that show in san jose...

was fun! it was at this place called the smile factory, which was really just a rehearsal room in the back of an old thrift store that had been converted into a tax office, or something. anyway, we rented a minivan drove down once everyone was off work. corey's mom and her partner were there, haha. unfortunately they couldn't stay for the show, cuz it was getting late. anyway, we hung out, watched the other bands, dranks some sparks and tecate and had a pretty good time! we played:

don't you want to play with me?
do you wanna mess around?
persona
fem politique
the escapist
you don't love me anymore
dead roses
i was a teenage werewolf (the cramps)
anal fixation
sing pretty or die!

the set was pretty solid, no major fuckups, though tommi insists that many drum fills were all messed up - but none of us noticed, ha! i could have done the cramps cover better, cuz i re-heard the original yesterday, and my vocal take was soooo vanilla compared to the original. oh well! all of our songs came off pretty good, a couple people kept hollering "do you wanna mess around" at us afterwards, so yeah.

sunday we spent hanging out and working on the mix for the dichotomy song, and eventually we went down to the studio to put things back together and record some percussion type parts for the song. hopefully we'll get the mix close to finalized tonight or tomorrow and be done with the damn thing!

going to san jose

so we're playing a show tomorrow night in san jose. i think we're all pretty excited to get out of san francisco, especially with the weather being so nice this weekend. it's an all ages show put on by a friend of jimo's at some new venue that may or may not be a house...we're not really sure. it's called the SMILE Factory. anyways, other than the hundred bucks it's gonna cost us to rent a van, it should be a total party.

as far as recording goes, we finally have got all of the major tracking done for the song that has been a real pain in the ass (the dichotomy). corey laid down his bass parts this past wednesday, and i honestly didn't think he'd have it together yet, but he brought his game proper. pretty much all that's left to do is mix it and add some auxiliary percussion. i've let jimo kind of take over with producing the direction of the song, cuz i kept getting lost, and had recorded a bunch of unnecessary bullshit keyboard and guitar parts. anyway, he's really kind of pushed the damn thing back into focus with burning it down to the essential rhythmic components. it'll still sound huge on some parts, but we're trying to focus on the rhythms of the drums and bass, with the guitars and synths being more secondary. plus, he's got some really fucked up guitar playing on it that he's pretty proud of.

after this weekend, we're gonna work on getting solid on a few more songs, and then see where we're at with what we've recorded so far and see if we wanna write a couple more songs or not for the record. i suspect we'll probably bash some shit out...

things we're working on

so we got the new version of do you wanna mess around? up over on the myspace, and it sounds pretty fucking good. jimo and i are probably gonna do a remix/re-version of it with synths replacing all of the guitars just for shits and giggles (on top of the original bass and drums take). we were supposed to start that yesterday, but we got drunk on lemon drops made from the lemon tree we discovered in the back yard of our apartment building, and we ended up watching the movie stuck, which was pretty cool. been a bit hungover all day, sux.

anyway, we've been rehearsing over and over this god damned song i wrote called the dichotomy. it's been a really annoying and fucked up process for everyone in the band, but hopefully the end result will have been worth it. i basically wrote the song backwards, having only a few bass riffs that i wrote on the keyboard like two years ago, that have slowly been fleshed out into this labyrinthine suite-like arrangement. it's a bit of a mess, and corey has been very vocal in stating his opinion that the song sucks. but the more we rehearse it, the more it's starting to sound more parae, as in almost like real music. if it still sucks after we record it, then i guess he'll have been right, but jimo has been backing me up on this one. it's kinda like the blood brothers, public enemy, public image ltd, and miles davis all mixed together. poorly. talking about doing two versions of it, one stripped down live style with just vocals, guitar, bass, and drums, and one with all the needless bells and whistles, like queen on acid. hopefully it will be easier to record that it was to write and arrange. not sure when we'll start, as it's about 85% of the way there with the guys. maybe next week?

we've got several more songs that are written and arranged, it's just a matter of rehearsing them so that we're tight on them (and the recordings don't half ass suck). corey has a new song we've been jamming on, and jimo keeps threatening to write a song called hibernating rattlesnakes. oh yeah, he was supposed to do the lyrics to that last night while drunk...that didn't happen.

re-recording: do you wanna mess around

last night we re-recorded do you wanna mess around. we were only about 80% happy with the original version, and of course it turns out that this new take is 100 times stronger! continuing with are no click tracks prerogative, we recorded the bass and drums together as a single take with jimo playing guitar along in the headphones (and tommi and corey pretty much nailed it on the second take). it just sounds SO MUCH BETTER, almost like a real band! after that, jimo and i obsessed over the guitars a bit, which was not too bad, at least until we ran out of beer. but i'm happy with all of my parts, haha! i got a really cool fuzz sound out of my death by audio pedal that i never get to use. and jimo got to use his q-tron a bit too! we're gonna do the vocals tonight after i get off work, and hopefully have it mixed by monday.

sing pretty or die!

so we got a new song up, it's called SING PRETTY OR DIE! and we're pretty proud of it. jimo wrote most of the music on piano, i wrote the bridge on guitar, he sings the first part, and i sing the second part. it's basically about when yr hero's sell out, and do so very poorly. the initial inspiration came from a jaguar love show, they fucking suck. we recorded it a couple weeks ago very quickly over two days, and it was the first time we did a song without a click track. and what we learned is, we don't need no fucking click tracks anymore. they were actually holding us back! we finished mixing it over this past weekend and added a few guitar overdubs just to fill out the sound. anyway, we think it sounds pretty good!