Somewhere in the bowels of this website, there’s a post entitled ‘About music’ which I wrote over 10 years ago. It served as an explanation, reason or excuse for my indulgence in playing the guitar, a journey hampered by limited talent and no knowledge of music theory but fuelled by wishful thinking. The post provided an account of my early adventures in the world of music making (I use the term loosely) and points to the continued existence of some recordings that were made several decades ago by the various combinations of friends and fellow musical hopefuls, who drifted in and out of the journey, The recordings were made by standing around a single mike, cutting loose for a single take after a short prayer and at the shout of ‘go’, as a single-track, reel-to-reel tape recorder was switched to record mode.
With the help of modern technology these archaic recordings have been transferred, via intermediate devices (cassette records, floppy disks, CDs) and converted into digital files, which can be found by following this link to In Days Gone By (subtitled, ‘The Noise Lives On’). That’s quite a journey, which may give you some idea of how many decades ago the journey started! The lack of fidelity, strange background noises, and mistakes, all contribute to the authenticity and charm (!!!) of the recordings, although the material itself may leave a lot to be desired.
For a detailed explanation of what, why, and who did this, you will need to refer to the original post, but briefly, tracks 1 to 3 are young Debbie, with myself providing the backing. Tracks 4 to 6 represent the ‘bluegrass’ era, with Graham Anderton on 5-string banjo. Tracks 7 to 11 are the bigger group (Jan, Graham S., Pete and myself), and the final 2 tracks are Steve, plus some others of us.
My journey has stumbled down different routes since those days, and I’m starting to feel the need to provide an update on where I’ve got to, and what on earth happened on the way. All will be revealed when I get round to writing it.