Side
1:
The
Ghost Train - Waiting for Madness
One of my favorite Ghost Train songs, Scotty's - "it's morning
in your
kingdom" line always gives me chills, I wondered if he was thinking of
the Kingdom of Fife. This was recorded by the band in their third line
up (Scotty - vocals and keyboards, Ewan Slorach - drums, Davie "Chas"
Brown - guitar, Mark Nicol - guitar and John Lessells - bass). This was
recorded in Dick G's 16 track studio in Carnoustie in June of 1987, and
was the bands third studio session (the second having produced the
single "Killing Time" / "Hope and Glory"). I think the songs from
the Carnoustie sessions were the only ones the band didn't release in
any form (apart from on this cassette), the other songs that were
recored in those session were Wicked Wicked/Waiting For
Madness/Barricade/Being
There and Dusty Bedrooms. Wicked Wicked is also on the Stupefied
cassette, the rest I think was never released in any way.
Unfortunately, despite being a highlight of the cassette, the audio
quality of "Waiting for Madness" was always very dodgy. It sounded like
the version distributed on Stupefied was from a second generation
original and that the tape machine that had recorded the second
generation copy from the original master had suffered from "flutter"
(recording variations in higher frequencies due to mechanical
irregularities in the drive of the cassette recorder). Also, being
third generation analogue it was very hissy and sounded "compressed". I
was quite pleased with the audio work I did on the track, but listening
to it again with all the others, it still sounds quite bad. Happily I
believe the original master tapes of this session do exist in Scotty's
vault, so we may hear this version of the song in all it's glory again
one day. There was a second version of "Waiting for Madness" recorded
by the band in their fourth line up (with Jeremy Flynn on guitar), and
this was released on vinyl, but only in the US I believe. You can hear
this version on the Ghost Train page.
The
Receiving End - He's the Man
The line up of the band on the above song are, Danny Holland - bass and
vocals, Jeremy Pullar - guitar, Steve Kennedy - guitar and Alan
Bernard - drums. One of the songs I didn't listen too much too on
the original cassette, but a good example of how much you can improve
the quality of an analogue cassette recording with some very simple
work in Audacity. It sounds like the version on Stupefied was made from
a first generation original, so the quality of this song is really
rather good now. I love Danny Holland's bass playing.
All
Days Fade - ADF
Despite knowing Cameron and Clark from the band, I have no idea where
this came from. It sounds like it was recorded at a rehearsal - they
used to rehearse up at Balwerie High School. Imagine they rented out
classrooms at the weekend for bands to rehearse in, I remember watching
the band rehearse in the same room I struggled to understand maths in
the late '70's! The sound of this recording has a bit of the same
acoustics you got in these classrooms, but that could be my
imagination. My little Marantz cassette recorder that I used a lot to
record bands was getting loaned out a bit to Cameron at the time,
so it's possible that it was used to record this. Certainly there is no
distortion caused by using automatic record level to record a live
band, so it possible this was the Marantz on it's manual setting.
Silent
Falls - You Go Bye
Like the Receiving End material, this came up well when it went through
Audacity.
Elephants
and Weasels - I Saw You
I doubt if many people have heard this in twenty years, this was one of
the songs that has not been up on the site before. I don't know a huge
amount about this, but I think this was a little side project with
Cameron from All Days Fade and Colin from the Twist. This is the first
of six songs on Stupefied that Colin is on (he is, of course, on vocals
with The Twist and on drums with Who Cares). I think this is Cameron on
guitar and vocals and Colin on bass and drums. Was probably recorded in
Colin's small studio in his attic, the same place where The Twist
material and "Family Man" by Who Cares? was recorded.
The
Twist - If Ye Like
This is an early incarnation of the band, before Derek joined on bass.
So it's Colin Livingston - bass and vocals, Colin Usher - drums,
Ian Cummings and Stewart McCreddie on guitars. This (and "Ask a
Rhetorical Question") was also released on the band's first demo tape,
the "Strangefruit" tape, which you can hear in it's entirety on the
Twist page. I realised this morning that I have screwed up here and,
having spent ages trying to restore these songs from Stupefied, I now
realise that there are already versions of the same songs on the Twist
page that
Ian restored from the Strangefruit tape. Really, the song above didn't
need too much restoration and sounded pretty good with a few tweaks.
The version Ian restored from Strangefruit has been left on the Twist
page.
Who
Cares?! - Thank Crunchie it's Friday
This is the line up of the band that played most of the gigs: Coln
Burns - vocals, Derek Anderson - bass, Ian Cargill - guitar and Colin
Livingston - drums. This was actually recorded on my little Marantz
portable
cassette recorder at a gig in the Abbosthall. The Marantz's big, big
benefit (despite being mono!) was that it had
manual record level, so the record level was able to be set real low to
avoid the inevitable distortion that resulted in recording a live band
with a cassette machine with automatic record level (you can hear that
a
few of the recordings of early Ghost Train gigs suffer from that
problem). The cassette recorder was sitting on our table at gig and it
manages to capture a lot of our side conversations, as well as the
band. There were only two Who Cares? gig's that were recorded, I
recorded them both. This is the only surviving part of the better of
the two recordings. I have no idea what happened to the original
cassette as it was Ian's and I think it was loaned out shortly after
being used for Stupefied and it was never seen again. Nice at least to
have this fragment. This was the only song on Stupefied that I didn't
have a original WAV file to work with, the audio restoration work was
done from an MP3 copy, so it's possible with an uncompressed copy taken
from the Stupefied cassette that this could be improved further. I
don't think this sounds too bad too, and the band are in cracking form
and there is loads of atmosphere from the gig itself captured on the
recording.
Side 2:
The
Twist - Ask a Rhetorical Question
One of my favorite songs on Stupefied. The lyric is a little bit of
social commentary and is so redolent of those times from the late
1980's. The "girl in the ball gown", mentioned in the lyric I think
refers to a real incident at a party, but I have long forgotten who was
involved and what it was all about and I probably wouldn't repeat it
all here anyway. It does bring back so many memories though of
going endless house parties (usually after the pub), seeing
mostly the same people all the time, and there often being young girls,
not really able to handle their drink. A good time, but when you are
young there is often a lot of emotion around. "Are we ever happy with
what we've got", is also a young
person's hang up, that I remember so well from the time. This song,
like
"If Ye Like" was also on "Strangefruit" and this is a restored version
from Stupefied, Ian's restored version from "Strangefruit" is on the
Twist page. For some reason I've yet to figure out, the hiss was more
difficult to remove from the WAV file of side two of the tape, than
side one, so this restoration is not perfect, especially at the
beginning. The one Ian did from Strangefruit has less hiss, but it has
one or
two "pops" that were probably caused by minor creases on the original
tape.
All
Days Fade - Angel (Live)
I think this was recorded on my little Marantz portable
cassette recorder at a gig in the Abbosthall. I have no memory of the
gig, but it's possible that I wasn't there as Ian borrowed that Marantz
machine a few times to record gigs for Cameron. The band sound to
be on good form at this gig.
Silent
Falls - On My Own
The
Ghost Train - Wicked Wicked
The
Receiving End - Castles in the Sand
Elephants
and Weasels - Mr. Sentimental
Was probably recorded at the same time as "I Saw You" on side one, but
really I don't know much about this. Cameron sounds like he is trying
to sing in the style of Bob Calvert here.
Who
Cares?! - Family Man
This was the only "studio" recording Who Cares? did. It may have been
recorded especially for Stupefied. The line up here is Coln Burns -
vocals and guitar, Derek Anderson - bass and Colin Livingston - drums.
Ian remembers that he was not present at the recording as he was with
me at a Peter
Hammill gig in London, so I can date the recording of this fairly
accurately as the gig was February 14th 1988. This is the only track
that I did any editing on. There was a very clunky analogue edit (you
could hear the tape desk being turned on) between the sound sample and
the song, so I took the liberty of taking that out.
Download whole Stuplified
Cassette (Zip File, 63MB)
Follow
this link to download
other audio formats (FLAC and OGG)
