Current Traffic

Thursday 24 April 2014

Post 502 - Cowboy & The Giants - Power Blues EP

Back in the late 90’s when I worked in radio in Orange NSW I was given a EP to play on my Australian show I did every week. It took my eye as the band did a cover of one of my favourite songs, Matt Taylor’s “I Remember When I Was Young”. The other day while going through some boxes of records I came across the EP and thought I should put it up on the Blog for all to hear as it is a great recording. The lead singer’s name is Brian Cain and there was a guy on my Face Book friends of the same name so I contacted him asking him was he the same guy by any chance, and this is what he wrote back to me....….Hi Garry, thanks for your message and indeed I am the one whom perpetuated the EP you refer to. I see you come from Orange and the EP has local history. It was recorded in Adelaide at Soundtrack Australia and the cover was done by a printer in Orange. I can't remember the printers name or location. The year was 1987 and I was the manager of Browns Creek Gold Mine near Blayney, during the course of recording and pressing the disc the mining company I worked with transferred me from Kalgoorlie in WA to Browns Creek when BHP bought the mine from Hickey. Thus the record was pressed in Sydney and the cover I arranged to have done in Orange, the printer even placed the discs in the sleeve, they were very helpful. I still have a few of the discs left in one remaining box probably around 100 or so, I can’t remember how many discs were pressed but it’s pretty rare. The disc was transferred to digital about six years ago when I had a recording studio in the Hunter Valley in which I recorded two albums both mixed and mastered in Germany. The bands I had in the 80s were finally made up of the members of Adelaide band Mickey Finn, my work often took me away they were hard times. You will notice the words sung on the track I remember when I was young are actually incorrect, due to learning the words from an old tape with the members of band Terra Firma put together in 1981 when I left The Others. We wrote down the words best we could make out with a cross section of the early band members unrelated to the ones recorded on the EP, they turned out to be wrong. Long-time friend Phil Manning asked later about the words but when I told him he wasn't surprised as the recording was difficult to make out precise elocution. We were always broke even though I worked two or three jobs in Adelaide and often went bush to mines to make money. When I had the money to record the EP x later members of my bands in Adelaide had a band called 'The Giants' nothing to do with the Melbourne band of the same name.  I negotiated with them, Stan Korytni, Mauri Berg and John Freeman all x Mickey Finn. I flew to Adelaide from Orange met the members at the studio and without rehearsal the EP was recorded. The final mix went to Festival Records in Sydney and the records were put into the sleeves in Orange. When I had earned enough money to make a film clip I contacted the band and they had split up, the project was lost. I continued on in the mining industry but still played and did not record again until 2006 with east coast band Indiana Phoenix when I had my own studio in the Hunter. I currently play local at the Irish pub in Bathurst and Orange with Sydney band Finn when they appear here.  If I knew a good guitar player locally I would probably play more often. …

Thanks Brian for your help, very much appreciated. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice share Ozzie

Great to have the back ground on the recording

Thanks


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