Mike Macgirvin
Diary and Other Rantings
Beyond Silicon Valley
   
Wednesday, Jul 09 2008, 01:25 pm
Dec 09, 1980
Instrument Repair Labs

Started work at a little electronics fix-it shop in Boulder (Colorado). Two of us. Bill - the boss, and myself. I fixed everything and he went out and got business. And I mean fixed everything. Oscilloscopes, computer terminals, computers, signal generators, VOM's, oil drilling instrumentation, sound systems. If it plugged in to electricity and wasn't working it was my job to make it right.

Balanced the time between this and a rock-n-roll band (Sneak Attack), and doing home recording using two cassette decks - bouncing tracks between them to build up a multi-track recording with three guitars, bass, and two or three vocal tracks. My first tape - a cover of 'All Along the Watchtower' got critical acclaim during a local radio station's home-grown music gala and lots of call-in votes. I didn't win the contest because as it turns out there was some restriction that the music was supposed to be original. The Sneak Attack tape didn't do so hot - even though it was mostly original music and professionally produced at a studio in Steamboat Springs. Nobody remembers hearing it.

   

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"And, you know, I mustn't preach to you, but surely it wouldn't be right for
you to take away people's pleasure of studying your attire, by just going
and making yourself like everybody else. You feel that, don't you?" said
he, earnestly.
-- William Morris, "Notes from Nowhere"