Friends (Mark-Almond) — a 2012 home rendering
I found Mark-Almond while in one of those veg-meditative states flipping through a used vinyl bin somewhere. I’d never heard of them, just the later other: Marc Almond of Soft Cell. Then, as happens, a temporary mania of curiosity took over for a while, looking for more. I found a better copy of my initial find—different packaging—at Other Music NYC. Later I picked up a few more at The Exclusive Co. in Appleton WI, where I’d done an acoustic show.
The song Friends is one of just a few of more traditional songwriter-y pieces on their albums. Most are instrumentals or fragmented kinda jazzy jams. Though English, they sound like early 70’s Marin Co Calif, a place they dedicate one of their albums to. I can almost smell the breezy bay.
For my 2012 air of Friends, the vocal & acoustic guitar were recorded together into my Roland 2480, performed while visually counting the original's slightly crooked arrangement — which is probably what drew me to the song.
At the bridge, I tried to MacGyver a pedal steel smear using a Casio CZ101 on the trumpet setting through my Leslie, played with portamento to get the bends over my Bronson squareneck, mic’d for some actual stringy slide.
