Dr. Frank's What's-it

God said to Abraham kill me a song

I'm a little dazed from the journey through the fires of hell (i.e., Arizona.) Don't get me wrong: I had a nice time in hell (Arizona.) Hell (Arizona) is beautiful, with many very sweet people. But the fires of hell (Arizona) can sure take a lot out of you. Still, the recording must go on, and we're set to begin mixing in the next couple of days.

I've received several emails from folks, and run into a few of them at shows, who are themselves on the verge of recording for the first time, and many of them said that the little studio journal I've been keeping here has been instructive, yet terrifying. Believe me, what I've described has been a charmed, preternaturally smooth block of tracking sessions. The band didn't break up during a session (which is fairly common.) No one threw a rented instrument across the room, destroying another piece of rented equipment. No one spilled tequila into the board. At no point did the engineering staff have to leave the room for awhile in the interests of preserving the peace and preventing an imminent strangulation incident. No one pulled a gun on anyone. I didn't end up curled up on the floor in catatonic depression and remorse, sucking my thumb and weeping (as I usually do.)

As for the tracks themselves, they went unusually smoothly. There were basically no disasters. And so much of it came out great, far, far beyond any reasonable expectations.

Part of the reason there were no disasters, I have to say, though, is because we made some timely decisions to cut our losses as well as some of the more difficult corners, to concentrate on the things we really had time for. We decided to change the things we could change, accept the things we couldn't change, and outwardly to affect a pious "we can tell the difference" bravado. Or words to that effect. Serenity now.

I believe these were the right decisions in almost every case, but there's a part of me that will always regret them. We kept the drums set up and mic'd till the bitter end, just in case there was enough space to try to put down "She Runs Out when the Money Does." As the b.e. approached, however, we had to admit, with considerable reluctance on my part, that there was no way we'd be able to do the song justice with the time and resources remaining. We'd left it till last for just that reason, of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't disappointing. In my head, I heard a mournful death march as we carried the drum cases and hardware out to the truck. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, and see you in hell (Arizona) old man. Something tells me we haven't heard the last of that one, but for now, it's beyond the wall of sleep.

"...and for my next trick..." was even harder to let go. I really love my demo of that song, but unlike the other demos and pieces of demos that we're using, the drum machine was not intended to simulate, guide, or be replaced by eventual real drums, but rather to stand on its own as a bossa nova machine track. In the context of the other demos, it sounds great, especially when you make the drum machine very loud and prominent; but next to the other stuff we've recorded, it sounded too low-fi. (Nothing wrong with low-fi, but that isn't how this particular song is supposed to come out.) Our plan was to "widen" the sonic landscape by adding overdubbed acoustic drums at certain strategic points, and dressing it up with more sound effects and vocals. (The arrangement was already very vocal heavy, but I had even more grandiose post production ambitions for this one.) We fooled around with it on that next to last day, but in the end it became clear that what we wouldn't have had time to do what we would have needed to do to it without sacrificing some key elements.

So we sacrificed the song instead. Because I'm so good at math, I knew we would have to lose a couple of the 15 plus tentative one we had on the list in order to end up with a 14 song album. I mean, it didn't come as a surprise. But it does leave a gap, and I hate gaps.

Even among those songs that were not terminated in the final trimester, I have nagging doubts about a few, mostly centering on the question of whether we did enough "stuff" to them to make them sound special and to distinguish them from the others. There are far fewer of these doubts this time around than usual, and I'm really happy with the sounds we did get. But again, in the interests of actually finishing on time and on budget this time (as I've said, a first) we had to let some things go. Some of this involved simply using more of the tracks I had already recorded on my demos, rather than trying to re-do them with better or more sounds. We ended up retaining the analog synth sound and organ on "London" for instance; my plan had been to try to find a trumpet player who would be good enough to do the part quickly and cheaply, but we struck out there. Rather than try to find a different, less funky fake sound, we decided to stick with the funky fake sound we already had, which I like all right. In fact, it adds a certain what's-it. I love artificial, out-of-place sounds anyway, and much prefer that approach to trying to sound "normal." The "London" stuff sounds about as cool as that kind of thing can be, in my opinion, even if it is only a Casio. Still, a trumpet would have been nice. But oh well, that's show biz. We also decided to keep more bits of the demo vocals than planned.

Certain things came off exactly as hoped for. The easy listening vocals on "Fucked Up on Life" worked out like I'd planned. Believe it or not, there had been a slight but very real possibility that we might have been able to get Al Jardine to sing some backups on that (since he was hanging out at the studio around the time I had originally intended to record the song for last year's lost and abandoned solo album-- in fact, the arrangement was cooked up with him in mind. Totally nice guy, by the way. When we were finishing up the mix for the incomplete Revenge is Sweet outtake "I was Losing You all Along" he called out helpful hints on the bass sound from the lounge in the next room. "That sounds a little picky, doesn't it? Trebly and picky? Don't mean to be, uh, picky. Ha ha." You gotta love him. My favorite bit was where he said, in passing, "you know, I've been having some troubles with my old band, you know how it is..." The "old band" being, you know, The Beach Boys.) Well, we didn't get Al, but it still sounds nice.

I'd say most of the songs "feel" complete, in fact. It's the most together-sounding album we've ever come up with, even in rough, unmixed state. The ones that worry, me, though, are the "sounds good, let's move on" songs, where we persuaded ourselves, or I allowed myself to be persuaded, that we didn't need to do all that had been planned because it sounds just fine as is. Often, this is quite true, of course. And you can screw up a song just as much by overdoing the incidental stuff as by leaving it off. It depends on the song, and the type of arrangement, different types requiring different things to serve the ultimate goal of getting the song across to the listener. There can be differences of opinion on this, and usually the people working on them don't have a lot of perspective while it's going on. Sometimes you don't realize what you did wrong till years later. There have been cases where I have regretted making that kind of decision (the recent example that springs to mind is Alcatraz's "Our Days are Numbered," a great song that could have used something more.) That's really the only reason my optimism is slightly guarded. (And I gotta say once again, any optimism at all is quite a novelty in this situation-- I'm usually ready to shoot myself at this point.) And believe it or not, a perverse part of me also wonders whether some songs are too competently executed: we don't want it to sound too normal, do we? Or do we?

So there you have it, or better or worse. Fourteen songs, five of which appear in some form on "eight little songs." Two casualties and counting. Delusions of grandeur. Self pity. Letting I dare not wait upon I will. Elation. Massive headache.

Posted by Dr. Frank at August 13, 2003 04:07 PM | TrackBack