Josh Mars
When I was first in contact with Josh it must have been the mid 80s when he was sending out his Unknown Eyes tapes. They were a nice mix of reggae and dub influences and while being modest were atmospheric.
The CD cover for Mars Dark, an experimental project Josh did in 2004 with John Sandin ,Ken Clinger, Dr. Calvin Marze and myself.
wow, my first tape swap? probably occured in the very early 80’s, while a grad student at the university of oklahoma. there, they had a reel-toreel 4-track machine, the same model i later purchased in california. what o.u. didnt have was a mixer, or any microphones. so, i bought my first mixer while at o.u., a cheap radio shack copy of a shure mixer. 4 ins, 2 outs, no meters, and at $75 seemed like a great deal, lol. i still have it! i also bought a boss keybd mixer, 6 ins, 2 outs, no meters, but 2 peak leds on the outputs. then i found the paia 4700 modular synth at a pawn shop which has a 4 in, 2 out mixer, but none of it was quite enough, so i ordered a 12 X 2 mixer from manny’s in new york, and bought a new marantz pmd-360, a stereo 3-head field recorder, and i felt pretty set, oh, except for mics… so i got 2 radio shack omni xlr mics, and i still have ‘em! great for doing stereo live recordings…
i eventually got 4 sm-58 knock offs, but i’m down to 2, plus 4 sm57’s… anyway, back in those days, i had like 2 or 3 cassette decks, a bunch of mixers, a handfull of cheap dynamic mics, the 2 RS omnis, the paia, a used roland sh3a synth, a casio vL1, a cheap analog echo box, an old sony 3-head RTR for echos, and a flnager. i made some 4-track recordings while at OU, but not as many as i’d have thought. i got the kelsey 12 X 2 mixer to help with my video and film production, and that’s primarily what the pmd360 was for, but i began recording sounds i’d make with the paia and the sh3a, and experiment with my effects, which included an old wah pedal. i’d buy cases of crO2 90 minute cassette tapes, and make 45 minute long “space” jams… calling them that since they were just me spacinmg out on the sounds, loops, and craziness i could create. the vL1 had a small sequencer on it that would loop once. the paia has an endless loop sequencer. i also bought one of the first boss dr-55’s available, again, from manny’s.
my first tape exchanges were with john sandin at that time. i don’t remember this, but evidently, i sent him home with the paia when he visited me in norman. then, he and a snipe theatre co-hort, steve ballew, created a brilliant song called, “tour rotary” with the paia. it’s one of my alltime fave tracks. john and i would exchange what we called “tape letters” and they would be like a “letter on tape” if you will, and keep in mind, this was before email, so, we’d each take time to record a tape letter, and include new tunes we were each working on, or something odd we’d found that we wanted to share.
one of my buddy’s from o.u. moved to monterey/ca to play music there, and we kept in touch, sending tapes back and forth. i had begun to collect drum hardware to put together a drumkit around a snare drum my dad got for a quartyer at a garage sale. i’ve bought and sold a lot of drums, cymbals, and hardware since then, but i’ve always cherished that snare drum, lol. it was during that 1st drum gathering, or gathering of drum elements that i formed the 1st leg of the unknown eyes.
after i got to california, i found a small art studio where i kept ALL my stuff, built a drum booth, and sometimes, i’d take a nap on top of the booth, LOL, esp, if i’d gotten a little tipthy… i had an old silvertone electric geetar with a knot right in the middle of the neck, and once, while attempting to climb down off the top of the booth, i fell on the guitar, and the neck snapped in half. from there, i wrote to john and asked if he’d be willing to add guitar licks to some of my drumming, and the 2nd phase of the unknown eyes began. we’ve recorded probably 100 songs together. i eventually got a used fender neck to bolt onto that old silvertone body, and it’s my main guitar…
my first ever cassette “album”, “the look of cilantro” was a long time in the journey of getting completed. a friend who did layouts for a living did the basic layout for the j-card insert. a girl i was dating at the time created the photograph, and the music had been recorded from a variety of sources, including a tascam casstte 4-track, a marantz 2-track cassette field recorder, and an old sony 3-head reel to reel deck. i spent my whole savings account to get it copied on chrome cassettes, a whopping $200 for 100 copies, and i sent copies to radio stations hoping to get some airplay. i only ever heard from 2 stations, kkup, with a nice note from you, and kazu, a monterey bay station which told me it didnt fit their format (plus they thought the recording was far too crude for their listening audience)… that was when? 1986? that was sometime after i arrived in california, and continuing my journey of recording music and sound.
i’d been recording on cassettes since the late 70’s, when i scored two top-loading stereo cassette recorders, one an old teac, and an old sony. i built a crude plywood box that allowed me to carry them side-by-side to gigs, and i’d use one for playback, and one to record with. it was then that i met sandin, while we both attended ku, in lawrence/ks.
after i moved to norman/ok, i made dozens of 90 minute long synth jams, noise jams, and experiments with instruments i had made. i never thought to simply make short songs, and no one ever bothered to suggest to me that my jams were too long. in the early 80’s, i scored my first synth at a pawn shop, a paia modular, which was the basis for stuff i was doing then. evidently i loaned it to sandin, who took it back to kansas after a weekend visit, and he along with steve ballew did some amazing experiments with it. sandin and i traded cassettes for over 20 years, until he decided to build a computer to record music with, w/in the last 10 years or so.
after my introduction to your “no pigeon holes” show, i traded a few tapes with you, and a few tapes with people who were on some of the cassettes i got from you. i was part of a taper’s chain for a year or so, but after awhile lost contact with people. the cassette became my main means of both listening to and mastering to through the 80’s and 90’s, during the time that i had two different teac reel-to-reel recorders. in fact, it wasnt until 1999 bthat i had my first ever cd player, then i eventually got a rackmount cd recorder and a rackmount mini disk recorder. i still like the immediacy(sp?) that analog tape recording allows, using my big 12 and 16 channel kelsey mixers, and mixing from four analog tracks to digital stereo. i gave my girlfriend a nice sony dual record cassette deck, and a MD recorder, and we sometimes record to cassette just for the ease of it. plus, i still have several hundred new blank tapes from the days when i was a recordist for hire for lectures…
i am one of the few people i know that still has cassette boom boxes, a cassette player in my car, and i have several cassette players in my studio, lol…