I suppose it does.
But, in my defense, it is accurate. Recording, when I started in the early 80's was split into 3 basic categories: record label recordings, the albums and tapes you bought of your favorite artists, with varying degrees of production, but generally a decent sound, local production at studios for the purposes of demos, or vanity projects, as they were called in the old days, that would make no money, and the noisy, ratty recordings the rest of us made in our cheap Panasonic cassette recorders.
I made quite a few bad recordings with one of these!
It was a friend of mine, in the Navy, who turned me on to, what was then, a novel new way for "home recording enthusiasts", like myself, to make actual multi-track recordings. He had a Tascam 244 4-track cassette machine.
After fooling around with it, naturally, I had to have my own.
Now having one didn't mean anything beyond being able to make bad recordings with 4 channels instead of 1 or 2, assuming there was a stereo input on your recorder, but I began to hear what other people were doing with the 244 which sounded good, and I figured I could do that too. I bought a good mic and outboard gear, at least that which I could afford. From there it was trial and error.
And it worked for me.
That doesn't mean I didn't want to perform or couldn't get along with others. It was, rather, a way for me to get the songs out in a way that I liked. I wanted to have a fully realized, given the equipment I had, song to show people rather than just me beating out a few tunes on the guitar. Not that that's a bad thing, but for me, It was frustrating because I could hear the songs in my head and wanted to see what I could do with them. And finding studio time I could afford was frustrating. The other problem was the people I wanted to work with were already in any number of bands or were moving away or tired of life out of a van.
Then it was time for me to move. My wife at the time, Yoshie, wanted to come to Seattle, and I saw no reason not to. I could still record and do my thing. And, if I'm honest, I am a bit stubborn when it comes to how I want my songs to sound, so doing it myself was the way to go. I didn't need someone telling me to do it this way, only to have it be out of fashion or style the next day. I like guitars and synths, but I didn't want to necessarily do New Wave pop or hair band rock.
I just wanted to do my own thing.
And I still do.
Song of the Week: This week's song, Faces, from Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch, is basically a commentary on how women are presented to us through the media, and how in person, they're not really like that at all, or that the life we're expecting isn't how life turns out. The clash of imagery versus reality along side a jaunty beat. You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com.
©2019 David William Pearce
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