Twenty-Nine Years Ago

In early 1997 Elliott Smith and I opened a recording studio. -by Larry Crane

A friend just dropped off a scan of this receipt below. It’s from Super Duper, where Elliott Smith and I shopped all the time when building out and setting up Jackpot! Recording Studio in 1997. Super Duper became Super Digital a few years later, and moved from this location at 134 SW Alder St. in Portland. This receipt tells a bigger story though.

We’d just taken possession of an MCI JH-16 2-inch, 16-track tape deck that I’d bought from a studio in Greensboro, NC. Read more of Jackpot!’s tape deck history here. My dad, Richard Crane, took the photo below as we rolled it into the live room.

I’m pretty sure we asked Rick McMillen, Super Duper’s owner, who in town would be good for tape deck maintenance, and the name Mike Everhart came up. I called Mike, and he told me to get an MRL test tone tape for my deck, as he needed that to set it up.

Elliott must have offered to buy the MRL tape on February 2nd, 1997, as I’d just spent $3000 or so on the tape deck. I cannot believe the reel cost $495, though a new one now is $1075! He also picked up a little Samson Q5 headphone amp, which just recently we let go.

I think the test tape disintegrated along the way, or maybe it’s at New Monkey Studio? I don’t think it was packed up for that trip! It’s dizzying to look back 29 years and think about how much my life has changed. Elliott and my dad are gone. The studio has been in a new building for almost 19 years. But Mike Everhart still repairs our tape decks, and we still have a lot of MRL test tone tapes!