How it began…
One day when I was a little kid, I was walking through some sort of department store with my mom and I noticed this strange object in the glass case, and I asked my mom, what is that? She said that is a little cassette recorder for recording sound and music or whatever. I still remember being in awe of it, and the concept that I could capture sound, and immediately told her I wanted one. Not sure what she was thinking, but told me I would have to wait until my birthday to get it.
I did get it along with packages of blank tapes and my youthful recording career started! I recorded whatever I could. Me and my little sister would pretend to do mock radio shows and record it. I would put the recorder next to my kid record player speaker and record music. I would put it in front of our tv, next to the speaker, and record the audio from my favorite tv show at the time, Ba Ba Black Sheep, with Robert Conrad. (Back then there was no home video recorders, or DVRs, or streaming).
This was the beginning of my obsession with sound, that only grew from there.
My Uncles…
When I was growing up, in the 1970s, every weekend we would go visit my grandparents where my mom’s younger brothers where still living too. They were into music big time, and were always eager to play me the latest songs from the popular artist of the time. (I loved it!) They were also trying to outdo each other with better and better stereo systems. It seemed month after month, one would buy this integrated amp, or turntable, or special speakers, or something. They were constantly showing me something new. I was in awe of all of this gear! I only had my little kid record player and cassette recorder.
Then still in grade school, one of my uncles decided he was going to sell his stereo system and do a complete upgrade. I told my mom about it, and she offered to buy it from her brother, and then give it to me for yet another birthday. I was so excited to get a real stereo system. I don’t remember the brand or specifications, but remember it had four good sized speakers, and it just blew away my kid record player and sounded amazing. I was in sixth grade and in audio heaven!
High School…
Over the years my love of music and audio only grew. I subscribed to multiple audio magazines all at once, since there was no internet, or easy way to read about these things like there is today. I was learning about, frequency response, signal to noise ratio, slew rate, ohms ratings, impulse response, and so much more. Then at 15 and a half I got my first job in the mall making minimum wage, $3.85 an hour, and only three doors down from a music store. Inside the music store were instruments, sheet music, amps, recording gear, and so much more.
Many times before or after work I would visit the music store and check out what they had. Then one day in 1981, I went there and in the glass case was a new just released keyboard by Yamaha, the CS-01.
I worked and saved for a while to be able to buy my first keyboard. I loved it! Yamaha, not only released this small keyboard but also other equipment within this same Producer Series line like headphone amps that could be connected together to rehearse and play together on headphones and a small mixer.
Over time I ended up buying two of these headphone amp setups and the mixer below of the same line. (What is amazing is I still have the headphone amps, they still work, and I still use them to monitor a tape deck not connected to my main system).
This was the beginning of my first setup.
Nuclear Boyz…
Then in high school, I found out about this other band at school, and was thinking, maybe I could record them somehow? I met with them, and went to one of their practices to check them out. They were a three piece new wave band. They were called the, Nuclear Boyz. Guitar, Bass, and Drums. The guitar player and bass player sang. I didn’t have the equipment to record them, but I told them, I would look into what I could get to make something happen.
I didn’t have much money to buy sophisticated recording equipment, and multitrack recorders, so I looked around for what I could afford, and Radio Shack was the answer! At least part of it. I ended up buying two small mixers, that were being closed out for $30 each, that I would connect to my Yamaha Producer Series mixer to get more channels.
I also bought two of Radio Shack’s best condenser microphones that were $100 a piece, and then several small condensers that were being closed out, for just $10 a piece. I used headphone Y cables in reverse to combine microphone signals into one channel when needed.
We tracked all the music live to a Pioneer cassette recorder, and then later overdubbed the vocals on top of the music as we played it back, on one cassette deck, and recorded it all over to another one.
This picture taken for the our Lakewood High School 83 yearbook, shows the equipment I just mentioned. Just behind my right elbow are the two cassette decks. On the shelf above, on the left are the two Radio Shack mixers, and the Yamaha Producer Series mixer on top of them. The black units are two 10 band EQs. This was the gear that I started my years of recording work with.
I have kept all of these early cassettes I recorded with this first band the Nuclear Boyz, and recently bought a cassette player, to see if these tapes even played decades later, after being in storage units and garages. To my surprise, they played and sounded just as they did decades ago.
Then I was thinking what could I do with them today, with today’s technology?
I transferred some of the cassette recordings into my DAW, and went to work, to see how I could enhance and restore the recordings from so long ago, done with Radio Shack equipment. The details of how I did it could fill many pages, so I will skip that for now, and just leave you with a sample, of what the very first band I ever recorded sounded like. The Nuclear Boyz.
“Atom Attack Live at Radio City” recorded on cassette 1982 – digitally remastered 11/2024 – Lyrics below.
ATOM ATTACK
It comes from the air and a distant land.
Caused by a people and a human hand.
An Erie light in the night sky, everyone knows no one asks why.
A question of ethics, a policy change,
A greedy leader, a new missles range
Something is happening, no one will say
I’m not getting answers I need them today..
Atom attack starvation and death.
Atom attack no oceans or earth.
Atom attack worse came to worse.
Atom attack….
Retaliation we cannot prevent,
What’s happened has happened we can’t repent.
From across the oceans, deep in the ground,
Candles in the sky don’t make a sound…
It come from the air and distant land.
Caused by people and a human hand.
An Erie light in the night sky,
Everyone knows no one asks why.
Atom attack we’re here and gone.
Atom attack the end don’t take so long….
JT 1981
Working with the Nuclear Boyz was just the beginning, of my vast music adventure that continues through today.
