Band Lore - The First CD
The following was written by MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT '91, and tells how the first CD recording project came into existence:
In the fall of 1989, I assumed an active role in the band's activities. Shortly after our first concert in December of that year, I asked Venu Chivukula, the president, what I was supposed to do with the money from the ticket sales. He told me he'd take care of it, and in doing so, let me in on a little tradition that had only recently come into public light. Apparently, the band had been maintaining a secret "slush fund" for nearly a decade, containing the profits from all our ticket sales, and all the leftover money from our budget each year. Every time a new president took over, he would assume responsibility for it, and have the bank statements go to his place of residence. This way, the music department was none the wiser. By that time, it had reached a total of about five and a half thousand dollars.And all had been going well, until a simple mishap occurred: the bank accidentally delivered the monthly statement to MIT. When the music department found out, there was shock, then panic, then anger, then panic again. The latter was because the account was accruing interest, and because MIT is a non-profit organization (that therefore doesn't pay taxes on most things), we were essentially guilty of tax evasion. Oops.
According to Mike Mitchell, band treasurer at the time, here is a condensed version of what transpired:
I was the one who got called by Mary-Lynne DiCenso [head of music dept. activities] when the bank statement arrived in the mail. The conversation went something like:
M-L: Hi, Mike. Say, we received this bank statement in the mail from Shawmut. It has (so-and-so ex-member of the band)'s name on it, but it also says "MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble."
Me: Um, er, um, okay, what about it?
M-L: Well, it's an end of year interest statement, and it says there's a savings account over there with over $5000 dollars in it. Do you know anything about this?
Me: Um, er, um, well...
M-L: That's a lot of money! You guys aren't supposed to have outside accounts. Who's responsible for it?
Me: Um, er, um, you should probably call Venu.
M-L: I'll do that.
At which point I immediately called Venu, but I couldn't get him on the phone because Mary-Lynne called him first. Luckily he didn't say, "Um, er, um, you should probably call Mike."
Our worries over losing the money or being beaten up by IRS Auditors named "Vinnie" were unnecessary, as it turned out. The Music Department eventually did decide to let us keep it. The money would be placed in a "Special Projects Fund", provided the music department took over ownership of the account, of course, so we would stop breaking all kinds of tax laws. How it would be spent was up to us, with their final approval pending.
(The following year I would become treasurer. People today probably wonder what we needed a treasurer for, or even a president for that matter. The reasurer position has traditionally involved managing the ticket sales before and after concerts, coordinating booth duty and drop poster dates, and occassionally helping coordinate concert and recording preparations (rent the van, arrange to pick up and drop off the sound equipment, get the stage set up, etc.) I later learned that the position was just there to handle all the jobs that involved real responsibility that would otherwise have to be done by the president, who would then be distracted from his more important duties as a figurehead. The officer positions were taken quite seriously, however, as shown in this excerpt from the FJE bylaws:
New officers are chosen when the previous officers leave the band or are sick of being in office. Officers are chosen by general consensus. Lacking that, whoever is absent from the current rehearsal is selected.
Alas, I digress.)Now that the game was up, we figured we should probably find some way to blow this money and treat ourselves to something good. We tossed around ideas: we could apply for a festival in Europe - perhaps the Montreux Jazz Festival again (Herb had taken the band there 20 years earlier). We could do a small tour of concerts and festivals across the entire east coast. We could emulate Jamshied's formidable faashion sense and invest in really expensive and really cool leather jackets, with some kind of macho logo on the back. (The suggestion of a skull with a knife and a rose through it was winning for a while, but we figured we'd have to change our name to the "MIT Festival Jazz Mother Fuckers", and rename every one of our charts to "Fuck You" in order to make it fit. The idea died quickly.) Although no formal decision was made, we did get some good ideas, and Jamshied and Venu decided they'd best discuss it off-line, and we'd bring back a few more useful ideas to the band to see what they thought.
So, one Sunday night, after rehearsal, a small group of us (Jamshied, Dave Ricks, Ali Azarbayejani, Venu Chivukula, Mike Mitchell, and myself) met in the MIT Coffeehouse to toss around some ideas. This time, we prodded Jamshied, since he had been quiet during most of the discussion in practice, as he usually was, letting the democracy decide the matter. He said that he thought they were good ideas, but we should probably spend the money on something that wouldn't be totally used up on ourselves...something that contributed to the band - past, present, and future - would be the most appropriate.
It didn't take long at that point to realize what we should do: record an album. Since the band had to do a recording every year for entry into the Notre Dame Festival (and since we typically went through quite some effort to make them really good recordings), we had recordings of performances going back to the beginning of the decade. Jamshied had some previous recording experience (I think Dave might have also, I don't remember), so we started making a game plan on how we could do it, and have it done in time for the spring concert. Being musicians, none of us had anything to take notes on or anything, so we were jotting down little things on pieces of newspaper, napkins, and the backs of old party posters we tore off the wall. As we talked through the course of events, Jamshied grabbed a paper bag and wrote out all the things that needed to happen, when, and in what order. At the end of the meeting, Jamshied tore the notes off the paper bag and asked someone to make copies for everyone.
So on February 11, 1990, the band's first CD project officially begun. Our goals were marked merely by a primitive "musician's workflow" diagram, hand-written on a paper bag:
What I remember most vividly is how I felt looking at that paper bag when we all leaned back at the end of the discussion. It was a feeling of pride, as though we had just had a top secret mission plotted out for us by a high-ranking general. There was also intense excitement, knowing that we would soon have a tangible product that was truly worthwhile for our music. It was going to be big, and it was going to be successful. It was going to take us from the status of "cool band" to "amazing sound". This would be something I knew I would keep around forever.
Of course, I was talking about our CD. But I still have the paper bag.
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