my sister wrote to exene & original sinners to say "thank you for putting my sister's band on your site." i figured they were recognizing the band of me & the guys playing rockabilly cover songs since late 2002. however, the o-sinners' reply indicates otherwise!
in 01-02, songs began pouring out of my craw like rainwater over a dirty gutter... nearly all were about old relationships (train wrecks, hostage situations, near murder/suicides). like many songwriters must, or how in the world would they move forward?, i felt i had good melodies & lyrics. i pried open my wallet, purchased the 2nd-tier tascam tape portastudio & started laying down tracks. problem is, i'd never sung before & was seriously rusty on piano. at that time, i was on the heels of having played bass in a hessian-type band, but that was it - no ivory stomping since the high-as-a-kite country beau days, when i'd forge out buck owens, rodney crowell, highway 101 by ear in the wee am hours on his bartender roommate's bitchin' yamaha cp-80...
slowly, very slowly, i would work out the crudest of guitar parts. it took hours & hours to play one little crappy sounding line!! i have this beat-up kay, so beat up, even phil alvin wouldn't play it... i had no amps: everything went straight into the portastudio. no effects: i'd sing into a trash can, even, to try to get some kind of different sound. most of the singing, i'd double the vocals w/a tight harmony to fill the sound up, like buck & don or louvin bros manque... the signals were always too high or low. my timing would go off constantly cause it was so hard to hear what i was doing. i used drum tracks off a keyboard my father was sweet enough to buy me, since my earlier efforts with chopsticks to make "drums" were too bad even for me to abide. with each track addition, there would be degradation of another. it was a mess, but it was mine.
so many people were doing this kind of thing in the earlier net years, pretending to be a band, but working solo at home, trying to get their music out there. i certainly didn't feel unique, but it was certainly fun & exciting, too: i felt like a low-rent, nobody, distaff ed wood. but productive!! creating!! no matter how rotten the track, if it recorded, i'd usually roll with it, mostly out of fatigue & determination. this was when i'd just started a local underground paper & my total attitude was, just do it. don't look it too closely or you'll balk. make something, do something, or SHUT UP!!!
i took my crude but heartfelt love, loss, revenge songs, made a tape called "the dusk devils," & gave it to many people. i'd give them out, then run. maybe SOMEONE would hear the songs, through all the mess. the cover was a photoshop i made of me, me (me as twins), & my husband being choked by a young andre the giant. johnny fire in fl ended up recording one of the songs professionally - "my heart remembers when." recently, i pulled out the old recordings to see if any of them were salvagable for another music project i sort of have... i decided NO WAY!!! i was happy to realize, tho, like brian p has said, my playing has improved since back then, so i guess i need to tell him "thank you" since he was right. i used to scoff when he'd say it. those old recordings were not only emotionally naked in sentiment, but REALLY REALLY RAW (read: bad) in many ways!! i don't think i could or would ever perform them, but i like my lyrics & melodies, & i like my pretty, rottenly made songs, their stubborn horribleness & grit & yet how some parts ring out like lovely truths & how does that happen, anyway? there just must be a god.
these are the recordings that the original sinners & exene liked. :)
here's the letter angie, my younger sissy who had a birthday yesterday, got. thank you, ang, for sending the thank you note. i never would've thought to do so, & so never would've known that exene & her band liked my first songs, my earliest music. :)
"No thank her, Angie, This is Jason from Sinners. Please tell her for me that I'm in love with that terrible tape recording they gave us in Bakersfield when they opened for us years back. ["We" didn't because there was no band, but I'm glad to think he remembers it that way.] I still have it and it doesn't leave our truck often. The over driven bass, the screeching squirps of the recorder, the synthesizer drums, and through it all the most beautiful songs. It's a complete disaster. I consider it one of the greatest true psychobilly recordings I've ever heard. True love, Jason Edge"
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