Abubilla Music

This Week in the Studio: 11.01.15

Written by Jimmy

Michael riffs, Charlotte works hard to get miffed, and Hannah sets a new u-e-u-u, u-e-u-u-u standard.  And Jimmy says urine.

The Music

Focused on three songs:

• I’ll Be Frank (working title): Michael was late!  So Rob and Mike had some time alone in the studio to play around – first bass-drums, but then Rob switched to the ol’ Les Paul (claiming you can’t write for just bass and drums – I later showed him a book called, ‘Ringo and Paul discuss song-writing).    They messed around for a while, proving that you don’t really want Mike and Rob alone in the studio for too long.  But we were having fun.  Michael finally arrives to announce he had a little riff he had come up with Friday night.  Seemed to work quite well with what Mike and Rob were doing.    Martyn enters.  Sets up his 1927 amp on top of our 2010 amp and plays a bit of guitar.  All goes well.  Michael’s little riff becomes the intro and verse and his little middle 8 becomes the chorus.    This seemed to mystify Mike to the point of putting him into a coma.   No idea why.  We recorded the little song – 2 minutes and banished Michael to the front room to write lyrics.  After lunch he came back in with lyrics – all about the king not being able to withdraw money from a bank (or something like that).  We recorded Michael on lead (very Jim Morrison, or Mr. Mojo Risin’) and recorded Charlotte on bvox.  A nice little 2 minute song that will certainly go on Michael’s discover album and most likely will appear on our fourth.
• Saved:    you snooze, you lose.  Ed has abandoned us to go to Olso (in winter!!!!).  So we punished him by going from Ed’s Saved back to Andy’s Saved, with Ed’s Saved’ Choruses (you following this?).   Dragged Charlotte in to replace Andy’s vocals (Andy singing about his husband beating him didn’t ever really work).  Lovely vocals as always, although we tried hard to have Charlotte sound miffed, to sound angry, to sound mad, to sound a little put out.  Charlotte doesn’t do angry or miffed.  Just nice.  But she sounds on the angry side of nice.   We added a lovely middle 8 and young Michael got to do angst ridden guitar solo.  Michael does angst very well.   As a 16 year old, we think he’s peaking on angst.   All those kings talking to lovely maidens drifting in the sea!
• One Way Home: Feeling guilty about screwing Oslo Ed on Saved, we kept to his version of One Way Home (in our last Spanish Jam we did Ed and Andy versions of Saved and One Way Home for reasons none of us can remember).   The song is basically there (except Oslo Ed would like to add 246 Coldplay guitars on to it), but we needed new U, E, U, U bits by the girls.  In walk Charlotte and Hannah.   It takes us about 30 minutes to sort how to sing U and E.  Something about guttural vowels and glokkenspeals.    Lost Jimmy.     He just waited quietly by the red record button while Hannah and Rob lectured on vowel shapes and transitions.    Then we let the girls sing U and E.  Didn’t seem that difficult.
• Michael’s Jam: We also spend some time jamming on a new Michael riff.  Very fun.  No idea what will happen with it.

Everything Else:

• Urine:   Rob has decided Jimmy’s ‘You’re in’ that follows his extraordinary red button pushing sounds like ‘urine’.  That’s okay, except it means he giggles.  And he can’t play bass and giggle, which is okay if the song doesn’t start with bass.  But ‘I’ll be Frank’ starts with bass.  So we could never get the first note right.  Jimmy sorted this by shouting ‘urine’ a couple times and letting Rob giggle his bit, and then Jimmy silently pressed the red button and nodded in Rob’s direction.  Giggles completed, Rob was able to proceed with the job at hand.  But Jimmy realised that he  said ‘Urine’ on our first album to introduce Louise in No Poetry and in our second album to introduce Gus on Fairy Tale.  No ‘urine’ on the third album which seems to be a real improvement.
• Martyn Agreed to Build a Studio:   Martyn continues to have a hard time with priorities.  Something about domestic obligations.   But he finally agreed to sort all this by building a studio in his new big pile of a house.  Well done Martyn.   The great thing is he said that Alice (his wife!)  is fully on board and loves the idea of us all spending Saturday with her.   So watch this space.

That’s it.  Short and sweet.

Jimmy

(on the road to Singapore)