Following on from Domenic’s brilliant post, I was contacted by Peter Whitfield as he knew about some video footage from his friend Tom Bailey’s 1992 visit to L.A. when Tom, Nick, and Darian recorded their version of “Do You Have Any Regrets?” Tom very kindly contacted Darian who then dug the footage out of storage and even edited it for me.
It’s a brilliant insight into how Darian and Nick went about recording at home pre ‘Wondermints’.
Darian had this to say of the video clip:
Just some background info’, the impetus for us even recording the song was because at the time, Tom was interested in possibly getting into home recording. He was initially going to pick my brain for tips and recommendations when I suggested that rather than us having a discussion with him taking notes, we just go ahead and record something so that he could experience the process. Also at the time, Brian’s album ‘Sweet Insanity’ was floating about as a bootleg and there was a song on it that had very weak production, but I really liked. And so I suggested a reimagining of it as a ‘Summer Days and Summer Nights’ album track and we went from there.
Kind of surreal for me to revisit a lot of this stuff. My old pad (the family house garage), first time ever visiting Laurel Way (I’ve been there maybe 20 times since and now know the exact house ), my old job at Track Record (the owner used to work at Brother Studios), so many memories. And of course it really makes me miss Nick… watching and hearing him play the guitar, his feel for this kind of music was unparalleled.
