Are we Taping this?

Greetings Ladies and Germs

As mentioned previously, back in the day, I recorded onto Analogue tape recorders (Reel to Reels, as my Dad calls them). The only other choice of affordable recording format available was cassette tape based Portastudios and while these were a great first step into the world of Multitrack recording the recording quality did get pretty noisy. Tape Hiss to be precise. Now, I recently unearthed the master tapes for the first ever recording session I did back in 1982. A few old friends/band members asked if I had a copy of said Demo tape, no names mentioned, but, for the sake of privacy laws, let's just call them Ray and Paul, Doh! As I still have an old Revox recorder in the cellar I thought it would be fun (perhaps not the best term to describe what eventually transpired) to transfer the master tapes into Pro Tools and make some MP3's to send to the guys. Now, the Revox is a lovely old machine, but, like any Vintage equipment it actually needs a service once in a while. Which in my case means service it once and we'll worry about the while later.

A few days later, I fired up the Revox and, Hey Presto, all the lights came on and it actually seemed to be working. I loaded the tape, set up the Mac and hit record - easy and ,indeed peasy. Next, came that moment of pure clarity (a bit like the line in Father Ted where he explains to Dougal why some cows are bigger than others "Some cows are near and Some cows are far away, Dougal") whereby I realised that there are rules to easy-peasy ness:

1: If it looks easy, it's not.
2: See Number 1 above.
3: There is no Number 3, but, 1 & 2 looked a bit lonely and I always preferred Trios to Duos.

So, imagine the fun I had trying unravel the tape that had wrapped itself around the Capstan (a spindle on the Revox and not Headwear for Hard drinking, Heavy gambling, ex-QPR players), it was quite the "Oh Merde" moment. The end result is that the master tapes now have a lovely loud "Pop" sound every 10 seconds or so when played.

The moral to this story is that "The Past" is called "The Past" for a reason. When you bring "The Past" into "The Future", they do not always result in a nice "Present".
Or, to put it more simply:

Don't fuck with "The Past".........



Best regrets,

Mick