What's UP

The songs you are about to listen to was a project in the drama department that Robert Stern, the head of the drama department at the time, (I believe, it's been a long time since I've even thought about this) at Lake Superior State College in 1971. Yes, Lake State was a college at the time, and not a University. The idea was to write a play about the upper peninsula of Michigan and incorporate songs into the play. Now, you have to remember, (some of you weren't even born yet) that back then, rock opera's were the rage. The Who had "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia". "Jesus Christ Superstar", "The Wall" and "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spider From Mars" were among others. Robert Stern contracted out Rich Demolen, to write some songs about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Rick Mason, Paul Wade, (I will tell you a story about him in a minute), myself, (Tim Hatfield) Michael Jackson, and Pat Kight helped write some songs also. Rich wrote most of the music for the play. I helped write a couple of the songs and Pat Kight helped out on a song or two also. The band that recorded the songs was a band called Stonepipe and it consisted mostly of the guys I mentioned earlier. Rich DeMolen on the Hammond L-100, Rick Mason on bass guitar. I believe he played a Guild bass guitar that looked like the guitar that B.B. King plays, a hollow body except it was kind of like a cherry finish. A very nice bass. I played a number of guitars back then because I didn't own a guitar. I always had to borrow one. I hated borrowing a guitar but I didn't have the money to buy one. Eventually I ended up buying a Gibson ES-335 that I still own to this day. I see on Ebay that it's worth anywhere from $3000.00 to $5000.00 dollars. Not a bad investment taking that I bought it for only $475.00 brand new from Kreft's Music in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Stan Bright and family owned the store until they sold it sometime in the 70's. Paul Wade played drums. His drums were called ^^#@#$^&T. In other words, they were a conglomerate of different drum sets stuck together. But he had a knack of making a cardboard box sound good and they sounded great. And last but not least, was Michael Jackson. Not "THE" Michael Jackson but a very talented person. He could act, sing, dance and do all of that standing on his head. Yes he was that good. So the band got together and practiced and practiced for the play. But when we started out on this venture, a guy buy the name of Joe, (I won't mention his last name because I don't want to offend him.) played the drums for us. As I said, we practiced and practiced until we finally had the songs down and ready to play for the play What's U.P. Before we were to perform, someone ordered up a recording contract with RCA records. I couldn't believe what I saw when I walked in the auditorium at the college. There was a guy sitting there behind a desk with a TEAC 3340-S tape deck. Which is a 4-track, sound-on-sound, reel-to-reel tape deck. Back then, it was a top of the line portable tape deck. These tape decks are indestructable. They are work horses. I've owned one for over twenty years and it still works great but they weigh a ton. So when this guy set up his gear I was taken back by all of this cool equipment. Until I saw him pull out one microphone and plugged it into the deck. Now I didn't know to much about recording back then but I did know that if you are going to record in stereo you need two sides of the recording. Left channel and right channel. Left ear, right ear. Not to hard to figure out. But this guy was to much. Like I said, he pulled out one microphone and stuck it right in the center of the stage then turned on the tape deck and just let it run. Therefore, what you get is a mono, flat sounding recording. He didn't have any equalization or any effects to speak of. Just a very dull recording. Now, back to Paul Wade and Joe the drummer. On the night of the recording, Joe was suddenly very upset about something. He just got up off of his drum seat, packed up his drums and left. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Our drummer just quit on the night of recording the music for the play. What a jerk. What was the problem? It couldn't be fixed? What was going on? Nevertheless. He just got up and walked out on us. So what were we going to do? Then a bell wrang in our heads. Let's do the obvious thing and call Paul Wade. He is the drummer in our band Stonepipe. The only reason Joe was playing was because he was the one that was contracted out to do the play. So we called up Paul and he came down to the college right away. Within in minutes of his arrival he had his drums set up and was ready to play. Paul was a miracle in disguise. He learned all eleven songs in about fifteen minutes. That's how good he was. You might hear a few mistakes in the songs but we all made a few mistakes. I was, as was everyone, nervous and anxouis to get this thing over with. After going through this and all of the preparation to get it done and get it done right, we were all proud of making an album. Nobody had ever been on an album before so this was special to not only us but the whole cast and crew that made this play fun to make. I remember that this was one of the happiest times in my life.