SST: Capital I

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

My friend Kara suggested this clip, which is one of my favorite Sesame Street songs:



When I was in high school I made a homemade demo recording of this song, featuring me singing the vocals, playing acoustic rhythm guitar, playing an electric guitar solo, and playing a little mandolin lick to begin and end the song. I didn't have any type of multi-track mixing equipment, so I had to get creative with one dinky little cassette recorder, a second cassette player, and two blank cassette tapes:

TAPE 1: Using the cassette recorder, I recorded myself playing the acoustic guitar part for the whole song, sans vocals.

TAPE 2: I put Tape 1 in an adjacent cassette player and pressed play. I then quickly hit record on the cassette recorder, which was loaded with Tape 2. The prerecorded acoustic guitar part started playing in the background and I played the opening mandolin lick on top of it. I then sang the first verse while silently putting down the mandolin and strapping on the electric guitar. After the first verse I played a little electric guitar solo and then sang the second verse while silently putting down the electric guitar and picking up the mandolin, just in time to play the mandolin lick one more time to close out the song. I then hit stop on both cassette players.

Pretty ghetto, right? But I thought the final recording turned out pretty cool and the balance between the prerecorded acoustic guitar and all the other stuff was pretty decent. I never really played it for anybody and now I have no idea where that tape is (it's probably with the lost tape of "The Fugitive 2").