Between an evening at the movies and a night in the studio, Thursday was a good day in MOGworld. This week I edited drum tracks for Exit Strategies about eight hours every day, so it felt really fucking liberating to do something else for one evening, even if sitting in front of a G4 PowerBook was still involved.
At last Saturday's dodgeball league tournament, the organizers were kind enough to give every team free passes to a screening of the new Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn flick Dodgeball. Vince is consistently fantastic, but Stiller is a hit-or-miss comedy writer (see Envy), so I was not expecting brilliance when I met FJ, Irene and her coworker at the Kips Bay Loews yesterday. And while this movie is not mediocre (though many will call it that), nor is it stunning (and a few may call it that), we laughed. A lot. Like Zoolander, some gags were bizarre or simply did not make any sense. But the great material veers between brilliant one-liners ("You're as useful as poo-flavored lollipop!"), cruelty ("You were adopted. Your parents don't even love you.") and pottymouth laughs (a bar called The Dirty Sanchez), not to mention the nut-punching physical comedy. The non-sequitors and Mexican jokes also had us in stitches.
By the time FJ and I reached my block of Maiden Lane, Charles was already outside. We had planned a full band gathering at the studio yesterday, but Ash and Robin both bowed out for personal reasons. So rather than summit about the progress of Exit Strategies with everyone, we focused on three specific songs with Charles that needed bass overdubs or full-on rewrites. As the live drum edits came together for the record, we took the time to replay or completely refashion many instrumental takes recorded against drum loops. The recent addition of Charles to the hypefactor studio crew gave even FJ - typically reticent to re-record anything - impetus to erase a slew of old parts and start from scratch. In the case of the song "Solar," last night marked the third time we had revisted the song's bass part. On "Exist" and "Oneninefivesix," early performances that we found somewhat lackluster were axed as well. We blew through the three songs quite quickly as Charles works at a steady pace and possesses a drum machine's sense of tempo, enabling us to keep takes to a minimum. There were some slow points during "Solar" and "Oneninefivesix," although I chalk that up to the fact that Charles was exhausted and I was pushing him to both write and play long, seamless takes for both songs. A bit much for midnight on a Thursday, perhaps, but he pulled it off.
While the work we did last night may seem mundane, I cannot stress the significance of the evening enough in terms of improving band dynamic. FJ and Charles had never been in a room together under creative circumstances (as FJ missed the "Descriptive" session in May for a Los Angeles trip), so it was important that they get a feel for each other (in a completely straight way.) By the end of the evening, FJ and Charles were avidly reminiscing about obscure 80s new wave (Nik Kershaw) and other "stuff," so all in all I would say it was a stellar session. Most importantly, Charles is smitten with the hypefactor material.
Plans tonight include !!! live at Bowery Ballroom, followed by another day in the studio tomorrow morning working on "Oneninefivesix" with FJ. The sold out !!! gig will almost certainly be a hipster clusterfuck, so I can only hope the set will be worth it (and better than Out Hud.) But I would settle for a mediocre set with an indie celebrity sighting (like Le Tigre's Kathleen Hanna moseying down West Fourth Street last Friday.)
Today's cheap entertainment: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/amg/, a customized mix tape generator. Worth reading to discover such situation-specific mix tape lists as, "Songs to Listen to While Deciding What Color to Make the Background Behind a Crotchless Panty Because You Took Your Fancy Art School Education and Got a Job as a Graphic Designer at a Lingerie Company" (requested by Nikki and compiled by Danor).
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