Pencilneck

These days I can write and record an album, and get it up onto Bandcamp, and the only time it leaves my laptop during that process is when the tracks go to Yoss for mastering. And I can take as long as I want at no extra cost.

But if I go back forty years, when my friend Simon and I wanted to record some songs, we had to either hire a Portastudio, which we did for our first album, 'Terestchenko', or go into a studio*, as we did for the second, 'Bizarre Fathers'.  

Either way, it cost us all the spare money we had and we were always under time pressure.

My brother and his bandmate, Dave, went a step further, paying to record three songs in a studio and then having a CD pressed. You can hear the songs here.

I went 'round to my brother's today, and in his home office/studio, on the wall, he has this canvas print of the CD cover. That's Dave in the picture, at a wedding when he was a lad. 

*The one we used was called Cobra, and I think it had an eight track desk.