It was my first session in an actual recording studio as an artist. There's an End Rant about it in Tape Op#13, and the lessons learned that weekend of "what not to do" remain with me even now. But there was one little action I took, over 40 years ago, that I was recently reminded of, and it's a big one.
We'd booked two days to record the best songs of our current set on 33 minutes of tape. Day one was all tracking basics and most overdubs, and on day two we did a few last overdubs and then mixed. As we were packing up our gear, I boxed up the 1/2-inch multitrack reel, 1/4-inch mixdowns, and track sheets and put them under my arm. The studio owner looked at me funny, and said, "Most people just leave the multitrack tapes here with me." I sort of understood what he meant. What could I do with these tapes? I'd need a 1/2-inch, 16-track tape deck with the proper noise reduction in order to ever hear these again. But we'd paid for these tapes, they belonged to us, and I think I knew in the back of my mind that we'd never return to this funky studio in a shack in the middle of nowhere.