Band of Georges

Band of Georges. Various bizarre things will appear here…

In 1986, George bought a Tascam 244, a 4-track cassette portastudio. It was state-of-the-art at that time. He also joined programme that the government was running called the Enterprise Allowance scheme. This meant he would be paid £40/week and the local council would cover his rent. This was not great, but not unsustainable either in 1986. He could also keep anything he earned from his fledgling business. There was even a cheque book with the name ‘Wud Productions’ printed on every page, which seemed pretty cool at that time.

He bought the Tascam 244 from a company in Cumbria because they were selling the exact same item for about £300 less than exeter’s local music shop, Bill Greenhalgh’s.

Once the parcel arrived and he figured out how the machine worked, he started recording most of the songs he had written, starting with the earliest. Some particularly ghastly or unbearable creations were ignored. Those recordings, made on the 4-track cassette recorder, were mixed down to cassette.

Here they are.

Some of these songs were performed by bands such as Now, Sirius Rising, Wud and Rough Terrain, among others. Rough Terrain formed a year or so after George began making these recordings, and he would pass the tapes around among the other band members. He said that if they should hear anything there that they liked and that might fit the band, Rough Terrain could try to learn them. Danny, Rough Terrain’s drummer, did some hilarious impressions after he had heard a couple of the cassettes, which made everyone in the band laugh.

For many years George would not allow these songs to be published, for reasons best known to himself. Now he has had a change of heart. We shall be working together with him to try to publish all of the songs that he wrote and then subsequently recorded on the 4-track.

Nearly every part on every song was performed by George using various instruments. Thus came the name, Band of Georges.

There are several curious things we have noticed whilst putting these Band of Georges compilations together. The most striking is that they are actually not all that bad! In fact, some of the songs that nothing ever came of are rather catchy and tend to remain in the head long after listening.

The next observation is something that George said. He told us that his various girlfriends of those days always complained that the vocals weren’t loud enough. We disagree! In most cases the vocals are on the overpowering side. By today’s standards, if we were remixing these songs, we would probably bring the vocals back about five to ten dB in the mix. Seriously.

There was no compressor used anywhere in any of the recordings. None. Everything was recorded by backing off from the mic during loud moments. It was mixed by sliding the faders and twiddling the knobs. There was no automation like we all enjoy on today’s DAWs.

Also, bear in mind that there were only four tracks. This meant that some songs required the audio to be ‘bounced down’ onto one track to make room for more audio to be recorded. This was, of course, destructive editing, and what was done was done. There was no undo and no way to simply add another channel. It was how it was and that was that. A bounce also resulted in the degradation of the signal quality from the original recording, so a maximum of one bounce was probably all that was feasible. These factors also meant that the order in which tracks were recorded required planning and forethought.

Most songs feature a Boss DR55 drum machine. This was a very primitive drum machine with only a few programmable sounds. The hi-hat switch could be set to eigths, sixteenths, or off. The tempo was adjusted using a very analogue knob. There was no BPM indicator, you just had to go by feel. And if the knob was somehow moved before the section of drum machine track was finished, then you had troubles.

It was also fascinating to hear the thoughts and musings of a much younger version of someone we know well here at the label. Some of the songs he still finds painfully cringeworthy and unbearably wincable, but they are included in their collections all the same. He said they were his therapy at the time. There is a fair amount of musical experimentation here and there amongst everything.

We have kept the songs in the same order as they appear on the cassettes and split each volume into two – side A and side B.

We hope you will enjoy hearing these songs as written and performed by the Band of Georges.