Believer (since cassette demos 1997)

audio embedded at end of post

	Last spring, I was rummaging around my attic again looking for proof of my existence — or looking debatably for as much as hesitantly at — finding, eyeballing & then putting back pieces of circumstantial evidence one can’t or just doesn’t want to explain for whatever hazy reason, like pondering vaguely overwhelming bric-a-brac at your own ongoing estate liquidation. 

I’ve been rifling through the crash site at my leisure since moving to this address fifteen years ago — the first time in my adult-like life where my detritus is all in one handy place, close enough to sorta sort out in those moments when you suddenly think of something, wonder if it happened the way you barely remember & set off to explore on a fleeting impulse. 

Besides cast-aside collections of notebooks, weekly/monthly/year planners & scraps of bar napkin or pinched motel scratch pad jottings, there are also other bins/bags/boxes which contain material objects that go back nearly forty years. During much of that endlessly nomadic period, everything was usually squirreled away in various storage spaces around the country with no time in the smear of living it up or down to go through any of it, & honestly, with no desire to do so — mementos can be too fond of a general descriptive to use at times. You know what I mean . . . 

However, there’s always been this one plastic bin filled with cassettes, made & dumped as they happened over the years, that I’ve felt didn’t need to be disturbed because to what end? — let the moments be, I’d try as an excuse. “Then why keep them?” some busybody inside my head might ask: “Because I keep everything,” I still defensively justify as if it’s a reason — then also hope I haven’t just uttered aloud to myself while briefly allowed in public. 

It seems ridiculous to cling to some remnants, up until you find a real purpose for them. For instance, I’ve held onto my original paper selective service proof of registration, the size of a business card — a raincheck conscription I had to signup for when I turned eighteen. I suddenly needed it a few years ago for a rural mail delivery job*. “See?” I said to myself after finding the draft card, “Why you’re no sentimental hoarder, you’re just remarkably prepared for anything & then some. Good work, you forward-thinking Archivist you.” 

*(The postal service considers itself an army of sorts — there’ll be writing about that five-month stint behind the front mail slots at some point.)

. . . where all the years have gone . . .

At first examination, some tapes in the bin appeared to be for a Tascam four-track recorder that I gave away to a songwriting-in-law a long time ago & a few rough mix references, but mostly musical idea recordings, made on various handhelds along the way to somewhere-or-not, with traveling audio sketches. 

There’s even a cassette in there from an early nineties phone answering machine where familiar voices of the past sound themselves out again to meetup in a few hours at such-&-such bar in SF or get back to so-&-so asap for this-&-thats that mean nothing now, except that they meant something then. Listening back, we young ghosts nimbly come alive. 

(Of course, I transcribed that last one, documenting a disjointed trail which reemerges resembling a nostalgic dead end découpé. There’ll be a post about those messages coming as well.)

One cassette, though, was spined simply as “since demos.” The case face had mostly final titles scrawled. However, there was no memory of it. 

Until recently, I had four cassette players around the house: one was a Realistic stereo deck that I’d bought for ten dollars at a tag sale on the Oregon coast from a mobile home that had been used as a living quarters & cottage industry beauty salon. I found an eight track deck & tapes there as well, which I pick up any time I find them. There was also a pair of beautiful snipping/shampooing chairs with silver arms & base & bright orange upholstery, which I really wanted but didn’t get because my place is already full of wonderful things I don’t need, yet just love to look at as I‘m tripping over them. 

. . . mint, except for the unplayable PLAY button . . .

The last three contenders were a cheap portable that wouldn’t respond, a boombox I’d bought just a few years ago yet couldn’t get to work & the below handheld that I used to travel with but hadn’t turned on in years. 

my Sony TCS-580V stereo cassette-corder VOR picked up in 1995

I tried a few tapes in all of them (Gordon Lightfoot Greatest Hits & Tender Mercies soundtrack to be exact), but none of the machines worked. Thrift stores in the area were barren. We used to have a Best Buy in our city’s dying mall, but it closed years ago & is now a county health department Covid vax POD. It’s next to an ex-Macy’s which is presently a walk-in urgent care & advertises its featured specials on an outdoor LED billboard like a movie theater. 

now showing

I finally masked into an adjoining Target assuming they must sell cassette players, but, couldn’t find them. While I was waiting to check with a clerk, a man about twenty years older than myself was asking if they sold landline telephone answering machines. The clerk explained that no one used them anymore. The elderly man seemed letdown & walked away like he’d been told he was dead.

I decided not to ask for assistance & left. I’m already on the cusp of that last stage in life — not yet at the suspenders-wearing age, but I don’t want to push it.

Back at home, I tried the handheld corder again, replacing the batteries that were leaking their acid guts into the battery slot. I put in the since demos. It worked now, but faintly played with a loud whir like it was whining about being brought out of retirement.

I tried the boombox again, accidentally flipped a few settings that were too tiny to read & it thinly boomed finished acoustic versions of songs that would ultimately-then be reimagined for my 1998 album Since. They were so close to the final arrangements, I figured the recording must’ve been made right before going into the studio to make the album. Maybe I’d just been making a reference tape to play for musicians — not sure. 

All I had was a vague recollection of sitting alone at a small table somewhere with the corder, unsure where or when, but pretty close to when the songs were written mostly over the course of the months after I’d made my second album Devotion & Doubt, released in ’96. 

I played each side once all the way, ending with Believer which has a street-level siren appearing about halfway-in that made me think it must’ve been recorded in Since producer JD Foster’s apartment in lower Manhattan. He’d let me stay there on & off whether he was in town or not to save money on hotels when I wasn’t living anywhere, this time right before we went into a 14th St studio called Baby Monster to begin recording Since. That placed the timeframe solidly in 1997. 

I listened through & there weren’t any performance flubs, just a few later-changed lyrics & a false start. One of the songs, Ariel Ramirez, had a five-second portion with a crackle & then a mosquito-like mechanical hum, but the rest seemed fine. I may’ve actually done that damage myself when I was trying to play it back on the corroded handheld.

I wrote to the engineer I first met for the Since session & whom I’ve stayed in touch with over the years as a distant friend & professional I can call on for projects like mixing & mastering things I do at home. He no longer engineers at the now-defunct Baby Monster in NYC, but now works from a mountaintop in one of the Carolinas with a home studio for personal projects. I told him my situation & he said to send him the tape, that maybe he could digitize it so I could listen without disintegrating the tape with further play. 

Since session report 1998

That was last summer. This week I received a file of the cassette.

He was able to transfer the audio with all of its “cassette-corder” tape/machine-noise persona intact as-is. That restoration is what I’ll offer this selection from with this post &’ll continue in the Musical Depictions section of this site where all of my unreleased music now lives in exclusive seclusion.

	I’ll begin with the last song on the tape, Believer. I like it as a primer because it tail-ends with a few seconds of hubbub where I put the jangling-string-ends-guitar down & turn off the corder. That, combined with the street noise bleed of a passing emergency vehicle siren, suspends a specific 2:18 in my overall span, depictive at many levels. 

This initial offering will be without a paywall so you can freely hear what you might be getting yourself into.

There’ll be more since cassette demos from 1997 along with what I can recall of the Since studio session over the months to come. If you have any of those little foam Walkman headphones in a box somewhere, maybe dig them out — while trying not to get lost in the past with anything else you stumble across — to get a tactile earful of these texturally cassette-y recordings. 

Believer (since cassette demos 1997) :

next in this series is Once (since cassette demos 1997)