reuters: First clown in space hosts show to save Earth’s water
are we done?
i think so. a week is a long time to be in the house. some have gone much longer, but im no thoreau. im just an obsessive thing-writer-downer, small-stuff-observer and plastic-knob-diddler. this shit backs up impaction-style until i need 7 or 8 days to decompress and get everything gridded out all Excel-like. but now it’s out. for this year. at least the musik part. daemons have been exorcised.
had a friend from the outside world step in for a listen. he seemed to approve. which was good, because he’s got good taste.
putting the house back together tomorrow. putting myself back together tomorrow. curbside trashcans gonna be full. bathtubs gonna have a ring.
now onto mix anxiety. what has two thumbs and overthinks frequency spectrums…
easy to do when you’re mixing 3 instruments and not 8.
took some time out to do growed up stuff. pay bills mostly. and look outside at the rain and think hemingway stuff whilst rubbing my unkempt beard. my walk out to the mailbox is the only outside time i get. the sun hurteth. probably good that its raining all the time now.
had to use a butterknife to remove a t-shirt that had grown into my skin.
so i found out half the melons i had on my counter were rotting so i had to throw them out in the backyard.
welp.
circle of life and all that.
i recorded a bastard of a song today. no. make that WROTE and recorded a bastard of a song. this song, at one time called SCABIES, at another time PUNK TRASH, and at yet another time TOXIC MOXIC, blisters along for about a minute. three guitar tracks totally in the red. another one that’s just fret noise. vocals tripled. its chuck berry on a speedball bender and i actually reference kurt vonnegut. hoosier holla.
i was so happy with the raw version of this song i took the rest of the night off to watch BSG s.4
my house is a wreck. trash is stacked up in the corners. gnats are dying painful deaths drowning in my whiskey bottles. trying not to look my neighbors in the eye.
i have some really good shit on tape now. this fourth song, though, is still a bitch. but i have a soundtrack now for midwest trashcapade that im more or less proud of.
i went through four ideas today. scrapped my House of the Rising Sun Idea. fleshed out this song that was a raggedy, apocalyptic (there’s that key word again) versions of Come Together. wrote all the lyrics, sang it to tape, thought it sucked, trashed it.
so i finally strapped on the guitar and channeled Black Flag and Jerry Lewis into one spectre and made a song with the working title of “scabies” which will be changed, but is really fast and really cool. three tracks of fast guitar, overblown and distorted. some tambourine, thats it. i’m just racking my brain trying to set some good lyrics to it, and the only thing i can thing of is in the cadence of Johnny B. Goode.
so yeah, there’s more guitar on this and less piano than i envisioned, but i guess since my piano of choice is over 100 yrs old and cant keep a tune to save its life, i will have to make do-do with what i have.
currently racking my brain trying to think of a fourth song. ‘talkin toxic holocaust blues’ is out, although i liked the apocalyptic title. fits with the bleakness of my theme. figured out a cool variation on House of the Rising Sun, but i’m not sure its what i need right now.
really happy with what i’ve got so far. its quite possibly the nastiest, sludgiest thing i’ve ever committed to tape (or hard drive). it’s nasty. trash.
so im sitting here, listening to the shit out of some link wray, jerry lewis and eyehategod, trying to find a rabbit hole to go down. almost killt my first jug o whiskey. if i can get this 4th song down tomorrow plus backup vokes and random drum noises and guitar i might have me a bonfire.
probably throw in some projects from my married days. there’s a wedding dress out in the garage that’s going nowhere slow…
piano sound im happy with. im running everything pretty hot. the clicking sound is the middle “G” which i’ve nicknamed Shithead. i guess i wont be playing a G on this release.
believe me, no amount of duct tape will fix this click. we can say it adds “personality.”
seems like i should be working harder but im actually getting a lot done. tracklist is looking like this:
-7Up and Whiskey
-Witch Doctoress
-She’s On Fire (As Hard As She Can)
-Talkin Toxic Blues
this is turning out to be the absurdist bluesy sludge-fest i had intended. i added four tracks of fuzzed out guitar to 7Up, over the three piano tracks (i have one more to go). i may re-record the guitars tomorrow, though, when i have more energy. i think they could possibly be more murderous.
got a decent rock organ sound for Witch Doctoress. its an instrumental modeled after the beginning of Chest Fever by The Band.
im split on this isolationism deal. feels like ive been here for a month and ive got five days to go. old feelings coming back. wondering if this will suck horribly and if im wasting my time. i dont feel i should care, really. possibly made a mistake in announcing this project. maybe should have done undercover or something.
girl came by this afternoon selling cookie dough for the middle school cheerleading squad. told her i didn’t have any cash. even if i did i probably wouldnt have bought. im cheap.
trying to start mixing by thursday. gives me three whole days. still need to do vocals for She’s On Fire and actually write the whole damn thing of Toxic Blues.
the biggest damper to the free flow of ideas is being confined to this laptop. moving from one instrument to the next requires at least 10 min of unhooking and reconfiguring. maybe i should have used the Tascam 4 track thats sitting on my other piano.
said i would post a piano mic test last night. will post as soon as this is up.
