1966: A Documentary. This interview took place on December 28, 1983. The interviewer, my father, Leonard Los, is speaking with a “well renowned drummer,” Greg Dominique (pronounced DOMAIN)– don’t ask me!

I remember well, going to the Holyoke library and researching facts such as baseball standings and food prices for 1966– which is the year the interview is about. The interview is mostly about music and Greg’s involvement in an area band called “The Gladiators.” The interview does stray off on some topics, but adheres mostly to music. In between in interview, which is broken into sections, a song is played from 1966, almost always dealing with the previous conversation.

This interview also contains the earliest recorded voice of myself. At the end of side 2, my father hands the microphone to me, and I give a speech, although obviously pre-written, I give it none the less. During the interview, you can hear me and my sister yelling, and my mother in turn, yelling at us.

I’m Fixing A Hole

I used the original cassette recording as the source, which was really primitive. Basically, my father had two microphones set up, and after the Q&A were done, he’d stop the tape deck, then put on an LP, then record the song. He’d then go back to interviewing. Besides the primitive technical aspects, the sound quality after all these years was horrible.

In remastering the tape, I removed most of the tape hiss and much of the background noise. Since most of the noise was on the left channel, or Greg’s microphone, I would mute that channel when he wasn’t talking. So when my father speaks, Greg’s microphone is muted, and vice versa. This makes for a much cleaner sound and gets rid of most of Greg’s fidgeting with the microphone.

After getting just the voice into digital form, and cleaning it up and adding EQ, I was ready to lay down the voice for the new remaster. I was in no way going to use the original songs from the tape, so I got every song on CD, except one song, “The Skies Will Be Happy To See You,” which I had to order from the U.K. on 45. The song was recorded right here in Holyoke, MA.

Cheers!

As the interview goes on, certain alcoholic beverages are consumed, thus resulting in a changed “mood,” most noticeable on the second side. I mixed out most of the ice “jingling” in the glasses.

With the voice and music on separate tracks, using my Tascam 2488 24-track HD recorder, I could now fade in/out the music with each interview piece. This makes the recording sound much more professional than the old way, which was hard starts and stops. I’m very happy with the outcome.

Last December was the 22nd anniversary of this tape, and it was finished in time. I’m including the remastered version here. If you just want to hear me, just fast-forward to the end of side 2.

Download the interview: Interview Part 1 | Interview Part 2

The files are quite large, so you may just want to “save as.”