It's funny, for a long time I'd had in mind the notion of doing a long post, or series of posts, on dumb trivia you prob. didn't know about the meadowlands album ('you' being the dozen+ readers in theory) and pictured myself trotting out amusing anecdotes about this song or that. But then I've been so busy this past calendar year (regular life + going back to set up release of this next album now) that I completely forgot about it until today!
There are a few stories I don't think I've old-man'd about, so I'll post a few more shorties tomorrow, the apparent 20th anniversary of the album (actually even that's its own trivia-the album release date was not actually Sept. 9th - ha). This one though, that "erasing the meadowlands' master tapes" story, is 'true' w/ an asterisk (the * being that it's only mostly true due to the album being made on ADAT's) and is both long AND boring (ha)...
I've prob. prattled on about it before but it's relevant here because of the nature of ADAT's & the positively ancient form of ADAT's back-up/archiving. For the members of the audience not in bands in the '90s, ADATs being this sorta revolution that happened in home recording straight through the decade, for better & worse - better 'cause it brought high-quality multi-track recording, in this case early digital, to home studios at relatively budget prices (I think we paid $2000 for our first 8-track ADAT in '93?) And also better 'cause it was modular so you could connect one to another ($2000-budgets allowing) and thereby grow to 16- or 24-track, which is what we did.
But worse in that it was both digital AND tape, a VHS tape, in fact. So picture every VHS movie you had (or your parents had, younger set) & how if you rewound it to rewatch a scene like even twice, it began to get glitchy in spots. Glitchy when you're watching Trading Places is an annoyance, glitchy when you're depending on perfect reads to sync one machine to another was disastrous.
So the workaround was that I had to make digital copies of every tape as I went, 'cause they were constantly, over the four years making the record (1999-2003), being eaten. Since there were 3 ADATs playing in sync at all times (8 tracks per machine, totaling 24 sync'd tracks), that meant every "tape" was actually 3 tapes (i.e. one 8-track VHS tape per ADAT, if that all makes sense so far (regretting you clicked on Capt. Geek Answers No One's Actual Question yet?)).
Soooo...there were a few 'takes' of each song tracked winter/spring of 1999, I think filling 3 'tapes'-worth total - but remember that's actually 9 tapes total (one per ADAT). Then w/ back-up copies of each, and copies of those copies as they failed, you quickly ended up with a literal bookcase of glorified VHS tapes, all labeled things like "Dig. cc of Dig. cc #1, Tape 1, T-T8" etc. (trans.: 'digital copy of Digital Copy #1 of recording-session Tape #1, tracks 1 through 8). And all that capping out at about 30- or 40-some VHS tapes total.
So that's meadowlands 4-year recording on ADAT and only relevant here because with erasing them, the sheer number of all those digital back-up copies and the nature of ADAT recording is the alluded-to asterisk above.
In the last year of working on that record, I rarely left the house except to go to work, because I was as paranoid as a right-wing blogger that there was gonna be a fire or theft or God-act (you should've seen me on this next album). So,at a certain point, fueled by a resentment at choices I'd made in life that lead to me work on a record for 4 years and THEN turn 40 (ha), of music in gen. & the album specifically, I decided I wanted to erase the master tapes at our 'hey, the album's done' party (summer '03).
(Just an aside, the desire to erase everything was 'not' to prevent going back to keep on working on them, in spite of what we may have joked at the time (i don't actually remember). The album was done, done finally-not perfect, either musically or sonically but that is never the point (or at least never mine, even if it was within my ability,which it isn't). The record was done in that top-to-bottom it finally felt right (to me) and so it was...perfect (ha). (an aside to the aside, I'm very proud of the record even as I have only ever listened to it, i think, twice?, since finishing.))
Anyway, so I dragged two of the ADAT machines (entire VCR's essentially) into work at the ad agency I was an admin asst. at then, in a backpack weighing in at a cool 40+ lbs. (hilariously, the post-911 beefed-up security in our bldg. wouldn't let me leave w/ them for a half-hour). But it only registered once I got to the party & set up that the thing is, ADAT's are 'digital' but they're not computers, they're still tape. So shy of holding them over a 3rd subway rail, there is no 'command-delete' per se. There's only 'erase', which is really just recording - in real time - with no signal going in, which erases what was previous on there. So w/ each tape running 45 minutes, it meant that w/ two machines, over the course of a 6-hour party, I only made it through like, I don't know, 10 tapes?
Plus, erasing tape in real time as a means of wowing your friends is...underwhelming. With no signal going into the machines (so that they erase what's already on there as they 'record'), there are no flashing lights etc., essentially nothing's happening. So many of our friends, most of whom aren't musicians, understandably did not quite get what was even going on: "wait, you're recording the party?". "I can't hear anything". "why is your album so quiet" etc. (ha). But that did cover, technically the "orig" 9 or 12 tapes (session tapes one through three, each comprised of three sync'd ADAT vhs tapes. Jesus). It's also where I began to think about the notion of 'originals vs copies', but I'll come back to that in a bit.
The rest of the digital back-up tape copies I had to, exceedingly uninterestingly (like picture this long post but as a whole lived weekend) erase at home.
And that concludes the least interesting post in Facebook history. A couple blessedly shorter anecdotes tomorrow, then album announcement week of Oct. 6th.