Punk Band Punk Band La La La La

I should rename this blog - "The ongoing saga of two punks to get their album completed". Or maybe "How I learned to frustrate myself on hundreds of dollars of equipment a day".

My personal favorite has to be the VH1 special title - Anything Times Zero - behind the scenes, before the tragedy!

Of course, I don't know of any tragedy coming. It does make for a dramatic title though, doesn't it?? Right now, we are mired in the deepest depths of vocal hell. For those of you out there that are experienced recording vocalists, I envy you. This is definately one of the most difficult things I've participated in. Being a perfectionist, it's extremely difficult for me to accept my own personal failings, and be willing to put up with them. (I suck as a singer. However, I sing my fucking heart out. I think that should count. Let's put a sort of sliding scale into place, as long as I'm on there somewhere.)

Our album is musically coming to completion. We've laid down all the drumwork, the guitar work, and 90% of the basswork, and now it's vocals time!! So we started doing vocals. Over and over and over and over and over until we got drunk enough or tired enough to call them a success. I then proceeded to mix and mix and reverb and tweak and edit and compress and change and push and pull and tweak again and chorus.... and be unhappy. I talked to the other half of my band brain, who was also unhappy with the results. (I have to say, I've never worked with anyone musically I've agreed with more on such a wide variety of problems.... it's the only thing that's kept us going, that we do have a singular vision.)

So I, in my bigheaded I'm a super-mixing-production tech now way (Hey, I've been doing it almost a month, that makes me a pro right?), spent a couple weeks researching vocal styles. Doing critical listening to bands we like, don't like, don't listen to, and love, to find out what makes a vocal track different, what makes it stand out, and what makes it fail. By the time I showed up for the first "experimental" vocal session I had what I thought were some good ideas on where we should go. I termed it experimental because it was really going to be a controlled search for our "sound". We are both experienced and probably better than decent musicians. So of course, we spent all our energy making the music rock, making it sound good and go together well. Vocals were our last thought, when they should've been our first, because of course, as the most inexperienced piece they needed the most time investment.

So we experimented. We tried a variety of vocal styles, from Blink-182 i'm a pissed off 16 yr old lyrics, to Henry Rollins I'm the guy who fucks your mother style. RRRARRRGH. Spent a week doing that. Listened, listened, listened, and found out that's not us. It doesn't fit our style, it doesn't sound smooth, and the Henry rollins thing is a bitch to carry for 45 minutes. Vocal chord ouch.

We come to this weeks recording session. (I know, I know... FINALLY!) Chances are, if you're still reading this, you are so bored off your ass it's sad, or you're sitting at work looking for things to do that aren't work. Good show! Back on topic, this week's recording. We looked at what we'd done, what we wanted to do, and decided. We're going to be us. We're going to sing like we sing, we're going to sound like we sound (for better or worse, probably better for C and worse for me... ;P AND, we're going to be punks like we know how to be.

After all the changes, and all the back and forth, and all the false starts, I'm confident in where we're going. I think that this album will really get done, I think our second album will get done, and I think it's going to sound unique and it's going to sound like us. Hell Yeah.

I never missed a shot
The women think I'm hot
And you know that I've had my fair share

But I've still got the touch
Tu mere knows as much
I am the man, I am Jean Pierre!