I had a ridiculous idea today that I think I'm actually gonna' follow through with. In the spirit of all the nostalgia about my old songs that I've had lately I started thinking about the first demo tape I ever recorded. Yeah, I said demo tape! Back in the day that's what we recorded, and we liked it!
Ooops. Sorry about that - I swear I can feel my old age creeping up on me.
Anyway, I don't know why I was thinking of this tape, but let me just tell you a little bit about it: I recorded it with my first gigging band, Kimara, in March of 1995. Kimara was a three-piece band comprised of drummer Bruce Pannkuk, bassist Duane French, and myself on guitar and vocals. We scraped up every penny we could find and went into BopTech studios here in Spokane to record what would become the album "Falsehood." (Now, I say "album" because it's the easiest thing to call it, but it really was just an eight-song demo tape.) Duane, Bruce, and I spent two or three days in the studio and had a blast. There were a few mistakes in the recording, the overall production was average, and my guitar playing was nowhere near up to par, but we were pressed for time and money so we were happy with the end result. I sold a bunch of copies of it to all my friends at school and felt like a total rock star.
The band broke up a few months after we recorded the album due to lack of direction, but for the rest of my time in high school, I would see people walking around playing my tape and it made me feel good. After high school, I kept a copy of the tape around for a while, but lost it when I broke up with my fiancee in early 1998. For the next eight years, I could not find a copy of the tape to save my life. All my friends that I stayed in contact with had long since lost their copies, and I sure as hell wasn't going to go ask the ex for it, so I just let it be. Then, in 2006, when I played my last show with Matthew Lindley Mistake, an old friend of my mom's decided to surprise me with a copy of the tape. She'd kept it all those years and made an extra copy for me. Since that time, I think I've only listened to it once because, frankly, I don't even own a tape player anymore, but I'm really happy that I have a copy of it.
So, back to me and this idea.
I was thinking about the tape today and wondered if I could convert all of the songs into .mp3 files so I could listen to it any time I felt nostalgic. I have a friend who does this sort of analog-to-digital conversion all the time, so I know I could have him do it, but then, when I thought about it some more and realized that it has been almost exactly 15 years since I first recorded it, I thought it would be cool to re-record all of the songs with all of my updated equipment. Even though most of the songs are corny by my current standards, I think it will be fun to see what I can do with them 15 years later. Who knows, some of my old high school friends might even like to have a copy of the new recordings. Either way, I think this is how I'm going to spend my spring break. I'll let y'all know when I get the recordings done.
I am the Reverend Humpy and I have approved this message.
1 comment:
That's wicked.
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