Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Archiving

I have dug out a cassette of music from a documentary series called Pictures of Women that a whole bunch of us made in 1983. It was made by a women's film collective and provided satellite employment for lots of young film and arty women in our Camberwell community and beyond. At a party, I'd said 'Yes' to doing the music, and from then on began a journey of what is commonly called a 'steep learning curve', writing the music, finding people to play it, and ultimately overseeing the recordings, something that I believe is commonly called 'production', although if anyone had described what I was doing as that at the time, I would have fainted with surprise.

Alas, the cassette has deteriorated a bit and there's some odd phasing on the drums, but I'm going with it because on a lot of the tracks you can hear Dubulah's guitar parts. And Lester Square from the Monochrome Set, for that matter, and Mike Slocombe who currently drums for that very band, plus Simon Walker on fiddle. We were a bouncy lot, full of youthful energy and you can hear it in the music.

I've definitely NOT got archive ears, which you really need to engineer these things properly. I'm running it from a knackered Sony tape machine too. Probably I should take the original masters somewhere and get them converted, but at the moment my budget is covering the future, not the past. I'll put these on Soundcloud later this week, just for the craic. And I'm also going to put our version of Leavin' You Baby up there too- just for the energy blast!

I've missed Bargain Hunt because I was so absorbed in what I was doing. I thought it was going to pour with rain this afternoon but it's not looking like that. However I'm also going to do what I meant to do, which is record a version of Femme Fatale for a Mexican fanzine, and rehearse for Sunday's gig in Stockton. The studio tan is well on its way but who cares? I got to hear my pal again and I have to say that I don't think any of us have lost our bounce, and Nick definitely didn't. I'm so glad to have him as the voice of Fatberg!

Just posted on Soundcloud:

Leaving' You Baby

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