Three songs today: cover tunes by The MayTricks from 1992 or so. Specifically, the Police’s “Can’t Stand Losin’ You” (which I sing) and Talking Heads’ “And She Was” and The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” (both of which Steve sings).
These are actual, multi-track studio recordings done with probably as much care as many of our actual album tracks, recorded as part of a demo to impress frats and fratty clubs and other places we should probably not have been playing as a sort of underground, Beatles White album-inspired somewhat psychedelic band.
This is the same band that recorded the So Chewy album, but before we did that, and probably before the first MayTricks album was completed, though I’m not actually sure about that. They were recorded at earliest summer ’92 and at latest spring ’93.
So, these are songs we really liked, as were most of the many cover tunes we learned to fatten our set list and soften our audiences for the hard-to-listen-to original stuff. We tried to avoid “Brown Eyed Girl” and other frat favorites so as not to be forced to suicide, and increasingly played goofier songs that we thought our audience would still follow like “Stayin’ Alive” and Devo’s “Whip It!” We’d occasionally, and with reservations, play something current (a fill-in guitarist got us to learn Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “All I Want,” which I rather enjoyed despite the cheese factor), but more often dwelled eight years or more in the past. We played them mostly straight so that we wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time figuring them out.
What’s the moral? What’s the point? Did these efforts distract from our creative efforts? Did we feel like sell-outs? Not usually, I think. I enjoyed playing “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Gimme Some Lovin'” and still do spend some time on similar things with my current bands. It was nice that we got to capture these, even if they don’t add much to the world.
Though they were recorded on 4-track, I didn’t try to remix them or even re-EQ them much (I did pull up the highs on Paint It Black), just bounce them from cassette and apply some noise reduction.
Leave a Reply