It was around this time I picked up my first electric guitar and amp, a black Epiphone SG with humbucker pickups and Pignose amp with a 4-inch speaker. Also around this time I/the music-playing public was introduced to effects devices for electric guitar, the first I experienced being the immortal Rockman headphone amp designed and sold by Boston’s Tom Sholz. This was a game changer for newbs like me who needed help to sound like a better guitar player than I was. It also allowed us common players to induce Boston-type guitar sounds to our jam sessions. Effects units and pedals like the Rockman would take off in the mid-1980s and these devices helped shape the sound of the post-punk movement that consumed me in my 20-something years.

The growth of effects units coincided with some changes in recording gear advancements as around this time the personal computer was born. The digitization of music would come a little later but with this growth of effects units, we started hearing a lot more recordings with guitar effects and synthesized piano tracks. For better or worse music was changed forever with these tech advancements.

I need to preface following take to say that I am first and foremost a guitar player. I cut my teeth on acoustic guitar, my initial conquerings coming from the vaults of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, America, Cat Stevens and the like. I was a bit of a guitar purist and to this day I believe any newb on guitar must first get proficient on an acoustic before ascending to electric for the simple fact that an acoustic is harder to play because the action is harder and you don’t have the benefit of pedals and amps to make you sound better than you actually are. But that’s another blog post.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Dylan and Cat Stevens… When I listen to music I tend to break it down to the composition of the song – the guitar or piano chord progression, the melody, the alignment of drum kick pedal and bass. Over the years, the more I learned to write and record music, the more I dissected everything I listened to. It’s more of a curse today because when I’m with my wife at a show and I start talking geeky about music, all she wants to do is enjoy herself and not listen to my meaningless music-purist nonsense about the guts of it.

Dissecting music is extremely important to this genre and its composition and sound. The Retrophonics band is a guitar-first band. The songs we play in The Retrophonics we play because of how great they are composed not necessarily because of how great they were recorded. We strip away the synth and oft overproduction of the tunes and play more raw, wall-of-guitar versions of these great songs.

So, “why this genre?” The primary reason is to preserve this music for a younger audience who likes rock but who may have no noticed genre because it had a lot of synthesizer and piano and didn’t rock guitar enough. I wanted to play this music to show, at its base layer, the songs are meaningful in story and also thoughtful in composition of chord progression and melody. Sometimes when there’s a lot of different instrument things going on in a piece of music with a lot of experimental 1980s effects, the composition gets lost. The Retrophonics plays a more stripped down, rocking and raw representation of this genre. Perhaps in stripping it down, audiences can hear the music how it was written the day it was composed – often on an acoustic guitar or acoustic piano.

I don’t want to make this music different. We play these songs with (mostly) the same tempos. We always play the correct chord progressions with all the changes in the song intact. We stick to the melodies and harmonies, sometimes adding additional backing vocal harmonies for an additional vocal layer. But we still preserve this music as we envisioned it was written in someone’s living room or studio built for composition and recording.

If you grew up with this music – we say “it’s 80s college radio” – perhaps you’ll hear it and it will fondly spark memories of a time passed. For younger music lovers who may be musically nostalgic or have someone in their lives who introduced them to this genre, we hope this will be a unique Chattanooga live-music listening experience. We hope this music sticks with you and that we have done our small part in preserving it for you and future musicians who might pick up the torch and carry the music forward.