In the wake of the recent rythmn section shake ups in Ass Cobra, which I'm sure is going to lead to some nasty shit amongst the MOGpac, Ash and Robin made their return to the Birdcage last night. Ash was hyper, Robin was not, so I knew they were both in the proper frame of mind to work. On the way down to the studio, I played them the new versions of 1956 and TWOBASSESTHIN. Both were met with enthusiasm. Everyone seems pleased with the direction the album is taking, but we all realize there is still work to be done. Oh yeah, and for the 4,000th time, we listened to Ass Cobra's DETROIT, which has supposedly taken 6 months to do.
I was happy to see B's friend Kid Who Looks Like Kid From Witness All Grown Up in town and chilling. He is quite fey yet handsome and I think because of that he pulls in tons of chicks. I was happy to find he had bought some chocolate donuts. He is quite thin and can live on these things. He watched MR SHOW and realized it wasn't that funny after all...
B and I had an agenda for these two and we put it in effect immediately. The first big decision was to cut almost 3/4 out of SOLAR and start from scratch. No one was happy with the song, so instead of talking about it for hours, we decided to just get rid of everything that was problematic and go at it again. Even I, who normally is adamant about keeping things, felt this made sense. I think the crew were a little surprised how agreeable I was. I'm not sure yet what this means for Link's sax parts, which concerns me a bit
Robin has been playing too much guitar lately, so I felt she needed a bass in her hands. I challenged Ash to stop playing guitar like a jazz half ass and to rock out a little bit. B sat in the corner, I think with a guitar, its hard to tell when Bat-Ash needs the lights off everytime we work. Ash and Robin switched back and forth between bass and guitar and the results were awesome. It took a really long time, which is kinda uncharacteristic for us, but it was worth it as we got the necessary parts to work with. Thanks to these two, we have a good verse and a really nice melodic bridge that (and I didn't say this to Ash at the time) sounds like The Cure.
During all this, I sat with a laptop, checking E-Mail, talking to a few folks online and looking bored . In reality, I'm jotting down ideas for arrangements, occasionally a lyrical idea, and listening VERY closely. Sometimes I'll just spring up and say "THAT'S IT!" or "NO NO NO". Anyway, B will have to lay down his stuff (also quite good) and get all this to me before I leave for LA on Tuesday so I can hammer it into shape. After that, we'll figure out where this tune stands, but I think it's in really good shape.
It was late, but I wanted to flesh out EXIST because I just wasn't happy with the bass in the chorus. And you know its serious when it's ME playing the bassline I don't like it. At this point I was kinda tired, but I recall Robin laying down a lot of bass for me to play with. I also think Ash threw down some guitars.
Overall, it was a evening serious success. It wasn't like our usual sessions where the magic happens immediately. This was more about getting deep into the guts of two songs and mining the gold out of them. It's not easy. Robin referred to is as "unproductive", though I countered that it's quality, not quantity, and Hypefactor got some real serious quality out of the kids last night.
My immediate task ahead is to work with the new stuff discussed above and to tweak 1956. I have written some lyrics for the song, which are actually the first for this album and now changes need to be made accordingly. In the meantime, the decision has been made to not write any more for this album until we have the live drums over the tracks. When we have that, we will then make the next round of creative decisions. I am hoping we can spend November getting the drums into shape. Then we will assess what we have and then go from there. I'm not putting any time restraints on this one. I want it perfect.
And perfect it shall be...
F
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