My eye is still out for it, but it hasn’t been seen in 20 year and not likely to turn up, but there was a tape of a band, during their only practice, in a chicken-coupe practice space in a Bloomington attic... next to a homemade skate ramp... name forgotten... I was on guitar, Reid on bass, Matt Williams on drums and Bobby Schifano on vocals. I remember that we did “Paint It Black” and that Bobby sounded exactly like Cookie Monster. Very exactly. I also remember him thanking me putting a band together for him to eat cookies with. Crossed it off his bucket list.
Spin-o-rama...
That’s a tape I want to hear. My mom would say, “pray to St. Anthony.” The patron saint of lost things.
I miss you, Bobby. I’d say Rest In Peace, but that wasn’t your thing.
Another tape that I’d like to find but I won’t is that from our home answering machine in the 80s. The outgoing message tape that looped when you used it on a regular recorder.
If I found it, the ideal recording would no longer be on it. I used that machine and tape up, experimenting... the main experiment being the making of phone calls to people, speaking over my own voice looping in the tape.
It had come from my dad’s insurance office. A pretty pimp machine. I would record conversations and start playing them back during the call. Those were pimp moves back then for a 13 year old.
What was originally on that loop tape was my dad’s voice. A deep, loud, clear, professional voice announcing the opportunity to leave us a message.
He spent his final 10+ years without that voice. Cancer got him by the throat. He could talk, but it was work to hear or understand him, and it was obviously very frustrating for him.
After he died, at some point, in hopes to hear his big healthy voice again, my mom speculated that maybe those answering machine tapes were still around.
My life is, in a way, held together by tape. Always fascinated by it. Always experimenting with it. Wish I was more organized about it, but I guess you don’t know, when you’re young, what’s going to be important later.
Got to thinking about Bobby. I do have a very short clip of him on tape. One of these Tiamat recordings on here has a bit, perfectly squeezed between two songs by the band...
Melanie Upton: “Who are you?”
Bobby: “I’m Bobby!”
Melanie: “Hiii Bobby!”
I wanted to find that for his brother, to hear Bobby’s distinctive voice again.
Next thing I knew, I was thinking about Cookie Monster and how I wish I had more tape. Bobby was such a loyal friend. In that aspect of life, he was a role model.
Go Bears!
I’m not proofreading this.
Comments
Post a Comment