No? Well, you should be.
I came across my first band’s cassette the other day.
Yeah. Cassette. If you don’t know what a cassette is then stop playing Fortnite and go look it up. Also, get off my lawn.
It’s been a while since I’ve listened to it so, because my 1970s record player is “state-of-the-art” and has a built-in cassette player, I played that thing.
You know what’s amazing? After all these years, that cassette tape is still…the absolute worst thing ever.
But I love it. I always will.
Not only was it the first time we recorded, it was the first time the guys recording us recorded anything. Another way of saying that is that no one involved with the creation of this record had any clue how to do anything. At all.
Yet, we sold those bad boys for $3 of our friends’ parents’ money because that’s how much a value meal at McDonald’s was. Don’t judge. We were in high school and had the metabolism for it so whatever.
Then or never
We knew that with college departures looming, we needed to record these songs hastily. We had a few gigs under our belt and we were just trying to do these songs justice because the songwriting was way better than our skill level at our respective instruments.
So, we cut a record. All originals.
I can’t think of one track on the cassette that sounds even close to ok. I don’t think Roner’s guitar was ever in tune, and the cowbell track on “Our World” is so loud and overpowering that it would make all members of the Blue Oyster Cult blush. This cowbell track is an ongoing joke between Luke and I to this day.
But there’s a lot to learn from this. The most important being that it’s ok to be embarrassed about something you used to be so proud of.
If your perspective hasn’t changed about something you created a long time ago, then you’re not growing. And that’s a problem.
It might make the life span of your pride shorter, but it’ll only be because you’ve grown so much in that time — and that’s badass. That’s what you want.
Then…
Now wait, don’t get me wrong. You can still like it, but if you were asked to do it again right now and it would end up the same, then……yikes. No bueno.
What I still love about the music on this specific cassette tape is the energy, the ambition, the trying that you can hear in it. It’s like you can actually hear the innocent delusions that we were going to be huge. I truly love that. And, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Luke’s songwriting holds up.
What makes me cringe and laugh when I hear it is pretty much everything else. So young. So clueless. So much fun.
…and now
I think I’m going to dig up all the other tapes from my parents’ house to see what the hell are on them.
It’s why we study history in school: To have our past inform the paths we take in the present and future.
In most everything, it’s easy to project where you want to be in 10 years, or 5 years, or even tomorrow. But to truly know what path you’re on and are capable of creating, then you have to look back, laugh, and hope that ten years from now, you’ll look back at today and cringe.
Wouldn’t that be the best?
I thought about posting an audio link to this blog, but nope. Sorry. Not doing it. Instead, I’ll ask you to go back to something you wrote/drew/designed a few years ago and see if it holds up. You might still like it, but what would you do differently today?
Me? I’d probably skip the cowbell track on Our World entirely. Cowbell track? A whole take of just cowbell? What in the actual hell? SMH.
#bewhatyoumake
