Wednesday and Thursday Notes

/in , /by

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m writing this about 5 days after the fact. I’ve returned each night completely drained and haven’t felt like doing anyting, much less typing. This album has a lot of extremely difficult material. The songs sound deceptively simple, but are a real bitch to play or play correctly. Who wrote this crap? What was he thinking? Is he insane??**

** actual comments from me, chris, eric, joe and trey at various times.

Paul is pushing the recording equipment to the limit – about 4 mics on each guitar amp = 4 tracks per guitar. 2 in front, one in back, one ambient. The sounds are thick and syrupy. Ran thru all of my parts. I doubled many of them through a, dare i say it, marshall speaker with an ancient 50’s PA head that I’m ttold was the impetus for the marshall head. A very innocent looking metal box with 4 tubes – one per input with their own gains. I think Jeff Beck pioneered the use of it to get the wild distortion everyone now takes for granted. I tried to reduce the strums for a few tunes. I need to remove more of them from future songs. Its been a fall-back of mine for too many years.

Joe completed all bass duties with only a punch here and there. He’s a lot like me in that he gets angry when flubbing one note out of a thousand. Ok not like me as I flub a much higher percentage. Joe’s work at the end of the song ‘So Green/Human Reel’ is gonna wow you. I remember begging Joe to play bass for us way back when. He’s a monster guitar player in real life and I know its not as fun to play ‘that other instrument’. I thank God he agreed to play – he’s nailed every part with conviction and agility.

Oh – I don’t think I’ve given you the setlist for the cd (in no particular order yet)

Oldies –

  • Ego
  • First Five
  • You’ll Come Around
  • Mariner’s Dilemma

Newbies –

  • Be Cool
  • Sweet Simulacra
  • So Green
  • The World’s Ventriloquist
  • Little Doll
  • Hollywooden Dreams
  • Anymore