The 80's CD with the Regos, L.O.V.E. Sisters, Silvan Folks and more ......
A few special mentions about this CD -
Track 18 and 19 with ‘Good Old Texas’ and ‘No Place Like Home’ are my Mom and her sisters with Eleanor on the piano. From what I understand it was a song Papa (my grandfather) “made them sing” at parties when they were kids. This was taped on Christmas day, 1984 when they sang these after perhaps more than 50 year. Of course, after that, they never stopped!
The female voices on the first track “We’re your Friends” are my cousins Cherise and Neysa. Although they were not Mahim-ites, they were close enough, and I thought it was very apropos to have the first and last song called ‘Friends’.
The plant in the middle of the front cover used to be in the garden in front of our apartment and is an attempt at a little symbolism. Think of it as representing a central point of the activities that surrounded it – various practices at Eleanor’s, jam sessions in our apartment, hide-and-seek at the Regos, choir singing in church, campfires, races, watermelon parties and “Regos Vs. Silvan championship games” in the compound which we lost every time! Actually, the church may be a more appropriate symbol for many of these activities. But what can I say – I have no pictures of St. Mike’s.
Lastly, a special thanks to Rhiley, the13 year old daughter of a friend of mine who did some magic with all the pictures I gave her and put the cover together, and who came to the rescue when I got frustrated with the audio editing software and did the final filtering and compile of the CD.
Take Care. Love from Julie, Anna, Joseph and Steven
February 12, 2008
Dear family and friends,
A few years ago when we moved to our current home I found an old box that contained about 25 to 30 cassette tapes of home recordings dating back from the 60’s’s through the late 80’s. I wanted to put a CD together to share with all, but there were so many of them it was difficult to pick. In addition, many of them were probably meaningful to just a few people and may not have appealed to all. I eventually decided to select singing from a couple of years in the mid 80’s that in my opinion would have universal appeal. Over the last few years I went through the tapes, opened the cases, untwisted some, cut crumpled sections out of others and did a lot splicing - with two very high tech tools called a scissors and Scotch tape!
I am enclosing the final result with this letter and hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it. When I think of that time period in relation to music, I think of the family in the compound, the Regos, the LOVE sisters and a few others and hence the long name of this “album”.
Funny little side story - part of the reason it took so long other than just procrastination, was that tapes are so obsolete, we did not own a tape player and I was too cheap to go out and buy one until I knew what I was going to do! So I would listen to the tapes while driving, because my car happened to have a tape player, and then made notes at stop lights. I just hoped my car would not give out on me because no cars have tape players anymore!