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WELCOME TO THE DAILY ADVENTURES OF MIXERMAN:
A DOCUMENTARY

All Mixerman documentary copy is presented just as it appears in the hardbound book, The Daily Adventures of Mixerman. © 2002, 2004, 2006 Mixerman Multimedia, Inc. - All Rights Reserved. No part of the following web-based document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Post subject: Week 2: The Daily Adventures of Mixerman - A Documentary

Day 6: Chocolate Muffins & Razor Blades
Posted: August 5, 11:48 p.m. — Week 2

Today started like any other day on this project. I was brimming with anticipation as to whether I was going to be recording an album with the world-renowned record producer, Willy Show. I could hardly contain myself. Not wanting to be late, I left myself extra time to get to the studio. This was the big day.

I didn’t even tell Lance a false time on Friday. I just told him that his uncle was coming in, so he’d better not be late. Damn! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody turn that red. You see, I hadn’t let on to Lance that I knew about his familial relationship with Willy. After seeing that reaction, I’m glad I kept that to myself for so long.

I arrived at the studio half an hour early, and to my surprise, Lance was a mere five minutes later than I was. I congratulated him, telling him that by the end of this project, he was going to be a good assistant. He thought that was funny, but I was quite serious.

I asked Lance to put up the reel with “Test Drums” on it and to cue up the current drum sound. I checked out how the tracks sounded and made sure that I liked the static mix of the instruments. I casually played with the balances, put them back to my marks, and decided to go get a muffin.

One thing that’s great about the better studios in L.A., is that they supply you with a plethora of food. On any given day we could have muffins, bagels, croissants, fruit, or even veggie trays. At this particular studio, there were almost always muffins. I love the muffins, especially the chocolate muffins. But for some inexplicable reason, the runner only buys one chocolate muffin per day for the basket (he also only buys one onion bagel, which is even more dumbfounding to me). The longer I wait to go to the muffin basket, the more likely I’ll have to eat a bran muffin—something that I was not in need of at that particular moment.

Today, I figured I’d get myself to the muffin basket early and guarantee myself the lone chocolate muffin. When I arrived at the muffin room, lo and behold, before me stood Willy Show himself! And he was eating a muffin. This had to be kismet! Fate! Willy Show liked muffins too! And he liked chocolate muffins . . .

MOTHER FUCKER!!!

Willy Show was eating MY chocolate muffin! Was this any way to start off our relationship?

As usual, I chose the path of minimal confrontation. I smiled and greeted Willy. He hugged me, as if we were old buddies. That’s what producers do here in L.A., they hug you. It was great. So we talked for a minute, and he asked how I was. I told him I was doing well, and that I was glad to spend the weekend with the family, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The band arrived one by one, and eventually we made our way to the studio. First, we went into the studio, where Willy checked out the set-up. He commented how he’d never placed the drums where I had them (yes, I seem to have heard that before), and he commented on how great the vibe was. He liked the set-up, complimenting it as musician-friendly. I was elated to have him comment positively on the vibe, as that’s my pride and joy. I want the room to be so comfortable that guys are dying to get back in and play. I was very happy that he noticed the hard work that went into that detail.

After some kibitzing in the room, we made our way into the control room. Willy sat down, and we continued to shoot the shit for a while, until Willy asked if he could hear some drums. So I played him the last take we did. He listened for a verse and a chorus of the song, and he turned to stop the machine.

This was the moment of truth. To be honest, it sounded OK to me. But I hate OK. OK might as well be shit. That’s because I am at all times attempting to achieve the level of “magical,” which I can assure you is many levels above “OK.” But the hard and cruel fact of the matter is that magical comes from the player, not from me.

“It’s too room-oriented,” he said with his finger still on the stop button, as if the tape could stop any more than it already had.

OK, so what does that mean? He wanted a PA in the room. The way I figured it, that meant he wanted the sound to have a bigger-than-life room sound.

“I can make it less room-oriented within the balances,” I said, as I made some fader adjustments.

“No,” said Willy thoughtfully. “I don’t know if the PA is right. Did you do a take without the PA?”

I had Lance put up Drum Take I, which I made a week ago with a totally different set of mics. He stopped the tape after less than 30 seconds.

“This is much closer to what I’m looking for,” he said.

I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. He liked my first instinct, without the PA. A sound, mind you, that took me hours to dial in for lack of a good drummer, and a sound that is now gone. Now he was going to want me to take hours to get that sound back again. Hilarious!

“Well, then, I guess we should go back to that set-up,” I replied enthusiastically.

Willy concurred, left me his cell phone number and split. I went to work.

I spent about three hours with Dumb Ass and Lance trying to recreate this sound. First Lance had to reset the mics that had been long ago pulled down. That took about half an hour, even with my help and haranguing.

After hearing the drums on the mics and fine-tuning the placements, I realized the heads were dead. Drum heads have only so much life in them before they’re dead. In the studio, we typically prefer to replace drum heads often. Some producers prefer to change them daily. Some producers prefer to never change them, but if Willy liked the sound from the first day, then it would seem to follow that he liked the sound of new heads.

I called for the drum tech to come down and change out the snare and tom heads. I guess between going for two drum sounds with tweaks, and the marathon drumming sessions that non-drum-playing band members were participating in throughout last week had killed the heads.

Finally, I managed to get reasonably close to the original drum sound. I had the band play the song down, and I made a take. I called Willy and told him I got it. He returned to the studio within 20 minutes.

Willy listened again and then stopped the tape.

“Yeah, it’s good,” he said as he rubbed his chin in thought.

Man! That was easy. But doesn’t he hear the shitty-ass drumming? Perhaps he knows that it’s going to have to be edited. Hey, the guy’s a pro. He can tell the difference between a shitty sound and a shitty drummer, right?

“But let me compare it to something,” he continued.

Uh oh, I thought to myself. I’ve been down this road before.

We spent the next six hours comparing our drum sound to the drum sounds of mastered CDs which, for the most part, contained very pleasing songs that had no bearing whatsoever on this band or the song we were about to cut. We were comparing apples to oranges. None of the CDs was anything that Willy had produced, so it wasn’t like he was knowledgeable about what was done to achieve the sound. Not only that, but many of the drums seemed to be doctored with samples18.

I pointed this out to Willy, backing up my claim with the fact that some of our comparisons were being made to songs mixed by Sir Arthur Conan Mixallot. Sir Arthur is well known for triggering samples on drums. This is all well and good, but the fact of the matter is, we were NOT using triggered samples. This made for wholly unfair comparisons. Unless we were planning to put in samples ourselves, it was unrealistic for me to match drum sounds to those mixes. Willy seemed unfazed. He felt I could get that sound, regardless.

Throughout the day, I felt like a hamster on a treadmill. I was going around in circles. One of the CDs had tons of low end19, another had NO low end. How the fuck was I supposed to match a sound between two completely different sonic landscapes?

Willy liked the kik from one CD, and the snare from another CD, and the cymbals from yet another. The CDs were mostly insanely bright20 and loud21. So I rented several sets of Pultec EQP1a EQs, which I consider to be my not-so-secret weapon to help me brighten the drums. Pultecs are 40-year-old tube EQs, that are very expensive as they are highly coveted and in limited supply. I like them because I can add a lot of high end, without adding a lot of distortion, which is not the case with many, many EQs on the market.

I spent many hours A/B-ing22 CDs and trying to make Dumb Ass’ drums sound like a conglomeration of what I suspect were some of Willy’s favorite recordings. This process can be extremely fatiguing. So much so, that it becomes difficult to tell what the hell you’re listening to after awhile. One can become extremely confused and frustrated in this process, and the only weapon to combat these maladies are breaks, of which I took many. After much hoop jumping, I finally came up with a drum sound that I thought might satisfy Willy, who was making my life miserable at this particular juncture.

He listened. He liked it! Halle-fucking-lujah!

The only obstacle that remained was for Willy to do a car check (the process of checking a recording in the car), which he did without incident. Just like that (9 hours later), we were moving on.

We spent about another hour changing out guitars and amps and trying to find a combination that he liked for the song. We ended up back on the original combo that I had arrived at with Yore, who seemed to have no reaction to any of the sounds, and at times seemed bored to be participating in the making of his own album.

“Yeah, whatever,” Paulie Yore said, as if he had lost something important to him. “It sounds good enough to me,” he would say as he hung his head and slunk out of the room.

Listening to Yore in a studio was as treacherous as listening to the Sirens as you sailed a boat through a rocky cove. Needless to say, I did my very best to try to avoid buying into his most unenthusiastic comments, as I moved on to some bass adjustments before we began making takes.

By the time we actually were making takes, I was thoroughly exhausted, yet pleased that after more than a week, we were actually recording the album. As I sat, nearly dozing off in the middle of the second take (which sucked ass), I was awakened by what I considered at the time to be an odd event. Willy reached towards the console and turned down the music.

“So, you been having fun all week with these putzes?” he inquired from out of the blue.

What kind of play was that? He knows the band requested that I be on the session.

I chuckled, rather uncomfortably.

What did he expect to gain from this question? He obviously was interested in my reaction. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he was looking for, and I had only a split second to give him one.

“They haven’t been too bad,” I replied shortly after my chuckle, looking away from Willy, but quickly darting my eyes to see his reaction, as he turned up the music again.

After I said it, I figured this was the best answer I could give. I wasn’t acknowledging that I thought they were putzes, but I wasn’t denying it either. Until I could determine his angle, noncommittal was the name of the game.

As take after take after take went by, I pondered what had just transpired. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Willy was right. These guys ARE putzes. I get along reasonably well with all of them, but if I had a day off, I wouldn’t call ANY of them to go hang out. Dumb Ass drives me up a wall. Shit, he drives everyone up a wall. Paulie Yore is either full-on depressed, or a total asshole. I don’t think that guy actually likes anyone. The singer has proven himself to be a class A jerk. He is the most self-centered, inconsiderate prick to walk the earth, which is somewhat inexplicable to me, because he wasn’t this way the first time that I worked with him. The bass player is generally a fine guy when we’re hanging out alone, but this group of personalities has brought out the worst in him. These days he seems to derive his greatest pleasure from fanning the flames of the singer’s favorite pastime—the pushing of other band member reaction buttons. A bad combination—to be sure. This band clearly fits the definition of dysfunctional.

As if that weren’t enough, there was constant bickering over “monopoly money,” which songs would make the album, and who owned what share of which songs. Monopoly money is my term for money that doesn’t exist yet. The money, for example, that WOULD be made if an album SHOULD sell two million albums. Money that does not currently exist is the single most destructive entity in this business. For the most part, these kinds of arguments are preposterous, but no band-member wanted to have another member make more money than he. At the same time, no member wanted to split everything equally, in case his song happened to be the one that became a hit. “Happened to” was the operative term here.

Near as I could figure it, Willy wasn’t making a play, he was expressing what I should have discovered by now on my own. He knew they were putzes, where I had been temporarily blinded by my relationship with two of them and their communal desire to have me in the room as some sort of counter balance. On top of all that, I’m sure that my brain was somehow attempting to prevent me from actually hating the band I was recording—a condition you generally want to avoid at all costs. In one sentence, Willy had destroyed the protective bubble I was keeping myself in, and I was now on a project in which I hated the band and could actually express that. Once again, I was fucked.

Regardless of my revelation, we filled several reels with takes. He just let them play the song over and over and over again, sitting practically motionless in front of the speakers. As I sat next to him, I couldn’t help but think that Willy must be trying to figure out what the fuck he was going to do. On somewhere around the sixth take, he asked me to solo the drums. He was shaking his head in disgust. “This just doesn’t sound right,” he confided, never looking me in the eye but rather staring blankly ahead.

I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to tell Willy what I thought of this drummer for the better part of a week. To this point, I have done little toward this front, mostly because it is pointless to debate over something that you cannot prove right then and there. If one person is arguing from the perspective of speculation, then I contend the other is a fool to try and persuade. I now had Willy in the room with the shitty drumming of Dumb Ass blasting out the speakers, and if Willy still was not convinced, I could now at least prove it to him. Without hesitation, I replied.

“Cotton sucks.”

“Cotton?” He asked as he turned to look at me.

“That’s my pet name for the drummer” I explained.

“Why Cotton?” he inquired.

“Because he’s dumber than cotton,” I said dryly.

That MUST be a funny line because Willy practically fell off his chair just like the bass player had after I said it. When he regained his balance, he sat perched on the edge of his chair, and he laid his head in his arms on the console with his body pulsating from silent laughter almost inappropriately as my line really didn’t warrant such a reaction. Just as the band was completing its fifth take, I, too, found myself laughing, as laughter is often times infectious. Fortunately, I was able to gain my composure.

“I’m going to tell them to make another take,” I announced.

Willy sat motionless with his head down as I asked the band to play another take. Lance rolled tape at my cue, and I rolled the clik track23. Willy had finally regained his composure. He sat up in order to wipe away tears from his face.

Personally, I don’t get it. I mean, I thought it was mildly amusing, but this seemed to be an overreaction. Perhaps he was vulnerable—much like one is when he or she is extremely upset. Perhaps the drumming had depressed him so much that he was susceptible to even the mildest of humor, sending him into a tizzy. I can’t quite figure it out.

Regardless, to me, humor is the single most important part of a session. I’m like the class clown of a session. I dance, play practical jokes, fuck around constantly, make up names for people (I know, big surprise), and I’m an incessant smart-ass. I’ll do anything to keep the people involved, happy, and entertained. The more miserable the circumstance, the more I use humor as my weapon. I had achieved what I needed most to achieve today. I got Willy to laugh. More importantly, I got him to laugh uncontrollably. This was a good thing.

“You’re right, Cotton sucks,” Willy finally replied, still catching his breath, and still having occasional momentary tremors of laughter. “Do you know how to use a razor blade?” he continued.

“Of course,” I replied. I should have stopped there, but I was curious, since he had already asked me this in our pre-gig interview.

“You asked me that before.”

“Yes,” he replied, “That’s one of the reasons you have the gig. Somehow, cut me a good drum take tomorrow,” he said. And after the band finished playing the last take, he called it a night.

This isn’t going to be easy.

Mixerman

Week 2 Page 2:
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman

All Mixerman documentary copy is presented on PSW (with permission) just as it appears in the hardbound book, The Daily Adventures of Mixerman. © 2002, 2004 Mixerman Multimedia, Inc. — All Rights Reserved. No part of the following web-based document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Day 7: 188 Ways To Kill Your Drummer
Posted: August 7, 12:34 a.m.

Last night, as I was leaving the studio, I told Lance to burn me two CDs of all the takes, to program an ID for each section of the song as the CD was being burned—intro, verse, chorus, etc. and to document clearly and concisely which ID was which. Then I told him to have one of the CDs couriered to my house and have the other delivered by runner to Willy’s.

When I got up this morning, I was well aware of what this day would be like. Hours upon hours of tedious cutting and editing. I’m a big proponent of cutting tape, as opposed to using a computer. For starters, I like the way tape sounds better than computers, especially Alsihad.

As I’ve alluded to earlier in this diary, and which I suppose I can’t say enough, Alsihad is, without question, the most purchased and used Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) in the recording business. There are other manufacturers of DAWs, but none have anywhere close to the market share of Alsihad. As is typically the case with electronic equipment, computers, etc., it seems the best product rarely rises to the top. Beta players and Macintosh computers are prime examples of that phenomenon.

The advent of the DAW has changed the way recordings are made because products like Alsihad have reduced the buy-in cost to making records (albeit this is largely irrelevant in this particular case) and the editing software greatly speeds up the actual process of editing. Unfortunately, the power of editing that Alsihad provides can, and in many cases will, slow down the recording process as a whole rather than speed it up. This paradox occurs partly because people seem unable to resist using the editing power that Alsihad offers, and even the most disciplined producer, recordist, singer, or player, (myself included) begin to depend on the fixing power of the computer, as opposed to the performing power of the musician.

Of course, the speeding up or slowing down of the process given the presence of Alsihad is a hotly contested subject. But if you tell just about any studio manager in L.A. that the session he/she is booking will be using Alsihad, the eyes will light up as if you had just announced he/she won the lottery.

Che-ching!

To make matters worse, there is some debate as to the quality of audio reproduced by Alsihad. Recording and the process of editing within Alsihad is a subject of great contention among the community of audio engineers. To me, the sonic quality of a recording is drastically degraded just by putting a recording into Alsihad. Even though there are technical ways to reduce this degradation, it is often either cost-prohibitive, or, in the case of big-budget records, viewed as unnecessary fat in the constant battle to trim costs.

Unfortunately, the process of editing within Alsihad can cause the most egregious degradation of all—particularly with drums. With as many edits as were going to be necessary on this song, the quality of the recording would, without a doubt, be reduced substantially in quality. A recording that sounded “alive” and “vibrant” sonically can be reduced to “mundane” or “dead” by editing within the computer. I don’t know the technical reasons why this sonic degradation occurs, and to be fair, as with all of this that I am discussing here, there are those that will argue vehemently that said degradation is imagined. But as far as I’m concerned, anyone that argues that might as well argue that the earth is flat.

This phenomenon of degradation doesn’t really happen from physically cutting together pieces of tape, unless you accidentally use a magnetized blade, in which case you get a permanent “pop” on your recording. Nice! Unfortunately, the process of cutting tape together can be slow, laborious and, to some extent, archaic. Archaic would certainly be the truth of the matter here. This wasn’t simply a case of cutting three large sections of takes together to get the best performance, in which case I’d be done in about 10 minutes flat. This was going to be some heavy-duty editing. There would likely be a very large number of edit points in the song, a task that even on a computer would take many hours. On a tape deck, a job like this would easily take close to an entire 12-hour day.

As I walked out of my house, I picked up the padded envelope that contained the CD Lance made for me. I listened to the takes as I drove to the studio. The freeway was clogged, as it always is during the day in La La Land, so I wasn’t endangering too many lives by writing notes on each take as I drove. About half way there, I stopped even taking notes, as I was overcome by the irony. While Dumb Ass could not maintain a consistent pulse from one beat to the next, his propensity to speed up the snare hit and slow down the kik was nothing SHORT of consistent. Yes, Dumb Ass was actually consistent in his inconsistency. To make matters worse, Dumb Ass wouldn’t play the form of the song the same way twice. Some verses, he was still on the ride cymbal, when clearly he should have been on the hat. I was going to have to pick a take that he played the proper arrangement on and edit from there.

I couldn’t help but wonder why I was editing a drum take out of this bullshit. But at the same time, it’s not like a good take would have ever been played by Dumb Ass. So I can hardly criticize Willy’s decision to have them play the song down a bunch of times and try to cut something together. But perhaps it would have been better if the drummer played the takes similar to each other. It certainly would have made editing easier. But as I’ve come to realize, this isn’t about easy.

Even with the traffic, I managed to make it to the studio at my planned start time. Seeing as Lance wasn’t in yet, I made my way for the muffin room. I had been thinking about that chocolate muffin all morning, and I wanted to make sure that I was the person that ate it today. As I made my way to the table, I could see my muffin there at the top of the muffin pile in all its glory. Knowing that Willy liked the chocolate muffin, I actually considered leaving it for him. But seeing as I was going to be editing all day, the muffin was just going to get stale anyway, so I did us both a favor and I ate it. It was delicious, and I was enjoying it thoroughly. That is, until Dumb Ass walked in.

I almost choked on my muffin (That sounds bad!). This led me to lapse into the oddest momentary daydream of Dumb Ass incorrectly performing the Heimlich maneuver on me, and in the process, badly bruising my sternum. Then I imagined Dumb Ass performing CPR on me, punching my bruised sternum as hard as he could in hopes of reviving me. By the time my mind had wandered to Dumb Ass leaning over to administer mouth-to-mouth, I was overcome by disgust, jolting myself completely out of the dream sequence.

What the fuck was he doing here? I was going to be editing all day. I didn’t even want him anywhere near the studio.

Lance finally sashayed his skinny ass into the muffin room.

“You’re late,” I told him curtly, now in a bad mood with the presence of Dumb Ass.

Even if Dumb Ass were a cool, laid-back dude, I wouldn’t want him around while I was editing his takes together. The process requires enormous amounts of concentration, and having a nervous Nellie in the waiting room, or worse yet, in the control room, asking me a lot of questions or criticizing a work in progress would only serve to hinder that process. So I decided to make a sign. I wrote on a piece of paper with a dull blue Sharpie pen, and I taped my sign to the window of the control room door.

NO DRUMMERS ALLOWED! THIS MEANS YOU!!!

“Whaaaaaaa,” Dumb Ass whined in his best retard voice. “Why no drummers allowed!?” he exclaimed while stamping his foot as if he were three years old. Perhaps he thought he was Tarzan or something.

“That’s just the way it is, my man,” I replied compassionately.

“You’re not going to have to edit me very much,” he continued.

WHAT? Was this guy smoking crack? Was he not listening to the way the music rocked awkwardly like the blinker of a car?

“Of course not!” I lied. “But this takes a lot of concentration, and I can’t really have disturbances.”

“OK, but don’t make me sound like a robot,” he replied.

Better a robot than a horse, I thought to myself. The way the drums were now, were it to ever get on the radio, entire cities of people would have to be treated immediately for sea sickness.

“I won’t,” I replied smiling as I closed the door gently on him.

Once I got into the room, I quickly realized that this studio wasn’t the least bit prepared for tape editing. There were no extra 2" take-up reels (I would need a bunch), no 1/4" splicing tape (I needed the thin tape to do the amount of edits I would be doing), there were no speakers in the machine room, the razor blades were not demagnetized, there was barely a nub of a white grease pencil for marking tape, and I was in desperate need of a common 2x4 piece of lumber, the purpose of which I will explain momentarily. I provided Lance with a list as I spent the next hour-plus charting out the rest of Dumb Ass’ takes from the CD, as Lance put together my equipment list and proceeded to demagnetize and mark blades just as I had showed him moments earlier.

FUCK! The task before me was overwhelming. I’ve done editing like this before, but it’s been years. Editing is a groove thing. It’s not difficult, but efficiency comes from the act of doing. This was ridiculous. Dumb Ass’ drums pushed and pulled like the aptly named Doctor Doolittle creature Pushme-Pullyou. In order to fix this sort of disastrous feel, I was going to have to use little bits of audio tape from before kik drums or after snares to insert in order to manufacture drum hits that fall where they are supposed to. I reserved an entire take that I felt was less than stellar for those bits, and I had Lance label it as “Equalizer.”

The 2x4 I asked Lance to get for me was for making a time and distance template. Length of tape is the equivalent of time in a recording. The two-inch machine spins tape at a speed of 30 inches per second. Therefore, 30 inches of tape is the equivalent of 1 second of running time. If the tempo of the song is 60 beats per minute, which is the equivalent of 1 beat per second, then the length of one beat is 30 inches.

The way to determine the distance of a beat that is not so easily calculated is to physically cut a piece of tape between clicks on the clik track and to mark that distance on the 2x4. This distance becomes my template, and I halve and quarter my template in order to mark my distances for eighth notes and quarter notes, respectively. With the template, I have what amounts to a measuring stick, so as to see physically whether I need more tape or less tape between drum hits.

After a couple of hours of mapping out what I thought were the best measures of the takes and Lance getting the items on my list, I was ready to start cutting tape. The question was, do I start immediately and cut the 2" master or test my cuts on 1/2" tape. Normally, I’d at the very least start by cutting 1/2" drum mixes of the takes as a trial run of sorts to see how the song was going together. Since I was already two hours into my session, I decided against this course of action, and just went for it.

I spent the next 11 hours with Lance by my side cutting tape. At first, Lance was mesmerized by the barbaric nature of slicing up tiny pieces of audio tape and pasting them together with sticky splicing tape. But he quickly forgot about that, as Lance had his hands full in swapping reels on the machines, documenting where every scrap of tape came from that made up the master take of the song, and just as importantly, documenting where every scrap of tape was missing from the production reels24. All this without writing a dissertation, but furnishing enough details so it was clear where everything had gone and everything had come from.

Shortly after commencing the editing process there were reels and tape everywhere. I had two machines going, I was measuring, cutting, adding, checking, redoing and rechecking. There were little bits of audio tape adhered all over the wall with grease markings on them telling me what they were. I was adding in scraps as time equalizers that were barely over a 1/4" wide. It took me over two hours just to do the intro and half a verse.

My kingdom for Alsihad!

Yes. That’s right. My kingdom for Alsihad! I give! This is not a job for editing 2". When a drummer is as bad as this, fuck it! Who gives a shit if the sound degrades? With this many edits, it WILL degrade within Alsihad, but, again, so what? Hell, with inserting little bits of “Equalizer,” I was degrading the sound on 2" anyway. The drums sound like shit regardless. Degrading the recording really doesn’t matter.

I know that this revelation—or throwing in of the towel, as it were—might be slightly disappointing to Luddites everywhere (Luddite is my pet name for those that prefer working with audio tape as opposed to computers), but there is a difference between editing the shit out of a decent drum take and doing what you have to in order to make shitty drum take decent. In other words, my disdain for Alsihad does not lie in the good it can do in making a project more efficient. Clearly, in this particular case, the pros of using Alsihad FAR outweigh the cons. My disdain lies in the use of Alsihad to edit what otherwise could have been a perfectly acceptable performance. The fact of the matter is, the recording is now under a visual microscope. But in my opinion, music should never be judged visually.

Unfortunately, the use or non-use of Alsihad on this project wasn’t my call. The global ramifications of Alsihad on the making of music had nothing to do with the making of this particular record. My job was to edit the entire song on 2" whether I wanted to or not. I had to complete the job no matter how much of a waste of time I thought it was. This is what Willy Show wanted, and clearly, it’s his show.

I realize now that I’ve had a pretty cushy recording life in recent years in not having to do this type of heavy editing. I’ve done some 2" editing in that time, but no more than five cuts in a song. In those cases, I was basically compiling entire sections. In recent years, this kind of work has been left to Alsihah. In fact, I have a new-found appreciation for Alsihah.

Prior to today, my normal workday was spent sitting in a comfortable chair getting fat as I ate chocolate muffins and worked off the calories by punching buttons and moving faders. Editing 2" to this extent was serious fucking work. I was standing the entire day, sweating like a pig, with my back killing me, and my head swimming. I even sliced my finger today, an unusual event under the circumstances, and an event that I am painfully and constantly being reminded of as I type this diary entry.

At the six-hour mark of my day, Dumb Ass finally left. The singer made a brief appearance and split. The bass player and Yore relaxed in the lounge all day, drinking Johnnie Walker Red and playing video baseball (this was beginning to be a trend). Willy checked in and wasn’t surprised in the least to find out that it would take me all day and possibly some of tomorrow to finish the job.

I made 188 edits today, and the feel of the drums still sucks ass.

It’s just that now the drums are in time.

Mixerman

Day 8: A Fatty Day
Posted: August 8, 12:49 a.m.

Lance was sitting at the table on the patio with Dumb Ass smoking a cigarette as I pulled into the lot. Lance was there before me today, most likely due to the fact that last night I told him I’d be starting at 9 a.m. It was now 10:30 a.m. Lance didn’t dare complain. It was Dumb Ass who commented on how late I was. I smiled and told Lance to follow me.

Dumb Ass tried to gain admittance to the studio, but I told him that the “no drummers allowed sign” I had made yesterday was still in full effect and that he’d have to wait. I guess he thought I was kidding, because he came in anyway and sat down in MY chair between the speakers. There wasn’t much I could do about that. Technically, this was his session. Regardless, that was my chair, and I had work to do before Willy came in. “Excuse me,” I said. Convinced that he had actually made a point other than the one on the top of his head and further convinced that I wasn’t going to force the issue, Dumb Ass got up and moved to the couch in the back of the room.

By the end of yesterday’s editing session, it was almost impossible for me to accurately judge the big picture of my editing job. I had to wait until today to hear how my edit job had worked. I dimmed the lights and closed the machine room door, which houses the multi-track25 machines, so that I wouldn’t have to listen to the incessant thwap, thwap, thwap of 188 edits passing the entire run length of 3 minutes, 45 seconds. I prefer to listen to takes with the lights dim. I’ve found that there is something about reducing the amount of stimulation on your eyes that makes one’s listening more acute.

It was just as I had expected. There was no feel to the drums. In doesn’t really matter that the kiks hit the 1 and the snares hit the 2. Feel comes from everything in between. Feel comes from the way the rhythm makes you “feel”—hence the term. A drum beat should make your body move by pure reflex. There should be an infectious physical reaction from the drums.

How could this actually be a surprise to me? I must have spent too much time convincing myself this morning that I might be pleasantly surprised with the results of yesterday’s marathon editing session. The cold hard reality had set in. I spent 12 hours editing these drums with the single goal to make them, at the very least, acceptable, but, at the very most, they sucked ass.

I called Willy’s cell phone to make sure he was coming in. He asked me how the drums were, and I told him they were in time now, but that they still sucked. There was no point in trying to sugar coat it. I didn’t want Willy coming into the studio expecting a killer drum track. He told me that he’d be in shortly and he hung up.

Willy came in at around noon and immediately hugged everyone. My first notion was that Willy must not like dim lights, because after the morning hugs, he turned them all the way up. Willy was asking how everyone was, and we participated in the exchange of morning niceties as he reached into his leather satchel that he has thus far carried with him, pulled out a huge baggie of green, and proceeded to roll a fatty. It was 11 in the morning, and Willy was smoking a fatty.

“Breakfast of Champions,” he stated as he smiled contentedly holding his breath.

He pointed at Lance to dim the lights again. I understood now that it wasn’t that Willy disliked dim lights. Willy couldn’t roll a fatty in the dark.

He offered me the fatty, which I declined. Not because I don’t smoke fatties, but rather, I don’t smoke fatties if there is any chance in hell I’m going to have to cut tape. Combining the use of wickedly sharp instruments with substances designed to alter and dull the senses was an activity I preferred to avoid. Besides, my finger, which I probably should have gotten stitches for, was still throbbing with pain.

Willy offered his fatty to the others in the room, which Yore accepted without hesitation.

So far, Yore is the big partier in the crew. He’s keeping his empty bottles of Johnnie Walker and Makers Mark as trophies from his drinking sessions. The empties are currently stacked on top of the refrigerator in the lounge, and his collection is already nothing short of impressive. The bass player also participates in the drinking sessions, but I get the feeling that he drinks nowhere near the amounts of alcohol that Yore drinks.

After Yore took a hit, the singer was the next to partake, as he walked over to take the fatty from Paulie and proceeded to draw from the fatty.

Willy asked me if the edited take was up. I nodded, and he proceeded to listen to the edited take. I sat there listening to the take, thinking to myself, this just isn’t right. Willy stopped the tape machine when the take was done.

“It’s not right,” he said. “You’re right about what you said on the phone,” he continued.

I sat there slightly uncomfortable, trying not to show it. Willy made that comment while Dumb Ass was in the room, and I was just waiting for Dumb Ass to ask what I had said. Thankfully, he didn’t even ask, but he DID speak.

“I sound like a robot!” Dumb Ass pouted, actually sounding like a robot. Everyone pretty much ignored him.

We all sat there dejected, staring straight ahead. We were on our eighth day on this project, and we still hadn’t recorded a usable note. As if that weren’t enough, and as if the band, Willy and I weren’t sitting there wondering what else could go wrong, things got worse. The runner delivered a phone message, which he handed directly to Willy. I was sitting right next to him, and I could read plainly what the message said.

To: Willy Show

From: Jeramiah Weasel.

Willy, I’d like to come by. Please call.

Jeramiah is the band’s newest A&R rep. He is basically a minion with a very strong opinion. I’d be surprised if he even had signing power, although I’d be willing to bet he’s conned more than one band into signing a Memo Deal, which basically gives a label the right to the artist until a contract is entered into, greatly reducing a band’s power of negotiation.

This band was the president’s signing, and Jeramiah is a figurehead. But he certainly has the president’s ear, and it would not be good for him to come over before we had something worthwhile to play for him. He isn’t a dumb fellow, but he is a bit of a poser, and he really doesn’t understand much of anything about the studio. I’ve run into Jeramiah several times in recent years, and I’ve never been impressed by the dude. How he keeps getting gigs is beyond me.

Willy crumpled up the note and threw it in the trash.

“Perhaps we should trigger26 some samples,” Willy said unfazed by the note, “and then pump the samples out the PA and record the room. We can use your drum machine,” he said to me, pointing to my drum machine.

“May I?” I said, picking up the fatty from the console.

Normally, I wouldn’t partake this early in a session, or for that matter, this early in the day. The fact of the matter is, I was upset. This was a terrible situation. If Jeramiah comes to the session and finds out that we can’t play him a note of music, he could completely shut the session down. As much as that might very well be a blessing, I’m committed for the next two months to this gig.

As if that weren’t enough, we were now trying to trigger drums and somehow mask the fact that Dumb Ass sucks. At that moment, I knew there was no way to make Dumb Ass good, and it was obvious to me that I was going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time forced into relearning this particular lesson. Add in the fact that I was absolutely drained from editing all day yesterday, and for what? Perhaps if my efforts had been fruitful, I would be adequately energized. But this wasn’t the case.

It was pointless to resist. Willy was obviously going to exhaust every possibility to make a usable drum track out of the mess. The way I saw it, I had no choice. By the size of Willy’s baggie (that sounds bad), and the fact that he laughed so hard at my “Dumb as Cotton” line two days ago that I figured was only one step beyond mildly amusing, I was gathering that Willy smoked fatties every day. At this point, I needed to be in his head space.

The fatty did just what it was supposed to. I finally had recognized the situation for what it actually was. Humorous.

Not pathetic, not ridiculous, not hairball. Humorous. I had been given an instant attitude adjustment. I now understood what Willy was trying to achieve. Where I had been negative and doubtful that anything could save Dumb Ass, I was positive that we could do something creative to make the edited take work.

“Who ate my chocolate muffin?” a voice came from across the room. It was Willy, half-kidding, half-serious about the muffin.

I, of course, ate the chocolate muffin the moment I walked in this morning. I wasn’t proud of that fact. The muffins are huge. I could have been less of a pig and left half the muffin, but I chose to eat the entire thing. Could I really cop to such insensitivity?

“I think Cotton ate it,” I said after checking the room to be sure he wasn’t around.

“Why the fuck do we only get one chocolate muffin a day?” Willy said.

With that, Willy picked up the phone and summoned the runner who was sent out for 20 chocolate muffins. That was a bit much, because even being high I don’t think we ate more than seven of them between us. Willy told the runner that he was to never put less than five chocolate muffins in the basket each day.

“And five onion bagels!” I exclaimed as the runner was walking out the door of the control room. Willy nodded his head approvingly, as I brought my focus back to the task at hand—the triggering of samples.

Samples are basically very short recordings. A kik drum sample is a recording of a kik drum. A trigger allows me to replace the recorded kik drum with the sampled kik drum. This gives a very consistent kik drum sound, as opposed to the very inconsistent sound that was on tape. Bad drummers play their drums with great amounts of inconsistency, both in timing and in velocity. Being that I fixed the timing, it was the velocity that was now obviously lacking consistency. The trigger works by automatically playing the sample once it receives a certain threshold of audio information from a source. In this case, the source would be the track that was designated for the kik drum mic. This way, anytime Cotton hit his kik drum, the trigger would play the sample, and that is what we would hear as the kik drum.

Before we were to begin triggering samples and the like, I really needed to make a copy of the edited tape. It had way too many edits to record over. Every time we played the tape, I was worried that something was going to fuck up. I knew exactly what I wanted to transfer to.

After MUCH discussion, and perhaps a little sales pitch on my part, Willy decided that, rather than go down an analog generation, we should transfer the edited drum tracks to Radar27. Radar is a digital multi-track recorder that I actually like the sound of. The great thing about Radar is it operates just like a tape machine. Willy was concerned about going digital, citing his disdain for the sound of Alsihad. But Willy had heard good things about the Radar, and I certainly wasn’t telling him anything different. My concern was that with 188 edits, timecode28 could get a bit sketchy. I didn’t want to permanently go down an analog generation on the 2". So it was probably best for us to just freewheel the drums and transfer them permanently to the digital medium. The drums had already received the benefits of analog tape, now my concern was having a master that worked. I finally convinced him to give it a try.

After the Radar arrived, I transferred the edited drums. Willy DID like the sound of the Radar very much, and this was the best news of the day. I was in a great mood as I sparked up another fatty. Now, with Radar at my disposal, I had a chance to help move this session along. To say that we have been painfully unproductive would be an understatement. My goal was to eventually have someone else editing the drums, perhaps even in the Radar, while we continued recording takes each day. Spending an entire day editing while everyone just sat around drinking like fish wasn’t good for the band. We needed momentum.

When you have a band sitting around all day, they never get into a groove. Somehow, Dumb Ass and the band must get into said groove. If Dumb Ass had some confidence and momentum, it’s likely he would play better. This would make all of our lives easier and more efficient, and THIS was the key to making the session more productive. The band needed to be playing and moving forward, not sitting on their asses all day, while Willy and I jerked off over the drums. Unfortunately, at the moment, I was alone in this thinking.

After pounding down chocolate muffins followed by lunch, we spent hours putting together samples, triggering them, playing them through the PA, and moving room mics. I had to program mutes29 on the kik and snare because I was getting so many mistriggers30. Dumb Ass was just too inconsistent as a player, and with the compression, gating31 wasn’t effective. We tried all sorts of whacky tricks to try to make the drums work (perhaps on a day that I’m a bit less exhausted I’ll go through some of those). Actually, we were having a blast fucking with the drums. But by early evening, Yore, who was towards the end of his bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, had had just about enough.

“Let’s just record the other instruments on this fucking song already.”

The band was obviously getting frustrated at the lack of progress, and Yore was drunk enough to remove himself from his depression and expose the more assholish side of his personality. Willy, picking up on the subtle cue, decided we should lay down music on the drums. I took about half an hour to make an analog slave32 of the drums from Radar.

Finally, we were recording! We started with the bass, which quickly became a tedious punch-fest33 of recording one measure at a time. Apparently the bass player wasn’t used to playing with drums that were so steady.

Uy yuy yuy.

Next we recorded Yore’s part, which was pretty painless, regardless of the fact that he was three sheets to the wind.

Unfortunately, as has typically been the case on this session, someone was sure to bring our progress to a screeching halt. The singer, who should probably stick to singing, expressed the desire to lay down some guitar parts, too. Willy obliged, sending Yore home, and wisely exiting stage left himself. I got to hang for another two hours, wanking off recording a below-average guitar player at best, whilst the quality guitar player was at home, likely sleeping off an entire day’s worth of drinking. Why does this always happen with bands?

Here the band has a very good guitar player that can effortlessly and quickly lay down the parts, and the shitty guitar player is the one laying down the majority of the parts. Next thing you know, Dumb Ass is going to want to sing one of the songs.

God help us if that happens.

Mixerman

Week 2 Page 3:
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman

Day 9: Old Wounds May Run Deep...
But New Ones Hurt Like Hell!
Posted: August 8, 11:05 p.m.

I woke up around 5 a.m. from my finger throbbing with pain. I took a look at the wound, and it wasn’t going to take enrollment in medical school for me to determine the cut was drastically infected. Great. This wasn’t a case for Neosporin. This was a nasty-ass infection. So I showered, which proved to be a difficult process while holding my hand in the air as if to say “pick me,” got dressed, and went to the emergency room.

After waiting there for three fucking hours—apparently people with hemorrhaging wounds, kidney stones, ripped placentas, strokes, and heart attacks have priority over people with throbbing, infected cuts oozing pus—I finally got to see a doctor. I was half wishing that I would drop dead right there in the waiting room to teach the triage nurse a little lesson on just how dangerous an infection could be. Of course, then I’d be dead. The doctor prescribed a strong antibiotic (or so he says) and a triplicate form opiate mixed with Tylenol.

After over three hours in the ER, my morning was shot to hell. I took my antibiotic, took my Tylenol Codeine #3 (which I NEVER take just before operating heavy machinery) and drove to the studio (oops!). Having gone to sleep at 2:30 a.m. and having woken up at 5 a.m. this morning, coupled with an entire day of smoking fatties, as you can well imagine I was wiped out. What I needed was Starbucks.

Specifically, I needed a super-sized Starbucks drip-of-the-day. I’m not quite sure what super-sized translates to in the bullshit foo-foo Starbucks lingo, but it’s the largest cup they’ve got. They’re pretty good at Starbucks about not fucking with you, if you venture from their seemingly proprietary size terminology—even a term as obnoxious as super-sized. I guess they figure if you need that much coffee, you’re probably in a shit mood anyway. In this case, they would have been right.

Equipped with my extra-large, extra-hot, extra-black coffee, I hit the button on my car phone that activates voice recognition. It’s actually a cell phone that converts into a car phone. I hate fucking cell phones. Driving holding a cell phone the size of a credit card sucks. Personally, I prefer to talk on speaker phone when I’m driving.

“Call Willy,” I said to the microphone above me. “Calling Willy,” my phone repeated back to me.

Willy answered his phone as he always does in the early morning. He asked how I was, and he asked how the guitar part went down. I told him I was fine (not wanting to go into my morning hospital visit at that moment) and that it took two hours to record the guitar part the singer laid down. Then I told him that I thought Yore could play better after a fifth of Johnnie Walker than the singer could ever hope to do straight. Of course, that wasn’t news to Willy. That’s exactly why he exited stage left last night.

I was enjoying my coffee and my conversation with Willy as the codeine was starting to relieve the pain in my finger. Willy’s a great guy I was thinking to myself. I love hanging out with him.

“So what should we do today?” Willy asked.

I really wish he hadn’t asked that question at that exact moment, because I was taking a swig of my coffee, and that question caused me to suck the scalding hot coffee through my sinuses, which was now percolating through my nose. Holy fucking shit! I was screaming in pain. Willy kept asking if I was all right. He thought I was in a car accident or something, and I almost was as I recklessly pulled my car over. I had scalded my sinuses. My kingdom for some cold water and a Netti Pot34!

After a couple of minutes, the pain lessened, perhaps due to the codeine in my system that was really starting to kick in. I had coffee all over my shirt and pants, and to make matters worse, there was coffee all over my car. In my pain, I had managed to drop the cup, spilling coffee in both the cockpit and shotgun positions of the car. I told Willy I was going to be a little late, since I had to go back home, change my clothes, and try to clean out my car. He understood.

Great! I’m thinking on my way to the studio in a fresh set of clothes. Now Willy’s asking ME what we should do for the day. But as I thought about it, I considered that this could quite possibly be a positive development. As much as I liked Willy, this session was going nowhere, and someone—namely me—had to step up and get things moving.

So I called Willy again. After he determined I was going to live (he was very concerned), I asked him about Dumb Ass and the ramifications of actually using the shitty drum tracks on the album. Willy explained that the band was sure that if they used another drummer on this album that Dumb Ass would leave, and they would be dropped. Under normal circumstances, I (and I think Willy) would call that paranoid thinking. But the more money a label spends on a band’s first album, the more likely the band will either be shelved or dropped. Being that the band was given such a fat deal but was then forced to write for two years is a bad sign. The band obviously wanted to make sure that they finished an album. Having the drummer quit would be counter to that goal.

I’m not sure whether I agree completely with this thinking or not. First of all, I doubt Dumb Ass would quit. He may be a retard, but he’s not crazy. Secondly, drummers are replaced in bands on a daily basis. It’s not like anyone outside of the industry has ever heard of this band before, so the buying public certainly wouldn’t be the wiser.

Still, I could understand their concern. It’s quite possible the label would take any opportunity to cut their losses. The band would certainly have a better feel for that than I would. Regardless of my thoughts on the matter, Willy explained that both Yore and the singer were adamant and unified on this subject. Surprising, considering I’ve never seen them agree on anything to date.

There was really only one way that Dumb Ass was going to be removed from this project. Yore and the singer had to agree to it. They wrote the lion’s share of the songs, and they were the ones with the power to remove Dumb Ass from the equation. The only way that Dumb Ass was going to be evicted was by demonstrating that keeping Dumb Ass was surely worse than losing him. Whether Willy had actually thought the situation out this clearly, I couldn’t tell. I decided not to leave it to chance.

“I think we should record three or more songs to completion and let them hear for themselves that Dumb Ass isn’t going to cut it,” I said to Willy, finally answering the question that allowed me the opportunity to experience new depths of internal pain. “I also think Dumb Ass needs to play more than one song every four days to build up his confidence. Perhaps we should consider not using a clik track to see if he plays better that way.”

I had more suggestions, but I decided to stop there and see how my comments were received.

“I think you’re right,” Willy replied.

YES! Finally, we were going to move forward. If we could get a few songs in the bag, it would go a long way toward morale, confidence, and vibe. Best of all, it gives something for Jeramiah Weasel to bring to the president of the label.

When I arrived at the studio, Lance was in the room, setting up what looked to be a mic for a vocal overdub35. All the telltale signs were there. A music stand positioned as a table, a stool, and, of course, a pop screen36. Had Lance completely lost his mind? Did he decide to take over this session? Then the bass player walked into the room.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” he stated matter-of-factly. “I’m going to record a vocal on this song we’re working on.”

I was flabbergasted.

“But what about the singer?” I asked confused.

“I wrote this song, and I think it’d be better if I sang it,” the bass player responded indignantly.

Even with the tone of voice with which he had spoken to me, I was actually considering telling him about the new plan of attack, but I think he must have been playing Mind Tricks on me, because I said nothing. I was at that moment convinced that the best thing for me to do was record a vocal. It would be up to Willy to put a stop to the nonsense.

We spent the next two hours recording vocals. The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about the shit that would be hitting the proverbial fan when our favorite megalomaniac singer walks in and sees me recording the bass player singing. But the singer didn’t show up during the vocal session, and I found out later that the bass player KNEW that the singer would be a few hours late. Not knowing this myself, I tried desperately to reach Willy by phone, but to no avail.

Recording vocals with the bass player was more arduous and more torturous than recording guitars with the singer. I couldn’t help but think to myself, perhaps everyone should just shift over one musical station, pick up whatever instrument happened to be there, and then start recording the album. It would give a whole new meaning to the game musical chairs. The way I figured it, there would be a one in two chance that whoever sat on the drum throne would be a markedly better drummer than Dumb Ass. For a moment, I started to wonder if I were showing signs of my age in thinking that players in a band should actually play the instrument on which they are most proficient for the purposes of recording an album.

“So much for the great plan that I had laid out earlier with Willy,” I muttered to myself.

I finally finished recording several takes of vocals after having to punch just about every line on every take. The bass player, whom I have named Harmon Neenot (pronounced NEE · no) for the purpose of this diary, had no pitch, no time, no vibe and no talent as a singer. Other than that, he was great. I started comping Harmon Neenot’s vocal, which is the process of compiling one take out of several by switching between them for sections, lines and, in some cases, words. Willy FINALLY walked into the studio.

He was surprised that we were recording vocals. Yes, me too!

“That’s awful,” said Willy, scrunching up his nose. He was referring to the noises coming from the speakers that sounded more like seals squealing in agony than to bad drumming and bad guitar playing. Willy quickly looked around the room, realizing that Harmon might be around. Fortunately, he wasn’t.

I filled Willy in on what had happened, and he told me I might as well finish the vocal comp. I guess the plan was for Harmon to hear for himself just how shitty his vocals were—a plan I feared could backfire.

When I finished the vocal, I went outside for a breath of fresh air, and the band was playing basketball. Even with my finger as bad as it was, I figured some exercise wouldn’t be a bad thing. It turns out that this was a poor decision on my part, for I went up to get a rebound, and as I came down, my foot landed on the edge of Dumb Ass’ foot.

MOTHER FUCKER!

My ankle bent in half. I’ve never been in more pain for so many different reasons in one day in my life. I was half tempted to take out insurance on myself just for the remainder of the day but feared it might be too expensive for the risk. Dumb Ass must have thought we were playing competitively or something, because he went under me while I was in the air. What a schmuck! I had sprained my ankle and very badly to boot.

The good news was that the pain in my ankle made me completely forget about my sinuses and my finger. The bad news is that my ankle was swelling up so fast it looked like someone was actually blowing it up like a balloon. Lance ran to get me some ice in a towel which I promptly wrapped around my ankle. I shouldn’t have even gotten up today, I thought to myself. Now I was sounding like Paulie Yore.

Dumb Ass and Yore both helped me hop to the lounge, where I put my foot on the table with the ice on it. Everyone decided to hang out in the lounge with me, when the singer came in looking irate-a-plenty. Lance, being unseasoned in the art of saying nothing, had foolishly spilled the beans to the singer about our yodeling sessions starring none other than Harmon Neenot, singer extraordinaire.

The singer went ballistic. Normally around now, I’d exit stage left. Unfortunately, I wasn’t upwardly mobile. This was not a fight that I wanted to be present for. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that this was going to get ugly, and it did.

Yore joined the fray early on, pointing out that the singer spent two hours recording guitar parts last night. As far as Yore was concerned, he couldn’t really understand the difference between singers playing guitar and bass players singing—and he had a point. Dumb Ass was still complaining that he sounded like a robot, and the entire band yelled simultaneously at him to shut the fuck up. I was half tempted to say “jinx” but thought better of it.

On the Richter scale, I’d say this argument registered in the neighborhood of a 7.0. Willy’s way of dealing with the discord was nothing short of fascinating to me. He proceeded to spark up a fatty and started passing it around the room, as the argument took odd twists and turns that had no relevance to anything but years of baggage and the need to perhaps blow off some steam. I was starting to get the idea that Willy was like the Phil Jackson of the recording world, in that he likes to let things work out on their own. And who can argue with success?

What I found most amazing about this scene, as I sat there with my ankle throbbing, my finger throbbing, and the inside of my face throbbing, was that, as the band members continued to yell at each other with marked disdain, they were simultaneously passing the fatty to each other and partaking. Not one person turned down the fatty. When the fatty had made its way to my position, I paused momentarily. I had made the decision this morning that it would be best if I abstained from such activities as smoking fatties. But the way I figured it, the session for today was blown, my codeine (which I was in need of about now) was some distance away from my present position, there was no Lance in sight, and there was no way I was going to muster the strength to get up and hop all the way to my medicine. Not that fatties are very effective in dealing with pain, but the way I figured it, it couldn’t hurt. So I, too, accepted the fatty.

When things settled down and talking wasn’t doing much good anymore, Willy called the session. With Willy’s declaration, everyone left, although I’m really not sure anything was resolved. Perhaps Willy felt a good night’s sleep would be the healer of these wounds. I had my doubts. After everyone was gone, Willy, who obviously recognized my need for something positive in my life at this moment, invited me for sushi. My favorite!

A week ago I wondered if I was going to survive the session. But at that time, my concern was with being unjustly fired, not killed!

After a great sushi dinner we went back to the studio, hung out, smoked a fatty and listened to music.

Now, if only we could MAKE some music.

Mixerman

Day 10: The Albatross
Posted: August 10, 12:27 a.m.

Willy called me at the crack of dawn. We would not be working on the album today, since he was going to have a long meeting with the band to try and deal with the rift that had formed. Willy then provided me with some history. Apparently, this was not the first rift during Willy’s short tenure with the band. During the rehearsals, the band had another similar blow-up. The band members hate each other. No surprise there. What I didn’t know is that the money is almost gone.

For the most part, the band is under a tremendous amount of stress, because the band members have been living on their advance money, and each of them was quickly running out of that money. At first, I was taken aback by this news. Two million dollars—the reported value of the deal—was a lot of jack to piss away. Of course, I don’t really know the details of how that money was disbursed, nor if the budget for the record was included in that figure. Then, of course, there are any number of whacky accounting practices that go on at record companies. Regardless, the more I considered the possible costs of taxes, possible down payments on houses, musical equipment, and two years of no income in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the US, this was NOT that surprising. When I think about how much of my own money goes out the door from living in L.A., the scenario was not that hard to imagine. On top of all that, I’m sure the band never dreamed that it would be writing for two years before it would be making a record. I’m sure the band members thought they’d be touring by now and making money playing.

The label was taking a “tough shit” attitude with them, which was exacerbating the situation. Allegedly, the label has been pretty shitty with them all along. Last week, Yore was telling me that their previous A&R reps (since fired) were total assholes to them. The way it was described to me, it was as if the label was psychologically torturing them. This somewhat explained to me the constant depression that Paulie Yore was in, although it didn’t make hanging with him any more pleasurable.

It’s not like the band didn’t have good songs when it was signed. Quite the contrary, I’ve heard the songs that they had when they were signed, and in my opinion, they’re great. I can even understand why this band was a bidding-war band. Labels don’t give a shit anymore if there’s a weak player in the band. Everyone just assumes you either fix it with a computer or get a session player on the project. The only thing that labels are interested in is a song that they can break to radio. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less. Everything else can be fixed.

I am assuming that when the label signed the band, they recognized the excellent songwriting and figured it wouldn’t be too long before they got their obvious radio single out of the band. From Yore’s descriptions, the label was having them write music that was similar in characteristic to hot music of that moment. Being that what’s hot is constantly changing, so, too, did the direction of the writing.

Willy felt that in the rehearsals they weren’t a bad band. He knew the drummer was weak but probably didn’t realize that this would translate so badly in the recording. I guess I could understand this. I’ve been fooled by drummers in really awful-sounding rehearsal spaces, so I’ll give Willy the benefit of the doubt. Willy also confided that, due to Dumb Ass’ limited intelligence, he wasn’t capable of remembering the form changes they would make in pre-production. Willy would make a change, and Dumb Ass would immediately forget to do it. I can just imagine the conversations, with Dumb Ass thinking Willy meant the chorus when Willy said verse. Working with Dumb Ass was nothing short of maddening. The reality is that I’m NOT exaggerating when I say that Cotton is probably only moderately more intelligent than a retard. It’s that bad.

Since we weren’t working today—God forbid I get a three-day weekend after this debacle—Willy asked me if I could mix a song for him from another project that he’s been working on. So that’s what I did today. I mixed a completely different act with my leg up in the air and my ankle still two sizes too big. I had Lance running around doing everything for me, as I sat there just mixing. It was actually nice to bring a piece of music to completion and so quickly. The recording reportedly took only two days and the mix took me only five hours.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting down from this project. Setting aside all of my physical ailments (which are numerous, and each have occurred as a direct result of this project), it’s torture to spend nine days working 12-hour days to accomplish nothing save an unusable and incomplete take.

When I go into a session, I go in every day with a cheerful attitude. I put on my game face and try to keep everyone happy and amused. I want everyone to feel good and be excited about what they’re doing. That’s what making a record should be about. Sure, roadblocks are bound to happen, but those roadblocks serve to make life more interesting and invigorating. If only we had traveled far enough on this project to actually hit a road block, I’d probably be in good spirits. But really, when you consider everything, we haven’t even STARTED our journey. It takes me longer every day to put that game face on, which is even more depressing to me, since I view THAT as one of the most important parts of my gig.

My only salvation on this project has been this journal, as it allows me to demonstrate in real time just how destructive to music the business has become. Unfortunately, this journal has also been my albatross, as I am obsessed with writing and posting, without fail, my thoughts as they are freshest in my mind. Worse yet, I attempt to do so at a level of quality beyond my current capabilities as a writer, even at the risk of exhaustion and even at the risk of appearing ungrateful for the job—something I have been accused of and criticized for by some outspoken readers of this online journal.

The way I see it, anybody that thinks I should blindly skip through life satisfied with being unproductive so long as I’m being compensated for such activities isn’t considering the negative effect that lack of accomplishment can have on the brain. The act of accomplishing nothing other than wastefulness is both exhausting and debilitating to the soul. While in the short-term it may be self-serving to my financial well-being to participate in such unproductiveness, the resulting waste only serves to sicken me.

Still, I’m optimistic. Willy wants to start fresh on Monday. Perhaps the weekend off will recharge everyone’s enthusiasm, and we can become what we, as humans, were put on this earth to be.

Productive.

Mixerman

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