TM records again

...and then buggers it up completely.

Saturday's session at the Brill Building went like clockwork. We all arrived near enough on time and set to work with military precision. Doug and Dave set up a borrowed 4-track tape recorder (hint: this motherfucking device is the unwitting villain of the piece) while I set up Doug's drums and Mart and Dom tuned up and twiddled with effects boxes.

The Grand Recording Plan was to feed the vocals and bass into separate tracks, and to have the room mic pick up everything else. From the last session we did it was apparent that the vocals and bass were the hardest to nail down and record consistently, hence this arrangement. We'd mix down the recordings at leisure in Doug's flat.

We were ready to go after about forty-five minutes (i.e. half an hour earlier than last time!) and battered straight into Neil Jung as a warm up. A couple of goes later and we started to record. I think it's safe to say we played at least as well as we've ever done before, and some songs were really starting to come together.

After recording a few tracks, the tape ran out so Dave flipped it over.

For those unfamiliar with 4-tracks, this is a Bad Thing. A few tracks later, Dave's face spontaneously fell. "Guys. I think we just taped over side 1." 4-tracks, you see, record on both 'sides' of the tape simultaneously.

Flipping the 4-track to playback mode, we listened to side 1. Yup. Run played backwards, with no trace of the first few tracks.

The faces of everyone else simultaneously fell.

We soldiered on. Nay, we turned defeat into triumph! We played All I Want To Do Is Rock - the first tune we ever practised - damn near flawlessly. Dave sang his heart out; Mart embarked on a long-awaited, feedback-laden solo, and even the one interesting bit of the bass line came off pretty much perfect.

We took a triumphant break. Dave and Doug wound back the tape, and were about to flip it to playback mode, when Doug said something like: "Was this always like this?", gesturing to the 4-track.

Yes. We had recorded the entire second tape in playback mode. We pressed 'play'.

The PA hissed for a bit. Silence.

The upshot is we've got one recording of Neil Jung played with cold fingers and straining vocals, one of Sister Isabel where Mart is too tired to play any more, and one of Run. Played backwards.

Postscript: to be fair, despite managing to utterly screw up the recording side of things, we did play well. Andy, an ex-workmate of mine and veteran of the live circuit (comparatively speaking - he's played some open mic nights), opined that our last recordings were good enough to get us a gig, and I'd be willing to bet that Saturday's Lost Tracks would have been even better...

Ah well. Next year will be the Year of the Monkey. As well as this year. Oh, you know what I mean.