1988
In 1988, the first version of Shadowland was released on cassette (remember those?) under the auspices of Daystar Recordings in Huntington Station, New York.
The original cover "art" (I use that word loosely) was put together by using 8-bit clip art on a Macintosh 512KE (512 kilobytes of RAM. The "E" stands for "Enhanced" because the 3.5" floppy disk drive was "double sided"). It had a nine-inch black and white screen and there was no hard drive - everything ran off 3.5 inch floppy disks, which had a grand capacity of 800 kilobytes of storage. That's right - the operating system and whatever ancillary programs all fit on an 800 kilobyte (not megabyte - not gigabyte - not terrabyte) floppy disk.
The original cover "art" (I use that word loosely) was put together by using 8-bit clip art on a Macintosh 512KE (512 kilobytes of RAM. The "E" stands for "Enhanced" because the 3.5" floppy disk drive was "double sided"). It had a nine-inch black and white screen and there was no hard drive - everything ran off 3.5 inch floppy disks, which had a grand capacity of 800 kilobytes of storage. That's right - the operating system and whatever ancillary programs all fit on an 800 kilobyte (not megabyte - not gigabyte - not terrabyte) floppy disk.
The album was recorded on a 4-track reel-to-reel TEAC tape deck. This allowed for multi-track recording and did a pretty damn good job of it. I had no studio at the time so the recording was done primarily in my living room or my basement. But the trick was to allow only one-take. In other words, anyone who played a part on Shadowland had one take - and in most cases they were not allowed to hear the track before they recorded. This allowed for some of the most inventive, spontaneous - and in some cases - nail-biting performances. Below is a photo of that tape deck in all it's glory with a TASCAM four channel mixer sitting on top of it.
The cover insert was printed on an Imagewriter II dot-matrix printer which explains its "dotty" appearance. The labels for the cassette were typed on an electric typewriter. Yes, things were tough in those days. Below is a photo from an E-Bay post selling the cassette, which I purchased - hmmm - buying back my own creation. Interesting feeling.
In fact, William Brown, the Producer, Engineer, guitarist, bassist and keyboardist on the 2025 version of Shadowland (besides playing really inventive and creative guitar on the 1988 version) drew this image as his interpretation of Shadowland back in 1988:
I didn't have a studio to mic up a real drum kit when we recorded Shadowland back in 1988, so all of the songs that had "drums" were programmed on the Alesis SR-16 drum machine. In the song, "All Color Dies" John Sergio and I recorded two tracks of drums - both playing different rhythms. The result was...interesting and somewhat hypnotizing. Okay - it was more interesting than hypnotizing.
Here's a photo from one of the recording sessions in 1988 of Yours Truly sporting a youthful countenance. My how things have changed.
Shadowland: 1988
One of the icons of the 1988 version of shadowland was something we called, "Blinky." Blinky was used throughout the Shadowland booklet, that eventually was given to people who performed on the cassette and which you can see some excerpts from below:
And yes, here it is, in all its 8-bit glory - the original "cover" to Shadowland.