Everyone should recall their first Peach Detox, experience, like the first time they heard Rupert Holmes, Widescreen. For the latter, I was demoing songs for a record I did with Bronze, called Calypso Shakedown. This process was weird to say the least and I think it produced the unique outcome of that record. SM and myself would, after a feast at one of the local eateries of Lincoln Square, resign ourselves to the goal of finishing ONE sole track that evening in his wonderful converted garage apt. The thing was, we only had his digi 4 track, an acoustic guitar, a makeshift drum set, and of course our voices. Point of the story is, we'd go bananas overdubbing vocal after vocal, singing not only the verses and chorus' of the tunes we were composing, but the Carpenter-like string arrangements we'd concoct, and the Steely-esque horn parts there as well. When it came time to put the tracks down with instruments, it was too easy and even a bit normal, (of course it was totally abnormal in another sense, i.e we're in the extremely fortunate position of being graced with the friendship and comradery of some of the best musicians and engineers in the world; we'd be making the record and see horn players on SNL with Wilco and Cellists with Common) there was merely a lack of 20-beer-deep-jazz-pop-maniacs singing heroically at 4 am to meet some Puritanical self inflicted deadline.
Not all of these tracks were on the record, and there's some that I'd love to hear now, although I'm afraid they may sound Gibb bros meets O.D.B. meets Billy Joel. ( I should, against my better judgement, post some of the even "later-night" beat oriented vocal musings (file under BEEF BOYS)) click here to listen through soundcloud
But that's cool, I guess, too. And, by the way, I'm not talking about "We Didn't Start The Fire" era BJ.... unfortunately.
Needless to say, although my maiden voyage through the blissful waters of Rupert were more than tinged with a touch of Dionysian sin, the record holds up brilliantly.
