The Missing Overdub of 1987!

How a memory haunts the musician. -by Larry Crane

The first album I was ever a player/co-writer/band member on was recorded in fall 1986. We tracked the Vomit Launch record (Not Even Pretty) over a two-day weekend at Lowdown Studios, San Francisco, CA, (on Otari MX-5050 8-track 1/2-inch) and then returned a few weeks later to hang out while our engineer/producer/friend, Greg Freeman, mixed it (to 1/4-inch tape). I remember that Greg told me he had felt rushed, and later re-issues of this material used mostly remixes he had done afterwards on his own without our obnoxious input (“More reverb. No, MORE reverb.”).

When we entered the studio in fall 1987 for what became Exiled Sandwich, our second album, Greg suggested that he could mix it on his own and mail us cassettes to review (we lived 3 hours away in Chico, CA). We acquiesced, and the album came out sounding great. But there was one little nagging thing that I still remember. On the last track of the LP, “Lift,” I had overdubbed tambourine hits through Greg’s Yamaha SPX90 reverb at the end of the song, hoping to add some little ambience shift as it faded out. In Greg’s mix, the tambourine wasn’t there, but I never asked about it. Maybe I’d played it off time? Maybe it didn’t need to be there? Maybe it was punched in on the tail of the vocal track and Greg muted the vocal when it was finished and didn’t remember that the part was on there? Either way, it honestly didn’t matter much as the song sounded fine as it was, so I never worried about it. Yet, for some stupid reason I still remembered that the part was missing.

All of the old Vomit Launch tapes were transferred years ago by Tardon Feathered at Mr. Toad’s in the Bay Area. I went back and dug up the 8-track transfer for reel #4 from these sessions just to see what was there. I could see that VOX OD A had a tambourine punch in noted on the track sheet.

I loaded the files into Pro Tools, snooped around, and then created a new mix of the song. Steve Bragg’s cool-ass drum part was inspired by Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” – probably not something bands playing Gilman St. with us would have thought was cool. As Patricia de Rowland (now Patricia Howard)’s VOX OD B wasn’t used in the final mix, and veers off into different entry points for the lyrics, I used B as a double on the “chorus” sections in the first part of the song, and then swapped B in as the lead after that. I also kept in Lindsey Thrasher’s rhythm guitar in the opening section, something Greg had brought in later (a brilliant choice). I believe her guitar melody at the end (at 3:50 when the vocals end and the tambo comes in) was inspired by a part in some New Zealand band’s song; maybe one by Sneaky Feelings? I dropped that into a big reverb plug-in (Baby Audio’s Crystalline) at that section. As the original “Lift” had a nice fade out, I let this one play out at the end so we could hear the horrid bass wanking and Lindsey giving up. I do think the tape actually ran out! This song had existed in a roughed out form previous to entering the studio and not played live yet, and we decided to attempt it as more of a studio experiment to leave some open space for accidents and magic to happen. Note that Patricia doesn’t really follow the changes in my bass line. I think that’s cool! Obviously the key and chord never changes…

But the tambourine. Hmmm. Kind of not played that well, I’d say. I should have not done the pickup hits. The way I play (or coach players on) this sort of part now would be to hit the tambourine with a stick or mallet in order to get a clean thwack, and to play as little as possible. I did something like this just the other day, and also piped the sound into our EMT 140 plate reverb – it sounded pretty cool!

The “new” mix of “Lift” by Larry Crane in 2024.

The “old” mix of “Lift” by Greg Freeman in 1987.

It’s always interesting (for me) to hear alternate mix versions of songs like this. Mixing is just opinions and choices, right?