Tetrasonics - A Little History

Spring - 1977

In the spring of 1977, I was at the end of my second year of college. I had one more semester left and I'd graduate with an Associates degree in Electronics Engineering from St. Cloud State University.

With no idea what I was going to do to make a living that summer, I got a phone call from a musician friend of mine who had seen an ad in a local paper about a Recording Engineer position. He thought I'd be interested in something like that because I was a musician who liked that 'electrical' stuff.

The Interview

After one quite uneventful interview with a gentleman by the name of Mark Thelen, my application (some notes on a 3 x 5 card) was stuck on the top of one of those pokey things with a couple hundred other applicants.

Two days later, Mark called and asked if I could work for a couple of days for free as a trial period - to see if I could do the job before he decided. I did, I could and he decided.

For the next two years I worked on jingles, demo tapes and radio spots. We moved the facility and remodeled everything ourselves on nights and weekends. The studio changed from a 4-track to an 8-track and, eventually to a no-track. Through the two years I was there, the studio mutated into a full blown advertising agency and ended up changing its name to Thelen Advertising.

Mark and Ann Thelen were more than the first real bosses I ever had. They were my friends and my mentors. Tetrasonics will always have a cherished place in my memory for those reasons.

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