80's Bar Cheez

dafduc

dafduc

New member
I was cleaning out the garage and came across an old gig tape from '85. Kinda funny to listen to now.

I listened to 4 sets worth - really pretty good sound quality, considering how low budget we were.

I posted a couple of mp3s out on my blogspot site, since they're covers, I'd be violating NWR terms putting them up there.

Give these a listen, tell me what you think. There's definitely some tape wow, and guitar and mics were panned one side, everything else to the other. Rerecorded at 16/44, mp3 rate is 96k.

If you have an idea about the best way to put these together (center all but vocs & guitar? Just bring sides in closer? Go mono and then do that fake stereo trick in SoundForge?), let me know, okay?

Here's the details:

Euphoria, Dec. 1985
----------------------------
Greg Southwell, lead vocs
Steve Stefanski, guitar and vocs
Bob Goodsite, bass and vocs
Daf, keys and vocs (Prophet 5, Yam KX-88 driving TX-7 pair)
Jerry ??? (substitute - regular drummer got fired earlier that week), drums and vocs, lead voc on Mickey's Monkey

No Looking Back was a Michael McDonald single that was in heavy VH-1 rotation back then, but never was a hit. Mickey's Monkey was the old Smokey hit - we rocked it up a bit.





The whole tape had about 20 songs on it, if you guys are interested, I can put up more later.

Anyhow, MY perceptions of the whole tape:

(1) Greg's personality "shines" through as usual - he used to walk around the bar singing on our breaks. "Everybody look at me!".

(2) We didn't have a funky bone anywhere in our 5 combined bodies. Sad.

(3) As a whole, the Prophet sounds hold up better than the TX-7, which really sounds dated - but my TX-7s were still new then, I think I was using stock DX sounds still. I know I came up with a better piano sound later.

(4) Nice full sound from the bass - love that tape!!! Bob's voice also records better than Greg's, but he's not on these two songs.

(5) Steve played on as homemade guitar through a pair of 10-watt Peavey amps. Still a great sound. Never played with anyone who could shred like Steve...

Daf
 
You'd be LYAO at what I was doing in '85.:D

The band was pretty tight. I bet you had dancers-a-plenty with those tunes.

I would just collapse that into a mono mix, or maybe leave it panned just slightly for a bit of depth. There's actually quite a bit of bass on the right as well as some vocal bleed on the left. I wouldn't put any FX on it myself. It is what it is: a moment in time.;)
 
Sounds pretty good for ehat it is dude.;)Takes me back to when I was every bit of 20 years old.LOL...I like both tunes.The guitar player has a few 38 Special licks going on there.Cool keys too on the second tune and then it ended before the keys got started!It's only 2:14...is that the right length?

Cool tunes dude.
 
Oh oh - got an FTP timeout, shoulda checked.:( There's a long self-indulgent organ solo...:D

I'll reship Mickey, post back when it's up. IOt'll be at least an hour - damned dialup!

Daf
 
That sounds pretty cool!! I love stuff like this. Compared to what's posted here today the sonic quality just isn't there, but there is something warm and fuzzy about it. I don't know. It just smacks of youthful dreams or something. Don't mind my rambling. I still dig the sound of AM radio sometimes too. :D.

Band is pretty tight. Sounds like you guys were having a lot of fun. I might have to dig out some early stuff of mine. I'm pretty sure it doesn' sound even that good :D.
 
We were all kind of 30ish when we cut this, except the guitarist was younger - maybe 25?

Anyhow, you guys are being real kind. I remember now these guys really DID have a good sense of where the pocket was - maybe a little too much?

ANYHOW - the FULL version of Mickey's Monkey is out there, with my complete tribute to Jon Lord now fully intact. I think.



I believe I'm with M. Brane on keeping just a little bit of the separation and not messing with it further...

Anyone else?:confused:
 
"Looking Back"

Really, really nice. I loved the drumming and the keyboard work.

Mix - yeah, why not make it all mono? Nothing wrong with mono.
It doesn't *all* have to sound the same *always*. :)

You guys played *tight*. Lovely. 'Too in the pocket'? Nah, don't be silly. :D
 
Good cheeze....very tight band and good performances.....

another vote for mono.......
 
Props to the reviewers:

Gidge: glad you liked our cheez. It's been aging for 17 years...

dobro: Thanks for liking the keyboards! And it's a real testament to the drummer's ability - walked in with no rehearsals, he'd never heard a few of these songs before, including "No Looking Back." We'd just show him the groove and give him visual cues. What a pro. As far as "no such thing as being too in-the-pocket", I used to think so too, but then started playing country ('90-'93) I got real sick of being safe and predictable.

Jagular: Thanks. It WAS fun. Even if Greg was an idiot. I kinda miss him. I'd love to hear your back-in-the-day stuff, too.

Kramer: Thank you, too. I had never noticed Steve's 38-Special influence, but you're right - not so much in his tone as in his melodic ideas, I think. Is that what you meant? Oh yeah, and thanks for the heads-up on Mickey's Monkey being cut short - did you listen to the full-length version after I reloaded it?

M. Brane: I appreciate the input. The Smokey was definitely a dance-floor hit - "y'know that dance became a teenage craze" and all that. "No Looking Back" wasn't, though, for two reasons, I think - (1) nobody knew it, and (2) we always did it in the first set, and never got dancers 'til the second set. Not just this band, but about every band I ever played with. The guys had to suck down some liquid courage before they'd hit the floor. That was NOT true playing country gigs - those boot-scooters would be out on the very first song.

A couple more tech notes: we recorded direct off the board: a Yam 12-channel. We may have been submixing the drums - either an Acoustic 500 mixer or a Tapco 6-channel. The mix wasn't our live mix, though - we routed to a second buss for the tape. Guit and vocs were on the same side because of their low stage volume (I couldn't really tell from the guitar sound, though). We used a home stereo cassette deck (Hitachi DE-10), forget how we duped 'em, but I remember my tape is a second-generation. Oh and I said Bob wasn't singing on these - wrong. He was the "response" voice on "No Looking Back".
 
Sorry, Dim, missed your note...

Echo was on the board. No overdubs. Keys were direct via a keyboard mixer - I forget the make (it got stolen in '86).

Thx for your comments.

Daf
 
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