Blog
10.05.01 This Week in the Studio
Written by Jimmy
Bloody Mary’s & Sausages, Big Knees and Bigger Hangovers, The Real Thing, Ping Pong and a bit of rain — all in a day’s work at Abubilla Music.
It really wasn’t meant to be a hard task. We’d meet in the morning to record, yet again, Big Knees, or My Knees or whatever Martyn is calling it at the moment. 9 AM to be exact (have you heard Kid Francescoli’s 9AM?). Four hours to do a two minute track. That’s 240 minutes to record 120 seconds — we had two minutes for each second of the track. And at least 20 of those seconds was yelling the word ‘Big’. So how hard could this be? Oh and its the, same length as Norweigen Wood. (Read Keno’s posts about short Beatles and Rolling Stones songs — gotta love this guy – an Abubilla Voice who just doesn’t know it yet).
It started well. Kathy and I made killer Bloody Mary’s based on Bob from Moscow’s great recipe. I’ve added a blog on this — see Abubilla’s Bob from Moscow’s Bloody Mary Mix. And it got even better when Rob arrived at 0830 for the 0900AM session. But then things went pear shaped — Mike stumbled in at 0915 or so — but sober. Then Ed around 1015, very hung over. Then Martyn at 1020. Then Sophie texted to say she ran into a lamp pole the night before and was throwing up due to a severe concussion. (This turned out, against all our predictions, to actually be true and when we saw her later at ‘the play’ she had a lump on her forehead the size of Lewie! Poor thing, with crappy friends!) Then Hannah arrived and finally we got our tea. And then Gus called to say that he was out ’til 6AM and had gotten up at 7AM, but was on a later train and would get there at 1130 (something about May Morning at Oxford). So our four hours turned into two hours, or one minute for each second, which was still doable (have you heard of Two Hours Traffic and Stuck for the Summer?). Oh, and Andy was at a bloody wedding, again. See Too Many Weddings.
So we started at about 1030. noodled around with Bossa Nova for a bit at Andy’s remote insistence (see rare little guitar number). But Mike decided it was unfamiliar and different and made his hands feel funny and pouted a bit so we had to stop (see Japanese pout,). But the band did actually experiment and challenge itself for almost 15 minutes. Then back to 1-2-3-4 to a click track — and Mike was happy. Rob and Mike sorted out a nice little beat for Martyn’s riff and Ed’s nice little guitar and we had something. Gus arrived, very hungover and we went thru about 4,567 takes to get him thru the ‘scat’ middle 8 – he struggle with the following words: ‘My bros got a Mercedes Benz. My friends got a big Lear Jet.’ This is NOT poetry and it didn’t even have a tune – he just had to shout it. 4,567 takes. What goes on in May Morning’s in Oxford? (And a couple songs, with Mercedes Benz and Lear Jet in lyrics).
Then the band all jumped in to shout Big about 45 times, trying to get the Barbara Ann thing going. And that was it. 4,567 takes of the ‘scat’, 45 shouts of ‘big’, 15 minutes of grand experimentation before Mike started pouted and we were done. kathy rushed us thru some sausages and more bloody marys and then we headed into town to see Lou in The Real Thing. we were joined by Step and Sophie and Alice, Martyn’s wife of OBE for Worrying Livestock fame. Lou was fantastic, playing 17 year old Debbie. Some of the best lines in the play.
We then fought thru a rainstorm to Ping Pong to feast and ensure that young Debbie/Lou was well fed for her second performance. Then Kathy and Jimmy, joined by all their kids and kids’ friends headed home, while ‘the Band’ — Ed, Gus, Mike, Sophie, Steph headed off for more libations. Sophie, we assume you avoided lamp posts, but who knows….
And that’s it. Big Knees and My Knees or whatever will be song line, the transition song from Misery Marmalade to Other Spanish Jams. We only hope you survive it. It is only 2.12 seconds, so fight thru it if you need to — remember that Gus had a rough May day in Oxford and Ed was slightly worse for the wear! No excuses for Mike – but he had just stopped pouting. And Martyn. Well. it is HIS song after all. Rob’s base is fine, though. And I’ll turn it way up in the mix.
That was May Day at Abubilla. If you made it this far, here’s your reward: Michael Hedges doing All Along The Watchtower, and, appropriately, The Flobots, May Day. After all, it’s all about the music.
Jimmy