Multitrackin'

Once upon a time, my sole aspiration and life goal was to be a "rock star." Correction. Once upon a time, my sole aspiration and life goal was to be one of The Beatles. Strangely enough, that didn't work out as planned. But from the time I was around thirteen to about forty-three twenty-five, it's all I thought about doing. The problem was, unlike The Beatles, I didn't have all that much talent or ambition. I think it was all about the screaming girls. Despite this, I loved music, especially recording music. In hindsite, I was probably more of a frustrated producer/engineer wannabe than an actual musician.

Pete Townshend recording at home in 1971
Like two of my biggest musical heroes (other than the Fab Four) as a kid, Pete Townshend and Prince, I liked home recording, trying to play every instrument myself. Of course, Prince would release entire albums where basically he was the only person on them. I thought that was so cool. Using a four-track recorder, not too much unlike the one Bruce Springsteen used to record the classic Nebraska album, I spent much time, imagining I was in my own little Paisley Park, creating, if truth be known, total crap. But I had fun. I recently stumbled across something I recorded way back in the summer of 1987 that didn't make me cringe too badly when I listened to it again. Actually, my first thought was I almost pulled off playing the drums on this one. Here I am doing one of the few Prince songs an unskilled white boy could even come close to pulling off, one of my favorites, "Christopher Tracy's Parade." Forgive me in advance for the pain this may cause, but I just had to unleash it upon an unwitting blogosphere: