Artists
Album Info
Release Date: 2023-05-20Label: F of X Records
Produced, Recorded and Mixed by John Tabacco at Suburban Hermit Studios II and III, Stony Brook, NYCover: © 2023 Farben Fosfeen Artwerks
At one point in 2020 (Covid-19 lock down time) I began the arduous task of going through a plastic bin that held approximately a hundred or so cassette tapes that contained various ideas and demos I had recorded. The cassettes dated as far back as 1975! The majority of them came from the time period 1993-2003 when I slept in a 9 x 9 ceiling corked vocal booth in the now defunct Sonic Underground Studios in Stony Brook. I lived there (in the basement as it were) for approximately 12 years. Sometimes I was awaken from a deep sleep by music coming out of an active headphone hanging near my head. Usually it was a Marci Geller, Gian DiMauro, Paul Michael Barkan, or Jim Dexter vocal or song originating from the control room opposite the vocal booth. One time in twilight sleep I believed I was drowning in a vast ocean as I heard the sound of dolphins emanating from the cans. That would be Mr. Barkan trying to find the right sea sound for his “Did Something Right” song. But for the most part when I woke up I would have an idea in my mind and straight away I’d head for my acoustic guitar or the PF-70 keyboard (that was parallel to my lumpy bed) and hit the record button on the modest boom box Marci Geller bought me as a birthday gift. So there it was, day after day recording ideas onto cassettes; refining them and then maybe sharing them with my musical co-horts. By 2005 the cassette became obsolete for me as it was easier to use my iPhone or G3 portable to record my ideas. Anyway, as I listened to these cassettes and archived them digitally (I still have another 40 to go through) I was stunned by the amount of musical ideas I had come up with. So many of them were very complete and yet I only used snippets of them to write other songs. Especially with other musicians. This collection is just that; ideas from cassettes that seem finished but never saw the light of day in that original form. For shits and giggles (as Nigey Lennon would often say) I decided to dust off some of these initial ideas and polish them up for human consumption. Under each song is information regarding what this initial idea morphed into. What amazes me the most is that some of my recent material came from ideas that were tossed off 30 years ago. I don’t even remember coming up with them back then. I thought they were new ideas! Crazy how the mind archives stuff. Anyway, the songs in this collection my not be my strongest and maybe what I eventually came up with was better but it was a satisfying project nonetheless.
Note: On the previous CD : Everything Is Everywhere, the songs "Star Bird Full Of Light ", "You Lazy Demon" and "She Got Old" were demos also taken from these cassettes and re-recorded in 2021.