mc

Strangers spilled out onto Sunset Boulevard hugging, high fiving and banging on pots. It was fantastic.

It would take about 733 nine inch balloons and cost about $22 to fill a half my living room to nine feet. I’m just sayin’

* Does not including helium tank and sparkles

I asked my friend/sometimes videographer Mark to help me test out my fax machine. Within a few minutes he drew and faxed over this masterpiece. I’d never seen such an accurate representation of so many of my nightmares. I kind of love it.

Back in April, Annie, Joe Cardamone and I recorded four newish Giant Drag songs with Chris Rakestraw at Sunset Lodge Studios (If you were to open the door in the middle of the Elliott Smith wall you’d ben inside Sunset Lodge studios). The song “Stuff to Live For” ended up in a short film by Yorkshire photographer Bella Howard,

Apparently the designer of TankThreeGraceFilms.com didn’t want anyone to find anything on their site so here are some detailed instructions on how to watch the video:

• Go to TankThreeGracesFilms.com (and wait through a very long intro)
• Click the green dot (“commissioned films” should show up when you mouse over)
• Mouse over the three baby green dots birthed from the mama green dot until “bella howard” pops up (I’d specify which dot but, in yet another stroke of unusability genius, they appear in a different order every time.)
• Now that you’ve found the most awesome of all dots, go ahead and click your mouse.

I recorded this song yesterday for my friend Georgia’s birthday. The goal was to write, record and mix a song within an hour then head over to her birthday party (sorta on time) to deliver the fresh-baked gift. In reality I clocked in at about three hours and arrived painfully late.

I started off with the drums and a vague idea for a single note guitar/bass line. Here’s the track list in order of first recorded:

• Drums - Sonor Sonic Force whatevers
• Acoustic Guitar - Mark’s Johnson (quit laughing perv)
• Bass - Hagstrom with flat wounds
• Backing Vocals - 3 harmonies each doubled for a total of 6 tracks
• Lead Vocals - doubled

The signal chain for all tracks went: GT67 mic -> Neve 1272 preamp -> UA 1176 compressor -> Summit TLA-100 limiter -> Cubase except for the bass which skipped the mic and went direct from an SVT Classic head to the 1272.

Everything went down easy within one or two takes except the bass track. I was trying to match the guitar line I had just improvised a minute earlier and could not recreate it to save my life. I ended up practicing the line at least 50 times and cutting three takes together. That snag alone cost me about 45 minutes of birthday BBQ time.

Special thanks to Yuko and Mark for standing in to check levels.

Happy Birthday Georgia!

I sent a rough version of a song to my friend Mark and today he surprised me with this. The song still has a ways to go but I was so impressed with the video I couldn’t resist sharing.

I’ll be playing bass with Luke Top tomorrow (May 14th) at 3 Clubs (map). We’ll most likely go on some time between 10 and 11pm. I heard John Webster John has got a sweet, seven piece percussion arrangement so come early.