Welcome to Raw Impressions Monday's Music Mini Episode. So I have a concept behind this episode. Tell me about it. So we're working on my Marc Harris episodes.
And I wanted to find a tape in the style of what I sent him, like where I was being a DJ, and doing my own little things. I think I did prank phone calls for him too. But I don't have any of those because I sent them to him. But I did find something called a Bored Mark Tape circa 83.
See? Have a look. I'm showing it. I'm looking at the tape.
So, but in the course of this tape, I mean, it's like a mixed tape with all the songs I was listening to. And I would say latter 1983, like New Order, Joy Division, and some like hardcore, like Finnish hardcore. Interesting. A band called Travit Cadet.
A band called the Nios from near Vancouver, Victoria Island, Canada, very fast. But it's got a band called the Dream Syndicate on it. And it's just a really cool little, but in between the songs, I don't do the back-announcing. Like I did.
Like a DJ. I just put these little collages and songs on there. Oh, wow. So I took some excerpts from this for this episode.
Okay, from that, because that tape, the aborted Mark. The aborted Mark tape. Huh. Wow, that's neat that you found that.
That sounds like a fun listen, actually. I think at that point, I was starting to, not, I was putting my own songs on it, hoping that he would respond to them. But he wasn't really responding to them. So I actually made, at that point, I started doing it for myself.
Like my own song. I realized that what I was doing, like generating these songs and these melodies, and doing it in a very low-fi way, like between portable tape recorders. Song. Commencing.
Song. I realized, I was being misleading, leaning into that, thinking, you might have thought that's one of my songs. I thought that's one of my songs. I did.
It's not. Oh. No, I recorded that yesterday. That's a song.
That's a cover of a song that's on the tape. Oh. That's what we're here for? Who's the band?
Green on Red. Okay. They were from Arizona. I believe Tucson.
I'm not sure. Green on Red. There was all this music that we were listening to, like Dinosaur Junior, it was starting to happen, like a deep wound or J. and I's hardcore band was kind of winding down and we were embracing all this different kind of music.
You know, stuff that could be precursor to what you would call Americana now. There was like a... Mmm. Red were this cool band from Arizona and I love that song and I had not heard it in decades until I listened to this tape yesterday and I was like, I love that song so much.
And so I covered it. So I did my own version. I tweaked it a little bit. I made it a little bit longer added.
Didn't out of verse or anything, but I just sort of expanded it because I love the song. I love the song too. Yeah. It's a cool...
I never heard it before and I did think it was yours and I was like, Lou, this is your last hit song. Yeah. What a great hit song you've got here, hun. How come this is sitting on a cassette tape?
Let's get it out there. Actually doing pretty soon, I'm gonna pop up. What I was doing was these really just song fragments at that point and putting them on these tapes from Mark and still kind of with a nonsensical edge. I didn't do anything quite as sophisticated.
That's a great song. It's such a good song. Mmm. Wow.
Well, that's really funny because I was like, gosh, were you shocked or did you forget this song or no? It's not yours. Not mine. Not nice.
What happened to that band? Green on Red. Oh, well one of the members was owned Future Music on York Avenue in Los Angeles. Oh.
I mean, Future Music is incredible. I know Future Music. Really, like it's like full of, I bought a lot of stuff there because it was full of like, great star. Yeah, full of really, I don't know.
I hope so. There's a lot of like retro, a lot of retro vintage stuff like vintage keyboards, cord organs. I mean, I was kind of obsessed with this and the guy who ran it who was, I think in Green on Red, I would just see him and I never spoke to him really other than just like quick exchanges. But I was always like, were you really, I really wanted to really like pump them for details about Green on Red.
But then again, it's like, it's hard with those, a lot of those holder guys, if you ask them about their old bands, they're like, they get mad. Oh. They get really like, they get really like, testy. I'm not proud about it or.
I don't know. All that stuff, like those, that sort of little generation above, they're a little more testy. You know, it's like, who's going to do, we're never, never going to get back together. You want to mean there's those bands?
Right. There was another reunion. The real reunion. I mean, it could have been, you know, amicable towards the end, but they would never.
Song. Everman's voice. Is this what you were doing? This is what I was doing.
Ah, okay. So we're going to A.B. it. Yeah.
That's the beginning of a song by Wire. Hold on to XU. You know, Lissa, that's, it's not bad. Yeah, it was, it was not bad.
It's my beginning. It's kind of kind of, kind of reminded me of like old school cartoon of like a railroad track where some animals are like pumping one of those things and they're like going up and down. It's a nice image. Yeah.
You know. The lyrics on that one are influenced by who's could do. Oh. Because they had a song called Pink Turns to Blue on the Zen Arcade album, which I was listening to at approximately that time period.
What's that song about? What's that song about? What to do now? Pink cast turn to blue.
I don't, I believe it's a Grant Hart song. I don't know what it's about. I like that title a lot. Yeah.
I was sitting here thinking green on red, pink turns to blue. Oh yeah. And these colors. I didn't notice, I didn't make that note.
I didn't note that while I was compiling this stuff. But yeah, that's one, I think, I think, although I pretty much released everything that was, everything that's viable that I've ever done. I've released in some form in some way. It's available over the last 30 years.
It's out there. If it's not, it wasn't on a record called Losing Losers or Losers or, or the cassettes that I put out or this part of that artist enabler series I did for Joyful Noise. Yeah. Available on Bandcamp.
Great series. Great series. There's like, well, almost 200 songs. It's completely in control.
You want to be a Lou Barlow aficionado. I want to really get down and dirty and lo-fi with Lou and it's all there. It's all there. But I don't know about that one.
Not sure. I didn't really check. I didn't do my homework to check and see if I'd actually released that. But I think that might be an unreleased nugget from my archives.
Well, there you go, everyone. Dig into that. Yeah, from the aborted mark tape circuit, 83. Oh my gosh.
I love these cassette tapes. It's making me wish I had like all my old cassette tapes and I had tons of mixtapes too. And I would, I guess, do what I didn't, I would like try to record songs off the radio with my boombox. Yeah.
I would just be sitting in my room on the west side of St. Paul with my little boombox and listening to the radio, waiting for one of my favorite songs to come on. How was the radio on the boombox? Yeah.
Also, you would then you just hit the record. Exactly. So it actually captured the broadcast. It wasn't that you were making an ambient recording of the radio.
You were recording it within the box. I guess so. Yeah. I was recording it within the box.
It was one unit. One of my favorite songs was Careless Whisper. I was always waiting for that song. Next up.
I was like, what are they going to put Careless Whisper out? I need it. Damn it. Where's that distinctive saxophone?
That opens that tune. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I really love that song. I just have a really strong memory of like me waiting for that and then like starting, starting, starting, starting.
That's a good song with the saxophone in it. Yeah, there's not a lot. Or maybe there's a lot. I don't know.
Oh, you don't have to get it. Saxophone is a vibe. It's a vibe. You have to really lean into it if you're going to do it.
I mean, you got your jazz, which is very expressive. Okay, here's another way there. Oh, yeah. And careful with the knee.
It's flying. Atchinnyshot! So those were like colleges of like, you know, children's records that we had, family tapes. There was a little black flag thing from the client of the Western civilization, Ron Ries on stage from that compilation.
Bits off the radio. There was a AM radio sort of psychologist named, what was his name, Masters. I can't remember, but he discovered an English accent who, who, uh, Therapized People. Therapopop.
That is a tape of a party that my parents have thrown at our house. And a lot of my relatives have come up from Dayton. And so they just made a recording of it. But at one point in the recording, we sent, uh, we sent Abby, Amanda and I sent Abby downstairs with a note saying, maybe we have something to eat.
So you hear Abby, you hear Abby coming down the stairs with my dad saying, hey, you get back upstairs. And then like, oh, she's got a note. And then opening the note, can we please have something to eat? I don't know how I found that, but I found that back then.
And if there's two places in the tape where we are upstairs, because it's an absolute racket, you know, they're all like partying my relatives and my parents. 70 style. I love it. Yeah, that would have been.
I think Fortrach means kind of soft. It's the only thing they can do. Thank you for listening. Thank you.
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