Demonstration Tapes: At The Bus Mall

Your brothers were so cruel

Here’s the home demo for “On the Bus Mall,” a song that would eventually find its way on to The Decemberists’ third LP, Picaresque. I recorded it in my studio room in NE Portland, in our little upstairs apartment, on a Martin twelve-string guitar that would eventually — within a year or so — be stolen by meth addicts only to be later recovered from a roadside ditch. The demo, to my ears,

sounds like a pretty hasty job; I was just getting it down for the band to learn it. That extra guitar line, obviously, was a placeholder till we had a better, more Marr-esque line to introduce the song. I don’t know when this song transitioned its preposition from “at” to “on.” I thought it was always “on”, but clearly I am mistaken. “On” is better. Anyway, here ‘tis for you paying Machinists. Thanks for your good work.