Vignettes, 1982 . . .
We had our second gig at Off The Wagon, on Baltimore Avenue. I rented a truck from the U-Haul on 49th Street, a 14 footer with a manual transmission and a powered lift. Total overkill, but they were out of 7 footers.
I drove the truck to Apple Valley Studio, at 1824 Chestnut. We loaded a big pile of gear, including all the amps and cabinets – or so we thought. Out to the bar, several miles away in West Philly. We carried everything in (the bartender was alarmed at my Ampeg V4/V2 rig), and started setting up. Someone asked “Where are the PA cabinets?” I looked around, and realized we’d left them back at the studio. Then I turned to Jon and said “We suck horse eggs.” “Why?” I told him. “Those are pretty big horse eggs.” Back to Center City . . .
During this gig, my wallet was stolen by one of the patrons. Inside was my draft card, issued when there was still a war in Vietnam.
In the studio. Jon had a new song, with lyrics by Rockin’ Ron. I loved it as soon as I heard it, and I was ready to rock, having already consumed a fair amount of Jack Daniels (this was often the case in those days). Dubside set up Scott’s Garnet amp in the vestibule between the studio and the control room, and I turned every knob all the way up. My Dan Armstrong and I were connected to the Garnet by a cord running under the door. We started tracking – the guitar sound was amazing. Alicia played a quiet second rhythm for contrast on her semi-hollow.
Then came the overdubs: vocals by Jon, backing by Alicia and me, tambourine . . . and two lead guitar parts. Alicia finished these, but somehow wanted something more; so she turned up her amp and did a feedback part, maybe the best ever, rising up a full octave plus a third just as the bridge came to its climax . . .
Murphy’s Tavern. The big table in the back of the bar, covered in glasses and bottles. I was drinking beer, whiskey and eventually – ouzo! Rip roaring drunk; at one point, I sat down under the table and Dorothy also came down to check on things (“What’s happening?”).
Eventually, a few of us went to her place. There was an acoustic guitar, and I started playing suspensions on A – a lot of suspensions, up the fretboard – and somehow I kept playing them in a cycle, over and over . . .
And I actually remembered them the next day. I thought the chords had a Western feel – they reminded me of a family trip in the summer of 1974, just before I went away to college. We drove and drove, hundreds of miles, and were still in Utah (amazing to someone from New Jersey, where everything’s right nearby). So when the words came, they were kind of about that sense of space.
And 1983 . . .
We wanted to record, and we’d already done a few sessions at Apple Valley, but thought we’d learn something by going to another studio. In those days, there were medium-sized studios in every metropolitan area – not famous, but stocked with “real” microphones and consoles.
We saved a little money for a single two-hour session. That’s all we could afford, but it’s also all we needed to record two songs, because unlike most other bands back then we wanted to record live (instead of overdubbing vocals and leads). We picked Studio 4 in Old City, where they had a huge SSL console and a bunch of large-capsule condensers, signifying professional audio. I remember a Sony C500 on the drums, and U87s on the vocals . . .
When we walked in, the engineers were surprised to hear us say we would do everything live, but with Dubside’s guidance they set up a multichannel mix straight to two-track. We recorded my new song “Black Brother”, and Jon’s “I Know a Man” – and of course, the vocals were rough, and the sound wasn’t perfect, and we stubbornly refused to correct anything; but that was the point. Nowadays, this approach has made a comeback with some younger bands, but the temptation to perfect a recording is always there, and art needs both control and abandon.
We were proud of ourselves – we felt brave.