With the exception of Hideaway and Ode To Time, all of these songs were written and recorded 20 or more years ago in my basement (sorry, I have none of the original equipment, instruments, nor any pictures of my basement "studio"). Hideaway> and Ode To Time were recorded this year (2009) in my dining room "studio" with all new equipment, here's a pic, 99% of everything in that picture was bought from Musician's Friend online, I've never had a problem with these guys, I highly recommended them. With the exceptions of Debbie's Song, You Know, and Over the Line all lyrics were written by my brother, Dr. Peter Fields. On those songs the melodies, which in some cases also inspired chord changes as well, were inspired by his poetic genius. All instruments and vocals were/are done by me, for better or worse.
Except forHideaway and Ode To Time, the equipment used way back then was meager at best and ranged from barely adequate for songs that might contain 11 tracks (my Tascam Porta-5 4-track cassette recorder) to really just toys which you literally could buy at Toys-R-Us (my little Yamaha drum pads and tiny little keyboard) as well as the bargain-basement, no-name, strat and p-bass copies I used, eventually, I did get a Seymour-Duncan pickup into the neck position of the strat copy, using tar-tape to hold it down. To round out the deal the acoustic guitar was a Nagoya (from my college years, which I still have, but have abandoned in favor of my Seagull S6), the microphone was from Radio Shack along with it's noise-making gooseneck, and, if you hear a crash cymbal on the old songs, that was me making a crash-cymbal-like sound into the mic and playing it back on my digitech digital delay pedal. Reverb came from the Tascam, delay from the DigiTech, and I had a couple of other low-end pedals: flanger and distortion.
I was not then, nor am I now, a good or even adequate singer, nor am I a virtuoso on any instrument, but, I had/have musical ideas that become unlocked when I see great lyrics, and these songs are the outcome. Then, as now, I employed whatever technology was available to help me sing the notes and get out the songs and their melodies/harmonies as envisioned. Even with their many flaws as well as parts literally missing, and the inevitable tape hiss and 60 cycle hum, I still like these songs, first on cassette, and now digitally, I hope you enjoy them.
If you are anything like me, you will most likely start a song and move on long before it's over, and I don't blame you, these songs are mostly too long and no real music producer would ever have let them go that long. I would just say that in nearly every case, some of the best stuff resides in the last quarter or third of these songs, so don't say I didn't warn you ;-)
One more thing, please do me a favor and try to listen to these songs on some decent headphones, as this is what I used to record them. Please don't listen to these songs on tiny laptop or cheapie computer speakers, you'll be missing a lot of stuff. I'm a hobbyist musician/songwriter/producer, but I really did try to make things sound decent. So there are numerous tracks on these songs and things can get a bit subtle, so grab some decent cans and thanks for listening!
Here are the songs, in roughly the reverse order that they were created and recorded. Click on a song to be taken to it's page where you can play it as well as view more info about the song and the full lyric.
from 2009
from 20 years ago
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