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BS Productions Recording, "The Voyage"
(December 1976)


Sign on my bedroom door during
"The Voyage" sessions.

The Voyage Sessions

During the Christmas break 1976 Tom Bringle and I recorded a multitrack tape in my bedroom using two cassette decks. At this point I think that I'd been playing for nearly 2 years, and I was excited about writing some songs and recording them. From my perspective I wanted to try writing different styles of songs. (Tom recently reminded me that the original idea was to record rock versions of Christmas carols).
This was before anyone except big time musicians had access to synths. We used what ever sound making "thing" that we could find to fill out the music. For instance we used my parent's pots and pans to be the steel drums in "I'm in Love".We also used a noisy Yamaha EM-150 powered mixer as our mixer.
I found a set of slides of us recording while cleaning my fathers garage in 2002. Tom recently pointed out that we had set up Greg Asbury's home made stage lights in the bedroom. I think that we turned them on when recording our parts to get into the right mindset.
We collaborated on all the tunes except one. Tom wrote "If It Happens" and I wrote "Higher and Higher". I recently realized that lots of the titles in the Voyage seem to be the same as some of the older Moody Blues tunes. I think that this might have been a subconscious contribution on my part.
For the cover photo Tom and I stood in front of a rear projection screen that was projecting a painting of a far off planet. I had photographed the painting at a Star Trek convention in 1976. Leslie Ridgeway hand made the little book that went with the tape.
I digitized a my only existing cassette in June 2002. This cassette was in lousy shape, the left channel was partially lost. I spent extensive time in SoundForge recovering the recordings. Remastering included compression, signal recovery, click elimination, noise elimination and EQ.


Tracks

Departure 1:03 Weird Sounds, Poem
Higher and Higher 3:31 This was my solo recording
Assid Rawk 3:25 Sort of Aerosmith
Crimson Lady 4:04 Sort of Bosso-Nova
Strolling in the Park 3:26 Sort of a blue grass
If it Happens 4:04 Tom's Solo Recording
I'm In Love 3:52 Calypso. The title "I'm in Love" is us teasing Greg Asbury. Greg being the proper surfer dude that he was, used to say this when he saw an attractive women. We used my parents pots and pans for steel drums.
Funky Frisbee 2:33 Fun funk like song, no drums
Drunken Sailor 3:21 19'th century traditional.
Terminal 1:44 More weird sounds, Poem and a little electronic gizmo.

 

Photographs


The cover for the tape. We stood in front of a rear projection screen and shot the cover
with a Polaroid camera. The slide that was projected was from a photograph of a
"space" painting that I saw at a Star Trek Convention in 1976.

 


My bedroom door.

 


The recording "gear". Very primitive! Two cassette decks, a P.A. mixer
and a reel to reel for mastering. We ping-ponged four times between the
two decks to get 4 stereo dubs.

 


Gear...Volume pedal, Crybaby wah-wah, Maestro wah-wah/fuzz, Tom's
wah-wah/fuzz, Talk Box, MXR distortion, Big Muff distortion,
kazoos, percussion, wooden recorder, vibra-slap, windchimes, Gatorade.

 


Guitars, Pat's ATFLAA, Pat's copy Les Paul, Copy Hofner Bass, Tom's Guild,
Jeff Asbury's 12 string.

 


Stack of final tapes.

 


Tom Bringle

 


Tom Bringle

 


Pat Scandalis. Talk box tube.

 


Tom Bringle

 


Pat Scandalis, playing talk box.

 

Revision History

01/16/2003 (gps) Initially written


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