This was a slightly unstable time of life. I was living in Sydney, about to go to Hawaii and Vancouver to visit a friend, then returning to Sydney to pack up my stuff and take it to Adelaide, then prepare to go and live in Turkey. It was the summer of 1990. I had a job in a school so I had some money again. I decided that I would farewell Australia by consigning a couple of my songs to vinyl. My band had made a demo at Earth Media studios earlier in the year and I liked the place and the people. 
I booked a downtime slot (all night) on a week night and alerted the drummer.
We spent all night recording. I started the lead vocals at about 4am. I had tonsilitis and a day of teaching then a full night of recording made me sound fairly awful. Still, we went ahead and I was at school at 8:30, ready to put in a less than professional day of teaching.
At 5 o’clock, I went back to Earth Media to see how the mixing had gone. It’s a funny feeling to walk into a studio and hear a familiar song blaring out on a top quality sound system to realise that it’s me booming over North Sydney.
I put the order in to the manufacturers and disappeared to North America. When I returned, I picked up the records and gathered everyone together for the debut playing. Diabolical. The discs had the hole bored off centre so every rotation had a fast bit and a slow bit.
I went back to the manufacturer. They agreed to press another batch. I could come and help if I liked. So, another all-nighter, this time in a factory in Darlinghurst. I got to see the process. Plonking a sort of bun of vinyl on the machine. Bringing the two shiny masters together to press the doughy plastic into a disc with my songs encoded on it. Setting and trimming.
In the office, I saw a selection of records that the factory was pressing. I think the manager felt a bit guilty because of my off-center record fiasco and said I could take what I wanted. They were mostly pop albums but I was pretty happy to get the whole catalogue of Windham Hill Records. The one thing I regret not taking was a comprehensive set of recordings of Coca Cola jingles through the ages.
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