#lanterna

The Past Seven Days — “Rain Dance”

I joined a Champaign band called ¡Ack-Ack! in 1984 and in addition to learning about group composition I gained access to their mix tape library and LP collection. One song on a mixtape was “Rain Dance,” a curiously long song for a 7" from a band that only released one 7".

A song with a guitar part that is almost all harmonics is stunning. Also, the dark and unsettling drones that hover at the edge of the sonic space (with indistinct voices and the insistent beat.) I’m not sure how many other guitarists it inspired but I have to say I did eventually end up recording a song using only harmonics. After all these years I am hearing the slow fadeout for the first time and those rather discordant notes at the very end.

Tubeway Army — “Me! I Disconnect From You”

My father always returned home from his travels with an LP for me from the places he had visited. In April of 1979 he and my mom were coming back from Europe and meeting me at my grandparents’ house in Riverside, NJ. I had been listening to a newly acquired copy of The Yes Album on an old console turntable when my father pulled out a copy of Tubeway Army’s Replicas from his luggage. He’d walked into a record shop in London before flying home and asked, “What's hot this week?”

One might wonder how this influential piece of vinyl affected me. How many copies of Replicas were in the US at that time? Did I start my own dystopian synth band in the garage when arriving in Maine that summer? Did I flee to the relative comfort of my progressive rock albums (where ironically the Minimoog had been in common use for some years!)? The answer is that Tubeway Army’s Replicas still sounds as mysterious as it did in the parlor of my grandparents’ house all those years ago.

StarCastle — “True To The Light”

My brother’s high school newspaper interviewed the resident local progressive rock band StarCastle in January of 1977 (at the local Champaign Pizza Hut on the U of I campus). My brother brought home the brand new Fountains of Light and I proceeded to put on Side 2 and was met with the heavenly flanged/chorused vocals of StarCastle’s “True To The Light.”

StarCastle were mostly local lads. Three of the members had graduated from my high school a few years before. They were signed to Epic Records at the time and recorded with Roy Thomas Baker (for two albums in one year). A friend delivered papers to their band house and hung out with them when they weren’t touring which was always! It was only in recently years that I’ve realized just how much StarCastle toured. They played with practically every band that passed through the Midwest and beyond in the mid-1970s.And it being the 1970s they thought nothing of releasing two RTB produced albums in the calendar year of 1977!

The StarCastle experience taught me that music on LP records can come from people who live in small towns just down the street from where one was playing Little League baseball.

The Chameleons — “On The Beach”

A blur of sound! It is still hard for me to believe that these songs were recorded in a conventional studio and not just sounds echoing through the glens captured by a bird watcher with a tape recorder in the Peak District.

Giles, Giles & Fripp feat. Judy Dyble — “I Talk To The Wind”

From reading about The Brondesbury Tapes it is apparent that they were recorded on a Revox reel to reel machine with the sound-on-sound function which allowed one to add a new part to an existing track (a function which could be repeated a number of times). This yielded a mono master, but it is in fact composed of multiple performances.

Before acquiring a Tascam 4-track I created songs using a Revox A77. As well as being able to create my first tape echo effects on the A77 it taught me a lot about mixing instrument parts together. It is fun to imagine the folks in Brondesbury Road going through the same process as I did to make this recording of “I Talk To The Wind.”

Blitz — “For You”

Another album borrowed from a member of ¡Ack-Ack!. It was the era of lightly chorused guitar and bass. I’ve always been in awe of the glassy sounding guitars on this track, and puzzled by the haltingly uncertain guitar solo near the end. One can feel the legendary ambience of Strawberry North throughout this track.

The Vertebrats — “Left In The Dark”

Sophomore year at Champaign Central High School a classmate started playing in a group called The Vertebrats. In December of 1979 I was in the audience in the chapel at the Red Herring Coffeehouse in Urbana, Illinois to see one of their earliest shows. The chapel would always sport a very reverberant sound but with vocals, two guitars (one a Fender Mustang favoring the treble pickup), drums, and bass it was an awesome experience. For one, there was someone I knew making this ruckus, in addition to the songs and particularly “Left In The Dark” being instant classics. I’d started seeing rock shows at the local arena the year before but never up close with the band playing at floor level. I had a handheld Sony tape recorder on loan during that time but sadly didn’t take it along to this legendary show.

The Beatles — “Only A Northern Song”

In June of 1974, following afternoon showings of The Seven Samurai, and Modern Times at the University of Illinois, my father and I did our usual rounds to the local new and used record emporiums. Record shops proper, but also The Salvation Army. It was here amongst the discarded shirts, slacks, pots, and pans that I spied the distinctive artwork of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album. I’d seen the film a few years before when it was first in the theaters, and still had the songs buzzing in my head. Being able to listen to songs from a film at home was a new concept which I was willing to dive into. The band was most certainly not quite right but that was okay with me!

The Wild Flowers — “The Promised Land”

A purchase at Champaign’s Record Swap (still around, now in Urbana at Lincoln Square!) in the Fall of 1984. As was the case with The Sound’s Heads and Hearts, The Quaker would hand me an album from behind the counter and it would go on to influence me for years to come. My favorite guitar, bass, synth, and drum sounds of all time!

Yardbirds w/ Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck — Blow Up (1966)

With a father who taught film studies at the University of Illinois, it fell to him to once in a while check incoming acquisitions to the 16mm film library there. I’m sure that I didn’t see ALL of Antonioni’s Blow Up but I'm sure I bestirred myself from doing my grade school homework when the opening howl of “Stroll On” tore through the Frayne household one summer’s eve.