Sometimes I wish that I had a photographic memory so I could revisit moments from my childhood in much greater detail. Moments such as:
- Trips to visit the grandparents
- Buying very pivotal albums from my favorite bands
- The year I had chicken pox and got a plastic dinosaur bottle of amazing smelling shampoo for Christmas
I could always go for more info as far as those and other highly important moments in life like them are concerned. I remember various little random snippets but not as much as I’d like to. I want specific dates and to know what I was wearing! I envy Marilu Henner whenever I see her on talk shows and they quiz her on what she wore on such-and-such date 20 years ago. Not only will she accurately recall that information, but also who she was with and what they were wearing to boot… and then just as you think she’s pulling random stuff out of her arse they’ll show a photo of her on the day they’re asking about and I’ll be derned, she’s spot-on. I don’t know why I’d like to have that ability – it’s pretty useless information but it would be fun to remember stuff like what shirt, pants and shoes I wore on the fateful 1982 day that I bought Stray Cats Built For Speed album at K-Mart.
Somewheres around 1979-1981-ish whenever we would go to my Grampa Freeman’s house on Wilder Ave. in St. Paul my Aunt Lucy and sis Lisa would practice disco dancing moves in his den. I don’t know how many times this happened but I would think at least a half-dozen. I vividly remember the smell of that room; much like the rest of the first level of Gramp’s house it was a weird olfactory buffet of bacon, fireplace and moth balls with a hint of natural gas from the stove in the nearby kitchen. Here’s where I’d channel my inner Marilu Henner if I could… I want more info! I think that the den had shag carpet, sort of a loud calico cat pattern. I think the walls were a deep, dark brown (faux wood panels, methinks?) with dark brown sofa and ceiling light to match. I’m pretty sure that’s the same sofa that ended up at his Pelican Lake cabin that I would gently rub my mosquito bites on because the textured upholstery provided slightly more soothing relief than my rigid chewed-up fingernails did.
The Solid Gold dancers
Thanks for the memories, Google Maps. This is the disco den house (it used to be white)
I digress. It’s easy for my brain to go astray when it comes to that house on Wilder or any of my grandpa’s dwellings, they were like walking into another dimension. Back to those disco sessions my aunt and sis had: While they were in the den mastering The Hustle, Boogaloo, or whatever else, we would be in another room where I was most likely drawing pictures with pencils that had rock-hard oily erasers (all of Freeman’s pencils were that way) or reading a KISS magazine. I reckon they played music as they danced but don’t remember hearing any. I knew my aunt went to dance clubs (did they still call them “discos” in 1981?) and as they were in that den dancing away with the doors shut I would imagine what the clubs she went to were like. Having watched my fair share of Dance Fever, American Bandstand and my favorite show of all SOLID GOLD by that time I just assumed it was like all three of those shows combined. I’m sure that’s exactly what it was.
This brings me to chapter 6 of this TriplePlay-induced 70s/80s synth kick I’m on, “Disco Dance Party In Grandpa’s Den”. As soon as I combined the opening bass line with the dorky wobbly sounding DEVO-inspired synthesizers I started to have flashbacks to that den and the sweet disco dancing that I never really saw but knew went on in there. The tune doesn’t necessarily sound like something they’d dance to (nor is it very disco-y) but if that’s the gut-reaction vibe I get from it, then so be it. It is what it isn’t.
This music started as a cheeky joke which it still is but I’ve become obsessed with it and am having a blast making it. I hate… HATE playing guitar solos but this stuff makes it really fun. In that regard this tune channeled my inner Ace Frehley, Prince, and David Gilmour. I’m not even familiar with much of Gilmour’s playing but when I listened back to the second solo in this “song” it reminded me of the solo in Paul McCartney’s “No More Lonely Nights” which is a tune I’ve always loved. I only recently learned that Gilmour played the guitar solo on that!
These songs are kind of like what I constantly wanted more of when I was a kid and listened to Art of Noise but didn’t know where to find it. It’s waaay out of my comfort zone and opening my eyes to new (to me) things about mixing, recording, guitar playing (all of the sounds in these recordings were played on my guitar using the Fishman TriplePlay pickup), and creating music in general. Just like the hokey pokey, that’s what it’s all about.
