It used to be a lot harder to release music. In John Trubee’s 1985 interview with a Representative of Corwood Industries, the Rep. ballparks that it cost $800 dollars to get 300 Jandek records mastered & pressed onto vinyl with a full color cover. In today’s money, that’s ~$2,100, or about $7 bucks per record. While that price point may sound appealing to artists like myself who have balked at the present-day rates of indie pressing plants, consider these complicating factors:
1.) For decades, vinyl records were the only widely available means artists had of pressing and distributing their music. There were no short-run tape pressings, and there was definitely no Bandcamp. Even radioplay was predicated on having vinyl copies of material available to send out to stations.
2.) Unless these records were being pressed by an established act or had a specific built in audience (recordings of regional church choirs, high school glee club cast recordings, etc.), chances were that the outfits in question would be left with dozens (often hundreds) of copies worth of deadstock.
It is an unambiguously good thing that it is easier to release music today than it has been at any other point in history. However, this barrier to entry lends a certain mystique to a number of these private press vinyl relics, especially those made by artists with no built in audiences. Was X record pressed as a souvenir for the member of a high school garage band on the verge of dissolution? Was X record pressed because the outfit really thought they could make it big? Was X record pressed because one of the guys in the band was wealthy and bored? It’s usually the latter, but it’s fun to imagine that it might not be that.
So, let’s spend an evening with Dave Porter.
Dave Porter is a musician currently based in Tuscon, AZ. His first record, titled Dave Porter, was released 1975 through a Canadian private press. Porter has released an album or two per decade following the release of this record (mostly on CD). However, I get an error whenever I try to open his official webpage (musicbydaveporter.com), so I am only able to access his works which have been uploaded to streaming platforms. He, too, felt there was a reason for his music to be distributed. He even separately pressed his album’s opener Huggy Bear as a single, with a 7” exclusive B-side.
Dave Porter is also the name of the guy who composed the soundtrack to Breaking Bad. This is an entirely different Dave Porter, though both of these men’s works are lumped together indiscriminately on YouTube Music. This is a common error among artists who are unfamiliar with uploading their music to streaming platforms. How easily, even now, Mr. Porter’s music can be buried.
With your pillow every night
But with me you won’t be afraid
So turn out the light
This song kicked my ass real hard the first time I heard it. It’s hard to get my head around sitting down to write something so sentimental. It’s wild to see a project so masculine be this vocal about enjoying something. While his contemporaries were voicing their sentiments through stock characters in fantastical landscapes, Porter sat down and said “dang, my wife’s so cool. I’m gonna write a song about how cool she is.”
But I loved her more at night
Now we are so happy together
Because she’s now my wife.
This isn’t the only sillymode wife tune on this LP either. Consider the B side opener, I’m The Boss.
Where I can go?
Baby it’s you
Cus you ought to know
And who always tells me
My hair is a mess
Baby it’s you
But you are the best
But remember
I’m the boss
Do do do do do do do
You could not waterboard these lyrics out of me. I usually have a hard time processing this amount of schmaltz, but this record has ways. All of these love songs are immediate. They are littered with idiosyncrasies that suggest a relationship currently in progress. It’s dangerous to call these tracks autobiographical, but these tunes are tangibly personable. In these songs, Porter creates a home that people live in.
The trick here is the contrast between these songs and the record’s more depressive cuts, and don’t be mistaken, there’s some real sad bastard shit on here. It’s different, though. Most of the album’s downers are about failed relationships. They’re all set in the present tense, but they’re also distant in a way none of the love songs are. They describe rough outlines of relationships, and often call ahead to times years in the future. Take the example of Must We Say Goodbye Today, the second longest cut on the record.
Oh, were do we belong?
If not with each other
Than this story’s all wrong
And now it’s time to go
I feel the end is near
But let’s hold on to this love
Even through the years
These sad songs are definitely the corniest on the record, and this is entirely to their benefit. These heartbreaks still feel lived, but they read as old wounds. Dave Porter’s sorrows are viewed from a distance, while all of its joys are close and recent. It’s an unassuming device, and one that I’m not even sure was implemented consciously, but it’s wickedly effective. We’re invited to view these songs as part of a chronology.
The way Dave Porter’s bitter lows inform its highs is so nuanced. It takes its sad moments seriously, but they never upend the record’s tone. None of the sentiment of Huggy Bear is neutralized when framed against Must We Say Goodbye Today. As we reminisce, we look back on negative events, internalize them, and laugh about how heavily the events once weighed on the mind. Huggy Bear is given a scale to be measured against. It brings the record close. It feels like someone’s singing to me.
The smattering of tracks about courting throughout the record are important to this framework. Lonely Nights possesses the same nostalgic distance as Must We Say Goodbye Today, but it is inversely about the beginning of a relationship. In the album’s closing moments, it bridges its two halves into a cohesive whole. It’s stunning.
To sweeten the deal, Dave Porter sounds completely gorgeous instrumentally. The aforementioned 7” release of Huggy Bear suggests that Porter is the only performer on the record, which, if true, is an unbelievable feat.
All of this is to say that I hear a lot of Mr. Porter in this record. I don’t want to overstate whatever mythical qualities I may have accidentally applied to him here, though. He is only a lost marvel in the sense that he never got signed to a major label. He’s thankfully still around, and he’s thankfully still releasing music (peep the end of this article for a link to his official YouTube page).
This early recording, however, really is a miracle. If the vinyl crackle on this Dave Porter’s official Spotify upload is any indication, the whereabouts of this record’s master tapes are currently unknown. If not for its costly vinyl pressing, if not for Porter’s commitment, these songs may be completely inaccessible today.
Not all music exists for the express purpose of me listening to it, but some of it does. Dave Porter wanted people to hear his music. He wanted people to know how much he loves his wife, and how confused he can feel some days. It’s kinda insane how much he wanted to do that.
Listen: Spotify