This isn’t about shame, this isn’t about justifications, this is about saying “Hey, I was more innocent and naive back then, it is what it is”
Here’s a song called Clinic which I wrote and recorded when I was 16. It was the first time I’d used any digital recording software and found the whole thing ridiculously exciting. I used a lot of the free samples they included at the end of the Genius single by Pitchshifter. Mostly just wanted to shock people with the shouting and gross them out.
At 17 I was lead guitarist in the imaginatively titled ‘Virus’. The rest of the band really liked Pearl Jam, The Stereophonics and a lot of MOR American radio rock. I liked KoRn and Beck. Unfortunately (though understandably), they were the only people who wanted to be in a band with me, so I made the best of the situation.
I actually don’t know if I have any on MP3, TBH. There’s stuff on MiniDisc in a box that arrived today with all our stuff but actually getting it onto MP3 would be…an event.
Unfortunately all evidence of my teenage musicianship is on tape, not digital.
Ranges from:
When I used to make “rave mixes” by playing two tapes together on a dual-deck hi-fi and recording what came out of one speaker on a crappy tape recorder. Pitching / timing meant nothing. Once every ten minute or so, the beats would naturally sync and I’d think “nice…”
When I got an Amiga 500 and a sampler. More rave music, but now a bit cleaner, slightly more in time and tune and featuring a sample of the theme tune to That’s Life.
When, at 19, I formed a band called Mutant Mobster with my Uni flatmate. He played guitar and I “played” the Amiga. We had songs about BA Barracus and hamsters. We also did a parody of that fledgling band Belle and Sebastian called ‘Pasty Faced Bourgeouis Bastard’.
My Soundcloud is full atm, but I might delete a few things and put some stuff up on there from the olden days.
Sadly, my oldest stuff (and probably most bold in terms of teenage “I’ll-do-anything-to-make-music” ingenuity is mostly lost on a dead computer): some of that stuff involved me recording guitar on my phone (I couldn’t play guitar, and still technically don’t know what I’m doing) and then holding the phone speaker up to a microphone we had on the computer to get it on the computer. I’d read about (smog) on Wikipedia recently so I was proud of being mega lo-fi.
I’ve got a few things I’m proud of, from when I started downloading samples of really old records from Archive.org to make weird stuff. I have an ongoing iTunes playlist of really old stuff I’m proud enough of that I might bung on Bandcamp some day
I actually lost touch with the lad I knew who repaired guitars soon after getting the pedal off you so it remains unplayable, and now I pretty much only play keyboard. Happy to return it if the opportunity arises.
This is where you play the avant garde card and pretend it was deliberate - like The Fall did when they did exactly the same thing on ‘Paint Work’ from This Nation… and left it in.
Yes! Your Virus band have that sound a lot of mate’s bands had when I first started going out in the late 90s. Did you do any Matchbox 20 or Ugly Kid Joe covers too?
Always fun hearing this kind of rough early stuff that everyone’s mildly embarrassed by. Think I might be able to dig out some grotty sounding 4 track recordings from somewhere. Iirc, I’ve got something from probably 16, 17 and 18 years old in my dropbox account from a similar conversation on another forum a few years back.
