A Real Treat

My old friend and colleague Roger (akaRon Holdcroft) requested a digital copy of some of my old band's material, the 1984-vintage stuff. I wasn't sure whether it could be done, because I haven't kept any of it, nor indeed heard it for a good 15 years or more, but luckily Pete (pictured above with a double bass on one of the sessions) has some old cassettes.

So I did a transfer into Pro Tools, which was straightforward enough. I thought I'd also give the Sony Oxford Restoration tools a run, and got rid of the tape hiss without adversely affecting much else on the tracks (now that's some smart software!).

This is the second song we ever recorded. Like Natalie Wood.

I was always disappointed that we didn't manage to bring out the electric guitar a bit more in the mix. It was (I think) an old blue Fender Mustang that Pete had for a while, and we plugged it directly into the recorder rather than an amp, so I always felt it was a shame that the quite nice riff at the beginning of the song was more or less inaudible on the tape. Anyway, I've managed to bring it up a bit using yet more clever software.

The other singer was my old bandmate John, who left after we'd recorded a few, and I completed the rest of the songs myself. At the beginning, we were both inexperienced and nervous about singing on tape, and I suppose we have each other confidence. After he left, I got slowly better over time, but I was a bit tentative on some of the songs. I really don't like our two voices together - we're hardly the Everlys - but such is the nature of 4-tracks, that there's no going back.

Anyway, this was the kind of thing we were up to 22 years ago.