Band of Georges: release permission granted

Release permission granted for the Band of Georges? Never! No way! That would never, ever, ever happen! Or… wait, would it? Could it? Did it??!

George has finally granted Wud Records his permission to release the songs he recorded in 1986 and 1987 on his Tascam 244 cassette portastudio. We have been trying to persuade him to do this for more than a decade!

We have agreed terms with our artist and he has laid down precise stipulations of exactly which songs will be uploaded for posterity with minimal fuss and fanfare, and which can be publicised. Wud Records is unlikely to shout about the release of these songs very much, although occasionally one might receive some social media attention.

So here is a little background.

By 1986 George had composed between 250 and 300 songs. He wanted to bring them to life somehow. He found it most unsatisfactory that these songs should simply languish on many pieces of paper in a green folder, with lots of doodles and band names on it. Songs need to be heard! They are not much use scrawled on paper and stored in a folder.

This very same folder was stolen and destroyed in 1993 by a psychopathic alcoholic ex-girlfriend. Many originals were lost forever.

Soon after, following some drink-driving incidents and attempted suicides, the woman in question was sectioned to a secure mental health institution, where she spent a long time being rehabilitated.

Be all of that is it may, George believed that by the law of averages, if nothing else, there had to be at least one song among them all that would appeal to an A & R representative of a record label. But which one? So he tried a few different methods to record his songs.

First, he tried recording as many parts as he could perform at the same time into a cassette recorder. Then that cassette recording was played back, more or less loudly, whilst performing as many more parts as possible, into another cassette recorder. This second cassette recorder picked up the sound from the first cassette recording, mixed together with the new sounds that were being performed live. This process continued, back and forth, until all of the parts had been recorded.

The sound quality and degradation were truly hideous! Although this method worked, the results were never pleasing. Clearly a new approach was needed.

The next thing George tried was his father’s Tandberg 3000X reel-to-reel machine. This was something that his father had bought in about 1970 and was a part of his home stereo system.

The Tandberg had the possibilty to record onto one of the two stereo tracks, then bounce that onto the other stereo track along with new live audio. That meant the first track could then be used again for more audio. This way it was possible to build up multiple layers of sound.

Once more, this required multiple parts being performed simultaneously whenever possible. The degradation was again hideous, although less so than before. It was not possible to adjust the relative levels of the two sources of sound signal relative to each other, apart from by moving closer to the mic or further away, or turning the amplifier up, or down. There was a lot of guesswork involved. George recorded four complete versions of every song, in the hope that one of them might be good.

Again, although this method worked, the results were not especially satisfactory. It was an improvement on the twin cassette machine method, but not a big one. After about a dozen such recordings, he abandoned the idea as foolishness and returned to the drawing board.

Cassette portastudios were starting to become more ubiquitous at this time. Someone who was a friend of George’s already had one and had been reasonably satisfied by its results. Research led George to believe that the Tascam 244 was arguably the best of the machines available in 1986.

There was a local music store called Bill Greenhalgh which stocked the item, but George managed to find one that was more than £300 cheaper in Lancashire and placed the order. Soon after, the machine arrived and the work began. The whole process was very much a learning curve.

Hearing these songs that have lurked in a dark cupboard for nearly 40 years, with the release permission granted, has been a revelation. What surprised us the most was how good the songs actually are.

All this was despite George‘s considerable reservations. These were mostly due to his lyrics and his singing, neither of which he ever particularly liked. He always says that his voice, to him, does not sound like “a pleasing musical instrument.” He added that he finds his old lyrics too static, as he is liable to change his mind about things, or might wish to express those things differently, over time.

George added that his girlfriends of the day would always complain that the vocals were too quiet. However, we tend to disagree with them. The vocals are somewhat on the loud side. He grumbled that for them, even an a capella rendition would probably have resulted in the vocals being “too quiet”.

There was never a compressor of any kind. Just performances, faders, and human interactions and decisions. Who knows – perhaps someday, these songs may even be remixed and remastered from the original portastudio tapes.

Some of the songs in this collection of material were performed by Fooog Dinboffin and the Release, Now, Sirius Rising, Lemming Meringue, Wud, The Masters of Drone, The Addled Eggs, Rough Terrain, The Ug Brothers and Doctor Watson.

George passed the tapes around the band members of Rough Terrain, which formed in 1987 from the remains of The Subterraineans, a year after he started making these Band of Georges recordings. The rest of the band chose several songs from the tapes to be added to the setlist, including a few rather unlikely ones. Some of the songs we’ve enjoyed the most here at Wud Records are songs that never made it into the set of any band.

The Band of Georges page at Wud Records has received something of an update recently, although the update has so far not been mentioned in the News or on our socials. If you noticed already, give yourself a pat on the back and say “Well done!”.

With the release permission granted, the Band of Georges page will now be the parent page for all of the songs that we have lifted from the original cassette mixes. From that page will spawn a number of child pages. We shall be creating two pages for each Volume – a Side A and a Side B.

It may take some time for all of the pages, albums, songs, etc. to be fully released.

Later on we plan to make a couple of compilations, such as The Concept Album and a ‘Best Of’. News of such things may be published in the Wud Records News Service and on social media, such as BlueSky.

We hope you enjoy listening to these rather unique recordings as much as we did.

If you would like to listen to the first releases, and the oldest songs, which is Volume I Side A, here at Wud Records, please click here.

To listen to Volume I Side A over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

If you would like to visit the parent page for all of the Band of Georges recordings, please click here.

Subsequent volumes will appear in due course. We are likely to edit and add things on the fly, so if you heard something that you found intriguing, please come back and check its pages again sometime soon!