WAYLAID

Waylaid. By: work (annual conference), moving (to a new address in Austin), sickness (chronic and a vicious, bed-riddening, thank-god-for-netflix flu/cold/virus), as well as the usual excuses. I’ve been reading Please Kill Me, a series of interviews following American punk rock from the Velvet Underground through New Wave, and I’m surprised that any of these people (Lou Reed, MC5, Iggy Pop, Television, Ramones, etc.) ever got anything done based on the amount of drugs they were all doing. Throughout my early- to mid-twenties my creativity was a sparsely wooded place; I was all fire and brimstone and misplaced energy, but my writing was sporadic and my process stilted. I wonder how my youthful “yeah” would handle my current backlog of musical claptrap – would my 21-year-old self, faced with a backlog of 60-odd songs, be slowed by sickness, work, or ennui? Or would I restlessly and joyfully tear through that four-chord pile of prospective anthems? In some manner, I’m admitting defeat: I don’t have the time or ambition to properly record these songs – this body of work that I have more pride in than anything musical I’ve done before. I’m a little frustrated about that, but not depressed about it or beaten by it. There’s nothing I can really do; rather, there is nothing I can really do that represents a reasonable return on investment. ROI – that’s an acronym I’ve learned since I grew up. It sounds clinical, and I’m not even talking monetarily: I mean, the investment of energy I would expend recording these songs, getting other people to play on them, completing the mixes, mastering them, and telling someone who might be inclined to listen – that expenditure (of time, energy, love) does not translate into an appropriate amount of peace of mind or personal satisfaction. This something I believe today. Tomorrow, it changes.

In my possession, I now have the 2” reel-to-reel tapes that represent the short-lived but not unproductive output of Sinners, Repent! Austin Version 2.0. There are six nearly-completed recordings here. At some point I’ll have them converted to digital track and record the final vocals, handclaps, and tambourines that ultimately defeated the sessions at Big Orange. Arguably, the economy defeated it to – I ran out of money. Its unlikely that these recording will surface for years. The lost recordings – spooky.

Here’s a song from those lost recordings called “American Car” - shored up by some home-recording:

AMERICAN CAR

American Car (Rough Demos) by Sinners, Repent!