NEW MUSIC: The Same As Last Week live in Cleveland 1969

Founded in 1968 on the campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the birthplace of rock & roll, The Same As Last Week was a popular cover band. With their diverse musical backgrounds and uncommon instrumentation, they added unique flavors to an eclectic repertoire of Motown oldies, hits of the day, and future classics. Playing around Greater Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, and the Midwest, they entertained devoted followers at frat parties, college dances, crowded local bars, a summer lake resort, and even a 400-seat lounge at a bowling alley in Calumet City, IL.

How has it happened that after 54 years they have released their first album, a well-played set of their own versions of timeless rock and soul favorites?

Following the band’s tour in the summer of ‘69, their first gig back home was at an outdoor fraternity party. That performance was recorded on a stereo ¼” reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tape was forgotten for almost 40 years, then re-discovered in 2008 and digitized. Unfortunately, the sound was muddy and unbalanced, with lots of background noise.

Fast forward to August 2023, Oleg “Yorshoff” Yershov, a highly skilled Ukrainian audio engineer, hears those earlier tracks and challenges himself to bring them into the 21^st century. Applying artificial intelligence and lots of state-of-the-art technological magic to resurrect those vintage recordings more than half a century old, he has captured the band’s energy and made their music alive once more.

So, here’s a new album by a group of septuagenarians not named “The Rolling Stones”, based on original recordings older than the Beatles’ recent single, “Then and Now”. The technical prowess demonstrated in putting this immense project together has been extraordinary. Finally, out of the horrors of a brutal, ongoing war, a beautiful collaboration has arisen.

After the founding members graduated in June 1970, the band broke up. Members moved on to further musical ventures, advanced degrees, or the military. They ultimately enjoyed long careers in engineering, business, finance, education, home building, or medicine.

Les rediscovered a copy of the old tape in 2008 and digitized the recording. By 2011 he had shared those tracks on his personal website, but the quality was not very good. The members of the band sporadically reconnected virtually for a brief time and relived many memories.

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, though, there was a push to get back in touch more regularly. While the recordings were fine to share with close family and friends, they were not really up to professional standards. Les and Mike attempted to improve the sound quality, but the results were not satisfying. The project was pushed to a back burner.

Fast forward to August 2023. Jeff had made the acquaintance of a highly skilled Ukrainian audio engineer, Oleg “Yorshoff” Yershov, who had been working as a consultant for Jeff’s firm Synchro Arts. Oleg had taken it upon himself to apply his skills to those earlier tracks. He did a fantastic job separating the audio into stems, applying lots of magic to resurrect those vintage recordings. He captured the band’s energy and made the tape sound better than it ever had. No one is sure why he jumped into this task wholeheartedly (on his own dime/time, more than 200 hours so far). Maybe he was trying to beef up his skills, test out approaches for revitalizing aged recordings, or was just distracting himself from the Russian artillery and missiles falling all around him.

Oleg got a digital copy of the songs and started to work. He isolated (to a limited degree) the instruments and vocals, meticulously added a depth and richness to the bass and drums, boosted or ducked guitar, organ, sax, flute and vibraphone parts where necessary, patched missing or destroyed audio with “audio bandages”, and created a more contemporary sound space with modern record-like dynamics.

So now we, in our mid-70’s, are all happy to have these tracks put together into an “album” which is simply one live gig at an outdoor frat party in 1969 with some great songs of that era for people to dance to.

Despite the remaining rough edges, we hope people find our live music as surprisingly toe-tapping and uplifting as we do. And, as everyone knows, sharing meaningful memories with others is the most satisfying thing you can do with them.”

There are now 14 tracks that have been inspected, reflected, dissected, reconnected, effected, architected, directed, and thoroughly resurrected. Individual songs have been edited to provide cleaner intros and endings, fading in or out as appropriate. Extraneous background noise has been eliminated. Tracks have been ordered to provide maximum impact and musical flow from track to track. The former crude recording now sounds like it was made in a professional studio.

Thus, 54 years later, a new album of old music has been released, thanks in part to the application of state-of-the-art technology. However, none of this collaboration would have been possible without the unwavering efforts of an amazing audio engineer, himself younger than the band members by a generation or two.

The Same As Last Week can be found on social media including Facebook

You can stream the album on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other popular streaming and download services.