Blog
This Week in the The Studo: 10.05.13
Written by Jimmy
We suddenly turned political. Didn’t mean to, just needed a word that didn’t sound like a German command for ‘stretch your hamstrings!’
Anticipating sun on Saturday, Jimmy closed the studio for this week (actually, everyone said no!). But he opened it instead on Thursday night for a Andy-Jimmy Mixing-Vodka-Song-Rewrite session. These have become world famous in our minds, which are, yes, a bit feebled. Our goal was to finish as well as we could the album, at least in terms of studio input. We got about 20% of our way to our goal.
1. The Only Thing that’s missing: Being not very bright, it has taken me awhile to ‘get it.’ But Andy wants to be a drummer (by the way, do click on bright above, or here, GREAT SONG). I didn’t get this essentially because he doesn’t play drums. And when he does, he tends to follow the beat of a different drummer, and his name ain’t Mr. Click. But, because our real drummer was off shopping for school clothes (or this one) with his Mum a couple Satuardays’ back, Andy jumped in to drum on the The Only That’s Missing’ Sessions…. And he was a bit ‘off’ let’s say (or this one). So because Andy wants to be a drummer, but can’t drum, Jimmy got to have a very long, and very tedious mixing lesson in something like ‘mark to beat’, which involved a lot of tabbing and control i’s. And it took about 2 hours, and Andy thought it was a really important lesson, and I was supposed to care a lot about whether the track was recorded in ‘clicks’ or ‘clacks’ and there’s a Pro Tools button that tells the difference and that is interesting, and I should learn to do control and i with one hand using my right because that is faster and is how it should be done and wasn’t this cool and … Well, I sort of lost the will to live. Essentially because Andy can play the guitar, the whole point of this exercise was to use his guitar to find the beat, and set the track guide to guitar beats and then thru a magic button ‘snap’ his drums and they would go on beat. Well it didn’t happen, and Mr Click is still raising his eyebrows at Mr. Andy, but he really wants to be a drummer and have a drum credit so — we now know ‘the only thing that’s missing’ is all about the fact that the only thing that’s missing in that song is an actual drummer. And that’s all i’m going to say about the FIRST TWO HOURS of the studio being open on a Thursday night after a long work week. Except that two hours is 120 minutes and 7200 seconds, which is a lot of time to press tab, control i.
2. Efatuation Nation: So, as the band ‘house lyricist’ I pride myself on the words to our songs, despite the generally held belief by all members of the band that words are the commodity in all this and the stuff handed to the vocalists to ugh and ohh their way thru the melody. The history of our time in the studio has been one of consistent dismissal of the role of lyrics in songs, from the live recording of King of the Biosphere in Spain, where five sets of lyrics were tossed around like confetti until they settled on some ughs and ahs that fit sort of with the ughs and ughs Andy was singing, to the complete ‘missing’ of my lyrical conceits on Too Many Weddings, where the verses went 1,2,3,4 & 5 and A,B,C,D… so clever. And ignored. Well all this is important because my revenge on the band is every once in a while I write monumentally stupid lyrics. Really bad. And Efatuation Nation was one of these times, starting with the very phrase Efatuation Nation. As Andy sang them for the first time, we all realised it sounded like a really angry German aerobics instructor pressing his troops to stretch them hamstrings. Awful. So as we set about re-doing Andy’s vocals on this Thursday night we also decided to change the lyrics. And we ended up on Coalition Nation, which was so topical we just had to pause and go ‘oh.’ And suddenly my really crap lyrics about guys on the prowl sounded all earnest and deep and political and almost like a commentary on society. So now, as a lyricists I’m stuck. Admitting to writing really dumb lyrics about one night stands, or REALLY, REALLY dumb lyrics about politics and the state of the nation. I’m sticking with dumb lyrics about one night stands, thank you very much. Rather that then ‘earnestness’ which will cause the eventual death of mankind. So besides changing the title, we then switched to Andy’s singing style, which gradually moved from Box of Yellow Roses sweet, to Fun Lovin’ Criminals weird and low. After we sent out the mix, the band flooded us with feedback, which while not directly negative about Andy’s voice, did have a large number of volunteers willing to ‘have a go’ at vocals — maybe the feedback was bad. All I know is Ed and Lou left e mails late into Friday night (last night) offering to have a go at vocals. Ed even suggested he and I do a rap together. Poor Andy. Can’t drum and can’t do Huey, or ZZ Top, or Crash Test Dummies, or Nick Cave. But he can play guitar, and we quite successfully laid down 47 new guitar tracks on Efatuation Nation/Coalition Nation, none of which will see the ‘light of day’ but all were required to make our Thursday night studio session seem productive and noisy.
And that’s all I’m going to say about This Week in the Studio. Other than to say it took me a long time to realise that Andy and Lou had a previous career together.
Jimmy