A while back I read Frank Zappa’s autobiography. Not my favorite read (I was especially disappointed that the final chapters were dedicated to social/political rants rather than a look into how he felt about his ’90s work), but I remember being struck by a particular sentiment. He purportedly never listened to his own recordings. Once he was done with a record, he was done with it. Considering how prolific he was throughout his career, this may have been a protective mechanism against doubt and regret. When you’re pumping out material at the pace he worked, I’m sure there were plenty of compromises and dialed-in fixes for recording or compositional issues that came with each recording.

I could never work that way. It’s too late for me! I’ve always worked slowly. The Dionysiac Revelry record took us a good part of three years to finish. Some of the demos for that record were written a year or more before that 3 year period even began. And since we have the totally rad technological advances in music these days, I was able to listen to “Being Here…” for the entirety of the recording journey. It would be safe to assume then, that I’d be done with the record once it was completed. Three+ years of hearing the music develop into its “final” form. Not so! I occasionally go back and listen. I do it for a couple reasons:

I’ll clear the air and profess this right off the bat: listening back is incredibly ego-building. I BUILT THIS THING. HOORAY! Sure you recognize the mistakes and the horrible sections, but when you nailed a song it’s always interesting to test it. Did we nail that section? Was it as tight as I remember it? My taste has evolved. how primitive was the writing? It can be incredibly refreshing to listen back to the old material and recreate the compositional process and compare it to how you now work. I tend to notice that I completely glossed over certain compositional or engineering choices in my older material. With so many software instruments, so any musical styles, so many damn options these days, seeing how I inadvertently limited myself due to a lack of knowledge is incredibly refreshing.

There’s so much more to listening back than just considering the craft. It has personal implications as well. Music locks a  PLACE. When you listen back to that Mariah Carey record that helped you through a painful breakup, nostalgia kicks in. The emotions come back, and the memory of where you were when you experienced that record is reconstructed. The car you aimlessly drove around in and cried while listening to Mariah Carey becomes real again for the moment of listening back. I think its the way that emotional landscapes are mapped onto a recording that let you recreate that space.

So when I listen back to my old Wounded Soldier recording I remember the room! The room! That summer! Those moments of watching movies, but stopping them halfway because I got the itch! Putting together a recording seems to map even more emotions than simply listening to a final product (ala my Mariah Carey example)

Of course, the recording world of Frank Zappa didn’t allow for extreme overdubbing. They would go into the studio, smash out a recording, then move on. Good musicianship and a different mentality towards recording might have contributed to this. So maybe even if Zappa listened back to his old recordings he may not have found such a personalized nostalgia. He wrote so much music, maybe he never got that close to any of it. A crying shame!

What thinks you Ariskany Recordists? Emotional mapping? Waves of nostalgia? Specifically relating to the space in which the recording took place? I’m curious.