snap frozen getting gas this morning. An icy wind was blowing across the parking lot. Mate, it was no bloody good. I should be grateful I’m not down under fighing bushfires I guess.
A lot of these things look exactly like this now
On the weekend I decided to copy some cassettes. This is ancient technology that humans and others used to record and store sounds and play them back on demand. They are little plastic boxes that contain very long strips of magnetic tape that when passed over an electrical charge re arrange the metallic particles into patterns which the machine can then interpret into sound electronically. Anyway some these things are upwards of 40 years old now and they still hold sounds which can be played back. How long these are going to viable is questionable, so I decided that I should attempt to digitize them and with the help of Ai make them sound as good as, if not better than they originally were.
I found some interesting stuff. On one tape labeled “demos” I found a bunch of songs that I had written using a simple Casio M10 keyboard and a drum and bass machine. If you imagine something that sounds a bit like the Human League, you’d be in the ballpark. This was a period when I was writing songs every day with Stephen Cummings at his house. I would go over there in the morning, and sometimes he would cook me breakfast.
In between songwriting bouts we’d raid Joe Camilleri’s place for equipment we could use. I think one of the songs on this tape has never been released but I’m not sure. I would write the music and Stephen would write the words. This particular tune has him singing on it with perhaps myself sing backing vocals. It’s very Prince-like which was what he was into at the time. I was more of a Hall and Oats type person but we both liked Ray Parker Junior, so this stuff is a mishmash of all of that.
Jo Jo Zep. You want to borrow what?
To cut a long and boring story short, apart from that co-written one, I found quite a few songs that I had written on my own and some of them are pretty good if I may say. What’s going to happen to them, I have no idea. There was another band I had prior to that period, a three piece called The Bossa Nova, and they had a couple of good tunes that I found on another cassette. The drummer Simone, was my brother’s girlfreind at the time, and years later she ended up married to Neil, the guitarist. We debuted at the Jump Club in Fitzroy dressed like 18th century Dandys thanks to the Channel 9 costume department which I had raided with the help of some girl I knew who worked there. People were quite impressed.
The thing about cassettes is that you never know what’s on them because they can contain a couple of hours worth of material. It’s the playing back that’s tedious. I have a couple of ancient tape decks, but they both refuse to fast foward or rewind any more. To listen quickly to something isn’t possible. I have to play the damn thing all the way through to listen to what’s on the other side.
Go Wild in French has an album out. You can digitally download it.
Nevetheless, it’s a fascinating exercise in forensics and archaeology. I started out the day copying some Go Wild in French stuff which is also good. This was an 11 piece band that came after the Armchairs, which Stephen helped me to get together. He thought up the name, and even played bass for a while. It turned out to be one of the more musically satisfying things I’ve done so far. I loved having a brass section, and I miss it. The Slaughtermen were far more successful but “Go Wild” had much more depth and potential I think.
Good Day.
I’ve Got Feelings Too. I’m not channeling Scott Walker, no… not at all…much.
I’ll post one of these cassette tracks here later today if anyone is interested.