Until recent years at least, The George-Edwards Group were probably the most undergroundest group in America, making music in total, TOTAL obscurity, in their home studios, just for their own pleasure. In their many decades together, they’d only ever pressed up 100 copies of their one and only 1977 album, only to find that over thirty years later, to their complete surprise, it had been “discovered” by a crate digger and given new life (the story unfolds below).

Late last month, Drag City/Galactic Zoo Disk released Chapter III, the third transmission from the private musical universe of Edward Balian and Ray George. The duo’s home-recorded rock from the 70s and 80s sometimes sounds like Big Star meets the Silver Apples—lush/jangly (and very catchy) guitar sounds surrounded by synthesizers and other electronic audio equipment bent far beyond what it was supposed to do. At other times they sound like Moody Blues or one of Greg Lake’s numbers in ELP. Some of it reminds me of The Zombies. Some sounds like 80s synthpop. It’s really eclectic, that’s for sure, but it’s not eccentric in an “outsider music” sort of way. They just have no one fixed style, although anthemic/magisterial guitars are a mainstay of their sound, along with electronic embellishments and synthetic “strings.” Previously Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disk re-released their self-pressed 38:38 album from 1977 and a second set culled from their Archives.

Here’s a bit more of the backstory:

Ray George and Edward Sarkis Balian met during a pick-up baseball game on a gravel side street (Pilgrim between Steel and Sorrento, if you must know) in Detroit in 1960 and have been musical soul mates ever since. The group is still composing, playing and recording to this day. The band name comes from the combination of Ray George (his last name) and Edward S. Balian (his last name and middle initial).

Detroit was a true hot bed of rock and pop throughout the 1960s. As a result, Ray and Edward were strongly influenced by the major acts (e.g., Cream, The Who, etc.) coming to town, most notably gigging the Grande Ballroom and the Eastown venues. All this blended in with Berry Gordy’s powerful Motown scene, with that studio located only five miles from Ray and Ed’s homes.

Originally, both Ray (vocals/keyboards/guitar/drums/percussion) and Edward (vocals/piano/synth keyboards/guitar/bass) were part of a four-piece group playing in 1968-70 as the Detroit-based, Andromeda, in the era that included local rockers Bob Seger, Joe Walsh and The James Gang, Alice Cooper, Dick Wagner/The Frost, and Ted Nugent/The Amboy Dukes.

 

 
I asked Ray and Edward a few questions over email:

How long did you guys spend in the basement studio working on the music that’s been on these releases?

Ray: We did the 38:38 studio sessions over less than a year in Detroit but worked on it only when we had the time and got together. We were experimenting with new equipment and recording techniques as well as musical forms—-all of this influenced by the great artists we’d been exposed to in the 60’s and early 70’s.

The Archives and Chapter III tracks were recorded in various places, some very quickly, as for a long period I was living in California and Ed in Michigan. In the early 1980’s, Ed would fly out 2,500 miles, “equipment and all” to record, but our time was always very limited. We have always had much more original material than time to record it, to this very day.

Some of the tracks on the new LP Chapter III come directly from our master tapes of 38:38 and were recently re-discovered by us. In fact, so much time had passed that we didn’t realize that we hadn’t issued all the recordings from those sessions. We didn’t even remember writing and recording some of them.

Edward: Ray and I would get together (usually in my Detroit home basement-studio) for most of the 38:38 (first vinyl album) sessions. I was our engineer and did a lot of work between the sessions dealing with mic experimentation and tape recorder maintenance. I was always trying out different ideas and fooling with gear. I guessing we spent closer to an entire year (June, 1976—June, 1977) on the 38:38 album, from start to finish, including the mixing and mastering work which added a few weeks for sure.

Any extra money I could come up with went immediately to recording gear. I had decent mics, mostly Sony, Shure and Electro-Voice, and we made the best of it. (Neumann mics were out of the question, budget-wise) We recorded almost everything on the now vintage Dokorder 1140 or Teac 3340 decks, both 15-inch per second tape machines with four track sync ability. I’m sure I owned one of the very first of those now extremely rare 1140s that got imported into the U.S. I even built a custom rolling console case for it.

I used a very nice Sony 850-2 half-track machine for creating the master tape at 15-inches per second in stereo. While this equipment back in the day was very difficult to work with, the analog sound quality was warm and human, as opposed to today’s digital, more harsh and robotic, recordings. I still own both a Dokorder 1140 and Teac 3340. In fact, I will still even now run stereo masters through the preamps of those machines.

Back to 1976-77. Most of our actual recording sessions back then went pretty smoothly. We would work anywhere from two to six hours at a time. Recording drums at volume with such limited gear was the toughest challenge. I might also add that we were very limited with only four track recording capability on two tape machines. We had to do a lot of track “bouncing,” tape-splicing (with a grease pencil and razor blade!) and sub-mixes to make it all work. The album was mastered on huge Altec Lansing “Carmel” speakers, now highly sought after vintage items.

We were cutting our teeth with multi-tracking but also pushing our own limits as songwriters and musicians. I very much enjoyed the mixing and mastering. Well, I call it “mixing,” but mixing was exceptionally crude by today’s standards. George Martin and the Beatles used near-identical processes on recording Sgt. Pepper’s, of course. This was just the way it was, so that was the way you did it.

Some tunes on 38:38 went down very quickly, such as “Hypertrain” or “Solar Flare,” while others such as “Planets and Stars” took much longer due to the extreme limitations of 4-track recording and monotonic Moogs of the era. Note that these very early Moogs could only play one note at a time—no chords! (Yeah, you read that right!) In the case of “Planets and Stars,” I must have spent at least ten hours recording and mixing that six-minute song.

Was this an obsessive kind of thing, because you obviously weren’t doing it for the money? Did you have day jobs or families back then?

Ray: I think an artist must have an element of “obsession” to his work based on a passion for the art. We have always had this, and yes, we were always involved with many other things including school, jobs, travel and other projects.

Edward: I was married, working on my Ph.D. degree and teaching at the same time. Through all this, I stayed very involved with composing, playing and recording only because I loved it. Music has always been a top priority for both of us and is even still an “obsession” with us to this day. Proof? For over 30 years, hardly a day goes by that we don’t discuss our music in one form or another—-no exaggeration! Obviously after over 30 years, Ray and I work very closely together. We can complete or complement each others’ musical thoughts almost effortlessly.

At what point did you start building your instruments and why? What kinds of things did you make?

Edward: I’ve always been intrigued with musical instruments, recording equipment and studio techniques. This started at age twelve when I bought my first tape recorder, a battery operated 3-inch reel-to-reel, the Awia TP-32A (I still have it and it works). I recorded my flute and clarinet compositions on it. Soon after, I started “experimenting” with bizarre recorded sounds.

We weren’t actually “building” gear, but we were modifying nearly everything and anything we touched! I was always fooling with the Moog synthesizer and tinkering with the control knob settings—-I must have tried every combination of Moog settings conceivable. In fact, some things never change: I’m answering your question with two 1975 Moogs sitting about 20 feet away from me. I did build from scratch the patch bay we used for the 38:38 sessions. And I was always experimenting with electric guitar pick-ups, guitar settings, bass sounds, guitar amplifiers and different types of mics and mic placements in the basement-studio. Some experiments worked out cool, while others were total flops. But it’s always been a fun challenge. I’ve owned over 100 guitars and countless amps and stomp boxes over the decades.

My producing influences came mainly through the very serious after school studies of albums predominantly by the Beatles, Beach Boys/Brian Wilson, Dave Clark 5, Ventures and very early Pink Floyd. As a result, I did very little schoolwork in high school, and had the grades to prove it.

Ray was big on tape decks, sound effects and was into it very early as well. For over 30 years now, he’s been coming up with an amazing array of very hip, unique sounds. He came up with the idea to even run mic’d drums through my flanger stomp-box. Going way back, I also remember Ray discovering a natural “airplane effect” or flange while double-recording George Harrison’s, “If I Needed Someone” off the vinyl album.

Have you seen mass produced versions of some of the things you’d invented in the basement studio or elements of them?

Edward: Yes. In particular, some of my early experimentation stuff eventually ended up as more complex stomp boxes for guitar or effects units for the studio. That is for example, combining the effects of distortion, flanging and duel octave in a single stomp box. Also, today we have “doubling” of notes done digitally. We were using that method by recording the same notes or vocals over each other then sub-mixing them or bouncing tracks to combine both tracks onto one track. Of course, now the digital world has made all these things very do-able, faster and affordable, but I still much prefer the analog sound from the recording methods and vintage gear we tweaked and combined.

As I mentioned a moment ago, Ray broke some very interesting ground particularly in sound effects, including backwards sounds. I think the guy has recorded every sound on earth, including speech,  and played it backwards to evaluate it!

Our real challenge was to incorporate all of our sonic weirdnesses in a meaningful and creative way into a solid, overall musical composition. A good song is still the bottom line and there is no button on any machine or instrument that can make one!

What happened with your music once it was completed? How many albums of 38:38 were pressed and what did you do with them?

Ray: We have always written and recorded music just for the sake of creating it. So when our recordings were done they were just available for whatever purposes presented themselves. We have always been open to commercial release but it’s never been the prime reason for our musical productions. This has been more of a lifelong love affair with the art of music.

Edward: I have to claim some ultimate responsibility (or blame) here, as it were. Just as a lark, I saw an advertisement for “Nashville Record Pressing” in a 1977 issue of Billboard magazine and thought I would give the 38:38 album a shot. I think I fronted the “big” $300 bucks for 100 vinyl records and I sent in the master tape, basically on a kiss and a prayer.

We distributed only about 30 of the 100 albums. Most were sent to music production companies or record label A&R people. Ray pounded the pavement on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood; I was shipping albums out of Detroit. We got back a nice stack of about 25 “reject” letters, which I still have to this day in a red binder entitled, “Reject City.” That reminds me—-I was always going to write a song by that title about all this but have yet to do it! 

Some of the remaining 38:38 records were given to friends and family. I kept about 10 or so and somehow they have survived many moves over 30 years. We see that a few original copies of 38:38 are selling for over $400 each on eBay. I wish we had all those original Nashville pressings back! (laughs)

But I feel that we stumbled into an important life-lesson: You never really know what’s going to happen in the future, so be passionate and give everything you do your very best effort.

But you wanted to be signed to a label, right?

Edward: Yes, we wanted to be signed by any major or even minor record label, but it seemed like an impossibility, especially back in that era of 70’s disco music. Our mixture of melodic/ballad/psychedelic music was not what the record companies were looking for in order to turn a fat profit. Remember, we’re talking the era of Donna Summer, Saturday Night Fever and etc. We refused to go that route.

How were you “discovered?”

Ray: This is an incredible, and I believe miraculous, story. Both Ed and I had all but forgotten about 38:38 and each of us had a few of the original pressing left collecting dust. Thirty-two years had passed!

All of a sudden we started getting emails from fans from various parts of the world praising the songs on the LP. We then discovered an excellent review of 38:38 in Acid Archives the renowned reference volume of Patrick Lundborg out of Stockholm, Sweden. This was a book I’d seen in bookstores for years, never knowing that a review of our own album was within it!

We then found out that an accomplished bass player, Jason Chronis, in Austin, Texas, had flipped out over 38:38.  We had no idea as to how our record ever got to Texas. Then we found out that independent radio stations in Austin and the well-established WFMU in New York City were both giving us airplay and webcasts!

Things just kept on building from there and the demand for the last few original vinyls of 38:38 skyrocketed. All this with no promotion and no marketing or advertising efforts on our part—-and with a totally blank white album cover and no inside liner notes to boot!

Next, we were approached by record companies in Spain and Japan. At about this time, we also heard from Drag City/GZD in Chicago, as they wanted to re-issue “38:38.” We felt that Drag City/GZD was the proper decision and we have never regretted it. In fact we are overwhelmingly pleased to be working with them. The re-issue was met with worldwide acclaim and so was the follow-up LP Archives. Chapter III has just been released and we’re very happy with it.

Edward: Talk about a total lack of marketing and promotion for 38:38—-we wrote the book!

I could add that in 2007, after over 30 years since we recorded it, our 38:38 album was on such a far back-burner, that Judith, my wife of over 20 years by that time, had never even heard me mention the album. Now, that’s obscure! All of a sudden she found out that she was married to a rock star (laughs).

I remember getting an email from Mr. Chronis. My very first question to him was, “How in the heck did you ever hear this album?” He said, “Oh, the University of Texas radio station here is playing it constantly…” I thought, “Wha?” Remember, that this was a full 30 years since we had pressed those records!

Next came numerous DJs all around the U.S. and world who we found out were giving us airplay and webcasts. So after three decades of solid hibernation, we became “overnight successes” in the music business. Yes, beyond crazy and into the realm of cosmic, I’d say.

What’s on your new (third) Drag City/GZD album Chapter III?

Ray: The new LP Chapter III is a real mixed bag with good variety representing much of our varied approaches to music composing and recording. There are straight out psych instrumentals, then we’ve got the hard rockers, some mellow, pop melodies and delicate, acoustic ballads, “Wondrous Child” and “Morning Light.”  For over 30 years, we have written in a number of genres—-we don’t much like “limits” or a single style to our music.

Edward: For me, the goal is simply this: Every time you experience a George-Edwards Group tune, you’re never going to be exactly sure of what to expect. We want to surprise you with musical enjoyment. Yeah, we know this represents a totally non-commercial approach per today’s highly predictable, music mega-industry. Instead, at the core of the George-Edwards Group is a wildly rampant, never-ending creativity presented to you by us, two life-long colleagues. Our “style” per se, is eclectic but it is always original, musical and, hopefully, enjoyable to you, our audience.

The George-Edwards Group would love hearing from you—-visit them on Facebook.

“How Many Ways?”
 

“She Was All”
 

“Planets and Stars”
 

“You Came Away”
 

“Indian Winter”