A Quick Pit Stop

Stack 24

I wasn’t sure which direction to take this week, so I decided to use it as a bit of a bridge post. There’s some news to share, a couple of things going live, and a heads-up about next week.

So, let’s start with the fun stuff.

I’ve been sitting on the idea of building out some Spotify playlists to go along with this Substack for a while now, and this week I finally made two of them live.

The first is called A Night at The Max, a playlist with some of the actual music I played as a DJ during my years there. Not the bands I admired from a distance or the records that influenced me, but the real songs that filled that dance floor on any given weekend. If you've been following along with the club chapters of this memoir, this is your chance to hear what the room actually sounded like. Currently, it's sitting right around 3 hours. The base hours of the club were 2am to 5am. So I'll be keeping it around 3 hours and rotating out sounds every few weeks, like at a real club. I considered doing a giant playlist of all my favorite songs from my time at The Max, but I think it would exhaust you. A few years ago, I did a mixed version of that on Mixcloud. It's over 10 hours long. But since it's mixed, you can't hit shuffle and have variety. It’s great for a theme or New Years Eve party. But if you want to listen to the song regularly, it gets predictable. So, this is my compromise, lol. Anyway, you can access the playlists by clicking here for The Max, here or, if you're reading this on Substack, simply clicking Spotify Playlists up at the top menu.

The second is called What Was That Song?, which is a little more behind-the-curtain. Every episode of this Substack that has an audio version comes with an intro and outro track, usually something that fit the mood or theme of that particular post. I’ve been slowly building a playlist of all of those, with the most recent additions at the top. Not everything I’ve used is available on Spotify, unfortunately, but I’m adding what I can find. If you’ve ever caught yourself humming along to the music at the start or end of an episode and wondered what it was, now you can go find out.

I am of the mixtape age, so playlists are very much a modern equivalent of that, to me, and are an active part of my life. That being said, there will be a few more added and maintained in the coming months. If playlists are your thing, feel free to follow my profile there on Spotify to keep up with them.

Now, some music news that’s been a long time coming.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned finding a box of old masters and shipping some off to be digitized, including the two Trust records from 1993. Those tapes are starting to come back to me now, and I've already remastered the first one, Faith. It went live on Bandcamp as of this week. There's a good chance the second one, Your Moods, will be finished and posted there by the end of the weekend as well. After more than thirty years, it's nice that some of these "lost" recordings are finally seeing the light of day.

I'll be honest, some of these tracks aren't going to win any awards. I know that. As more come back and I listen to them now, it's clear I was still figuring things out, but it kind of documents my growth in writing and synth programming over the years. That's part of why I'm pricing them on Bandcamp like a dollar bin find. If you're curious, or if you're the type who likes to have the complete collection, you can go listen there or grab them cheap to add to your own stash. I’ll be adding them to the store on my website as they are released and, I’m sure, I’ll make a post on social media when I add them as well.

Anyway, it's a fun, light project - a nice little break before I deep dive into the next book - and something I've been meaning to do for years. I just got notice that some of the Frustrated Housewives masters are done and should be to me soon. These will be fun, since they're the multi-track masters. So, I can actually do a lot more with the mastering process and make them sound way better than they did back then. That first CD had some audio issues, which has always bugged me, and I'll be glad to finally fix that as much as I can. I won't be redoing anything musically with these - that’s another project. They'll just have better audio, and it should help document the bridge from industrial to electro-pop and beyond over the years. More on that as it happens.

One more thing before I let you go.

There won’t be a new post next weekend. I’m heading to New England to attend the funeral of a friend, and I won’t be in a position to write or record. I appreciate you understanding, and I’ll be back the following week.

When I do return, we’ll pick up right where the story left off in Tulsa. There’s a next phase of my life waiting to be told, one that includes a new partner in crime, a new band, and an important realization that maybe, just maybe, I needed to get a real job. It’s an interesting stretch of the story with plenty of ups, downs and realizations. I’m looking forward to telling it as we continue on this little journey called life.

Thanks for sticking with me through all the detours, the closed chapters, and the occasional week like this one where I’m just catching you up. More road ahead, just not quite yet.

Have a good week!

Jeff