As I’ve ranted before, re-mastering a record is a lot like the experience of Ebenezer Scrooge. You get to see all yer past sins again and again. And again. And as I’ve also ranted before, I put off re-mastering Positive because it carried the greatest number of past sins. (Who knew that recording was so hard? 😀 )
Over the years, fans have told me that one of the songs that succeeded best on Positive was ‘This Time’. I think this is partly because I was still quite under the influence of Brazilian jazz so the playing was fairly ‘hip.’ Or maybe it just has something of a ‘smooth jazz’ vibe (shudder.)
But I’d also like to think it resonates with people because it was most sincere in it’s sentiments. I was at a point in life where I was determined to re-invent myself just as is the guy in the song.
As I said, re-mastering is tough. But listening to that autobiographical wailing over and over these days only adds to the deja vú. Because in addition to having to hear all the technical mistakes about a billion times over, all the repetition just hammers in song’s message with all the subtlety of a cultural revolution re-education camp.
The guy in the song pleads about running out of time and not being able to make any more excuses. No more waiting. This is it. OK, so that was ‘it’ ten years ago. I was determined to be a musician and do ‘my thing.’
And now it’s ten years later and ‘this is it’ is here. Again. The clock is ticking.
How many ‘it’ moments does one get in life? I mean, supposedly Ebenezer had his ‘it’ moment and then lived happily ever after.
In addition to my technical naiveté, I was perhaps still too young or unsophisticated to realise that there is no one ‘it’ moment in life. Maybe there are no ‘turning points’; only challenges that come along from time to time, none of which carry a lifetime reward or redemption. Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to do a truly ‘zen’ song that sells. (Hell, what have I got to worry about? 😀 )
I’ll let you in on one other crummy aspect of re-mastering these records. I probably shouldn’t cop to it at this point, but what the heck. Every time I’ve done a re-master, I get about one hundred ideas for new material. It taunts me just as I’m trying to focus on getting the old material in shape. Is my id a complete prick or what? Under other circumstances, I might spend weeks ‘trying’ to be ‘creative’ and…. nothing. But just tell me I gotta focus on cleaning up Positive and just watch the ideas for everything but Positive start flying left and right.
Oh, the creative ways one can find to not get down to business. Take blo…
😉
