Don't Go In The Attic

Holy Crap!
Cheese, Louise, that was a mistake.

Not because of the spiders … As any really long term blogpals will know, there are no spiders in my attic because somewhere out there in the dark forest of rafters lurks The Thing That Eats Spiders.
I have never met The Thing That Eats Spiders but I hear it sometimes.
And even during harvest time when the rest of the house is overrun by the bloody things there are never any spiders in the attic, so I know it's still creeping around up there on however many legs it has, snuffling and crunching things-arachnid in the gloom.

No, the thing that I found in the attic was in one of many boxes that have remained taped shut for decades, moved from house to house and put up in attics with the faded and enigmatic legend "STUFF … DO NOT THROW OUT!" scrawled across the top.

Rainy weekends occasionally lead me up into the warm darkness (scuttling, snuffles and crunching sounds notwithstanding) to explore these time capsules.
And in this one I found a boxful of cassette tapes.

I've said it once, but it bears repeating: Holy Crap!
Recorded on one of the very first crappy little hand-held portable cassette machines are tapes of my kiddie rock band from the early seventies playing Yes and Focus songs, tapes of sanity bands through the centuries, four and eight track masters, country bands, heavy metal bands, jazz-rock bands, a snapshot of the decades that Dive forgot!

So …
I lugged the big old monster mastering machine from the studio down to the dining room, plus several more shiny black boxes with flashing lights and lots of knobs.
I hunted through cases of leads to find ones with the right connections.
And I started the painstaking task of digitising my past …

Don't get excited; this job will take at least a year (I'm not kidding) and the sound quality of the early stuff is execrable at best.
Through a wall of hiss, static, tape-wobble, flutter and general sonic crap I can just make out our eleven-year-old drummer going apeshit while kiddie Dive wails solos all over the place.
The things were recorded in St.Luke's Church in Beccles, Suffolk by a twelve-year-old kid who I can hear between songs trying to chat up the singer's girlfriend. Let's just say that he would not be going on to a career in the recording industry.
Those tapes are never going to be restorable enough for public listening, but they got me all nostalgic.
Where on earth are those people now?
Other than the bass player - who is something high-ranking in the Royal Navy and was last heard of living in the Caribbean, the bastard - I've not seen nor heard from any of them since around 1974.
Sheesh!

Anyhoo, there's loads more crap in there. Some of which - if I'm feeling particularly masochistic - may well end up on a Thursday Racket.
Most of today has been spent either sighing wistfully, shouting sudden expletives or laughing like a loon. It's been fun and I've only done three cassettes so far (there are hundreds).

I'm currently digitising a heavy rock gig from 1984. The quality is crap - a cassette recorder plonked on the floor at the side of the stage, so far from the monitors that all you can hear is the backline and a very, VERY faint vocal reflected back from the hall but it's got me grinning like a loon and dancing round the room.
I even started headbanging and playing air guitar until I came to my senses and picked up a real guitar to headbang with.
Fuck me, this is fun!

I thought this stuff had been thrown away decades ago. Considering the skipfuls of crap that I throw out every time I move house it's a miracle these have survived.
So … I don't know what you're doing with your weekends but I hope you're having as much fun as I am.
Woohoo!
With a side order of Yaay!