Hello, my name is Carter and I
will be your host for the Telepathic Dumpster Basement Tapes series. All the tracks in this basement tapes
series are recorded on a Radio Shack CTR-112 portable handheld tape recorder
that I typically set on top of a beer cooler in the middle of our rehearsal
space and turn on while we practice.
The cassette recordings are then digitally recorded, edited, and exported
to mp3 using Audacity, an excellent—and free—digital recording program. For being so goddamned cheap (I think
the tape recorder cost me $19.95 or so) the little tape recorder does a really
good job, as the surprisingly decent fidelity of these recordings should
convince you. I hope you shark-heads enjoy these eclectic, raw tracks, and
LONG LIVE THE AUDIO CASSETTE!!!
Simply click on a song name to play
the song, or right mouse click and select “save target as” to save to your
computer.
Straight Up
[recorded 5-8-05]
This is the
jam with which we began our rehearsal on May 8, 2005. I have always secretly hoped that we
would develop this into a bona fide song and play it more often.
[recorded 5-8-05]
What could be more appropriate for one of the
first releases in the “basement tapes” series of Telepathic
Dumpster rehearsals than The Rat Song as it was first played on the
night we spontaneously created it?
A classic!
[recorded 5-8-05]
A throw-away
song that’s actually kind of catchy. . . and permits Carl to drink beer the
whole time.
[recorded 5-8-05]
This was just
one of those creative nights. . . Fly High is an improvised number we have never
done anything further with. Maybe
this will serve as a reminder. . .
[recorded 8-5-05]
This is an a capella improvisation we did during a break at a recent rehearsal—I find the lyrics and tune to be immensely enjoyable and memorable.
[recorded 8-7-05]
A track slated for “official” release on our forthcoming CD Hot as Hell, in a rocking rehearsal version.
[recorded 8-7-05]
This song seemed to go over rather well at our recent (8-31-05) Black Forest show, so here it is for your home listening pleasure.
[recorded 8-12-05]
I wrote this song back in the early 1990s and haven’t played it since then. But the groove we got on it on this recording is so delectable that I felt obliged to include it in the basement tapes series.
[recorded 8-12-05]
Some songs just sound better in a low-tech recording environment, and Lava is one such song. For pure energy and ethos, this might be my favorite recording of the song to date.
[recorded 8-12-05]
To me, Shuttlecock Rock is a great summer song about one of the loveliest (and most underrepresented in rock) of summer activities, badminton. Here is a rehearsal recording of this party epic caught at the height of summer 2005. Interestingly, this particular version also represents my first foray into using the editing features on my Audacity sound recording software: that night in August, we stopped the song short of the end, in order to discuss and learn the ending itself, and played the newly completed Shuttlecock Rock denouement a little further along on the tape. I have digitally grafted the (delayed) ending onto the rest of the song.
[recorded 8-12-05]
This recording proves that you can never have too many recordings of Black Orifice.
[recorded 8-12-05]
To my knowledge, we have yet to
record this song in any other medium.
It’s one of those perennial classics that we keep forgetting about at
16-track recording time for some reason.
Also, this is another track that has benefitted from my ability to use my
Audacity sound editing program to splice together two different versions of the
song—the splice occurs just as the
verse starts again at about the two minute mark. (Another case where we had to stop the
song during rehearsal to figure out the ending.)
Salt
[recorded 5-13-05]
Once again, using the editing capabilities of my sound recording software, I have been able to restore the ending to Salt, a great Carl-penned song that we played at both of our two coffehouse shows in June 2005. There is a little bit of distortion on this recording that I have been unable to filter out—probably due to the original placement of the tape recorder.