So this tape, and the next one (I'm lagging a bit in my posting), present a vexing choice for me. Though there were none of the lost songs I was looking to rediscover here, there were a number of previously recorded favorites, but almost all of which are preserved in fatally flawed versions.
These are songs ("The Wrong Girl," "The Other Shoe," "Race the Sun" and "It's Clear" to be specific) that I cherish, but tellingly, none are featured anywhere on our Bandcamp site (and have you visited oxfordboys.bandcamp.com? It's lovely.) - even though I've posted a fair amount of less-than-ideal material there.
That's because each song has, despite their often cringe-worthy flaws, some inimitable element that binds me to it. It might be a unique feature of the recording environment, like the squeal of brakes coming from the buses that stopped at the corner of Dauphin and Cedar, that then seeped into the recording and lent it an unpredictable uniqueness. It might be a featured instrument that I no longer own, like the clavinet patch on that Casio I foolishly left behind at the old house. Or maybe just some burst of improvisation that's impossible to recreate.
So do I now add these songs to the to-do list, straining an already ambitious schedule of recording? Probably, why not? Ok, maybe the choice isn't so vexed after all; I'll do them.
This dilemma of course can't help pique my long simmering fury at that dastardly 2006 hard-drive crash that forever ended the possibility of just re-mixing or tweaking these tracks. But I am yet very thankful at the bounty, the utter fecundity of the Oxford Boy catalog, which gives and gives and gives, asking so little in return.
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