I was ten when Avenging Annie hit the airwaves. Many years later I rediscovered this unique and intricate tune while driving around West Virginia in my darkest days. Hoping for a name or title to attach to the piece, I was disappointed to hear only a greedy station promo. It was another few years until I was again driving around and found Annie on the FM band. But this time I had an angle..it was playing on a pirate station I was about to visit. this time Annie would not escape!
I ran up the pirate station's treacherous stairway in Inman Square, Cambridge and discovered what appeared to be an aging hippy at the console. Eagerly, (and perhaps even a bit rudely, in my excitement) I demanded to know "What was that...and who did it?" The dude smiled broadly, extended a hand and said "I did. I'm Andy Pratt."
"Avenging Annie" has been covered by Bruce Springsteen and Roger Daltry. An amusing local Andy Pratt announcement
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The Prattster's 1973 self-titled album brought him from the Cambridge rock scene to national fame. Hear his music free on andy-pratt.com.
I've recorded Andy both here at my studio and live on stage, and he always shows up for me in court. ...What a guy! Andy recorded for Polydor and Columbia Records, and he's finally graduated to the big time...hanging out here at the "Cafe."
From the 492 Cafe Studio |
Three Original Exclusive Andy Pratt Songs |
We did this multitracked piece in the new Medford studio. Andy was in charge of the recording process. He played guitar and Freeman played Engineer, trying to keep up with Andy's fast creative pace. After Andy went home, the real work began. "I love mixing Andy," says Freeman, "because I feel the freedom to use the sort of heavy-handed manipulations one hears in pop music." |
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| Another one from Medford. NOTE: Both of these Medford pieces these are done entirely with guitar and vocals. | |
Andy dropped by one day at the old Cambridge studio to have some fun. This was something he was developing. This is an unintentional recording caught partially on a MiniDisc recorder before I had the proTools gear up and running, so you hear the old room at its worst. There are many tweaks, including a heavily manipulated echo track. The whistle in there is me...asking my dog to get out of the recording room. ("I Don't Care" is a studio version of this. I think Andy did it with former Meatloaf Guitarist Mark Doyle. |
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Live Recordingsfrom the old Zeitgeist Gallery, Cambridge |
These
are Freeman's favorites, mixed from a stereo mini disk he made at
the old Zeitgeist galley in Inman Square. The pieces are "massaged" tremendously
to make the best of the very limited mics available at the time, (a single
binaural mic) and the poor room
acoustics. |
A haunting performance with many hours of loving work invested. Though the recording was simple and quite imperfect, I became rather obsessed with it, and it has great personal meaning for me. One of my first music recordings, really. |
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| "...It's about a man, a woman and a dog" | |
| Features an interesting solo that reveals Andy's pianistic virtuosity. |
Andy Pratt Recordings (With Mark Doyle) |
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Video: Andy in Concert "Treasure That Canary"
| Quote about Andy: "By reviving the dream of rock as an art and then re-inventing it, Pratt has forever changed the face of rock" -Rolling Stone | Quote by Andy: "Sound is a matter of tubes and shapes and the placing of wood and sometimes it works just right." -Andy Pratt |
Andy's memoir details his life in the music world. Read about the early days playing around Cambridge, the concert on Boston City Hall Plaza, piano lessons from a student and friend of Bela Bartok, and much more. xlibris.com has it! |
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autoload track: Larry Azrin on WMBR-FM