Yesterday:
I didn’t want to post anything here on April 1, so I held this back.
Someone long ago sent me a tape labeled simply “Stan Rogers.” Turns out to be two complete albums — “Between the Breaks… Live!” and “From Fresh Water.”
I recorded them, sped them up 6%, ran a noise reduction filter over the whole thing, amplified it somewhat, and started divvying it up into tracks. Seemed to be going well.
Except then I noticed that the times didn’t match the listings online — apparently the machine that originally recorded the tape was slow, too. I should have sped it up more. By the time I realized this, though, I was about halfway through and didn’t want to re-do it all.
I did notice the noise was getting worse, though, so I filtered the last half-dozen tracks again, and got it better.
It sounds pretty good, but it’s definitely not perfect.
As for the music itself, it’s Stan Rogers — Canadian neo-folk.
Today:
Tackled another of Larry Boyd’s punk samplers; this was a C-60, only an hour, of Lou Reed, Flipper, Suicidal Tendencies, Disarray, Crass, Sonic Youth, Charged GBH, U.K. Subs, the Art of Noise, and Bonzo Goes to Washington.
I almost put “Bonzo Goes to Washington” in quotes, because that wasn’t a band, it was the one-shot name the people who created “Five Minutes” put on their record. “Five Minutes,” for anyone who doesn’t remember 1984, was a sample/remix of Reagan’s “joke” about “outlawing Russia.”
It was only about four minutes long; I think they should have made it exactly five, but they didn’t ask me.
And yes, I know the Art of Noise isn’t punk, and Lou Reed is sort of proto-punk, but Larry included them anyway. This time he seemed to focus on hardcore British punk, but there was an assortment.
Larry had some good equipment; this has no perceptible noise and the times match up exactly. An easy transfer; the hard part was figuring out what albums all these tracks came off. (And of course, I can’t find anything useful about Disarray on the web, so I’m just collecting those tracks as an album entitled “unknown.”)
Oh, and earlier today I did some testing. The tape of Fleetwood Mac backed with Dan Hicks that I got from God knows where isn’t really salvageable; it’s a crappy recording, and filtering it won’t put back the stuff that’s missing. Side 1 consists of the album “Bare Trees” and a few cuts from “Mystery to Me,” while Side 2 has “Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks” and a few songs from “Striking It Rich.” I went ahead and downloaded “Striking It Rich,” but the others I’ll need to buy on CD if I want them. Which I kinda do. So they’re on my shopping list.