From Carl Edge on recording the original 45 single Down and Out which was used for the Fishmasters theme song... In 1984 I was in a hard rock band in South Texas called Quasimodo. I played bass and did vocal duties, Raul Medina played drums, Roger Romero and Roland Salinas played guitar. We hadnt been playing very long together and at that point had only really played parties and for small groups of friends. We rented some time in a recording studio called Hacienda in Corpus Christi, Texas with the hopes of recording an Iron Maiden influenced original song called Chargazzar. Having no experience we spent about an hour of our time just trying to figure out where to plug in. Finally the engineer came out of the control room and helped us set up. Of course we were still on the clock and had only paid for about 6 hours of recording time. They put the drummer in the big room and put me in a small room with my bass amp in yet another room. We listened to each other on headsets. I could see the drummer and he could see both me and Roger (who was in another room). Roland was playing guitar in what could only be described as a closet. He couldnt see any of us. To make matters worse his headset continuously cut out. Amazingly he was able to just continue playing even though half the time he had no idea what we were playing or where we were in the song yet he was always somehow in sync with the rest of us. I was very uncomfortable trying to play with my amp in another room and listening to my vocals and bass through less than stellar headsets. --This is no reflection on Hacienda studios--they were fantastic and had produced some amazing Tex-Mex records, but we were inexperienced in a studio and they did not understand what we were going for. We just went along with whatever the engineer told us to do and figured everyone else must have recorded in similar conditions as well. After struggling for awhile we decided to record the music first and then go back in and lay down the vocals. When it was played back for us there was very little distortion on the guitars and for some reason it was sped up. Instead of having an Iron Maiden quality it had more of a Rockabilly/Punk feel. As the clock kept ticking we kept re-recording trying to get what we had originally intended, but each take was worse--and the engineer kept trying to clean up the sound... We didnt want to leave the studio without having recorded anything so in the last minutes of our time we quickly recorded two original songs that were shorter and more similar to the hard rock songs getting airplay in 1984. For the price of the recording time Hacienda also provided a mixed reel to reel tape and a few hundred 45 singles. We werent very happy with the single at the time, but we did manage to get it on several juke boxes in South Texas (just before they began converting to CD) and we sold a handful at record stores in the area. We also got a little radio airplay locally, but only because a friend of ours worked at a radio station and he put our single into the MTV mix which consisted of about 13 songs from MTV artists that were rotated into the schedule. I dont know which MTV artist got replaced by us--but that particular station played most of their music off pre-recorded carts and one of the MTV carts was re-labeled Rox (they didnt use the bands real name because the guy sneaking us into the mix thought one of the dee jays on duty might recognize the local band name Quasimodo). The Rox cart alternately played the two tracks from the single and that cart was included in the MTV mix that played throughout the evening... but that only lasted a month or two before the whole MTV mix was dropped altogether and the songs never got airplay again... until Down and Out was re-purposed for the Fishmasters theme song.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 09:08:08 +0000