Today I’m working on a tape from June 2002 called CID Live! CANARSIE. That’s the only identifying marker on the outside. The inside flap lists the contents of Silver Jews Starlite Walker on side A and Nikki Sudden and “various stuff from 45s”. I have a suspicion who’s handwriting this is, but not 100% sure. It does not sound like that material was taped over, rather that I needed a cassette flap and took this one, probably no longer in use. Also, the flap is from a Radio Shack LN60 and the tape itself is a Maxell UR90.

For context: I was still living in Brooklyn at the time, but not for much longer. My apartment was a basement in Canarsie, and by June 2002 I was living there alone.

Side A of this tape says “Free Bass latte June ‘02” but so far appears to be just me on my acoustic bass (like a Violent Femmes style acoustic bass) singing some of my songs from that era, despite me usually reserving the term ‘Free Bass’ for woodshedding by running the drum machine from the Casio through one input and my electric bass through the other.

The tape quality on this side is pretty poor. I did side B the other day and the quality was bad, but this side is even worse. It’s not quite unlistenable, but it’s going to take some serious cleanup before I release it. I started with “It Hurts Me More Than You”. I was playing around with this song at this point. I’d done it with my first band, and would record it with my next. There’s slightly different lyrics on the last verse here than that recording.

Then I do Life As A Movie, which I’d probably just written and remember thinking was the best thing I’d done so far. Then “The Outer Limits” on which I’m also working with some preliminary lyrics.

And holy shit out of nowhere there’s a cover of Modest Mouse’s “Trailer Trash” which is actually pretty decent. I’m still very raw in both playing and songwriting at this point, and I haven’t yet figured out how to sing or write for my voice. I go back into the Outer Limits riff for a bit, then I’m just jamming out for a bit. This sounds like a very early version of “Complicado”. But there’s a completely different vocal.

Then it’s a couple of stabs at one of the first songs I ever wrote, I don’t know if I ever finished this or named it. It’s just G – Em over and over, with some stop start dynamics and changes of phrasing in the vocals. There’s a lot of lyrics here…. some are good but some are just terrible.

Wow now I’m covering a song from my first band called “Breath of Life”. Our keyboardist Daryl came up with the riff and all three of us wrote our own verse. This is awesome. So great to have all the right lyrics on tape. No way I would have ever remembered them otherwise.

Then I do Life As A Movie, which I’d probably just written and remember thinking was the best thing I’d done so far. Then “The Outer Limits” on which I’m also working with some preliminary lyrics.

Finally, with about ten minutes left on the take, some Free Bass!!! The acoustic session ends and the familiar Casio drum machine kicks in. Sounds like I’m trying to riff on “When the Saints Come Marching In”. Tape quality is much better, more comparable to the other side. I guess I taped all that acoustic stuff over the first part of this. I quickly fall into a bouncy riff I like and proceed to work it over and over and over. This was the general purpose of Free Bass. I’d been playing on and off (mostly off) for ten years at this point. I wasn’t that good and I’d only been in one band and was just trying to play as much as possible to get better. The tape cuts off suddenly.

I have hundreds of these tapes and recently I bought an old Tascam Ministudio Porta MKII off Reverb in order to digitize them before they fall apart. I am only putting up excerpts at this point, but if people want to hear the actual tapes I’ll start uploading stuff to bandcamp.

This is an ongoing project.

– jo 10/24/25