My Secret Career 19: One Take One-Off One Time Only "Prosthetic Limbic"

I have many songs in my canon that have been played exactly once. Live to tape. Oftentimes I am balancing a lyric sheet on my knee while I record. I will also ad-lib if the lyrics are not fully formed or the spirit strikes me. In fact, in 2018 I put an entire album of such wonders up on Soundcloud and called it "I, Phone", because that was all the technology involved. 

But the song I'm going to highlight today predates the iPhone and was recorded live-to-tape in Windsor Terrace, Park Slope’s shabby but cooler next door neighbor. If memory serves it was very late at night so I was necessarily hushed. 

To talk about this recording I have to talk about the room it was recorded in. My bedroom. The basement apartment was not legal. The ceiling was so low you could almost touch it without crooking an elbow. The kitchen was sunk a half a foot below the rest of the room, with a sink barely large enough for a plate and a mug. The walls were so flimsy that cardboard would give them a run for their money.

My room was a perfect square built out into the main space. It was an airless cube. An ancient fold-out couch was slammed up against the top of the square and each side of the room was lined with a low shelf. By low I mean shin level. The shelf was more like a step, in that it didn't hang out from the wall but was built into it like a bench. On these shelves sat a TV, stereo system. various sentimental knick-knacks arrayed in a way that was very meaningful to me, and most importantly, the Tascam 424 4-track. Both Timothy and I were filling cassette after cassette with new material. 

I was attempting to process what had happened in my life. I learned a little bit about the brain. I then sat down and wrote "Prosthetic Limbic" onto a sheet of paper which was lying around. There were lots of lyrics hanging around that apartment. I also had lots of free-floating riffs, pieces of music that I was obsessed with but that hadn't found words yet.

I don't remember how I decided to throw these two things together. But I thought it would work. Instead of working on it I hit record on the 4-track, balanced that paper on the little built in shelf, and recorded whatever the hell happened next.

What came out was this. I have never played it again. Someone would have to listen to it, learn it, and teach it to me if I were to try to play it today.

Prosthetic Limbic, from Bomer-B's Act II: Americana Subversive.