Sentimental treasures
KeithHandy posted in Old skool on June 24th, 2007
While you’re waiting for my next exciting instructional video (I won’t tell you what it’s about yet, but it’s something that begins with the letter “S”… What? No, not “sex”, you moron…), I’d like to point you to a May post I just found on Matrixsynth that whisked me back to a personal yesteryear. Someone named Ron has posted the audio from several “soundpages”, the thin, flexible records that were included in issues of Keyboard Magazine in the mid 1980s, right around the time when I was reading it fervently.
I used to make mix tapes from these records, so I could listen to them more passively, and give some of the weirder and more experimental stuff a chance to inject itself into my subconscious. Although any collection like this is bound to be incomplete, there was a lot more overlap than I expected between what’s here and what I remember. A few of them are B-sides featuring ads for Kurzweil and Kawai instruments, which are fun in an “OMG the 80s were actually quaint” kind of way. Do you remember when announcers didn’t all sound like vomiting teenagers on speed? (Incidentally, last I knew — back when I watched television — Paul Shaffer was using that Kurzweil on Letterman’s show. For its time it was admittedly pretty hot… but one of the demos here, subtitled “Rock Block”, features some of the least-convincing “guitars” I’ve ever heard. Ah, who cares, rock was dead anyway.) One of the soundpages even featured my favorite columnist, Freff, whose way-off-topic articles on creativity I still keep copies of today — although, truthfully, that particular record is kind of corny, and I cringe a bit to envision it as your introduction to him.
If you want to hear these, but don’t like Windows Media files, let me know, because as soon as I downloaded them I immediately converted them to mp3 and gave them proper tags. Now if only somebody could post that mix cassette I stole from a house party in college, declared to be “stupid”, and promptly became addicted to, until it found its way into the laundry, care of a careless family member who shall not be named… sigh… they do hand all that stuff back to you when you check into the afterlife, right? (Uh, Keith… no, not if it was stolen. HTH.)
P.S. - If you want one more hint about the upcoming video… it’s sort of relevant to this post… in a way.
