Bill suggested a studio in St Kilda he recorded before with the Tide. We went in with the intention to record 2 songs and release a independent 7” single. We had booked the studio for a day, not a long time, but Bill assured us we could do it. Bill had invited Ivan to the studio a well as a friend of his Ian to play Hammond organ. Ian was a tall blonde guy with this old 60’s keyboard with a pair of Leslie speakers that had a great retro sound. The mix of musicians was exciting, we had the song, we had the band and we had studio time.
The session started well but the recording got bogged down very quickly as we were not at all happy with sound the engineer getting, he was relatively inexperienced, but he tried hard. After a few hours of trying to perfect the sound, Bill got pretty frustrated and left the studio. He had only put down a few of his parts but wasn't happy with the results. Then Adam stepped up to the microphone and totally dominated. It was like he was a seasoned pro in the studio. Put down his guitar bits in one or two takes. Done. Bill eventually returned and finished his parts and within the day we had 2 songs down on DAT. We listened to the mix and we all realised that the recording was not good enough for release as a single, a demo would have to do for now. Bands get gigs with demos, and some even get record contracts. Fingers crossed we get both.
We put the two songs on out first demo tape and started to distribute the tape around Melbourne. We got a mixed reaction from venues, some liked the demo, but some didn’t, it was after all the height of grunge and the Seattle sound, and we weren’t a grunge band. It got us gigs at places like The Arthouse, Nicholson’s Hotel and The Perseverance Hotel, the but we quickly realised a demo tape was not going to go far. We needed to go back to the studio and try to put something out independently. That was the norm in the 80's and 90's.
