endless automata

So, what should I happen to find this morning, but Drawing on Eve’s first attempt at recording our first album. It’s raw, and noisy, and it’s wonderful. I listened to the whole thing - hilariously on a tape titled “Olivia Newton John’s Greatest Hits”. What’s amazing is that most of the songs changed very little between this rough first recording and our official first album. Some of the more interesting differences:

• Prologue, Epilogue, Julia, 11:00, and Scorched Paper Way are all missing - Scorched Paper Way, Prologue and Epilogue hadn’t been written yet, I was thinking Julia was too soft for the album at the time, and 11:00 was, frankly, mostly filler.
• Saturday Night Seduction/sns - both versions had a little intro Ryan played - it’s probably better this was cut. Also, Ryan sings the full 3rd chorus over the solo on both versions instead of coming in at “Fly away with us.” I remember thinking he shouldn’t do that, but didn’t want to tell him how to run his song.
• Golden, Life, and Anonymous - slightly different lyrics.
• Dave has harmonica, and it’s mostly AWESOME - I wish we had kept that. Also, Jake does a sinister laugh at the end - and there’s the sound of a knife being sharpened and something being chopped at the beginning
• Glyss This - this version is hilarious - I actually sing totally different lyrics during the verses. During the break, instead of instrumental solos, we say things:
  • Jake - “Remember me?”
  • James - “Hey doobs!” - a common saying of the main subject of the song
  • James again - The best scream I ever recorded - I swear - really!
• When I Was - Mostly the same - except there’s Harmonica on this one too - which is not nearly as good as on Dave.

If there’s any interest - like if there’s still one DoE fan out there who actually is curious - and the other guys don’t mind, I’ll digitize the tape and post it.