My very first solo album. Back in the day, we used to make cassette albums, which were easier on the budget, and free from the constraints and contractual obligations of record labels. There was no real intention to make an album at the time – I was just learning how to record on a four-track reel-to-reel machine, and my first efforts were aural landscapes, rather than songs with verses and choruses.

As I became more comfortable with the 4-track process, I graduated from banging on pie tins and manipulating microphone feedback, to more conventional instrumentation like guitars and keyboards. Eventually, I had collected enough of these pieces to create a couple of albums, which provide somewhat of an upbeat contrast to the material I had helped create during the same period in the band Borrowed Time.

Starting out with no real theme in mind, these pieces sorted themselves out almost of their own accord. I found myself with two distinctly different sets of music, roughly spanning a period of three years. The pieces that became Uniforms + Saints reflect an optimism which somehow evaded me in later years. This was a fruitful, hopeful time in my life. My first marriage had just recently ended, and a new relationship was forming in its’ place, as well as a new creative vehicle in the band Borrowed Time. In one way or another, many of these pieces are all about beginnings. Here are some of the stories that go with the music, which should by no means be considered explanations.

The First Of Many Resurrections is transparently obvious, I should think. Even at that time, it seemed I was always starting over on my journey through life – I had no idea just how much of a theme that would continue to be for the next few decades! This was my first attempt to do something of a “musical” nature on the four-track.

Statue That Waits For No One is another piece from this early era of discovery, centered around a riff in the break which I had tried to steal from Fernaundo Saunders, who was playing bass with Lou Reed at the time. Rest assured, this piece doesn’t sound anything like that original riff.

Uniforms + Saints is a refined version of a song called Falling…, which I had previously recorded and performed in Dancing In The Dark (v.2.0). This song marks one of the few times in my life I attempted to write something along the lines of a “love song”, while trying to not relegate it to pure schmaltz – fortunately, nothing is ever really about only one thing. If I had realized how misguided my romantic inclinations were at the time, this song might never have been written, so I guess there is a reason for everything that happens. Given that on a broader scale, it reflects on various transitions in one’s life, I think it still holds up rather well as a lyric, although I do admit cribbing a bit of stylistic influence from Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs. This was literally written in about five minutes, sitting at a bench in Loring Park. This song was drastically re-arranged once again in the mid-’90s, for a band that almost existed, called somersault.

Secrets was a song I had written and performed in The Hytones, which I guess makes it kind of a “pop” song. Even by 4-track standards, this version might be a wee bit over-“produced”, but I still think it’s a pretty good recording, and seems to capture the essence of the song as I had originally written it.

For In The Dark I asked Ward Harper [aka Sloth / idb], our compatriot in Borrowed Time, to just lay into a metal-type guitar solo throughout the entire song. I think he was somewhat annoyed by my lack of specific direction, but he delivered the goods, as far as I’m concerned. For no apparent reason, I decided to add a bit of faux-Arto Lindsay scratch-and-skronk, before calling it a finished piece. I’ve never tried to re-create the song after that recording was made, although Ward himself performed this number in a later band, The Calling. This remains the definitive version, though my original mix was sadly inadequate, and I’ve re-mixed it for this final take.

This recording of All My Friends is a re-visited version of a track previously recorded with Micki Ellis, in our two-man version of Dancing In The Dark (v.3.0.), joined by our mutual pal Irving Safari on violin. Somewhere in early 1985, I transferred that early recording to 4-track, and added some additional tracks, including congas, more vocals, and my best Will Sargent Crocodiles-era guitar impression. I was pretty unapologetic about wearing certain musical influences on my sleeve, and I was a huge Echo + the Bunnymen fan at the time (almost thirty years later, I can say that still holds true!). I’ve always liked the idea that with the evolution of technology, one could take an old recording and “dress it up” a bit, but I do think there is an inherent danger in trying to make something into something that it isn’t. This song, however, deserved it.

In keeping with my own unpredictable modus operandi, the last of the new beginnings doesn’t come at the end of this album. The Adventures Of Joan Of Arc & The Virgin Mary was essentially the last piece I would create on a 4-track, before leaving behind life as I had once known it to be. This instrumental was the blueprint (and backing track) for the song Nation Of One, which would appear later on the Facades album. This was composed after the demise of Borrowed Time, and inspired by the dancer I followed from Minneapolis to New York, being the dreamer that I was. Fortunately, the instrumental has no words to feel trapped by, and the words I wrote for the second version are masked with ambiguity. If I had learned anything by that time in my life, it was that romance surely fades, people and situations will change, but I wanted my songs to last. There will always be endings, but there will be even more beginnings.

UNIFORMS + SAINTS

[Sorry – these audio recordings were hosted on soundcloud, but that account is now closed.
I’ll figure out a different way to host it soon!]

technical errata:

Melne Murphy contributes guitar on Prelude: “Falling, Falling…”,
and programmed the drum machine on Uniforms + Saints, and Secrets.

Sloth (aka Ward Harper / idb) plays the guitar lead on In The Dark.

All My Friends is an overdubbed version of a song originally recorded by Dancing In The Dark v.3.0,
featuring Micki Ellis on rhythm guitar, and Irving Safari (aka Dan) on violin.

All other instruments and vocals by J. Free.

Originally recorded on Dokoder and Tascam reel-to-reel 4-track decks, between 1982 and 1985.

This transfer was made in 2010, using a Nakamichi deck which was re-calibrated by Echo Audio in Portland, OR. This was an azimuth-optimized analog-digital transfer [24-bit/96kHz sample rate] from a first-generation master cassette. Tracks were split in CDWav editor; any other post-processing was done using SoundForge. Digitally pitch-corrected by ear (using SoundForge), to a digitally-tuned acoustic guitar. This 256kbps .mpeg conversion was direct from the 24/96 .wav files – no down-sampling or bit-rate conversion was applied. Additional mixing, minor editing and treatments were applied by J. in 2010.

There is tape hiss present. But then again, you’re listening to a bunch of .mp3s.

all tracks: © J. Free; 1982 – 1985

These pieces came out of the same batch of material that spawned Uniforms + Saints, and which also spanned the existence of Borrowed Time. While the tracks that wound up on the first solo album were kind of pop songs with a slightly experimental nature, this album was more deliberate, with avant garde leanings. I’m sure there’s a difference, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what it it is.

These are more serious songs, and serious themes – perhaps even a bit introspective, as the critics like to say. Whatever. I had been through a lot at this point, and I think it shows in the music. That is, I think you can hear it in the music. I don’t know if it can actually show you anything. And yes, I am wearing pants in that photograph.

Just to mix things up a bit for my second solo album, I sifted in a few of the very first 4-track pieces I recorded, from the pre-everything-that-happened-since era. A few of the more somber instrumental themes, and songs written along the way that reflected the rise and fall of my grandiose artistic and romantic fantasies come to life, over a few brief years that felt like a lifetime. I wouldn’t have thought about it in such concise terms at the time, but if Uniforms + Saints was all about beginnings, then Facades had a lot more to do with endings.

National Anthem was really sort of a tongue-in-cheek twist on the well-known Hendrix performance from Woodstock. Thinking about the wild-eyed hopes and dreams of that generation, juxtaposed against a nationalistic theme cribbed from a old pub drinking tune no less, it seemed appropriate that it should come across as both tentative and slightly menacing.

Legacy was a slightly re-worked version of a song I had written during the Reagan era, and performed in The Hytones; a sort of anthemic militant nursery rhyme, with a nod to Kill Your Sons by Lou Reed.

Moments Turned To Sand was just another take on combining a basic Eastern melodic motif with a Western rhythmic nuance – all the kids were doing it, and it was especially popular with fans of The Cure.

Those three pieces were the remains of my earliest excursions into 4-track technology, recorded between 1982-1983. All of the other material was completed towards the end of 1984, and early 1985, shortly before I moved from Minneapolis to NYC.

The title track, Facades, was my own musical nod to various nuances I heard in the music of both The Only Ones and Alex Chilton. I can’t say it wasn’t about any particular situation, but I didn’t really have any one thing in mind when I put it together, other than the desire to create a good song.

The Sitting Room was a one-off, something I threw together pretty quickly with a miniature Casio keyboard, in an attempt to emulate a small chamber group of some sort. Not for classical purists.

Nation Of One was the swan song for this era of material, a re-worked version of an instrumental which appeared on the first album, inspired by dreams of a new life that loomed ahead.

FACADES

[Sorry – these audio recordings were hosted on soundcloud, but that account is now closed.
I’ll figure out a different way to host it soon!]

technical errata:

Melne Murphy contributes lead guitar on Legacy and Moments Turned to Sand,
and also programmed the drum machine on Legacy.

All other instruments and vocals by J. Free.

Originally recorded on Dokoder and Tascam reel-to-reel 4-track decks, between 1982 and 1985.

This transfer was made in 2010, using a Nakamichi deck which was re-calibrated by Echo Audio in Portland, OR. This was an azimuth-optimized analog-digital transfer [24-bit/96kHz sample rate] from a first-generation master cassette. Tracks were split in CDWav editor; any other post-processing was done using SoundForge. Digitally pitch-corrected by ear (using SoundForge), to a digitally-tuned acoustic guitar. This 256kbps .mpeg conversion was direct from the 24/96 .wav files – no down-sampling or bit-rate conversion was applied. Additional mixing, minor editing and treatments were applied by J. in 2010.

There is tape hiss present. But then again, you’re listening to a bunch of .mp3s.

all tracks: © J. Free; 1982 – 1985