Entertainment For Lively Minds
Live in the studio
This is my mate Dan recording our second album in my bedroom in 1982. The Silent Shout was a concept album - well, I say album, it was a tape. A concept tape, about alienation and that. Sales were sluggish; only two copies were ever produced.
By today's standards studio equipment like homemade speaker cabinets, hallucinogenic carpet, a broom handle and some sellotape must seem as retro as valve amps or rickets, but we were pretty pleased with this setup. At its heart is the Tensai Studio 5000, seen here on top of the bass amp. It had six preset rhythms - Fast Rock (bip bip tss, bip bip tss), Slow Rock (bip.... tss...), Waltz, Rhumba, Beguine and one I've forgotten. Madrigal, probably. Even better, you could record to one channel on a cassette, rewind and overdub a second track, then bounce these down and add a third, and so on. In practice this got very muddy very quickly, so we rarely did more than three tracks, then played it back through that August cabinet and added further 'live' elements for a final mix which was recorded on another cassette player. So that's drums, three pre-records, vocals, BVs, lead guitar and percussion - eight tracks, twice what The Beatles had.
Dan's hair is in a transitional period between Not Looking Much Like Brian May (1977-80) and Not Looking Much Like Marty Willson-Piper from The Church (1983-5). He's holding his Epiphone Scroll. Leaning on the pre-duvet bed is my first bass. I think that may even have been its name - My First Bass by Fisher Price or Chad Valley. It came with flat black plastic strings and sounded like a stream of wet farts.
Speaking of which, I can tell from Dan's facial expression that I've captured him right in the middle of "cutting one."
Other albums recorded in The Dan and Dave's prolific career (1980-86) included Golden Grates, You're Not Listening, The Final Conflict, A Box of Everything and FNEB. There was also the all-acoustic Songs of Love And Similar Things by our spin-off project, The Band Of The Same Name. Oh and my solo album, Politicians and People (I know, I know. I KNOW) which only sold half as well as the others.
Come September Dan and I will have been best mates for 40 years. Forty Years, bloody hell. There's talk of a reunion album - we reckon we could shift four, maybe five copies. He still does that face when he dumps his guts.
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Fantastic...
That reminds me of recording with my short-lived band Roi (pronounced 'Roy'). Sadly we never got round to the planned Roy II, Roy III, Roy IV and Houses of the Roy as we were shite.
Shame
The world is still waiting for In through the out Roy
Presumably not
ROI as in "return on investment"?
How much
of that equipment or the instruments still exists? Are you as bad a hoarder as I am?
Dan still has the Scroll
It's slipped down the picking order behind the Strat, the Tele, the SG and all the others though. I always give it a little pat when I'm round there. That white box at the back is a Shure Unidyne B microphone which i borrowed from a kid at school (and any day now I'm going to give it back). The rest is long gone.
I still have the album by Dan's shoulder. A bonus point to anyone who knows what it is.
Stray Cats
But I can't claim the credit. That goes to Mr. Simmonds.
Think of it
as a joint effort from a mini mingle
Shure thing!
I was an avid one-man-band home recorder in the early 80s. I was much better and more prolific at it then with really perfunctory equipment than I am now with a home computer based mid-price software recording system that the makers of Sergeant Pepper could only dream about. The only bit of kit still standing from those days are a mic stand and 2 Shure Unidyne B's. I bet they still work
Home recording
I imagine we've all done it at some form or other throughout life haven't we?
I know I have. This year sees me celebrating 10 years as a home recorder, having just completed my 38th project. 38! Madness. I have been involved in a further one EP "Never Let Me Go" with my band at university, Perception Room, but that was recorded in the arts centre recording studio in Abersywtyth (ROCK!) and so not viable for inclusion.
Nearly all of them sound like they were recorded in a shoe, mostly recorded in one take on a dictaphone or inbuilt laptop microphone. Some are programmed with various dance music programmes (Music Maker, eJay, etc). Most are unlistenable. Particularly the series of "White Noise" experiments I recorded in my late teens, essentially 10 minute slices of feedback and made up noodling. Challenging stuff.
Surprisingly I am still waiting for the call to say that someone's going to release them as a box set, ripe for number 1 status across the globe. Well, you never know do you?
Wonderful thread
Cheers CU. Sadly no photos exist of The Royal We cutting our seminal 'Tea With Mr Kipling/Terry Scott's Blues' double A side, but let's just say it makes your set-up look like Abbey Road.
postscript
Since I posted this Dan has dug out his copy of The Silent Shout, our 30-year-old concept tape about alienation and that, and armed with large whiskies and a soundproofed outhouse we sat down to listen to it. When we emerged 40 minutes later, ashen-faced and unable to make eye contact, we told our wives we had been enthusiastically strumming each other to vigorous climax, rather than reveal the deep, dark truth from our past: we were Teenage Pretentious Twats.
Steve Hannigan / No one, none to know
He's just another one / Of the units that come and go
Our protagonist works in a factory and mopes around a lot. He meets a rich girl who briefly gives him a glimpse of a better life, before dumping him again, possibly because he's such a moaner. Steve rails against the unfairness of life for a while before having a personal epiphany in a Mini Clubman and, in a stunning denouement, going back to work.
Throughout we are treated to Steve's Aristotelian search for understanding of the human condition:
What the hell am I doing here?
I should have listened to what they said
They never seemed to have anything to say
Now I'm alone in an empty bed
At one point, for no other reason than I had written a song about it, Steve goes to Paris. I reproduce these lyrics as a form of penance - those of a nervous disposition may want to look away now.
The Boulevard / Was frozen hard
And the autumn leaves in the Champs Elysees were falling
I strolled along / The Petit Pont
And dipped my toe in the stream below
It's strange / Without you I'm in Sienne
September, Paris, In the rain.
OH LORD MAKE IT STOP. I now realise that the reason we suppress painful memories deep, deep down inside where they can never hurt us is that, had I suddenly recalled the full horror of my 18-year-old self's bloated self-regard in, say, McDonald's one Saturday afternoon in the Nineties, I'd have had to stab myself through the eye with a plastic tea stirrer just to make it go away.
There's even a five-minute guitar noodle called Ennui. Ennui!
I guess teenagers should be allowed to express themselves. They should aim high, distain the mundane, explore possibilities. They should hold up their creation and say: this is mine, I made it. It is mine. It is art. I am ART.
And then they should burn it before any poor fucker has to listen to it.