So these three tunes had a long journey to get to you. They were recorded on a boom box in Silverton in 1985 at a guy named Wayne’s house. Jennifer will remember him as the guy responsible for her getting a gash on her leg from his shitty car and its rusty damaged bumper. She got both a scar and a settlement from that, I think.
Me and Tony (your dad) went to his place to jam out. We brought our stuff. Your dad had his red D’Agostino flying-v guitar (see photo above) and his amp. I had my blue bass and a huge Yamaha amp. There was Wayne there with his drum kit. Wayne sucked at drums, couldn’t keep time. You can hear that on “It Got Better”.
There were a couple friends of his I don’t remember the names of. One of them was the Grateful Dead-sounding guitarist. He was actually pretty good. The other friend, the drummer, was excellent, and any good drumming you hear is from him, like during the Van Halen cover.
We had a great night there, went back again a week later and there was no magic, so we never saw them again. I kept the tape. It saw the light of day on a couple demo tapes back in the 80s (under the name ’69 Band’ – blame me, and then it went away in my storage.
Jackie and Lizzie got their hands on it when they were little and pulled the tape out of the case, so I had to reassemble and scotch tape it together. If it sounds bad, that was part of the reason. I did the best I could with the sound, editing it after I got it digitized.
I got a decent tape deck in the early 2010s and recorded a digital copy of it to my system. These youtube videos are the result.
“Something Mellow” is probably the best. “It got better” was the worst, though I have to say it did actually get better. The Van Halen cover thing was in the middle. It was pretty sweet hearing your dad playing along with the drummer who actually knew the song (“Ain’t Talking ’bout Love”). I played a shit bass and you can hear me effing along in the background, not doing all that well.
Your dad is the distorted guitar in all videos. The twangy guitar is someone else. Your dad played well, but he used to always complain about his hands being tight from all the physical work he did, which was probably true. Most guitarists avoid physical labor for that reason.
Anywho, he loved playing, and I kept this tape because it was him.
