Time Delay

One session was booked to record Boomer’s five best songs at Phil and Joe Nicolos’ Studio 4 in Wayne, PA in the springtime of 1979.

Everyone in the band, Richie Leone, bass, Don Antonelli, drums, Chris MacAlpine, lead guitar and Jimmy Bevan, keyboards and mandolin were well rehearsed and performed flawlessly that day. I gave it my best vocals and rhythm guitar and so did good friend and Johnny’s Dance Band band mate, Bobby Lenti, brought in happily as co-producer.

We recorded each song “live” with no time to overdub or record more than two “takes” per tune. When we’d finished, we chose the best of the lot, made a bunch of cassette tapes and handed them over to manager Dick Whiteford to shop to record companies. We all felt the demo was fantastic, because it was. And despite the dozen rejection letters from record companies which spelled the end of Boomer by summertime, those demos still sound fantastic, even today.

Evidently, Phil and Joe Nicolo thought so, too, because they kept that one inch wide, 16 track master until I called them at their Rough House Records Studio in Conshohocken, PA in 2003 wondering what happened to it? “Yea, Johnny, that Boomer Demo’s over in the closet right under Billy Joel’s master of The Stranger! Come get it if you want it. We been savin’ it for you all these years!” Thanks, boys.

The tape was spun once, and the Boomer demo made the transfer to digital a short time later. I’ve titled these five songs “Time Delay” but maybe I’ll rename it “Boomerang” because, well, it came back twenty five years later!