Continuing on from yesterday, and it’s slightly musical theme, I’ve finally got some of my own music organized and transferred to MP3 (again). This time it’s on two different computers as well as a separate external hard drive so, hopefully, I won’t lose them again (like I did when I lost my hard drive).

I had considered remastering them from scratch but that sounded like too much hard work and I don’t really have the enthusiasm for that nowadays…..not like I did in days past where I would be at a mixing desk almost 24/7 and forgetting about food, drink, sex and sleep. Nope, around about 1991-92 I basically stopped creating music and threw my artistic talents (artistic being subjective of course) into other arenas.

At one stage during my musical life I think I was in about three or four bands at once? A “poppy” alternative jangle guitar band, a grungy guitary three piece, a goth band and a classic standards soul type band. It was a lot of work! At the same time though it was a lot of fun and I got to play with some really cool musicians. At various times I was able to play live on stage and in pubs and clubs in front of people, rehearse and record in studios, make records and tapes and video clips and even hear my stuff on the radio. I never made it “big”, but that wasn’t the issue. Creating the music in the first place was.

I also did solo stuff, on and off. Since my primary instrument was the bass guitar I had to learn other instruments to help fill out the sound of the musical pieces I was working on. It was the “electronic age” though so, in many ways, it was easy enough to do this. On some of my solo work though I ended up playing guitar, bass, piano, drums, keyboards and do the programming for drum machines and sequencers as well as any “special effects” that I wanted to add. Plus any vocals of course. It was fun but the results were mixed. Still, I managed to get certain things out of my system so it was good from that point of view.

Rather than put all of my stuff up at once I might spread a sample of it out a bit over the next few weeks or months. Today I’m putting up some tracks from one of the last bands I was in – the poppy alternative jangle guitar band called The Tide.

The Tide (1986-1989) had already been a working band by the time I joined them. They consisted of Rick Chandler (vocals, guitars), Bill Jurkovic (vocals, guitars), and Bill’s brother David (on drums). Their bass guitarist, Ivan James, had left and so they were essentially bassless :-) The thing that sold me on wanting to join them was the music itself. It was poppy, well written jangly guitar and just what I was into at the time. I think the thing that sold them on me was the fact that I worked for Australia’s largest guitar manufacturer! We weren’t together for that long (I can’t remember really? Maybe 8 months? A year possibly?) but it was fun and definitely a good experience for me. Of course I spent quite a bit of money in rehearsal and recording studios but what the hell!

The Tide had already released a single before I joined them and it had done quite well on the alternative charts here. We had a tentative deal with Rubber Records to make an E.P. (in vinyl folks! Remember those?) so we went through a lot of songs to get the “mix” just right. That in itself was a bit annoying for me because I would start off having to learn maybe 6 or 8 new songs during each rehearsal only to have half of them thrown out and discarded by the next rehearsal. In short I was learning songs I was probably never going to play again! That was more than a little frustrating.

About the only other frustrating thing I can remember was the fact that we spent all the time rehearsing and NOT ACTUALLY playing one gig! None! Nada! Now anyone who has ever been in a band would know that it’s when you play in front of a crowd that you really hone your skills and find out what works and what doesn’t, but any amount of pleading with the guys to play live seemed to fall on deaf ears. The trouble was that the other guys wanted things to be “perfect” before they played in front of people but you really shouldn’t do it that way. You need to go out there and just do it!

It’s not that they hadn’t played live before….in fact I think they played quite a few gigs as The Tide and, before that, The Mynah Birds. I never knew why we didn’t just get out there and play but I knew it was good. With no impetus and no feedback to work from it was only going to be a short while before everything started to stagnate. Once that happened there was no turning back and the band eventually broke up. It was a shame because I felt that, at the time, we could’ve actually got somewhere. It was not to be the case however, though I still had a lot of fun being in the band.

There’s a bit of a “footnote” to all of this though. My “good tape” I had of the band’s recordings I actually gave away to one of the big music promoters here when I met up with R.E.M. in Sydney. This, of course, left me with tapes where the quality/mixing wasn’t so good and that’s still all I have here now. It’s no biggie, but it would’ve been cool to have better mixes of the songs.

What I guess is a little disturbing – though, in truth, I’m not that worried about it (and actually find it quite flattering if it’s true) – is that some six or eight months later a very popular band, who were also managed by by the promoter I gave the tape to, seemed to have a song very similar to one of ours that was on the tape. I don’t think any of the other guys were that worried though as they probably all felt the same way as I did.

I still hear about Bill from time to time. He’s apparently in the film industry now and we have mutual friends. I haven’t seen him since the band broke up but I do have his phone number somewhere so maybe I’ll call him up sometime? I’m not sure what Rick and David are doing but it’s probably something equally creative.

Anyhow, here’s the songs! Once again please excuse the muddy mixdowns.

Yesterday Tomorrow

Before She’s Gone

(I Saw Her) Walking

That’s That Girl

Islands In The Night

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.