Share Your Embarrassing Early Recordings!

[BigRedX]

One final one from me.

 

Track 9 on this page is by my third band. This time I'm playing synth. 

 

This is yet another song originally written and recorded by my first band and repurposed as an oriental sounding piece of synth-pop. IIRC it only uses black notes on the keyboard. This version was recorded at the end of 1983 using our newly acquired Yamaha DX7 (we had one of the first in the UK), in our practice space/recording studio located in the tiny cellar of one of the band members. Recorded on 4-track with numerous overdubs including one that had to be added live during the final mix. As well as the DX7 the other instruments on the track were Roland 808 drum machine, Korg MS20 and Roland SH101 synths.

 

The Bright Lights cassette compilation was organised by myself and a friend who at the time was running the Square Dance Studio in Derby (which subsequently moved to Nottingham and became the Square Centre). It was supposed to be a representation of the current state of the Nottingham music scene like the Bomb Party cassette that my pervious band had been on. Unfortunately at the time we didn't have the same clout as BBC Radio Nottingham so a few of the bands we wanted to feature weren't interested, and some of the bands are included simply because they recorded a demo at Square Dance.

 

I think 100 copies of the cassette were produced and sold through local record shops and at gigs. The cover was screen printed by me and the cassettes duplicated in real time by the studio.

 

Another track recorded at the same as this had William Orbit interested in working with the band, but we weren't that impressed with his band at the time (Torch Song), and another member of the band had been involved in a similar situation with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics which had promised lots but ultimately delivered very little, and so we turned him down.