So around 20 years ago, I played in a ska band in middle Georgia. We were called the Macon Blue Beat Combo, and we were pretty darn low profile, but our shows were somewhat successful in bringing in a fair number of students from a local college (where we met, where pretty much all of our friends were, and where our singer was and is a professor...so, the math added up). In 1999, we scraped together the money to quickly record what was essentially a demo. It's always had some big flaws (mostly in my drumming) that have often made it tough for me to listen to. However, we did make some CDs out of it that we sold at shows and were EXTREMELY lucky for the Toasters' Bucket Hingley to actually put one of the songs on his and DJ Chuck Wren's Still Standing ska compilation in 2003.
Fast forward to the COVID-19 quarantine...a friend of ours who is now a news producer in Chicago is enjoying some comforting tunes from her past and decides to work one onto the air:
A few weeks later, and Liz is nice enough to do it again with another song she felt fit the day...
Somewhat hilariously, the members of the band all realized that, other than maybe the song on the comp, none of us could put our hands on any of the music that we recorded. Luckily, our other organized friend Amanda came through with 20-year-old MP3s she could still locate. So, I went ahead and put most of 'em up on YouTube such that they won't be completely lost to history.
If you're so inclined, you can click here to be taken to the band's YouTube page. And if you're not, here's what I think is the song that probably came out the best in our approach to recording (the second song above):
If you do check 'em out, thank you(!), and please be honest but kind...with time and money, there's a lot we'd do differently...!
That's amazing! And to get your tunes on TV as well. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThank you sir! It's been fun but strange!
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