Eat This Rock : Soul Chatter

Κυριακή 5 Ιουνίου 2016

Soul Chatter

"Cleveland, back in the stone ages. The early 1980's. Dark and dusty warehouses, long rehearsals, no money and trying to play only original music in a town with very few venues straying from a cover band format, especially with no local connections and certainly no pedigree. Modern music was hitting the radio. MTV had stumbled across its video format. We had real drums, a battered Wurlitzer electric piano, a couple of battle scarred fender amps and no ability or desire to play synth bass or a drum machine.
A band with three core members (keyboards, guitar and vocals) begins assembling original works. Ill-paid live performances, wallet-emptying studio projects and a revolving cast of support musicians straight out of The Commitments come and go. After a few years of long rehearsals, late night trips to Irv's Deli and lots of very bad attempts at humor, the trio becomes a duo (the duo made this dubious mistake, but it has finally been rectified by the time of this writing). An ever-changing crew of characters join us for more studio sessions (whenever money other than that earmarked for rent was available) and the occasional 'live' performance.
Every so often an independent label (usually very obscure and very far away, like that out of town girlfriend no one ever seemed to meet) picks up one of our cuts for a compilation CD. Thus our songs were often re-produced in dark, damp, probably ancient and leaky cellars throughout Europe, selling literally dozens and dozens of recordings across the globe!
One day a very small indie label from deep in the Carolina woods gets a hold of some of our demos and decides to issue a full CD of our work, but the true intent of this 'partner' appears to be to market us and other unknowns to larger labels. We agree on absolutely nothing; what cuts to include, song titles, the color and cut of our underwear during live performance. Working to promote any actual airtime, exposure, or distribution seemed to be out of the question, or more likely, beyond their financial or political means. We could certainly relate.
Oh yeah, we also have a handful of classic (and true, I swear) stories about A&R calls from Geffen, Inner City Records, etc. that came ever-so-close to a real recording deal. You know; the kind of anecdotal stuff that re-surfaces when you are hanging out with your ‘professional’ peers in a dark tavern after a few after-work beers.
After years of working ‘real jobs’, raising families, mortgages, etc. we could never quite shake the fact that we really missed this music thing. So our ragtag band of veteran musicians pull the covers off the studio gear, write and rehearse like we never too a break, and get back to work on a fresh new batch of songs."