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Saturday 16 June 2018

Post 709 - Marsh Brothers - Demo Tape


John Marsh was leader of Cowra band “Carlton” which you will find on post # 692. John and Brother Rusty recorded 3 demo songs (here to download) for Yeldah Music in 1995. I found this message Rusty left on another music site about the recordings:-
In the mid 90's, John and I were starting to "panic" about our age, and if we still belonged in the "Rock" scene. So we decided to venture into a bit of "Country"!
John wrote a heap of country songs...... I did help him "arrange" the songs (stacked the lyrics in a tidy pile!), and worked out all my own bass-lines, which took a good 10 minutes! We did a rough recording, and sent a demo to "Yeldah Music" (Hadley Studios-Eric Scott) in Tamworth, and he asked us to come up and record 3 songs! John was so excited and told me to stop washing my Magna, as I would now be able to buy a Merc! Yeah right!
As most of you would know, professional artists can spend a full week in the studio just perfecting "one" song! From memory, it was about a six hour drive from Cowra to Tamworth. After the long drive, we recorded the "three" songs in "one" hour, and drove straight back to bloody Cowra!  It was a "promotional" CD for Yeldah Music, consisting of our 3 songs, and 12 other songs belonging to 8 other artists. It was called "Song Plugger Series No.3"! Wonder why it didn't sell??!!
The recording was pretty rough, and John was upset that he was not allowed to use any effects pedals whatsoever! Pedals!! What are they? I'm just a bass player with a cheap Aussie Eminar amp and Ibanez bass! We also used a "drum machine", which I operated manually with foot pedals! That's right, I did have pedals!
Our songs were all true stories:-
1. “Coming Home”- A story about a Woman from Canowindra whose husband went to the Vietnam War.
2.”Pay The Price” - Apparently is about "me", when my then wife was screwing around, and I was ready to shoot anyone who had a dick!
3.”She Must Be Crazy” - A song about our older Sister who was a real Tom-Boy, and mad-as-a-meataxe! Flac