Dave Taylor was an audiophile and bought his TEAC 4-track reel-to-reel tape machine up to Baltimore. The only other equipment we used was a Shure microphone, a Radioshack mixer with an EQ and a single channel DBX limiter compressor. As soon as Ray McCrory and I settled on the words and arrangement for a song, I would bang it out from beginning to end sitting on my desk chair in front of the mike and then throw down a second track to fatten it up or play a theme or melody to wrap it up. Then I would bark out a reference vocal track for Kenny to learn and we’d practice while Dave would set up for the vocals. We actually put the microphone in my bathroom and had Ken sing in there for the ambiance and slap echo from the tile walls! 

Then we would sit in my living room-with-a-bed, get a balance on Ken’s voice and … roll em’. After a take I would work with Ken to tighten it up and we would fly another take until we had the keeper. Then Ken would sing a harmony track and in some cases Jeff and I would jump in for a crummy 3-part harmony, singing into one microphone. Even the Beatles didn’t try to get 3 guys singing into one mike … We were so broke we couldn’t afford new spools of tape so Dave Taylor recorded the demos over top of his personal tapes of media and music by other bands. On one of the tapes says “Amtrak” while another tape box says “Blue Oyster Cult”.   

In 2001 while digitally remastering all of the tape sources I had, Les Lentz and I were able to remaster the 7” reels of tape. Fortunately Les still had one of the obsolete TEAC tape machines that was in good shape and calibrated for bouncing tape to his computer. As with “Memories and Fantasy” I had hoped to have a few more never before released tracks but 3 of the 8 original reels of tape had gotten wet and couldn’t be salvaged.