We've been clear from the beginning that restoring and releasing Calm Before the Storm was the "one big thing," a labor of love and legacy for our fallen comrade Matt Bouley. Our time came and went, and that would have been that - nothing but memories so long as memories live on - had it not been for the existence of the tapes we recorded two years after our final show.
While the nostalgia makes one sad at times to consider what could have been, and wishing there still could be something now, there simply is no Nor'easter without Matt. But there have been extraordinary gifts and experiences in the here and now because of doing the album restoration; the three other members reconnecting frequently over "beer Zooms", and reconnecting with friends, fans and supporters in real time during our three livestream events from the studio over the last year as well as via social media.
But there is one more gift from the time capsule. We knew that there was a video of our final performance, at a local festival May 2, 1987. Fellow local musician Carl Robitaille was walking around that day with a fairly fancy 4-head VHS camera, and caught some of our set. Turk captured almost the whole show from the sound board on stereo cassette, so we had some memento of the performance. We'd never seen the video, and our efforts at connecting to get a copy were waylaid for one reason or another, and after a few years, we all just sort of forgot about it.
Back in November 2021, Andrew got the film from Carl. While it had some mold spots (protect your old VHS tapes until you transfer them people, they don't last forever!), we have been able to clean it up and transfer it. AND we have those soundboard tapes as well. The video isn't very sharp compared to the crispness of HD video that we all take on our phones routinely, but it IS a time capsule and a story; a story familiar to countless other bands and musicians who dreamed of bigger things.
A story we plan to be telling soon too. One more big thing yet to come.