a song's worth (given our pop/rock criteria) would be to look at those titles and see if a snatch of melody, a hook if you will, is still lodged in the memory banks. That can be done for me with the songs numbered 2, 3, 5, 7, 15, 16, 17 and 19. That's pretty good, right? However, what the hell were you doing with all those tracks in the middle, though? Nonetheless, I do have vague memories of "Alpenstrasse" as a cheesy instrumental that's fun to listen to and sounds like nothing elese you've ever done. Similarly, "Institution" is based around a cool repetitive drum machine beat, even if the song itself isn;t too memorable.
The hit single is definitiely "Lost Inside My Shoes," a power pop number with dodgy lyrics, since some lines seem written in desperation to rhyme with the ones preceding.
Guess I should go dig out my own 1990 release "The Eclecticollection Box," which is also 90 minutes long and features a mishmash of good songs, half-baked ideas, wistful stuff next to goofy songs, and almost all of it, from the multiple guitar tracks to the Casio drumbeats performed by me alone onto a 4-track.
I just listened to this album a few weeks ago. I have mp3s of it from somewhere - Alvin must have made them way back. Hen, I can send you the mp3s if you want to compare the recording quality.
I've probably re-visited that album about every 6 months for at least the last 5 years. It reminds me of the many listens we gave it during our Europe trip of 1993.
Lots of great songs.
I seem to have 6 more songs than your listing - 'bonus tracks'?
01 - The Dance of Rub Wrongways.mp3
02 - We Go Limping.mp3
03 - Hello, Hello, Hello.mp3
04 - Tin Whistle.mp3
05 - Sit on Roofs.mp3
06 - Where Is My God_.mp3
07 - Vestigial Heart.mp3
08 - Dead Friend's Name.mp3
09 - We'll Take Our Time.mp3
10 - Lost Inside My Shoes.mp3
11 - Looks Like I'm Tall.mp3
12 - If I Had a Gun.mp3
13 - Rub Wrongways Dancing.mp3
14 - The Needed One.mp3
15 - Portable Yardstick.mp3
16 - Alpenstrasse.mp3
17 - That's Not Love.mp3
18 - Institution.mp3
19 - Bible in a Basket.mp3
20 - Someone in This Room.mp3
21 - What's a Guy Like Me To Do.mp3
22 - Poems Don't Come Easily.mp3
23 - A Boy Is a Curious Thing.mp3
24 - Filler.mp3
25 - There Goes Rub Wrongways.mp3
26 - We Go Limping (outro).mp3
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