Inside Soon-To-Be-Demolished Arlington, Virginia's, Inner Ear Studios

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I'll see if I can dig up something from that album by The Slickee Boys in the first picture.

A final look inside Arlington's legendary Inner Ear Recording Studios before its closure and the building's demolition

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Inside Soon-To-Be-Demolished Arlington's Inner Ear Studios
Arlington's Inner Ear Recording Studios is secure in its place in music history, no matter what happens next. The venerated recording music studio tucked away on S. Oakland Street in the Green Valley...
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Inside Soon-To-Be-Demolished Arlington’s Inner Ear Studios

Matt Blitz October 6, 2021 at 11:30am


A look inside Inner Ear Studios in Shirlington (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

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Arlington’s Inner Ear Recording Studios is secure in its place in music history, no matter what happens next. ... The venerated recording music studio tucked away on S. Oakland Street in the Green Valley neighborhood, near Shirlington, is where some of the region’s most iconic punk and rock acts have recorded.

Fugazi, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, and, one of the biggest acts in rock, the Foo Fighters, all have plied their trade here in this nondescript, gray building that sits between a brewery and a used tire shop. ... There are first pressings of albums recorded there hanging on walls, memorabilia strewn about, and equipment new and old line the studios. The place looks lived in, likely a product of numerous all-nighters and decades gone by.

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Earlier this year, Arlington County bought the property that Inner Ear has called home for a generation. The $3.4 million sale was part of an agreement made in June 2019 between the county and the property owner. The plan is to demolish the buildings there, including the recording studio, to make way for an arts and industry district, including space for festivals, markets, movie screenings, and concerts.

Arlington Cultural Affairs director Michelle Isabelle-Stark told the Washington Post that they were essentially saving the property from being bought by a private developer that would put a “self-storage in there.”

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Here to Stay (The Slickee Boys album)

Here to Stay

Compilation album by The Slickee Boys

Released: 1982
Recorded: 1976–1981

Here to Stay compiles all five Slickee Boys 7"s from 1976–1981 ( plus one previously unreleased song—"Kids" ). It was released by the German label Line Records with a catalog number of LLP 5170. It includes cover versions of songs originally recorded by Perry Como (by way of the Downliners Sect), the Rokes (and the Grass Roots—the Slickees combined the two versions), Vince Taylor, the Yardbirds, the Hangmen, The Chocolate Watch Band, as well as the theme from the film Exodus. According to the liner notes for Mersey, Mersey Me, Talking Heads had dropped the song "Girls Want to Be With the Girls" from their repertoire but re-visited it after hearing the Slickees' version, which beat the Talking Heads version to vinyl by months.

Some of these songs were later re-recorded for their 1985 album, Uh Oh… No Breaks! ( including "Kids", re-titled "When We Were Kids" ).

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