Much as I love the blues, posting stuff from our blues club nights every week gets a little samey, so here's a track from the wilderness years.
The wilderness years were that awful, desolate decade after punk when synthesisers ruled the earth.
Brrr …
I shudder to think back on it.
Suddenly nobody wanted a guitar player on their session or in their band.
Suddenly girls who used to go out specifically to bag themselves a lead guitarist would grimace at you and say "Eww! Guitar is dead! I only date synth players".
Boy, what a crap decade that was!
As if to rub salt into the wounds, the only forms of music where virtuoso guitar playing was welcome were Country and Western and Heavy Metal, the inbred, bastard, trailer-trash dregs at the bottom of the musical barrel.
I served four year sentences in each of those awful prisons before being released back into society when the asteroid of common sense and decency hit the planet and killed off the dinosaurs of synth-pop.
I am still bitter and resentful.
The peak of my musical life spent amongst yee-haws and headbangers.
We formed a prison band.
A sanity band.
We played complex jazz-rock of our own devising and mixed it up with some smooth, jazzy pop so we could get gigs.
This was the band where "Dive" was born as a stage name.
It was great fun, but where Country and Western payed top dollar (for which - let me confess - I was very grateful), our sanity band had to play for peanuts … supporting synth bands at the UEA and playing country hotels on Sunday afternoons.
But it kept me sane (ish) musically.
You can thank mum for this recording.
She was good enough to stump up the readies for a couple of days studio time (expensive … this was in the days before we had home studios) so we recorded a bunch of songs for her and this is one of them.
There's no lead guitar on it but it's a nice tune.
The only photo I have of that session is this old Polaroid, taken by Angie, the singer.
That's John Tuttle on sax and me playing Old Les, running through the sax and guitar riff from one of our own songs (Apart From The Fall, which might get posted sometime in the future).Please forgive the awful sweater. It was bloody cold. The date of the session was 10th and 11th October, 1982.
Anyhoo … Here's the song. I think it was a Randy Crawford tune but correct me if I'm wrong: Rio de Janeiro Blues (yeah; he says "a break from the blues" and the song has blues in the title. Live with it).
18 comments:
Who's that skinny man with a beard? I almost remember October of 1982—I was studying French and philosophy at Purdue that semester.
I love the song. Yay for Mum.
i can't even remember where i was in '82 - overseas, i'm sure. xox
randy crawford - my favorite tune of hers was "last night at danceland"
cool sound, darlin ;-)
I love Thursdays. Angie can sing and I think it was a Randy Crawford song. I had one of her albums - the one with "fly away" on it. Nice photo of young Dive.
Old Les sounds so mellow - the whole sound was so mellow. Loved it, so thanks to Mum for helping out with the studio and thanks to you for bringing us beautiful music to cheer us up on a Thursday.
I remember being quite annoyed when synthesisers were all the rage because I had always loved listening to the guitar - Antonio Carlos Jobim on his 12 string and Mark Knoffler's songs from the "Local Hero" movie. I hadn't given it much thought at all until you mentioned it though. Very interesting piece, Dive.
Surprise for you on MBOB. Thanks for the inspiration.
What a wonderful tune to wake up to (yes I'm home in my own bed, able to hear you again on my iBook)! But you're right, it lacked a good guitar solo. More more more! (Ok, I'll go back and listen to the other music that you posted and couldn't seem to listen to on my friend's PC, then scream for more.)
I was just starting college in Maine in Oct. 1982. The era of bad 80s music was just beginning. Luckily a lot of the people in my dorm had lots of good records and the college radio station played a huge variety of cool music.
Robyn: Yes I was skinny … and beardy. Hee hee.
You girly swot!
Yay for mum indeed.
Savannah: Thank you. I can't remember 1982 either; it was just written on the back of the Polaroid.
Sheesh! Polaroids! Remember them?
Mme: It's a sucky photo of young(ish) Dive but thank you anyway.
It was indeed a mellow sound. We played a lot of insanely complicated jazz-rock for our own pleasure (lots of weird time signatures and jumps in key and mode) and smooth, mellow stuff like this to make sure people would pay to watch us do the rest.
Jobim wrote some truly beautiful melodies. I love his stuff.
I'll pop on over to MBOB for a surprise!
Hi, Katie! Home from the frozen north! Yaay!
Thank you for your Minnesota posts. Now I'm going to have to buy Green Giant stuff again. Cool!
Just starting college in '82, eh? Gosh, you are so young!
I'll try to post more guitar next time.
I might even drag up some stuff from the archive box I've been digitising.
Eek!
oooo that was lovely, more please!
Your wish is my command, oh Lady of the Lakes.
ha ha ha - hee hee hee
great post dive. Now where was I back then...hmmm going to disco bars maybe?
Disco, synth-pop, New Romantics … sheesh! The early eighties were truly spattered straight from Satan's arse, Rich.
That's real real nice. I think I would have been listening to the spinners in 1982 singing 'Celebrate(good times. Come on)' and performing it with my bf for my teacher on the playground. No wait that was the year before.
I think I was far too busy for such things in sixth grade as I was the designated popcorn maker for the whole school. Big job-big responsibility. A different sort of precocious, I was.
Designated popcorn maker? Cool!
That is an awesome responsibility, Shan, but I would imagine you make awesome popcorn.
What a ridiculous notion that someone would only date guitarists or drummers or whatever. As if they're of all one personality because of the instrument they play. How curious.
I saw Randy Crawford at the Royal Albert Hall in London I think 76 to 78 it would have been, somewhere around that time anyway. It was just great! I had a professional boxer boyfriend at the time who surprised me with the tickets. He was a real softie (with me), lovely guy... hmm..... thinks....remembers.... sigh.....! Oh look what you've done to me now Dive.
Hee hee. You mushy romantic, Lynn.
As for the girls: Ha! Before then, it was always the lead guitarists who acted as girl magnets; with the coming of crappy synth-pop we were suddenly naff.
Women are so fickle (ow)!
lol well fickle isn't the word i was thinking of - i just can't imagine being attracted to a series of guitarists simply because...they play the guitar! Then again, i was attracted to several doctors recently... what IS it about docs? They had good personalities though, as well as being good-looking. I wasn't attracted to their stethoscopes. See my dilemma with this phenomenum? lol.
Lynn: Fortunately for you, you were "not that kind of girl". Hee hee.
And be truly grateful that you were never attracted to the drummer! you could always tell when a bunch of giggly girls descended on the band that the slow, dumpy, shy one hanging back would end up in the van with the drummer. Poor deluded things.
Doctors, eh? Did you by any chance have a pony when you were little? I ask merely from knowing several girls of the pony and doctor kind.
They are almost as scary as band groupies!
That was lovely, lovely...houdini sweet.
In October of 1982, I was contemplating med school. I was also going out every night, dancing until I dropped and dating every man and woman in sight...
Life was one big storm.
The Perfect Storm, eh, Maria?
Oh, to recapture that!
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