I've been playing guitar since I was about 18 (I'm 28 now) and had a few vocal lessons when I was in my mid 20's. The result was that I spent 1996 and 1997 performing as a soloist in pubs and gaming lounges around Adelaide. I performed The Traveller as a regular song and occasionally found myself screaming through Waiting For The Hurricane. Other than that, I've busked in London and done a `cameo' appearance at the famous Red Garter in Florence (that's what the picture is from).

Well, it's been a very long time since I made the recording, it was `probably' early 1996 or late 1995 (maybe even longer ago!) when I did it. It was when Cesar Quintero first floated the idea of an album. Anyway, the song was recorded on a Tascam four-track machine in my bedroom, the tracks being.....

Track 1. Sequencer and Acoustic rhythm guitar - I created a sequence in Procyon Pro based on the sheet music from the Anthology book for the piano (it was never actually played, just clicked and dragged), the original recording for the percussion part (found the pattern and then cut and pasted it throughout the song) and a pretty basic bass riff which was the chord's root just played in the same pattern for the whole song. I chucked in some pan pipes in a couple of places as well if I recall. The sequencer was a Korg I5M. Over this I added the rhythm guitar part from my Takamine acoustic.

Track 1a. Riff - Basically this is just me picking the individual notes of the chords played on the guitar of track 1. It was probably a mistake to mix this in with track 1, because once I had done so and reused what originally was track 2, I couldn't mix the volumes/tones again.

Track 2. Lead vocal1 - Yuk! I think I sound OK singing live, but I don't really like the sound of my voice on record without....

Track 3. Lead vocal2 - Did the vocals a second time and mixed it in at a slightly lower volume.

Track 4. Guitar solo - Again played on the Takamine acoustic, basically I didn't have any structure planned for the solo and this was my third take. I knew how many bars I had to fill in and I knew the key I could play in. It's a minor pentatonic and it's ad-libbed ....I think I droped into a major pentatonic for the chorus.

All tracks except the sequencer went through an Alesis Quadreverb before making it to the tape which added chorus and delay, basically the guitar sounds a bit like a 12-string and the vocals each sound like there's a backup singer.... I suppose there are four of me on the tape.

The original recording was on just a domestic cassette which I took to a friend's place and mixed down onto a DAT to send to Cesar. And now it finally ended up on the tribute CD!