Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch

Here now is the official unvarnished truth behind Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch, which will be released on Friday, Nov. 30th.

The album has taken a somewhat circuitous path to release for a variety of reasons, the formost being that at the time it was recorded, minus certain technical problems, it was prohibitively expensive to do so. But that was the nature of the business in the early 80's. The only people putting out proper releases were those who had a contract with a record label. I did not.

What I did have was a friend, Brian Waters, who liked my music, could play bass, and, most importantly, could get us into for real recording studios.

PearceArrow,

which we had recorded in 1980, while Brian was going to school at Auraria College in Denver, had been, for the most part successful: it had been recorded, mixed, copied to cassette, and one of its songs, You're Fine, was selected to be on a local album of up and comers. By 1982, buoyed by the idea that we could do this, Brian and I decided to record another album. I had written a number of songs and Brian had lined up studio time by hook and crook-mostly providing repair work on the studio's gear in exchange for recording time. I took a month's worth of leave-I was in the Navy at the time-and Brian gathered some musicians he knew to play on the record.

They were Brian,

Mark McCoin,

Howard Cano and Mr. Jones,

And yours truly,

We got together at Mark's house to rehearse: Brian on bass, Mark on drums, Mr. Jones on lead guitar, Howard on keys, and me on guitar. We then made our merry way to the studio to record. 

While writing, I had been focusing on the electric guitar mainly because I was tired of the acoustic and wanted to record a more rocking album. PearceArrow, I felt, was more folk-rock and I wanted to move on. The recording sessions were a touch frenetic due to the limited time available to us, but we got it all done in the 2 or 3 sessions we had. Brian was to then mix the songs down, add Howard's parts-he had to work when we were recording-and then we'd have a big party to celebrate.

Which we did.

And that was that.

There were a few problems, though. The biggest, was the Dolby on the masters was messed up, so that when you engaged the Dolby function, you got what is lovingly described as flutter and a disconcerting muddying of the tracks. They sounded great with the Dolby off so long as you didn't mind the tape hiss.

Major bummer and at the time there was nothing we could do about it.

I had a high-quality cassette version and that was that.

We talked about doing another album, but that never came to fruition, and the masters were lost after Brian died in 1991.

In 2016, I had by that point gotten back into writing and recording and I pulled out my cassette of Broken Hearts and wondered if there was anything there. I hadn't listed to it much in the intervening 34 years, but I still like the energy and I though the recordings were, for he most part, really good. I felt they weren't quite complete and there was the tape hiss problem. Fortunately, there were solutions now that weren't available in 1982, namely noise-cancelation programs. 

I decided to make digital copies of the songs and I added what I thought the songs lacked, whether it was an additional guitar, keyboard part, or vocals. I then ran the songs through a noise cancelation program and mastered the songs.

They still have a DIY quality, and the mistakes made when originally recorded are there if you listen for them, but all in all, I think it sounds good and is a fun album.

Song of the Week: Movie is basically a lyrically impressionistic song. My take on film noir, which I love and continue to watch to this day. You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com along with the other songs from the album.

©2018 David William Pearce