"Underage Drinking" or "How I Became a Musician"

[Ted]

This is my 1000th post.  It should be special, shouldn't it?

By request of ORH, attached is an excerpt from the original recording of Dechromium Cob (2009 Redux version, ORH and Geir cover version).

This was at an unsanctioned party a friend's house, in 1979, when his dad was out of town.  Five guys, ages 16 and 17.  One of us (not me) played a little guitar.  I thought it would be funny to put together a "band." We got a toy organ, and borrowed (without permission) a hi-hat and a floor tom from an older brother.

We learned and recorded Li'l Red Riding Hood by Sam Sham and the Pharaohs while still sober. Then we went out and managed to buy some alcohol.  (I was 17.  At the time, the drinking age in Arizona was 18.  I almost never got carded.)

We drank. Then we recorded Cob.

Listen carefully, and you'll hear a basketball being used for extra percussion.

This was the night that sent me on a trajectory to becoming a musician.  The next day, we discovered that we really liked the idea of being in a band; we liked telling our high school friends that we were in a band when there was an ounce of truth to it.

That was an early milestone in my development as a musician.  What were yours?

[Flash Harry]

Congrats on the 1000th post and the music file is madness in a mad world. Love the swearing.

Hero!

[Oldrottenhead]

thank you so much ted this reminds me of my youth, me and my late friend donny acquired a small pa which we plugged into the family gallanti electric organ lol. we didnt have microphones but we discovered that if you plugged headphones into the mic socket on the pa you could use the headphones as mics. so one phone strapped to mouth and other to back of the head, that was step one, step two was i bought a sony walkman that recorded it had two built in mics for stereo recording, that was our rhythm section.  so walkman got a cassette put inside, gaffer taped the record button down and stuck it in my mums tumble drier for three or four minutes. the resulting tape was then fed through a phaser pedal and voila one rhythm track. i have a box in my loft (attic) with unlabelled cassette tapes, i dont have a player that takes that format, i dread to think wot youthful vibrance is held within such caskets, time to hit the car boot sales for a tape player.

[Oldrottenhead]

jings yer 1000th post gaun yersel

[OsCKilO]

Was the last line of that recording "I've got a Ten inch Hard-on?"

Awesome Ted!  Lol!



It is special that something recorded 30 years ago is Still getting played today..  And Covered!!!!!!

Glad you took this journey! Your music is superb.

[Ted]

Was the last line of that recording "I've got a Ten inch Hard-on?"

That was strategically placed fade-out.

[Geir]

Thanx for sharing this Ted !! Really cool recording .... I love those dives into the ancient times of taperecorders !!

[Ferryman_1957]

Great stuff Ted, and I have to say the vox sound pretty good and the whole band doesn't sound bad! And it's a great, great song.

Milestones in my early musical development? Too many and too varied to tell. I decided at age 11 that what I wanted to do with my life was play guitar and be in a band. I guess my brother started me down that line as he was five years older than me and played acoustic guitar (he was more of a folky hippy type) so I got into music through him. Forced my parents to get me a guitar when I was about 12 which was of course a classical acoustic and took some lessons, which I hated. So saved up my pocket money and bought an electric at about age 14 and started playing through an old Bush radio, deconstructing Pink Floyd songs with a couple of mates. Formed a band at school as soon as I could, played in church halls, sports clubs and all kinds of places.

Fast forward 38 years and here I am. Where did the time go?

Congrats on the 1000th post btw.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Rata-tat-tat]

Very cool. Wish I had some of my early stuff. Lost all of my cassets along the road of life. Wish I could have had a hard drive back then LOL. What a trip. Thanks for sharing congrats on 1,000.

[Ted]

Great stuff Ted, and I have to say the vox sound pretty good and the whole band doesn't sound bad!

You're too kind.  By which I mean, You're full of shit.  But thank you anyway.

What I like about this excerpt is this: The guy playing the toy organ was taught to play the riff, just root notes, as:

||: E EE EE EA GE :||

Along the way, he forgot, or his finger slipped, and he was playing this:

||: F FF FF FA GF :||

You can't get much more discordant than that, but we didn't notice--not while we were recording, and not in the first 100 times that we played the tape.  And, believe me, that tape was like a sacred relic to us.  Our lives changed that night, and we knew it.  But it took a long time before our ears could even discern what we were doing wrong.

How we felt about the music was more important to us than our discernment of how the music sounded. We had what Zen Buddhists call Shoshin or "The beginner's mind." 

Put another way: We were more punk that night than we would ever be again.