Pinto's Groove

'Pinto's Groove' is one of the strangest songs I've ever composed / recorded. I can't even remember exactly when the recording took place - all I know is that it happened somewhere between October 2004 and maybe February 2005. The funny thing is that this song is a complete accident - it was never intended to happen, but I've always liked it. It was discovered recently upon searching an old computer of mine in a folder full of other older recorded material that might show up here someday.

I had just bought an octave pedal, and was trying out some of the sounds. My recording device was a Tascam Porta02mkII analog cassette 4-track. I had an SM58 pointed at my guitar amp, running directly into the machine, recording everything onto tape.

Anyways, I started playing that main theme over and over, occasionally changing the riff. I wanted to just have a record of what the octave pedal sounded like on different string groups. After a couple minutes, when I had naturally cycled through every possible pentatonic riff, I stopped playing and stopped the tape. When reviewing the tape, I loved it so much, that I pointed my SM58 at the drumkit (back then a Premier Olympic 5-piece kit with 1 crash cymbal!) and laid down a one-take drum track. There are tempo issues in the beginning, and late fills, but this song always makes me laugh because it just showed up.

When I played the tape back, with the drums and guitar tracks playing simultaneously, the song reminded me of an old Ford Pinto, or maybe some leather-jacket-wearing punks riding in one, cruising down the street with that awful engine coughing and spitting all the while.