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WELCOME TO THE DAILY ADVENTURES OF MIXERMAN:
A DOCUMENTARY

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Post subject: Week 3: The Daily Adventures of Mixerman - A Documentary

Day 11: Win One ForThe Gipper
Posted: August 13, 12:09 a.m. — Week 3

After three good nights of sleep and quality time with the family, I woke up this morning in far better sprits than the end of last week and with a renewed sense of purpose. Still, I couldn’t help but be partially concerned with the potential of my day going downhill from here. For the second time since this project began, I had a conversation of some substance with Willy. The first was over sushi on Thursday night. The second, and the one to which I am referring here, was over the weekend. According to Willy, his marathon band-therapy-bitch-session had gone well. Being a producer can often require a hard-knocks degree in psychology, and Willy, no doubt, needed to make use of that degree this past Friday.

Even Willy, who has revealed himself as a man that prefers to avoid mediation unless there is clear and present danger—sometimes referred to as waiting until just before everything goes down the shitter—has to occasionally resort to the role of therapist in order to keep a session moving forward.

I could just picture Willy in his slippers, rolling fatties in a plush crushed-velvet chair, as the band members vented for hours their disdain for each other until they reached the point of utter exhaustion. In no small part, the inevitable argumentus coitus interruptus would occur from the band members’ disintegrating fighting spirit, as fatties could turn even Ivan the Terrible into Gandhi given enough of the substance. Then, I could imagine Willy viewing the band’s temporary inability to discuss its insurmountable problems as some sort of therapeutic victory. Yet, although I criticize, I can’t help but think that were Willy to actually intervene, the results would likely be nothing short of disastrous where the completion of this project is concerned. At least with his usual course of action, problems are neither solved nor aggravated in the process.

Suffice it to say, Willy was confident that we would be moving forward on Monday. I had my reservations.

Three days off on a project is an eternity. Even though I worked on Friday, it was still a break from this project. When players are in a groove, three days can destroy every ounce of momentum that had been achieved. Of course, that certainly wasn’t a danger here, as we were having the opposite problem known as stagnation. When stagnation sets in, three days can be as revitalizing as an unreciprocated blow job.

I was truly impressed with Willy’s decision to take the time off. Many producers would have chosen to work through the weekend, citing a need to catch up. Catching up would have likely been the WORST decision he could have made. From my experience, if we had tried to power through the weekend, this session would be over. Cooked. Done. Finito. It amazes me how many producers, both big and small in stature, don’t recognize the value of rest and separation. Even a matter of one night’s sleep can condense what would otherwise be a three-hour late-night task down to only minutes come morning. That’s because after a long day’s work of recording an album, two conflicting phenomena can occur—over-saturation and hyper-sensitivity.

Over-saturation causes one’s brain to be incapable of discerning and evaluating subtle and even not-so-subtle differences among such things as timing, tuning, expression, musicality, and balances (level differences among different instruments). It’s quite like a numbing agent of the brain. If you could inject the part of your brain that processes hearing with Novocain, this would be similar to the effect of over-saturation. I would imagine that people of all walks of life have experienced this to some degree. I sometimes refer to it as “the wall,” and when you hit the wall, there are only two cures. Time and fatties.

Hyper-sensitivity is the function of one’s brain being so aware and sensitive to minute changes that you are beyond any kind of “real-world” standards of listening. It is the exact opposite of over-saturation. This temporary condition can make differences that are normally nearly impossible for the human ear to detect seem like enormously drastic changes. Although this condition is generally less debilitating than over-saturation, it can cause the wasting of inordinate amounts of time, as this phenomenon will cause one to endlessly make adjustments that seem to make a big difference but, in reality, make no difference whatsoever. Once again, there are only two cures. Time and fatties.

After 12 hours of intense listening, either one of these phenomena can occur. The best method of preventing these two temporary conditions is to take breaks. But breaks become less effective and are required more frequently as either of these disorders sets in, and at some point, only a good night’s rest will rejuvenate one to the point of functionality. Unfortunately, rest and breaks do not appear time-efficient, and they are often abandoned for the far worse option of powering through.

Sometimes even a good night’s rest can’t prevent one from starting the day with either one of these ailments, as the cumulative effects of working long days on end take hold. And sometimes, BOTH the hyper-sensitivity AND over-saturation conditions can be present and occurring simultaneously. When this particular brain-fuck happens, WATCH OUT because the phrase “dog chasing his own tail” is given a whole new level of meaning. Of course, on this project, while I have experienced all sorts of minor temporary semi-delusional states (even without the fatties) that occur over the course of a session, over-saturation and hyper-sensitivity have not, to-date, made the list.

What we needed today was focus and determination—a desire by everyone other than myself to make music and have the music captured as music as opposed to fodder for manufacturing something that resembles music. Cotton needed the gift of confidence. Really, the whole band needed that gift. Were I Knute Rockne, I’d likely have given the old "win one for the gipper" speech. But I’m neither Knute Rockne nor the producer of this session. So I didn’t.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Willy wasn’t going to allow ANY of these disorders to enter our session this week. In fact, Willy seemed motivated to give this session the jump-start it so desperately needed. I knew all this from our conversation this weekend, as he divulged to me his plan of attack.

“I think we need to record some takes of several songs and help build up some confidence in these guys,” he said. “and we should experiment with not using a clik,” he continued.

Thank God I wasn’t drinking a cup of coffee when he said this, as it seems to me that’s EXACTLY what I said to him last week! Of course, I didn’t mention any of that to Willy. I responded to him appropriately with agreement and praise, expressing my encouragement by such great concepts in recording.

When I arrived today, to my pleasant surprise, everyone was already at the studio. Willy, Lance, and the band were all waiting for ME. This was a good sign. After greeting everyone on the patio, I quickly determined that the band was in fairly good spirits. I mean, Paulie Yore was still Paulie Yore, and you could tell that the “girls” still didn’t like each other, but they DID seem to be putting on an act. Although it seemed a bit contrived at times, “Oh, I’m sorry, after you, no, no, no, no, no, after you,” (PUKE!) it was better than the alternative of screaming and calling each other egotistical assholes, while smoking and passing a fatty around. In my experience, that really brings down the vibe of a session.

Willy added another little twist to our session this morning, but fortunately we recovered quickly. He wanted to open up all the iso booths and record the band live—bleed and all. Bleed is the sound of the other instruments “bleeding” into each other’s instrument mics. I pointed out to Willy that by doing that, we would be hindered from doing super-microscopic editing, not that I was upset at that concept! By recording with bleed, you are adding in harmony, which is a term for chord changes or, in this case, a tonality. In other words, I could no longer edit based on drum patterns alone.

In the case of editing takes with bleed, I would have to take into account musically where I was in the song when making an edit. If I needed to replace a measure of a drum pattern in which the bass player is playing a “G,” I have to take a measure in which the bass player is playing that same “G” and with the same rhythmic pattern—typically the identical measure from another take. If I don’t, then the bleed of the bass and guitar in the drums will rub with any re-tracked bass or guitar parts, and that can be quite distasteful. Typically, this style of recording is reserved for bands that can play a keeper take TOGETHER, without having to redo any of the parts—an unlikely occurrence in the case of this band.

Recording without a clik can further reduce my editing options, as I have to use a measure that is close in tempo to the measure being replaced—a hit-or-miss proposition at best with someone like Dumb Ass on the throne37. But Willy didn’t care. He had decided that we weren’t going to be doing such aggressive editing. Not on two-inch tape we won’t be! I thought to myself. That would be nearly impossible, and if not impossible, certainly time-prohibitive.

So we opened up all the doors, marked the mic placements and distances from each amp, moved the amps into the main room with the drums, and replaced the mics. We moved the amps because, if the bass amp and the guitar amps were too far from the drummer, Cotton would sound as if he were lagging. That’s because sound travels so slowly.

The rule of thumb is that sound will travel one foot per millisecond (it’s actually generally slightly faster than that, but the speed of sound changes according to temperature and this approximation is close enough for the distances that we deal with). Just five milliseconds can be the difference between the drummer sounding on top of the beat or in the pocket. Since the band wasn’t going to be playing with headphones, the players’ amps had to be a reasonable distance from the drummer.

Willy had the band start with a different song today. Wisely, Willy had chosen a song that would be close to the same basic planned drum set-up as we had for the last. We spent about an hour making some changes to the drums and guitars to better match the song. Before I knew it, we started making takes. I could hardly contain myself, as I sat in front of the speakers listening to the band actually performing (and I use that word loosely) for the first time during this session. It’s not the first time that I’ve gone two weeks in a session with nothing to show for it, but at least in those instances I felt as though SOME forward progress was being made. It wasn’t until some time later that we realized that those two weeks were lost. In this case, we were all too painfully aware of our lack of productivity.

Cotton played considerably better without the clik, and although I wouldn’t give him an award for “over-achievement in solid drumming,” it seemed that we might come up with something usable out of the performances. Or perhaps I’m just being optimistic. Until we tried to put something together, we just wouldn’t know.

After six takes of the first song, I convinced Willy (and it really didn’t take much convincing) to move onto a second song, as opposed to trying to edit together a take. Normally, it’s best to do your editing before moving on, because, if the band didn’t nail a particular section of the song on any of the takes, then we can easily rectify the problem by focusing on the section. If you move on and you have to go back, then you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to re-establish a sound. As it is, it takes constant vigilance to keep the snare drum at the same pitch for each take.

Once we change over sounds, even with impeccable documentation, it’s unlikely we could come close enough to make an insert of a section, although there are exceptions to this rule, hence my use of the word “unlikely.” Regardless, even if I COULDN’T edit something useable out of those six takes, it was better at this point to create the illusion of progress than to bring the session to a grinding halt again. Lifting the players’ spirits and having them in the groove of playing was far more important than actually knowing we have takes at this particular moment. As far as the band was concerned, that track was in the bag and that was all that mattered, whether that be illusion or reality, it would have the same effect.

After checking to be sure that Lance had all the necessary notes, which were amended as they were, indeed, missing crucial information, we moved on to the next song. The session ran as a good session should. We listened to the demo of the song. Willy went over the form changes from the original demo. We all discussed the planned sonic direction of the song. We changed out the snare several times, changed out some cymbals, switched to a different guitar/amp combo several times, and swapped out the bass (several times, I think, ending up back where we started). As the band would rehearse with Willy, I would make adjustments. Then they would all come in and listen together to the sound of the recording.

Sometimes the processes of finding the right sound for the record can be a bit laborious. Sometimes it can be painless. Today the change-overs were middle-of-the-road. Willy had clear concepts in mind, and implementing those concepts was a matter of finding combinations of instruments that translated well. Where the process becomes laborious is when one’s concept is not very clear or one’s original concept didn’t work as intended.

Finding the right source or the instrument itself is the lion’s share of work when finding an appropriate sound for a record. It all comes down to the source. But the engineering side does come into play. Personally, I believe in making the record sound exactly as I or the producer intend from the very start. I will distort drums to tape, compress them to tape, combine microphones to a single track (many people record different mics to their own track so they can combine them later, I do not believe in doing this), equalize, or neglect to process the instrument at all. I will commit to tape whatever is required to make the drums sound like they should for the song. When it comes time to mix, I don’t want the sounds to change at all. The mix should be done at the completion of the last over-dub.

Sadly, even with this approach, on the occasions when my tracks are mixed by so-called famous mixers38, they try to change the sound of the record. It is truly heart-breaking to put as much effort as I do into recording a song, EXACTLY the way it is intended to sound, only to have it homogenized by a mixer more interested in quantity than quality. But that is what the record companies want.

It’s really an odd process, if you think about it. The record company hires Willy Show, for example, to record the songs the way he is capable of doing. Willy spends time and money getting everything to have a certain sound that is unique and consistent with the playing of the song and the performances. The record company then takes it from the producer’s hands (VERY common), and has one of five mixers make it sound exactly like everything else on the radio. Then, as if that weren’t enough, they have a mastering engineer39 come in and stomp the last remaining bit of life out of the production and make it sound as two-dimensional and loud as possible. But I suppose that’s a discussion for another time. I digress.

As we proceeded to make takes, it was important that the song at least START at the same tempo. This way there was a chance that we could edit sections between takes. So, before every song, I would give the band the clik through the talkback speakers up until the third beat of the count-off. I always have a drum machine in the control room with me, and I would check Cotton’s tempo with my own set of headphones as he played without the clik. Remarkably, he could actually hold a tempo fairly well. It was not uncommon for Cotton to finish a song at the tempo he started it. Granted he would fluctuate during the course of the song, but overall, I was quite impressed with his ability to maintain a tempo.

When all is said and done, by the end of today, we managed to record two songs, of six takes each onto four reels of 2" tape. I have no clue as to whether we actually recorded something useable or not, and it doesn’t even matter to me. At least we are getting takes down. Momentum is the name of the game right now.

The most promising development of the day is that Cotton may be gaining some confidence. The last take they played tonight was the best he’s played this entire session. I’m not saying he’s miraculously great—far from it—but I HAVE been able to put away the barf bag.

For the moment, anyway.

Mixerman

Day 12: Girlfriend Day
Posted: August 14, 12:29 a.m.

As I was driving to the studio, reflecting on yesterday’s productivity, I had a very disturbing realization. Although we were making takes and progressing with the session, the band members seemed unfazed by such events. There was no excitement, no giddiness, no enthusiasm. It was like making takes with a bunch of robots. If the band is a bunch of robots, then Paulie Yore is certainly the King of all Robots with his monotone, “Yeah, I guess that’s all right.” Or if he got really excited he’d say “That’s good enough, I guess.” I wasn’t holding much hope out for Yore, but I was hopeful that when we make a little more progress, the level of enthusiasm would elevate considerably. Perhaps even I was guilty of guarded enthusiasm yesterday. That would certainly be understandable after the two-week debacle we have endured thus far.

When I spoke to Willy this morning, he had made an interesting decision. He was going to hire some hot-shot Radar editor from Nashville to come in and edit takes while we kept recording. I didn’t even know there WAS such a thing as a “hot-shot Radar editor.” Editing on the Radar is a piece of cake, do we really need a “hot-shot?” I could just imagine Dude punching keys at lightning speed, as one uses designated macro keys on a Radar as opposed to using a mouse. Perhaps our hot-shot Radar editor was of age when Commodore 64's were all the rage, giving him a distinct advantage over younger Radar editors who are likely hindered by the lack of a mouse.

Since when was Willy, the consummate Luddite’s Luddite, willing to transfer the drums to digital and edit them there? Granted, the Radar is probably the only digital multi-track machine in the history of such machines that I actually think sounds good (barring some serious hot-rodding). But that was quite a leap for Willy to make in such a short amount of time. Perhaps I had his ear and he trusted me now.

“I’m surprised at that,” I said to Willy when he told me about the Radar editing.

“Yeah, well we need to get a move on with this session, and you’ve already demonstrated that the Radar sounds great, so fuck it,” he said as I could hear him sucking in heavily from what I assumed was the first fatty of the day.

Indeed, I thought to myself.

I certainly didn’t complain about this new development. Shit, I couldn’t have been more delighted to be relinquishing editing duties to someone else. If Willy was a producer that enjoyed Alsihad, the session would be paying for an Alsihah to be editing the tracks anyway. Besides, having one person editing while we continued recording would be a far more efficient way of working.

Then Willy further enlightened me on the subject of his great turnabout. He told me about a friend of his that is a somewhat famous producer in Nashville, who suggested that we quit fucking around editing 2" tape and transfer the takes to Radar for editing, and Willy’s friend recommended HIS guy for the editing gig. Being that Willy actually described Dude as “lightning fast,” I’ve named him Fast Fingers McGuilicutty, sight unseen. Fast Fingers would be arriving tomorrow to start editing takes.

Further, I learned in our conversation that Willy had taken home a couple of the takes of each song from the running DAT (Digital Audio Tape). I keep a DAT recorder rolling at all times during the course of a session. When the band is making takes, Lance’s job is to mark an ID at the beginning of each take and log down the ID number and its corresponding take number. That way, if Willy or I want to take home a CD of some takes, all Lance has to do is look at his notes and transfer those takes to a CD. Running a DAT recorder at all times has the added advantage of allowing me to play back an idea or part that someone may have played accidentally but forgotten, and it can potentially provide interesting and fun interlude material for an album.

Willy had confided in me, in our phone conversation this morning, that the takes really weren’t up to par and that the band was severely lacking energy. This was not a surprise to me. After all, the band DID have an obvious lack of enthusiasm yesterday. It’s not that either of us is incapable of listening to a take go down and recognize that it’s not totally happening, but we’re dealing in relative terms. Our ability to listen to a take has been tainted with the comparisons of what we had previously recorded. In comparison to our first recording with the band, yesterday’s takes were a marked improvement. Improvement was a step in the right direction. In cases like these, where the playing is so hideously atrocious, knowing for certain whether takes are going to pass muster often requires a day away from the tracks and sometimes requires actually editing them.

Although the takes weren’t happening, Willy felt that moving forward, as we have done, has been the right course of action We could always go back and try to beat what we have recorded thus far. So long as there was improvement, Willy would allow the band to record takes and move on to the next song.

Even with the news of the takes not being up to par, I was encouraged and upbeat on my way into the session. Perhaps the energy level would improve today. As I was driving to the studio, I had made a decision that I was going to be as upbeat and as positive as I possibly could. Sure, I’m always positive at the studio. But today was different. Today, I was going to be the specimen of good vibes, positive thinking, and overly expressive enthusiasm. Perhaps my enthusiasm would be infectious, and the band would start to play with excitement.

Of course, no sooner had I arrived at the studio, convinced that I was somehow going to make a difference on the day’s work, when I was instantly and completely deflated. There, at the table on the patio, sat two girls with Yore and Harmon. Girls in their own right certainly were not a bad thing, but these particular girls had two strikes against them. They were at a recording session in which there were no girls, and they looked suspiciously like girlfriends. A terrible, horrible feeling had overcome me. These guys didn’t ACTUALLY bring their girlfriends to the session. Did they?

“Hi, how’s it going?” I said coolly as I hobbled to the table at which the crew was sitting. I stood there with what I’m sure was an awkward little smile waiting anxiously for an introduction, which I didn’t actually have the patience to wait for.

“My name is Mixerman,” I said like a heathen, holding out my hand as if making an effort to show that I come in peace.

Heathen or not, sometimes my insight and ability to recognize a situation scares me. They WERE girlfriends!

What I wanted to do was cry No! No! No! No! No! No! No!—over and over again as I slammed my forehead against the brick wall outside the studio. But I figured that would have been too revealing of my thoughts on this subject, so I smiled and welcomed our newfound intruders instead.

How could these guys be this stupid? One should NEVER bring one’s girlfriend to a session. It’s like the first rule of recording. I think they teach this in kindergarten. Even my children know you don’t bring your girlfriend to the studio. Guys don’t act like themselves when their girlfriends are there. They get distracted, the girls get upset because the guys aren’t paying attention to them, and then the guys get all pissed off because the girls don’t understand that they’re making a record. Then what typically happens is the girls split, the guys get pissed, and it’s a fucking fiasco every time. My only hope was that the girlfriends were planning to leave and go shopping together. I clung onto that hope like it was Barry Bonds’ 73rd 2001 home run ball, as I proceeded to the control room and prepared for the day’s session.

Willy walked in the control room, and I gave him what must have been a maniacally horrified look as he entered, because he actually asked if I was sick.

“They brought girlfriends!!” I blurted out in horror, with no thought to how that must have sounded or looked for that matter.

Willy chuckled. “I’m sure they’ll be leaving soon,” he replied.

But they didn’t leave soon. They stayed the whole day, and for what had been the briefest of moments yesterday, a decent, well-adjusted session would now be destroyed by the presence of alien intruders.

Don’t get me wrong. I love women. GOD do I love women. I enjoy working with women in studio situations. What I don’t like is girlfriends or boyfriends in the studio. In fact, boyfriends are worse! There’s just no room for that shit. Band members and artists have to be unencumbered and free to be themselves wholly. Girlfriends and boyfriends only serve to aggravate, for they don’t recognize the boundaries of concentration and focus that go into the creative process of recording.

It seems our visitors were intent on proving that my disdain for such things was warranted right from the start. The girls yucked it up on the couch in the back of the room, while I was trying to get sounds. Anyone that has done any level of engineering at all knows it’s VERY difficult to work while people are in the room talking. The only way to combat the noise is to turn up the volume of your monitors. However, the louder I turned up the volume, the louder the intruders would talk, until such a point that I was absolutely blasting the music, as the unwanted studio guests were yelling at the top of their lungs and looking at me as if I was doing something wrong!

“I’m sorry, but there really can’t be any talking while I’m doing critical listening,” I would say after muting the speakers. “You’re more than welcome to go into the lounge if you like.”

“Oh, sorry! We’ll be quiet,” they would respond giggling, as if making my life miserable was somehow humorous.

Less than 30 seconds of silence would go by, and the whispers would start again. The whispers would soon turn into talking, and then yelling as the cycle would play itself out again, and I would calmly ask them to shut the fuck up in as pleasant a way as I could muster—perhaps too pleasant a way. ‘Round and ‘round we’d go in an endless cycle.

At one point, one of the girls realized that I could magically communicate with the boys by pushing a button and just talking, and the other decided it would be cute for HER to talk to Yore.

In an elongated and exaggerated fashion, with a light Southern accent much like the blonde white-trash-factory-worker character that pretended to get pregnant in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, she screamed “Play louder, sexy!” She made sure that she yelled directly into the push button, as if by some miracle a solid piece of plastic with her thumb over it could somehow act as a microphone.

MOTHER FUCKER!

“Please!” I said exasperated. “You really can’t be playing with the talkback button, we’re trying to make a record here,” I continued, as I held out my hand as a gesture to demand return of the talkback remote control. Still, they wouldn’t leave.

I had thought for hours about what I could say to get them out of the room. Many scenarios had played in my head in short little daydream sequences, as my brain attempted to come up with a reasonable solution to my problem.

“Get me a mic and set it up for the girls over there,” I would say to Lance in one of my daydreams, as I pointed to the back of the control room.

“Why are you setting up a mic?” one of the girls would ask.

“So that I can record your singing,” I would reply.

“But we’re not singing,” they would respond hook, line and sinker.

“Oh! Right! Well then, how about you SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I would say to their horror and dismay. That would get them out of the room, anyway!

Had this little vignette actually happened, it surely would have gotten me in hot water with Harmon, who wouldn’t understand at all why I was yelling at his girlfriend. I would have possibly gotten myself fired, a thought that is not so unappealing right about now. Worse yet, I might have to hang out for weeks with a guy whose girlfriend wants me fired. Even if HE could somehow forgive me and understand why I snapped, his girlfriend would make sure that he hated me by such torturous techniques as talking about the incident endlessly.

Deciding that I was, perhaps, untrustworthy to ask the girls to leave at that particular moment, I decided it would be best if I let Willy act as the diplomat. I was at my wit’s end where they were concerned, and it’s always best to get a disinterested party involved in such cases. Willy always seemed to fill this role perfectly.

Willy was great, because when I told him my problem, he poked his head in the door and held out a fatty and led the girls to the lounge as if the fatty were a flute, Willy was the Pied Piper, and the girlfriends were rats. So as the crew smoked a fatty, Willy came up with the new rule that no one was allowed in the control room while we were working. Everyone was agreeable, as most people are when they are smoking fatties.

Willy was very tolerant of the fact that the girlfriends were there. At one point, when the girls were in the lounge and we were making a take, Willy said we would just have to deal with the “bitches” for now (his words, not mine). The way Willy figured it, the girlfriends might actually make the boys play more inspired. This hasn’t been my experience in studio life, and it certainly wasn’t evidenced by the band’s uncanny ability to play a 120-beat-per-minute lullaby at that particular moment. But who am I to argue with success?

With the girlfriends now out of the control room, the remainder of the day went fairly smoothly. Much like yesterday, we recorded two songs today. Willy was working very hard with the band to try and bring up the inspiration in their playing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the band and Cotton were starting to perform halfway decently by the end of the night. But I do know better. So much for being upbeat and positive!

I guess there’s always tomorrow.

Mixerman

Week 3 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 13: What-up Dog?
Posted: August 15, 12:09 a.m.

Whereas yesterday was a pain in the ass what with the presence of Paulie Yore’s and Harmon Neenot’s girlfriends, today was a pain in the ass times two. That’s because Dumb Ass and the singer both decided to bring THEIR girlfriends to the sessions too. Girlfriends were multiplying at an alarming rate. Tomorrow, could I expect the girlfriend ratio to double again? Perhaps Willy would bring his girlfriend and our soon-to-arrive comrade Fast Fingers could have his girlfriend flown in from Nashville. Lance surely had to have a girlfriend that had nothing better to do than to spend a day at the studio gabbing all day as she ate chocolate muffins. I have always had my suspicions about Magnolia, perhaps SHE could round up a girlfriend, and then we could have eight girlfriends tomorrow!

For the record, I really didn’t give a shit that the girlfriends were eating chocolate muffins, as the runner was now buying 10 of them or more per day so as to be sure that we never ran out. I considered requesting that the runner back off on the muffin count, but I was fearful we’d be back down to one muffin per day, as making requests at this studio was much akin to driving a large vehicle very fast and making sudden direction changes while on ice.

Four girlfriends is four girlfriends too many. I had to make a sign. I find signs to be an effective way to not only set rules but set them in an obnoxious way without actually offending anybody—mostly because rules usually come off humorous when posted as a sign. So I ripped a piece of paper from a pad, and I wrote on the paper.

NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!

“No, no, no, no!” I thought as I tore up that sign. That wasn’t going to work. A sign like that would only serve to guarantee that the girls would enter the control room. I needed a girlfriend deterrent, not a girlfriend magnet. So, I tried again.

NO TALKING IN THE CONTROL ROOM!!!!

TO BE STRICTLY ENFORCED!!!

I liked that one. I was hopeful this would work, since, as it was, I was sure that I could hear the flock gabbing from down the hall through an airlock that is designed to prevent sound from entering or escaping the control room. I realize that my sign was neither super inventive nor very obnoxious for that matter. But the way I figured it, these girls weren’t going to be coming into the control room, if they weren’t allowed to talk. Therefore, by placing the sign, I would be better able to enforce the rule, since the rule had been clearly and conspicuously posted. Yeah, right.

As I was hanging my freshly written sign, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a stranger coming down the hall. He was a short, lanky, meek-looking pasty-faced guy with a tiny goatee and spiked hair died pure blond. He was wearing a parka and carrying a bag that I assumed was made out of hemp. The stranger looked prepared for an Arctic dog-sled competition, save the fact that he was also wearing knee-length shorts. It’s 95 degrees outside, and this clown was wearing a fucking parka!

“What-up, Dog?” the stranger said to me. “Where da Bitch Slap session at, Yo?” he asked.

“Right here,” I replied, preoccupied with the ideal placement of my sign and completely disinterested in pointing what I assumed was more posse to the lounge.

“I’m here to cut takes, Yo,” the stranger announced. With that, it became apparent whom I was talking to.

It was none other than Fast Fingers McGuilicutty, in all his glory, standing before me, looking like a 20-year-old idiot with a parka rated for 40 below in the middle of summer in L.A. Out of nowhere it struck me that my Commodore 64 theory from yesterday was now shot to hell. Dude was too young to have ever used a Commodore 64. Perhaps he wasn’t as fast as all the hype made him out to be.

“Ah-ight,” I said, as I noticed that he was about the height of the girls, and lined my sign up to his eye level.

“Been having problems with the Bitches?” he asked.

What’s with these guys and the “bitches” shit? I mean, yeah, I don’t want girlfriends on the session, but it’s not for some misplaced deep-down hatred of women.

“Word,” I replied in a language that I thought he might understand.

My years of hip-hop sessions came in handy, as I could converse fluently with Fast Fingers, or perhaps I should say Fingaz. I knew the lingo and when to use it, and as far as he was concerned, I was one of the brothers. Strangely, neither of us was one of the brothers, but I figure that’s just a technicality.

So, I gave Fingaz the nickel tour. I showed him the room, and then the control room, and finally I showed him where the Radar was. As I stood there staring at the Radar, I realized that neither Willy nor I had considered where Fingaz was going to work. Editing in the control room was out. The iso booths wouldn’t provide enough true isolation, and we’d likely want to reserve them for recording anyway. Willy’s makeshift office was too far away from the control room, since we wouldn’t want to have to keep moving the Radar. Really, the only place I could think to put Fingaz was in the bathroom, which was a reasonable distance from the control room. Fingaz didn’t seem too thrilled with that prospect.

“What happens when someone has to go to the bathroom, Yo?” he asked incredulously.

“I guess you’ll have to take a break,” I said. I could hardly contain my laughter, and it got worse, because then I imagined someone taking a really smelly dump during Fingaz’ forced mandatory break time, causing considerable contamination to the editing area. By the looks on Fingaz’ face, he was imagining something quite similar.

This wasn’t the first time that an editor has ended up in the shitter on one of my sessions, and I didn’t find it any less humorous the last time it happened either. Being experienced in these sorts of things, I brought out some extra tapestries (which were also necessary for acoustical reasons, as large concrete bathrooms make for terrible acoustics), a plethora of scented candles, and some incense to try and transform the bathroom into what appeared to be a very vibey editing space. OK, so it never quite made vibey, as we couldn’t really cover the commode, but it was certainly much improved, and the commode would make a very convenient seat for anyone that wanted to come take a listen to what Fingaz was working on.

Willy loved what I had done to the bathroom after he figured out that I was, indeed, right that there was nowhere else to put Fingaz. Cotton pointed out that there WAS another bathroom down the hall, which I had forgotten about—mostly because I don’t like that particular bathroom. I call it the “Trough” with its three urinals and three stalls. I hate using the Trough. I don’t have a phobia or anything like that. I’m fine with the Trough at the mall or the movies or a restaurant. But I spend 12 hours a day at the studio, and I like having a private bathroom, much like the one I have at home. I hate the Trough.

With our makeshift editing suite complete, we set up the newest member of our crew in the bathroom. Fingaz had the Radar, a rack of three Dangerous Mixers40, and some powered speakers. We ran cables to and from the Radar between the bathroom and the machine room, and we transferred the takes for Fast Fingaz to get to work on. He immediately got to work. And work he did.

This guy really WAS lightning fast. He had the fastest fingers I’ve ever seen as he hit macro buttons left and right like he was a court reporter at a deposition. He’d cut, paste, scrub, mark, move, slide, chop. It almost seemed fake, like a bad movie where the guy is pretending to break into a super computer on the Internet by typing on a keyboard really fast. He was absolutely fantastic!

Now, with Fast Fingaz furiously editing away, we needed to start to make takes again. Occasionally girls would try to enter the room one at a time, and I would play Mind Tricks on them, forcing them to quickly close the door and go back to the lounge. But at one point, I was overrun by the four of them. My Mind Tricks were useless against such numbers, and somehow they figured this out.

Willy would let the girls hang for a while, and then he’d pull his Pied Piper routine again, luring them to the lounge down the hall with his fatties. Then Willy would return, and we’d continue working.

As the day went on, it got progressively more difficult to find band members with whom to make takes. That’s because they would usually be somewhere else with their girlfriends. The moment I’d find a player and inform him that he was needed, another band member would be missing. It was like the girls had cast a spell on the band, causing them to forget that this day was probably costing in the neighborhood of $4,000.

Whenever Lance was trying to find AWOL players, I would go and hang with Fingaz and get to know him a little better. I found it absolutely fascinating that this guy lived in Nashville. He would be the equivalent of an alien in Nashville with his appearance and the way he spoke. Things just didn’t add up, and I so desperately needed them to. I figured I’d just up ask him.

“So, where in Nashville do you live?” I asked, as if I knew more than one street there.

“Damn, maaan,” Fingaz responded incredulously. “I don’t live dare Yo. Jus’ been cuttin’ takes wit da man over dare.”

“Word,” I replied. “Well, where you from, Yo?” I asked.

“I live in da City, Dawg” he replied, which made a hell of a lot more sense than Dude living in Nashville.

“You know dey don’t let no Wegro live in Nashville,” he continued.

I almost fell off the commode at that comment. Dude called himself a Wegro! I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life! African Americans haven’t been referred to as Negros in 30 years, and for good reason! But Dude decides to call himself a Wegro? What a schmuck!

But then, at the thought of such absurdity on so many levels, I found myself laughing and unable to stop laughing. I was laughing so hard, my gut started to hurt. (I’m STILL laughing) This guy was a fucking classic! The fact that he couldn’t understand what I found so funny about this statement just made my laughing fit worse. Finally, I had to get the hell out of there, because he was starting to get mad at me, and that was not helping me regain my composure at all.

When I went into the control room, Willy wanted to know what I was laughing about, and I told him. The two of us sat there for about 10 minutes laughing so hard that our stomachs hurt. At one point, when we had almost gotten control of ourselves, we noticed Fingaz standing in the airlock with this confused scowl on his face as he was watching us laughing. This didn’t help matters at all. Then Willy decided to fire up a fatty, and Dude came in to join the party.

“You bluntin’?” Fingaz asked Willy.

“Not bluntin’,” I said, “smokin’ fatties.” I guess Fingaz found that acceptable, because he joined in.

We got one song recorded today because we could barely get the guys in the room at the same time. Fingaz got the first song edited and was halfway through another. Willy decided he’d listen to the edited takes tomorrow after the second editing job was complete

As much as Fingaz is an idiot with his whole Wegro terminology and the shtick that went with it, at least I could hang with the dude.

Which was more than I could say for the band.

Mixerman

Day 14: Up All Night
Posted: August 16, 9:45 a.m.

It’s 9:42 a.m. Friday morning. I’ve been up all night, and I've just gotten home. I’m going to bed, but currently there is the looming threat of having to go back to the studio this evening, although I wonder if that's actually possible. Yesterday’s session was a doozie.

But then, aren’t they all? Sleepytime for . . .

Mixeyman

Days 14 & 15: Bring In The Posse Brigade
Posted: August 17, 10:49 p.m.

Exhaustion has set in.

I did a 72-hour session once (actually twice) with no sleep and no drugs, and I’ve finished entire records in that time. So yesterday’s 22 hours could hardly be considered a marathon session in the grand scheme of sessions. But it’s still a long fucking day. When you couple a 22-hour session with three weeks of 12-hour days, the stress of a session that was doomed before it began, the relentless documentation of my daily events here, and a desire to actually see my family, the exhaustion can be overwhelming. I won’t do anything this weekend except walk around like a zombie and try to be of SOME use to my family.

I arrived at the studio at 11 a.m. on Thursday, the 14th day of work on the Bitch Slap album. The day started fairly normally. Dumb Ass was sitting on the patio smoking a cigarette. Harmon and Yore were in the lounge playing video baseball, and the singer was probably in the bathroom fixing his hair, as he was prone to do on a regular basis.

Lance had arrived, like clockwork, a few moments after me, which seemed to be the trend these days, since he exhibited some innovation by training the runner to turn on all the mics and the tube gear. Willy arrived the moment I began enjoying my morning muffin and hugged everyone in sight. My new friend Fingaz rolled in on his first-class rental sled, which seems the appropriate terminology for his ride given his propensity for wearing a parka. Magnolia was arranging flowers in the kitchen, even though they make me sneeze, and I place them out on the patio on a daily basis. Everyone was present and accounted for. That is, everyone but the unwanted studio guests.

While I was very happy that there were no girlfriends, I was also a bit suspicious, and I have no idea why. To my knowledge, Willy hadn’t banned them; in fact, at one point, he had expressed the thought that they might help matters, which they don’t. So where were they? Did they actually work? I didn’t dare ask for fear that one of them might take my inquiry as some sort of invitation, and the next thing you know, we would have girlfriends everywhere.

With the obligatory morning niceties behind us, it was time to work. Willy wanted to record one of the more creative songs. He searched through his cases of gear and instruments and pulled out this fantastic circus drum. It had what I can only describe as a “round” sound as it had a front head on it with no hole. The lack of a hole causes the front head to resonate more, supplying a very distinctive sound much like Jon Bonham’s kik drum heard on old Led Zeppelin records. We had to actually tie Cotton’s stool to the drum in order to prevent the drum from migrating forward as he stepped on the beater, as this particular drum wasn’t designed to be used on a drum set and had no floor anchors.

With the makeshift kik drum in place, we attempted to detune the toms to be exceptionally deep and resonant, but Dumb Ass totally fucked up the sound of them, since he has no clue how to tune a drum set. Seeing as I had only slightly more of a clue, I called the drum tech. That’s not a problem, because fortunately we are right down the road from the rental drum tech and rental warehouse.

When the drum tech arrived some 15 minutes later, he decided to put up some very large toms that he had in his truck, and he made them super deep. Of course, Dumb Ass, living up to my name for him, neglected to tell or—at the very least—remind anyone that he doesn’t hit the fucking toms in this particular song, except the floor tom once in the bridge. Since that particular tom hit was eventually dropped at Willy’s request, there were actually NO tom hits in this song. Essentially, we went through all of that bother for nothing.

After a couple of hours of drum sounds and several glasses of water, I was in desperate need of a trip to the Trough—a place that I abhor even for such mundane routines as relieving my bladder. Normally, a walk to the Trough would be relatively uneventful, and I assure you, I will not make a habit of describing to you my bathroom visits. Today, however, in my journey to the Trough, I found myself passing an inordinate amount of strangers. It wasn’t necessarily unusual for me to pass strangers in the hall, as there was usually another session going on in Studio II. But the people from Studio II didn’t typically wander this far down the hall, as the complex was set up to prevent excessive fraternization between sessions.

Regardless, my need to take a leak had reached a high level of alert, so I high-tailed it to the Trough. To my surprise, there were a considerable number of people IN the Trough, as well. Normally with this many people in a communal bathroom, I would assume there was a string session going on in the next room. But these were definitely not string players. These guys appeared more like wannabe rockers from the Valley, laden with tattoos and piercing hardware. If this were a decade ago, they would have likely been viewed as a sordid and dangerous bunch of hoodlums. Now they’re society’s youth.

After completing my business in the Trough and feeling as though I somehow didn’t belong (when in reality I was the ONLY one who belonged), I headed back for the control room, which I have taken to dubbing the “Womb,” as it is often my only place of true refuge on a session. When walking to the Womb from the Trough one must pass directly in front of the lounge, and as I did, I caught an unsettling image through my peripheral vision. I stopped dead in my tracks, just beyond the entry to the lounge. I was just a few short steps from the safe haven of the Womb. I wanted to ignore it. I really did. But to ignore what I had seen, or more accurately what I had thought I had seen, would be only to put off the inevitable. Slowly, I leaned back, half cocking my head to see more straightforwardly into the lounge, to the view of a throng of strangers mingling.

For the record, this was not some communal lounge for anyone that happened to be working at the complex. This was our own private lounge, or at least it was to this point of the session. I scanned the crowd in search of anyone that I actually knew, but to no avail. As I searched, the lounge people began to take notice of me, and I grew uncomfortable, as if I didn’t belong there.

It didn’t take me much more than a few seconds before I continued on to the Womb, as I was fearful that one of the strangers might start asking me whether he or she could help me, as if I were somehow in the wrong place. The band members were out in the room with their instruments, adjusting their amps, tuning their instruments, and testing guitars, as I could hear the evidence of this coming from the speakers. Willy seemed ready to move forward with our session, as he sat perched in front of the speakers.

We jumped through the usual hoops of trying to find a guitar sound that best fit the song and the sound of the drums. Sometimes this can be like putting together a puzzle. Every instrument had to sound as if it belonged with the others. Everything starts with the drums. If the drums are more stylized, then it’s likely that the bass and guitar need to be, as well. But style isn’t the only consideration. One must also consider the frequencies that instruments occupy and how that affects the other instruments.

The frequency range of human hearing is from 20 hertz (cycles per second) to 20 kilohertz (20,000 cycles per second), although it is a rare person that can actually hear frequencies as high as 20 kilohertz, just as it is rare to find a person that is 115 years old. An instrument has a fundamental range within that spectrum. Without going into the physics here, and to put it as simply as possible, a bass covers the low part of the spectrum and a violin covers the high part of the spectrum. A tine struck with another tine would have almost no low end, and a bass drum played with a soft mallet would have almost no high end. Achieving separation between a bass and a tine is very easy, as they do not cross frequencies. Achieving clarity between a bass and a kik drum can require some attention, because they cover similar frequency ranges.

In this case, the kik drum was very round and took up a lot of low-end space, so the bass had to have some mid-range attack to it in order to cut through. Half the battle is finding the specific instrument that works best for the application. In this case, we knew that this was the kik drum sound we wanted, so we were looking for a bass that fit with it. In other words, we were looking for a bass that had a very pronounced mid-range. So we used an instrument that had these precise characteristics—in this case a Hoffner bass. This particular bass was over 30 years old and could have easily been used by Paul McCartney41, as that was the bass he typically used through his career, although we have no documentation proving Paul actually played this particular bass. Not that we needed any; this was a right-handed bass, and it has been well established that Paul McCartney plays left-handed.

Different guitars and basses made at different times throughout the course of rock history have distinct and unique sounds. The same can be said about guitar and bass amplifiers. That is why on high-budget sessions, such as this, there will often be as many as 30 guitars, many of which are very old. Older instruments are usually referred to as “vintage.” Much like vintage wine, they are called that because they are the cream of the crop and have aged well. Otherwise, they are just plain “old,” which also has its place.

I’ve been on sessions where there were over 100 guitars, all owned by the artist. It’s not uncommon to try five or six different guitars (sometimes more), through several amps to find a guitar sound that works best for a song. This is not entirely a hit-or-miss process, as discussions take place, citing particular target guitar sounds. Often times, terms like warm, biting, bright, thick, crunchy, mellow, etc. will be used in an attempt to describe a guitar sound. When that fails, and that fails often, then we reference CDs. It is not uncommon to send the runner to the record store to buy specific CDs in order to demonstrate a guitar sound concept to someone. Suffice it to say, when you are surrounded by guitars and amplifiers of many varieties, you have many options available to you.

After recording a few of the rehearsals and then listening back and making adjustments, we were ready to start making takes, but the band wanted a short break. As the band broke, Willy and I took the opportunity to visit Fingaz and check out what he was working on.

Fingaz was almost finished with his third song, and he was more than happy to take a break from it and play us his editing job on the first song. Willy sat on the commode, and I sat on the sink, which wasn’t very comfortable with a spigot in my back, not to mention the constant concern for catching fire from the surplus of burning candles surrounding me. Willy liked the first song’s drum tracks as the takes were a far-cry better than our first attempts at editing Cotton. I think abandoning the clik track and headphones was beneficial to the overall feel of the drums. But the question was, were they good enough? That question couldn’t be definitively answered until we attempted to record over the edited drums.

While Fingaz certainly wasn’t doing as severe an editing job as I had attempted on 2", there were still a lot of cuts, and the bass and guitar parts were rendered useless as the cuts were designed specifically for the drums. There was bleed from the other instruments on the drums, but the large majority of that bleed was on the room mics. I could always remake the room mics by blasting the edited drums through the PA system and recording the room mics again. Regardless, I didn’t think the bleed was going to render the editing job useless. Still, this is the gamble that you take when you record with bleed.

As I said before, usually recording in one room, as we did, is reserved for bands that can play a song together without redoing guitar and bass parts. Still, I was fairly confident that we wouldn’t have any problems, since Harmon and Yore were fairly consistent in what they played, and the replayed parts that they would have to lay down would likely work fine with the bleed that was present on the drums.

Willy and I listened to the rest of Fingaz’ editing jobs. Willy suggested a few changes, and we left Fingaz to his work as it was time for us to begin making takes with the band. Having briefly forgotten the presence of strangers outside or perhaps, hoping deep down that they had left (I’m not sure which), I made my way outside of the Womb and into the cold cruel world of excessively tattooed and pierced intruders from the Valley. My hope of their mysteriously vanishing was dashed the instant I popped my head out the door, as the presence of strangers had not diminished, but rather increased. There were strangers everywhere!

Who were all these strangers?

As I made my way through the infestation of intruders, I was approached by one of the band’s girlfriends that I had supposedly grown close to. She hugged me, assuming that I actually liked her or that I wanted her around. I didn't. I couldn’t even remember which band member she belonged with.

There were strangers in the lounge, the kitchen, the game room, and they even spilled out to the patio area where the band was now hanging. As I passed through the kitchen to the patio and sifted myself through strangers trying not to touch any, as if they were cockroaches or something vastly more disgusting, I couldn’t help but notice that our usual spread of muffins, bagels, veggie tray and fruit basket looked more like the remnants of an Over-Eaters Anonymous party. There was nothing left save the unappetizing remains of ranch dressing dip, which had mostly been dripped across the glass table, randomly interspersed with muffin crumbs both large and small in size. If I hadn’t realized it before, I did now. The intruders were there for our session, and they had absolutely no business being there other than to eat my food, drink my beverages, and take up my space that I use as refuge from the Womb, for one even needs refuge from Wombs occasionally. There was no doubt about it—I was in the midst of a Posse Brigade!

Regardless of the brigade, we needed to start recording. So, I went to the patio to get the band members, who were holding court with their posse while holding on to their instruments—Harmon with the Hofner bass in his lap; Yore with an electric guitar strapped to his shoulder; Dumb Ass with his drum sticks in his back pocket; and even the singer was holding a microphone that we would most likely never actually use to record him.

“You guys ready?” I asked.

“Let’s get to it,” Harmon responded.

With those words, the band stood up in one swift uniform motion and, in formation, proceeded immediately in the direction of the room. Never before had I seen such a determined look painted on their faces as they made their way through the crowd to the large double doors of the complex. For the briefest of moments, I felt as though I were watching a real rock band, a successful band, somehow making its way through the corridors on the way to performing its last concert after a long career of making successful records and selling out large stadiums. Like they were of the caliber of U2. Like they were actually cool.

“C’mon, we’re playing!” yelled Cotton at the top of his lungs almost directly in my ear as he gestured for everyone to follow.

”WHAT????? NO!” I thought in panic.

With that summoning, the Posse Brigade became a posse parade, as they followed the band into the room like they were being lured by Willy with a fatty. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everyone filed into the recording room. It was like the lights had blinked on and off at the intermission of a play to indicate that the show was about to resume. But this wasn’t a show, so what the hell were these people doing? I stood there motionless in the middle of the hall, staring in disbelief with my mouth hanging open, as brigadiers displayed marked irritation toward me for neglecting to provide a fully unrestricted path to the recording room.

As the last person filed in, I was suddenly broken from my spell. I spun around and ran to the Womb, which could be entered from a separate entrance without going through the recording room at all. When I arrived at the Womb again, I could hear the commotion of many people coming through the speakers, being picked up by the many microphones in the room. Willy looked at me wide-eyed with his mouth open, and I looked back at Willy, as it was apparent that he was as taken aback by this event as I was. I had not seen Willy fazed by anything until now. Since he was still in the shock that I had just moments ago been snapped out of, I spoke first.

“Are they going to clap when they finish the song?” I said dryly.

At that comment Willy snapped to and immediately went to the recording room and motioned for the singer to come into the Womb with about as much grace as Dumb Ass had displayed when he motioned to the Posse Brigade moments earlier.

After an extensive debriefing, it became apparent that the band was taking Willy’s own words to heart. They were searching for a way to get more energy out of their playing. Willy had told the band he wanted to capture them the way they played live, so they figured the best way to achieve said goal was to bring in an audience. Willy expressed concern over such possible negative events as crowd noise, applause, or screaming in the middle of the take, but the band assured him that everyone in the room had been prepped on the procedure, and that no one would make a peep. Willy decided to oblige, which he might as well have done, since everyone was already in the room and ready to listen. With that, the singer made his way back into the room.

Willy looked at me and said nothing, as he sparked up a fatty that had been sitting on the console for some time . He didn’t look particularly pleased at that moment.

We recorded the band, and they didn’t play any better or worse with their manufactured audience of drones. In fact, the presence of that many bodies in the room changed the sound that we had worked so hard to attain. But I wasn’t going to start readjusting things yet. Rather, I allowed the session to proceed devoid of adjustments, because, frankly, I’ve been down this road before. After three takes that were likely passable at this point, the band headed for the Womb, and so, too, did the posse brigade. Willy and I looked at each other with the sort of horror you would expect if a piano were about to land your head from 10 stories above.

“Whoa!” he yelled out. “We can’t have the audience in the control room. I’m sorry,” he continued, which surprised the hell out of me, because Willy rarely seemed to want to make unpopular decisions.

Like disappointed drones, as if there was such a thing, the Posse Brigade filed back into the recording room.

As we were listening to the takes, I took my normal listening position to the back couch. The band liked to be in front of the speakers when listening to the takes, and Dumb Ass liked to sit in front of the console and drastically change my balances.

By the middle of the second take, which was sounding awful for Dumb Ass’ clear lack of mixing skills, I was envisioning 20 strangers in the recording room with mics that I spent a considerable amount of time placing and positioning. Worse yet, I was envisioning them with NO supervision.

I was overcome by instant panic. The tiniest change in a mic’s position can drastically change the sound that is being recorded. If a mic is somehow moved, it can render a take useless because of the inability to cut it together with another take. I jumped up from my position in the back of the room, and my worst fears had been proven true.

There, through the window, I could see a guy hanging onto the large boom stand that I was using to hold a mic over the left side of the drums.

MOTHER FUCKER!

Not only was he hanging on it with his arms twisted around it like it was a barbell, but he was swiveling it back and forth over the drums in fascination.

Another intruder was sitting on the guitar amp that we were using, leaning back on it like it was a chair and he was in junior high. For me to go into the room and start berating people would be pointless. The intruders were completely ignorant of what they were doing wrong. Willy was listening down to a take and was completely oblivious. So, in an effort to stop the madness as quickly as possible, I did the most irritating thing I could think of. I stopped tape as they were intently listening to a take.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but we have to get all those people out of the recording room.” I finished as I pointed towards the room.

Everyone stood up to look out the window, and Willy gasped in horror.

“I know you guys want a live atmosphere and everything . . .” I said.

And with that Willy told the singer with a look of wild-eyed horror, “You’ve got to get them out of there!”

The band, realizing he was right, agreed and escorted the Posse Brigade from the room. I explained to Willy and the band that between the moving of microphones and the removal of a large amount of the best deadening material known to man—man himself—we would have to go over the takes that we had done thus far.

After repositioning the moved microphones, I returned to the Womb. Willy was on the phone. Let me tell you, it’s nearly impossible to listen at a reasonable volume when someone is on the phone next to you, so I sat down to wait and told Dumb Ass over the talkback to do the same (which he didn't so I just muted the console). Once I had settled down on the couch to wait, I realized that I was listening to Willy’s end of a conversation with Jeramiah Weasel, the band’s A&R rep. They were discussing the progress of the record, and Willy was deftly spinning an account of great progress and wonderful performances. As the conversation progressed, I could tell that Willy was being pinned down for a time to come by, but Willy was an expert at thwarting such attempts and finally convinced Jeramiah that he’d call early next week to set up a time.

Shortly after Willy’s phone conversation with Jeramiah, we began making takes again. But we could barely get a groove going as the band was beginning to take peculiarly frequent breaks. It wasn’t so much the breaks in and of themselves that were peculiar, as much as it was the manner in which the breaks were being taken. Indeed, as one band member would proclaim the need for a bathroom break, the rest of the band would proclaim same. These guys didn’t do anything well together, including playing music, why would they all want to go to the bathroom at the same time?

Of course, I already knew the answer to my own question, as the tell-tale sniffles of a session gone awry could be heard through the microphones each time they returned and prepared for another take. I knew then that the boys were partaking in, as Dennis Miller so brilliantly puts it, “Columbian Marching Powder.” As if girlfriends and Posse Brigades weren’t enough to slow down the progress of a session, I now found myself smack dab in the middle of a gak fest.

The gak fest was like some sort of disease (as gak fests tend to be) that everyone on this session caught except me. After the band, it was Willy who started to leave the room, and then Fingaz was walking back and forth through the control room on a regular basis, since he couldn't get anywhere without walking through the Womb. Even Lance was starting to disappear for long periods of time and on several occasions claimed to be catching some sort of a cold out of cold season.

I tried to stay in the Womb as long as possible. I certainly didn’t want to join in on the party, as I knew that the moment I were to do a gak, I would want to be anywhere BUT the studio working. But after sitting alone for some time, I decided I should see for myself what was going on.

The party was raging. There were volumes of liquor and beer being consumed. There was actually a tiki bar set up in the lounge where people were ordering drinks. The entire complex reeked of fatty smoke. Even though there weren’t piles of blow on mirrors in plain view, the consumption of marching powder was about as clandestine an operation as an episode of Survivor, a television game show in which cameras record a contestant’s every maneuver. The complex was overrun with a Posse Brigade in the partying mood. They could even be found at the pool table in Studio II’s lounge, a faux pas of the highest order. At one point, as I gazed in amazement at the sheer scope of this party, I was offered a gak by the band member’s girlfriend that hugged me earlier, but I turned her down, since I didn’t want to be up all night. As it turns out, I was up all night anyway.

We spent the rest of the night recording relatively little over a long period of time, as everyone that was actually supposed to be at this session was gaked up except for me. I was surprised that I wasn’t being pressured to join in by the band, as that is usually the case on these sorts of sessions. By this lack of pressure, I could only assume that there was a limited supply. Unfortunately for me, that supply lasted the entire night through the morning.

Even with the 10 extra hours of recording time, we managed to accomplish less than usual. To say that it was difficult to get Willy or the band in the room at the same time would be an understatement, but to be honest, I didn’t really try.

We did, however, manage to make a couple of takes throughout the course of the evening. The really pathetic part about that was the fact that Dumb Ass played considerably better gaked up then he did straight. Unfortunately, Willy couldn’t really judge the takes very well in this condition, and he kept listening to the same take over and over between his partying. Perhaps what we needed to do was get Dumb Ass gaked up and Willy straight before we did drums takes. But the logistics of that were overwhelming to me.

I would have gone home if the session had actually broken down into a full-on party with no pretense of trying to make a record. I even asked Willy if we maybe should call the session for the night, but he felt that we needed to keep going because the label was going to want to hear some of the recording we’ve done so far.

So, I stayed the whole night, the only sober person there. I didn’t even dare take a hit of a fatty as much as I really wanted to. I was too afraid that I would break down and take a gak, since fatties late at night tend to have the effect of putting me to sleep. I had to avoid taking a gak at all costs, because I would have to face my children in the morning. I promised myself when my first son was born that I would never allow my children to see me in that particular state, and to date they never have.

By 5 a.m., most of the Posse Brigade was gone, but the band and Willy and the last remaining brigadier, who I am assuming was the supplier of the gak, were all still up and raring to go. Willy, somehow realizing that we had managed to get very little done through the course of the night, decided we should record some bass and guitars on the songs that were edited. Sadly, much like Dumb Ass, Harmon could actually play halfway decently gaked up. I just didn't want to test out his singing, because I was certain that no substance on earth could help that. Yore, who was normally a fine guitar player, went to complete shit on the substance. I spent the next four hours recording bass and guitars on two songs. The guitars were, for the most part, useless, out of time, and generally uninspiring.

In 22 hours, we recorded what could have been done in six. Willy wanted to come back again Friday evening, but, as I suspected, that was cancelled. I’m sure everyone felt like shit, and they probably still do, as those sorts of parties tend to supply hangovers that last for two days. Hell, it’s taken me a full day to recover, and I wasn’t even partying. As of this moment, I haven’t heard from Willy about Monday. Perhaps tomorrow.

Once again, I find myself in semi-poor spirits come the end of a week of recording on this particular project.

Although, I think I’m becoming numb to the idiocy.

Mixerman

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