NORTHAMPTON, MA (1981) “In the Recording Studio”

You couldn't just "play the song" and not make mistakes. You had to MURDER the song (and still not make mistakes.)

[This piece was inspired by the remastering and re-releasing of the songs of my band October Days, which are now available on Bandcamp. Big thanks to Ron Sutfin and Carl Boland for their efforts on this project.]

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In high school I was in a band called No Exit, with two high school friends. We played a couple parties. I had just begun playing guitar, so we couldn’t have sounded very good.

Still, I’m sure we recorded our versions of “Jumping Jack Flash” or “I Don’t Care” by the Ramones on a portable cassette recorder at some point. That’s one of the first things you do in a band.

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So then I went back east to college, to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. My freshman year I started a band. I wrote a bunch of songs but we never actually played out.

Then I heard that one of the big campus bands needed a new guitar player. I got in contact with them. They were upperclassman. Some of them were in a frat together. They played covers (the hits of the day) at parties and big campus dances and got paid real money.

I remember carrying my Fender Telecaster Deluxe up a hill to their practice space to audition. We played some of the songs from their set list. These were by groups like the Pretenders, Joe Jackson, Talking Heads, the Cars.

In terms of musicianship, I wasn’t really on their level. Almost every song had a part that I couldn’t finger the chord, or I couldn’t get the rhythm right. Even the simplest New Wave songs—the ones that were on the radio—were actually very difficult to play correctly.

Despite my incompetence, they invited me to join the band.

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There were a lot of guys in this band. We had 2 guitars. 1 bass. 1 keyboard. 1 singer. One drummer. And a lot of friends of the band were around as well.

We practiced regularly. We played parties, some at different colleges. And then one day, a couple months after I joined, it was announced we were going into the studio to record some of our originals.