A couple of scrapped David Bowie tapes from the 1974 Sigma Sessions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have been found, but they were almost erased. Max Ochester, a rare record collector and preserver of Philly music history, found the recordings in 2022 when he purchased a large lot of unpublished reel-to-reel tapes from a foreclosure sale. However, the tapes weren’t labeled, except for the word “scrap” penciled on one of the boxes.
Last June, Ochester was heading to Elm Street Studios to do some recording and decided to bring the tapes along, assuming they were blank. “I took a couple of the tapes with me, because I was going to tape over them,” he told the Telegraph recently. Ochester and producer Brennan McGeehan went through the process of priming the old tapes for the reel-to-reel, which involves baking them in an oven on low heat to prevent deterioration.
“We baked them overnight and then Brendan threw them up on the reel-to-reel,” Ochester explained. “I just wanted to check there was nothing on the tapes before I erased them.” However, when the tape started to play, Ochester heard something familiar…