Sound on Sound (1978) - the balance of tunes

I've made you all wait long enough. Here's the balance of the "Sound on Sound" sessions for your enjoyment.

"Heartache" is a rockin' little tune that I re-recorded for the "Air Canada" sessions. It's a basic story of "I'm warning you" to a girl about all those bad for you men - of which I am one, it turns out! When you're young, it's always someone else, of course.

"Red Car" is a song I wrote about this Datsun station wagon I drove when I was a kid. I swore one day, I would get a better car. In retrospect, it wasn't too bad!

"Girl" is a great song, as far as I'm concerned. One of those I wrote early that is seemingly simple, but actually changing slightly the entire time. It's a quality I love in a pop song. I hope you do too.

"Don't Cry For Me" and "Who Do You Love" were my first emulations of love for the end-of-the-decade burnout of Fleetwood Mac. I loved Lindsay Buckingham's simple rock tunes - just driving and driving, like "What Makes You Think You're The One" from Tusk and also loved Christine MacVie's sad songs like "You'll Never Make Me Cry" - so simple. These tunes are a take on that feel and sound - only with a lot more hiss as I pretty much wore the cassette tape out at this point.


Download "Heartache"

Download "Red Car"

Download "Girl"

Download "Don't Cry For Me"

Download "Who Do You Love"

(right click the link above and "Save Target As..." to your local machine)

Almost Home - the demo tape encoding saga concludes

Well, I'm on the home stretch of my demo tape encoding. It's been a long process, and the entire task is only partially complete. So far, however, I have some observations:

When I was young, I flexed a lot of muscles. I wrote songs at a pretty impressive rate. This was my "Elton" period - one that continues to this day. Mostly piano-based songs, with complex chord progressions, strong melodies.

A short flirtation with end of the decade malaise was followed by a power pop phase - Elvis Costello/Nick Lowe/Stiff Records-influenced.

Come the time of the Throttle Body sessions, I was making very immediate pop-rock, simple, fast and clean. As TBMC matured in the 90's I entered the final stage chronicled on these tapes, which I would characterize as riff-rock. I didn't even bother singing half the time. Or more.

The way back machine has been filled with the joy of rediscovery, sadness and regret and inspiration to get back to some of the best of these tunes and see what they have to offer.

History is hard on the heart

As I am archiving these song tapes, it's getting a bit rough on me. I had the habit at the time of playing the skeleton of the song I was working on and then just letting the tape roll to pick up what was going on around me while I was writing. I would also narrate the events of my days and capture friends and family in the process. So now as I listen back to these tapes so many years later, there are ghosts of my past coming back to life. Funny how joy can turn to regret with the passing of years. But these songs, if ever properly recorded, will never be now what they were meant to be then and I guess I'm just a reflection of that same fact.

What goes on

Ok - it's been awhile, but remember, there's no promise of productivity here, just an archive that is building organically. So what's been going on during all the silence? Primarily a huge archiving project. I am in the process of transferring 35 cassettes with somewhere near 300 song demos onto Pro Tools. It's a huge project that'll require many passes. Eventually some of these songs will be developed into final, finished versions.

I've been saying to musician friends lately who are aware of the project that I always meant to return to these songs - I just didn't realize it would be (in some cases) 30 years later!

I'll try not to neglect the posting of demos for too much longer, but in case you were wondering, that's what goes on...

"Sound on Sound" 1978 - Tracks 4,5,6 - "All That Matters", "She Doesn't Seem To Be That Nice of Girl", "Diana"

Here's a group of songs, two of which were re-recorded for 2005's "Air Canada" session. Across these three songs, I think I turned a little corner in my young songwriting career.

"All That Matters" was this really simple 4-chord tune, but had this marvelous asymetrical hook that used two chords and built up the tension really nicely.

"She Doesn't Seem To Be That Nice Of Girl" was my attempt at a "Hard Days Night" era Beatles tune, with a swinging groove and very forward melody. It's clean and simple and rockin' and a tune I still like a lot.

"Diana" is a song I really should treat properly one day. It's another piece of pretty good songwriting, with multiple movements that don't seem so different on the surface, but accomplish that Roy Orbison trick of slight, continuous variation from top to tail of the tape.

You'll notice the sound getting "hissier" as I add more instruments and vocals on the tape. I was starting to push to see how much I could add without losing the whole sound of the songs at this point. Something else I always loved about these sesssions was the sound of the Hofner bass (a Beatle-bass), which you can still hear pretty clearly on "All That Matters". When I re-recorded the song for "Air Canada" I tried to re-create the sound with a Fender Percision, and the bass just dominates the mix as a result.

I hope you enjoy these three from the "Sound on Sound" sessions.

Download "All That Matters"

Download "She Doesn't Seem To Be That Nice Of Girl"

Download "Diana"

(right click the link above and "Save Target As..." to your local machine)

"Sound on Sound" 1978 - Track 3: "Everytime (Jill's Song)"

I was crazy about Jill Utz. I think I was probably crazy about her for three years. But I was one of those outsider types in high school, and Jill was definitely "in-crowd" material, so nothing ever came of it but a sweet friendship that I still treasure. I lost touch with Jill right after high school and always wonder what happened to her. I remember hearing she married her high school boyfriend and I think had one of those happily ever after lives that good souls deserve so much. I certainly hope that was the case.

"Everytime (Jill's Song)" is actually a pretty good piece of song craft, and still holds up today to my ears. It has a nice groove and round to it, appropriately sentimental lyrics, and that gentle 70's-ness quality now known as "smooth". It remains one of my favorite songs I've ever written.

When working on the "Air Canada" sessions, I revisited the "Sound on Sound" tape and this was one of the tracks that I refreshed and recorded properly. I gave it a nice "Daniel"-esque feel with electric pianos and synths and am pretty happy with the version. You can pick it up on iTunes if you want, or hear it at the Throttle Body m/c website.

Download "Everytime (Jill's Song)"
(right click the link above and "Save Target As..." to your local machine)

"Sound on Sound" 1978 - Track 2: "Together"

The "Sound on Sound" session was created in the order it appears here, one track after the other. In some cases, like this one, I had a backing track that I had previously recorded, and simply made a few additions to it. "Together" features Lenny Dahlstrom on guitar and backing vocals, as well as Thom Brisendine on backing vocals. The backing track was recorded at my best friend Paul Ralph's basement and the only addition I made for this version was the bass guitar. Lenny was a cool guitar player who knew how to rock in the old-school "rock and roll" kind of way and his playing made a number of these tunes come to life.

Download "Together"
(right click the link above and "Save Target As..." to your local machine)