’Inside Out’ (Voxx Records 200.031) 1985

I’m currently immersing myself with ”Inside Out” by The Miracle Workers. This was released on Voxx Records back in 1985 and became a dominant presence on my turntable back then.

Let’s face it, in ’85 the music scene around the entire world was uninteresting apart from the odd scene here and there. You had to dig a little deeper beyond music weeklies like NME, Sounds and Melody Maker – good rock ’n’ roll music was out there untouched by lousy 80s production and synths.

All songs on this stellar album are Miracle Workers originals apart from a choice cover of ’Hey Little Bird’ (The Barbarians)…If you want your garage beat undiluted with fuzz, maracas, tambourines and pissed off snarl I can recommend this – shame it was recorded in stereo and not MONO though.
 
Impossible to pick out a favourite track as they all simmer and explode so I closed my eyes and settled on the intense ”One Step Closer To You” – written by lead singer Gerry Mohr.

The CD version of the album released many years later came housed in a different cover. 

I contacted Miracle Workers guitarist / organist Dan Demiankow via Facebook this week and he kindly answered some questions I put to him.

Dan: ”The album album cover was the first pressing. We hated the bamboo lettering and the yellow background. Then there were two other Bomp versions, and one Virgin Records versions pressed. My favourite was this Virgin Records cover”.

”Funny story about this photo. We did several photo shoots with different photographers. After getting the pics back on this shoot/photo, we decided to not use any photos from this shoot. But, somehow, these pics got out there.”

”When I asked the guys who let these pics out, everyone shrugged their shoulders, ”Gee, I don’t know. Wasn’t me.” Well, that’s show biz. Looking back, I now like these pics and am happy they are out there. Still, OK, who’s gonna fess up?”

Acid Revolver: What are your memories about recording this album?
How many hours / days did the recordings take? Any songs abandoned because they weren’t working? Any songs unreleased?

Dan: ”As I recall, this album was done in two days. First day, all the songs were recorded live, in the studio. Meaning, we played together, like we were on stage. No song was over three takes. Usually, the second take was the one we kept.”

”We had a philosophy that we had to get it in three takes or less. Our great engineer, Gary Bomb, was so fast, he made it possible for us to hurry and re-play the song right away, if we wanted to. The second day, we did some overdubs, and mixed down the album.

In my opinion, it was Gary Bomb that suggested aggressive mixes and played the most major role in mixing the album. If it were a different engineer, I don’t think we would have sounded so aggressive.”

”No unreleased recordings in this session. No songs were abandoned. We never fought over what songs go on our albums. We had the attitude that, oh well, we’ll put any songs not yet recorded on our next album.

Greg Shaw asked us to record an album. We had no idea it would be well received. To us, we were just another 60s style garage band, happy to record an album. Overall, we just recorded what we played on stage. That’s probably why the music had the energy that it had.
 
OK, here’s a fun note: during the excitement of the sessions, the engineer accidentally grabbed a Herbie Hancock tape and we recorded over it. Oops!”