Steppes
Near Life After Death
About
...So we were a band and we made our share of garage tapes and spent a lot of our own and other people's money making a "real demo". And occasionally we played live and occasionally we made a "live" tape. All with (pardon the pun) mixed results.
Then time went by and Steppes went with it. Then some more time went by and this guy heard our stuff and said "why don't we record this stuff better?" So we all talked and thought that it would be good to be better.
So we all arranged and made time because we loved this music.
And so here it is.
Was it good for you too?
Would you like a cigarette?
Maybe we can do this again sometime
David Becker
Rogers drums, Zildjian and Paiste cymbals, Vocals
Bill Giles
Fender precision bass, Yamaha bass, Moog taurus pedals, Roland juno 60
Scott Grant
Oberheim OBX, mini moog, modified Rhodes piano, bat guitar on "So Sorry", Roland juno 60, Vocals
Robert Masters
Lead and background vocals, modified Rhodes piano, acoustic guitar
Lee Edward Zimmer
Fender stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul custom, Oshita classical guitar, Vocals
Writers:
It is nearly impossible to determine exactly what musical parts were written by whom and when whom wrote what and where and what whom was thinking when whom wrote what. However it is possible to roughly (yet tenderly... Mmmmm) partition things. Being the more bohemian inclined instrumentalists, dave and bill usually wrote most of the rhythm parts (as may be expectorated). Lee and scott wrote most of their own parts (displaying them in front of dog and everybody), not to mention their various solo statements (such as deedle-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee in "ether or dose") that they hashed out without the presence of any corned beef whatsoever. Rob is as rob does and suffice to say that he usually stood semi-patiently until he could stick whatever pop-ish type parts (musical, melodical, and at times, gastro-intestinal) into these bastions of technical musicianship. The truth of the anti-matter is, that these songs usually wrote steppes while steppes stood helplessly by in their self-induced hypnotic state (usually nebraska). So lets just say...
All music composed and arranged by
Steppes
How we did it
This project was recorded on a Tascam 38 8 track recorder using 3M 226 tape without noise reduction. The drums and bass were recorded first without a click track. Next the keyboards and vocals were added and mixed. The solos and extra parts were added last. Effects used include several cheap digital delays, spring reverb, compressor and aural exciter. Microphones were Sennheiser (441 and 406) and Shure (sm57). As many as 14 tracks of information were recorded using no more than one generation of channel to channel bouncing. It was mixed on a Ramsa 16 channel console and mastered onto a Tascam 32 half-track recorder. Monitors included JBL 4331 studio monitors, Auratones, Sony MDR-20 headphones and the worst sounding $35 a pair cheepo bookshelf speakers available.
Magic
Mike Peterson
Steppes logo by
Bill Giles
Original cassette cover design by
John Page
CD cover design by
Bill Giles
Very Special Thanks to
Mike Peterson
Dan Eldred and family
Tim Watson and family
Steve W., Paul D., Lois T.
J. Eldred, D. Fox, Rick
Jack Schwarz,
and especially
a bevy of wives
and girlfriends,
usually our own.
