Cringe!

Apple being Apple and Apple Music being Apple Music, I recently ‘lost’ some digitized tapes from gigs I did. My total faith in the cloud (Apple Music Cloud to be specific) meant that I had to go back to the original tapes and re-digitize them. Most important among them was a concert at Creative Music Studio by Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, and Dave Holland on New Years Eve 1981-82. I was a student there over the winter (while I was still in high school). The heating and hot water went out the day I arrived, 17 years old, driving a van from Ohio to the Catskills. I slept and showered in near-arctic conditions for a few days. Oh – and I learned once I got there that the whole menu was vegan.

We snuck out a few nights, in an ice storm, and drove to the Bonanza Steak House in Kingston.

My now-college going girlfriend had just done the completely predictable thing over the fall quarter and, being a teenager, I was a bit beside myself —

Anyway –

In the old tape case — My brother’s first album, an interview with KQED about Pixar from 1989, a David Bowie master DAT from a project I worked on, the Creative Music Studio performance, some Flintstones music cues, classic traded tapes like Tommy LaSorda yelling, Coppola yelling, etc.

I’m really glad I held onto the physical media, and that one of my colleagues here in the sound department held on to a very nice pro Marantz cassette player. (Redacted public radio station) inventory stickers, balanced IO and everything!

And – the amazing cringe machine that is me at 17 years old, and my audition tape for Eastman Jazz and Berklee.

I got invited for in-person auditions for both. Dad (a musician) and Mom (a musician’s widow) especially didn’t want me to be a jazz musician. So I went to architecture school, learned that computers could make pictures, etc, etc.

Listening to that tape brought back really awkward 17 year old me memories. Sort of wish I would have followed that path sometimes. But, that stuff isn’t re-negotiable.