The last song that I wrote for the album, "Dream Transmission" was the calm after the storm. I was living in Old Louisville at the time in an apartment on 4th St. I only lived there for a few months, and I would often go to Anthony's By the Bridge to play at Danny Flanigan's open mic on Mondays or Tuesdays, so I was always in a songwriting state of mind. My on again off again girlfriend was off and in Pittsburgh. I was very much alone.
I think the song began with an image from when I was in middle school, and we would drive out to Long Run park in the early morning or late at night to catch sight of Halley's Comet. The idea was we needed to get far away from the light pollution of the city. I wasn't all that interested in looking at the comet. Instead, I remember being fascinated by the radio tower with its red blinking lights. Something about how radio worked reached a deep part of me going all the way back to when I was a young child and I would use the sleep function to listen to radio as I drifted off to sleep at night. It was always strange to think that there was someone on the other end of the transmission.
I've often wondered how I wrote songs. Some songs take a long time, but not to write. They talk a long time to be born. It's as if I become aware of them long before I ever write them down. It always felt like I was an antenna and receiving signals from somewhere else, only I wasn't a very good transmitter myself. I had/have a hard time reaching an audience. It's not a new experience for me. It seemed peculiar that I really wanted to chase a dream of being a performer, when I had a hard time finding an audience.
For all the dreams that I set loose, their ain't nothin' comin' back.
***
The song was/is real easy to play, if you are in the right mood. It's pretty much all mood. I think we did it in one take. Matt's soloing was live and not overdubbed, which worked out great, but not how one usually records a guitar solo. Andrew Lee and Brian Gager (our producers) were really thrilled about the song.
Unfortunately, we did not record the vocals until later, and the flu made it a real challenge. I really strained to hit the notes on that one. When we were getting ready to remaster the songs, I was going to see if I could overdub another lead vocal on top of the other- because we had not way of mixing out the original take, but Andrew Lee talked me out of it saying:
Perhaps I have an emotional attachment to the way we cut it, and I know you were getting over the flu and your vocal performance overall was not what you might have wanted it to be, but there's also kind of an emotional intensity to the vocal that I think really plays well into the tune, with its themes of desolation, isolation, loneliness, etc. The bridge is one of the most intense parts of the song, and your cracking wails really play into that angle.
That's when you realize how lucky you were to have such an astute and articulate producer in your corner. I thought both Brian and Andrew helped take the recording to another level. Sadly, Brian passed away several years ago. I really appreciated his honesty and occasionally I appreciated his persnickety-ness. If he didn't like it, he simply wouldn't put up with it. Both Brian and Andrew were at Carnegie Melon focusing on composition, and their trained ears came in really handy over the course of the recording.
With Brian gone, Andrew did double duty helping to resurrect and remaster the songs, which brings me to the third part.
***
Twenty-seven years had passed since Satori had recorded with Andrew and Brian. Our masters were on DATs, which fewer and fewer studios can play back for you. I have no idea where the "original" masters are, but we did have copies of copies. At any rate, we did not have a perfect copy of "Dream Transmission." It turns out that the best version that we had, had some horrible digital noise towards the end. Analog distortion and noise can sometimes be nice, but digital noise is horrible, and that meant the only ending we had was from an analog cassette.
While losing a pristine copy of your original recording is bad, this became an opportunity. For years, I had always heard backing vocals on the song, and a section towards the end where the song would move transmute itself until returning to its original incarnation, so I saw this as an opportunity. I added some acoustic guitars, and other sound-effects to bridge the gap from the original master to the casette version.
If you were a fan of the original recording, I hope this version isn't too much of a departure, but adds a little something that makes it worth listening to again after all these years.
