Gary Pig Gold
For more information Gary Pig Gold
A split tape from 1988 by Gary and on side two, The Vodka Camels. Gold has been involved in many bands and projects over the years and has worked in many styles from rock to country to punky folk.
Gary also played with Dave Rave, a fellow Canadian singer with a rock pop bent. Above is the cover for their 1992 live tape.
Above is a split sampler from Gary’s own country rock project, The Ghost Rockets and on side two from his pal Shane Faubert, a home taper in his own right. Shane and Gary are currently in the band, The Next Big Thing which has a release on Ray Carmen’s Cut And Paste label.
A pop collection with tunes by Shane Faubert, Ray Carmen, Lane Steinberg, Robin Stanley and others from 1998.
I spent the latter quarter of 1968 (when I should have been concerned over starting high school I suppose) raising all the nickels, dimes, and Canadian dollars I could in order to buy one of those brand new Philips cassette tape recorders the pilot next door had told me about. And you know what? By the time Electric Ladyland and that White Album appeared, so had my newest and grooviest-ever toy …hand-delivered direct from Tokyo via my Air Canada neighbor.
Yes, I honesty did own The Very First Cassette Tape Recorder in my ENTIRE TOWN.
As a result, most of 1969 (when I should have been very concerned over my grades!) was duly spent taping songs off mighty CHUM-1050 AM Radio, then holding my tiny little Philips microphone up to Dad’s console record changer so I could narrate my own radio shows block-booked with nothing but Beatles, Hendrix, and even The Monkees, I have absolutely no shame whatsoever in admitting (…ever heard the soundtrack to their Head movie??!)
So I suppose it was only a matter of time then before I snuck down into the basement with my sixteen-dollar guitar to begin creating my Very Own Music.
Which, I am also totally proud to admit, I’m still busy doing.
Forty long and strange years later.
Truth be told though, my initial audio attempts, completely “solo” so low down in that Canadian basement, often turned out much more “Revolution 9” than “I’m A Believer.” That is until I corralled over two of my closest friends to add some vocals and, um, percussion to the proceedings. The results
forever captured in all its no-fi anti-glory, can in retrospect sound terrifyingly like either White Stripe on a particularly chilly night, stripping The Who down to their meaty beaty basics …and this was all a good three years
BEFORE that first Ramones long-player, I’ll have you all know!
Then came at last the delicious scourge known as Punk, and my latest (“pro”!) cassette deck was there to capture my li’l threesome performing what must be the very first cover ever
>> of a tune by Toronto’s very own Dead Boys, The Viletones. Just think of the possibilities!
I did. And sooner than you can shout “gabba gabba” I headed to Rockaway Beach – no, make that Huntington Beach. As in, you guessed it, none other than Surf City, USA! Enough of those cold Canadian basements; I put a band together right across the Pacific Coast Highway called The Loved Ones, bought a presumably-very-hot great new cassette deck straight outta someone’s trunk following a show late one night, and started recording demo tapes
that actually made it all the way onto the legendary Rodney “Mayor Of The Sunset Strip” Bingenheimer’s KROQ Radio Show as Seventies slowly became Eighties. When we weren’t busy making fun
>> of what was left of the Sixties, that is…
Sadly, all fun things soon do come to an end; next thing I knew I was being rained all over in Vancouver B.C. But I simply retreated to my latest basement, worked the nightshift at the nearest 7-11 until I could buy an honest-to-gosh Tascam 244 Portastudio, and started four-tracking
>> the next several years clear away. In fact, I got so darn good at it that one of those primeval recordings
eventually got released on a real CD years later: Volume One of the Unsound Home Recordings series! Of course, I had to start my very own record company >> in order to do so, but Who’s Counting, right?!!
Anyways, I’m still here writing songs
>>, still recording demos
>>, trying to get songs into Brady Bunch movies even
>>, and although I never did manage to get all the way back to O Canada
>> for very long, I do still find time to slaughter old Hendrix, Who, Beatle and even my beloved Monkees numbers
whenever I get half a chance to.
And, believe it or not, it’s always on cassette …if it needs to sound Just Right.
Why, our old friend Ray Carmen’s Cut and Paste label has put out a whole new album of mine
>> filled with cassette recordings! So I strongly suggest you go hear for yourselves,
and Keep it not only analog, but running at under two-inches-per-second while you’re at it.