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Rocheport MO - Joe's House (guy we met at bar)

Rules for Field Recordists:
1) Use only equipment you're completely familiar with.
2) Test and new equipment thoroughly before your trip.

These are the rules I should have followed. if i had, I wouldn't be in the fix I am.

in a fit of wanting something light but killer sounding, stereo w/ rock-solid mono compatibility (btw, excuse any typing errors, we're well into a bottle of marker's mark), and the peculiar circumstance of having room on my credit card, i ordered a shure vp-88 stereo mic (m-s) and sharp mz90 md recorder a few days before i left. my only experience w/ them was recording a bonfire i lit a couple nights before departure.
everything seemed to work fine.

consumer minidisc recorders, i have found, have many quirks, several of which have led to my losing 3 of my best interviews.

1) that pause button is damn easy to trigger. check those damn little time readouts often to make sure it's not in pause.

2) i started hearing this hiss, which i just assumed was piece-o-crap md amps. turns out i'd left shure battery on, and power was almost gone: the mic was hissing.

3) I switched batteries in mid-intervu before making sure toc had writ for what i'd just recorded. when i started tape again, it registered Track 01, which I knew was wrong since i'd already recorded many tracks. stopped tape immediately, but couldn't get to what I'd recorded before. I still have data on tape now but can't read it, just that new Track1. there was a discussion on AIRlist about this, but I cant remember if data (recording) is retreivable. i hope to god it is, cause intervu was wonderful. jeff T, you reading this? tell me there's a chance of retrieving data from recorded md's w/o proper toc's.

still, having a blast, and a hard time making it out of missouri. as andy said, the katy trail is tres kewl. and we had to hang in Rocheport today for their wild LewisClark rendevous: period get-up, re-enacters, replica boats. got way to much great tape. gotta go...

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