they didn't call them 'mix tapes' back then...
Lou continues his cassette deep dive.
As you may know, RAW impressions episodes 41 and 42 were devoted to my late friend Mark Harris and featured a tape he sent me when we were kids: Insanity #1. It was his response to the dozens of tapes I sent him in the early 80s, compilations with spoken interludes and my first attempts at recording my own music.
I never copied the tapes, the only evidence I have are two never sent, abandoned, compilations. One is scrawled ‘Aborted Mark Tape’ and the other ‘IDK #3’, both recently retrieved from the prodigous pile of plastic that is my cassette archive. IDK was ‘I Don’t Know’ (am I the unwitting originator of this text speak?) and that was definitely the vibe. When I act as DJ on the tape and back announce the songs, the approach is all slack. When I started sending tapes to Mark in 1981 I was an excitable kid, really digging into my announcer persona and being a goofball. I titled the tapes ‘Greatest Hits’ and ‘Son of Greatest Hits’! By ’83 I was in a real band (Deep Wound) and had started my last year of high school. Enthusiasm was not cool. Though I was on fire with new ideas and the love of music, I affected the opposite.
After giving up on them I apparently re-purposed the tapes for some crude multi-tracking attempts. What’s left is fragments of songs, my favorites of the time and my embryonic melodies, drifting in, out and over one another. In the chaos I found an unreleased song and heard a whole, wonderful song I hadn’t heard in decades: That’s What You’re Here For by the Arizona band Green On Red.
For mini-music-monday I recorded a cover of the Green On Red tune (using my 4-track) and played the forgotten song, Pink And Blue. (side note: on the podcast I say that Pink And Blue was inspired by Husker Du’s Pink Turns To Blue, this isn’t the case, the tape predates the release of Zen Arcade, it was all about Metal Circus then) Listen to That’s What You’re Here For and Pink and Blue below.
I’ve also included an instrumental version of Bay CIty Baby I found. The ‘real’, finished version can be found here..
..one of 43 similar shards of my past that comprise that epic wreck of an L.P.. This is a quasi-important piece of my history because it’s one of my first direct multi-track recording attempts (as opposed to recording on the portable cassette with it’s condenser mic, then playing it back out through speakers and recording again on to another cassette in the portable, the lowest of the fi). On a visit to my local Radio Shack (the mighty chain of electronics stores that once supplied all of the U.S. with electronic bits and cheap audio gear) (R.I.P.), I found a magic adapter (1/8” to RCA) that connected the headphone jack of the portable tape recorder to the inputs of the family stereo console cassette recorder. This meant I could, along with the small plastic microphone provided with the console, record what was coming out of the portable -and- my voice, or guitar, directly, at the same time! Hello improved fidelity, it’s a make-shift 2-track! I was still years away from acquiring a 4-track so this was a big deal for little me. The Bay City instrumental is 3 layers: mouth percussion and 2 electric guitars. The adapter also made tape collages possible, a technique that evolved and resulted in Poledo, the last track on Dinosaur Jr’s You’re Living All Over Me.
Check its recording credit: ‘recorded on 2 crappy tape recorders by Lou and Lou alone in his room’, that says it all. I could endlessly layer sounds and, by half-pressing the play, fast forward , rewind and record buttons, do all kinds of sonic damage. I’ll be posting some more of the original collages that demonstrate that approach and led to Poledo soon. Until then, thanks for checking in.. songs and complete track listings for both cassettes live below..