Archeaology of the Self
Today finally put the wraps on re-mastering three new Hospital Records products. I finally finished assembling the master of
11,000 Switches: Cincinnati 1980-1981 which was originally assembled by Scott Lees and myself back in June 1981. It is collection of 19 recordings of the first edition of 11,000 Switches, the so-called "Band You Love to Hate."
I still had most of the original tapes that this cassette was taken from, so one by one I sought them out, restored them and put a new digital master together. It took a long time. I also assembled new masters of the complete live shows from which the compilation is mostly taken, and these are as interesting as the compilation itself, so I'll probably release them also. The first, a show from from the "second storey" of Bullwinkle's Moose Lodge in Bloomington, IN recorded January 31, 1981 is a disc in itself which I'm titling
Campus Vamps. The second is a combination of shows from the (former) East End Cafeteria at Miami University in Oxford (November 7, 1980) and a date from the Barrister House in downtown Cincinnati (March 28, 1981) which will be titled
Assassins of Rhythm. There is only one other complete live performance from the first 'Switches; Taylor Park in Newport, Ky. August 30, 1980 which represents a major problem from a restoration point of view. I'm hoping the master cassette will hold on for one more year so that I can work on some other things in the meantime.
Actually the Barrister House show was in itself considerably problemmatical. It was recorded onto a reel-to-reel, and my copy is a normal bias TDK cassette recorded at very low volume. Once transferred into the digital domain the soundwave was almost "invisible." I developed a special EQ setting to bring it up in a way that didn't magnify a lot of noise and applied it to each channel separately (and gradually).
In a couple of spots the recording engineer panicked at the band's volume and started to twist knobs around, creating ridiculously loud swells and throwing off the balance. I had to fix all these before I could expect to bring the volume up. I cut the segments up into little tiny slices and re-did the volume on each one. It turned out alright except for little bits where the sound drops out completely, but these now sound like little tape dropouts rather than the whole track disappearing.
I've got to start packing soon, so I can't do too many more projects. I'm hoping to transfer a live Manwich show I have from Sudsy's (March 23, 1987) and to get some other things done that have been long-delayed before I shut the whole deal down. I did get in some packing today - I repacked a box which was mis-labeled from many moves ago. It mostly contained towels, but underneath the towels were manuscripts, scripts from radio programs, a few photos, many gig posters, artwork and other paper documents relating to my career and dating roughly from 1983-1990. So this was a pretty good day.
Spring has finally sprung in Michigan as of two days ago. I have been under such a cloud that I'd hardly noticed, but today it was impossible not to, as squirrels were running around fighting, birds were singing like crazy (and driving our cat nuts) a warm breeze was up and blowing and I even noticed a few buds here and there on the trees. So that's all welcome - the earth awakes again.
Uncle Dave Lewis
udtv@yahoo.com
Uncle Dave Lewis