For various reasons I don’t have so many ‘also ran’ songs nowadays; the good ones make it into the studio, and the bad ones get abandoned at a fairly early stage. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1980s and 1990s I would spend a ridiculous amount of my spare time churning out songs and recording them with some very rudimentary equipment. In every case, I thought ‘one day, I’ll record this properly.’ So this page has the experiments; songs I’m proud of even if they don’t sound any good.
This is very recent. I recorded it during – and about – lockdown 2020.
I recorded these songs around 2002, roughly the same time as the songs for the Shatner album ‘Energise’
By far my most prolific songwriting phase – I was writing and recording a song every couple of weeks. As usual, there was no budget for equipment but I scraped together a setup which included a 4 track recorder and a mini-keyboard with 100 built-in drum patterns. Very cheap and cheesy.
Here’s a small selection from that era
By the late 80s I had managed to assemble a rudimentary 4-track recording setup of my own. The most obvious element during this phase was the drum sound, courtesy of a Commodore 64 computer – not very easy on the ear!
I have been writing and recording songs since I was 10 years old, when I would regularly put a cassette recorder on top of a piano to make ‘albums’.
I don’t think I’ve got any of those recordings left, but I do remember my first ‘hit’ song from the time, called “Mr. Big”. Me and my brother Rick recorded it for a giggle in 2002. Of course we tinkered with the arrangement a bit (and added a middle 8) but the melody and lyrics are authentic. It’s some sort of action spy story, I think.
A huge landmark for me was this song, “The Meaning of Life” which was recorded in 1982. I had just started college and one of my tutors (Hi Wally!) mentioned he had a home recording setup. I think he was shocked that I had the whole thing worked out in detail and was just itching to put it together. Not sure it needed a full minute of drone as an intro though!