Week 1. TV Life.

I never really understood bands that took half a year to a year or even more than that to make an album.  But now I think I understand more, because it took us forever just to wrangle everybody and get us all into the same room at the same time to do anything, and we all LIVE TOGETHER.  Between everybody’s work schedules and the practice times of the other bands who use the practice space, Lemon Party can really only record one day a week.  Figuring that shit out is like a venn diagram from hell.  And assuming we get one song done a week, I think we’re trying to record seven songs, that’s seven fucking weeks to finish this damn thing!  Almost two months just to make semi-listenable songs that realistically, no one but us are going to listen to when it’s finished!  Geez.

I feel like I should insert a picture here to break up the wall of text but have no relevant ones so I found this on google image search.

Anyways.  Day 1.  After setting everything up and all that, we tried recording our song, “TV Life.”  The experience made me realize that keeping a recording diary of our EP could end up being embarrassing for all of us because it was such a fucking task to get this three and a half minute song done.  It took from like 1:30 pm to about 7.  But the embarrassing bits are the only things worth writing about, really.  So fuck it, it’s funny to us and we’re all (sort of) men who can take it.  Besides, it’s an account of what happened.  This happened.  What am I going to do if not write the truth on this blog, just be some glib and self centered asshole on the internet?  Shhhhh, I know.

- We all thought TV Life would be a breeze to record, because we all know it pretty well and it’s mostly an instrumental song with only one verse.

-But Evan came up with a new guitar part he wanted to incorporate into the song.  Problem being, he had just come up with it several hours before recording it.

- Hank is incredibly anal about being organized and knowing what to expect.  He hates being thrown curveballs.  He’s sort of a recording pro, while the rest of us don’t know how to operate the mixer that we record through.

- Evan messed up while recording his guitar part.  A lot.

- Hank got incredibly agitated with Evan.

- Evan got incredibly agitated with Hank.

- After several false starts, Evan got incredibly agitated with himself.

- Note: To be fair, he did warn us that he gets very nervous and prone to making mistakes in recording situations.  What’s that old physics law that says something like observing an object will cause it to behave differently by the very nature of being observed?  Yea it was kinda like that I suppose.

 

I get so fucking nervous you don't even know.

- At one point after Evan’s umpteenth “I messed up, start it over,” Hank punched the wall.

- Yea, it got pretty tense.  I was just sitting next to the drums trying to calm them both down and ease the tension.  They wouldn’t even look at each other hahaha.  I was already finding the humor in the situation.

- Evan still messing up.

- Jacob leaves.

- “my hands are sweaty I can’t play it”

- Exasperated Hank: Why don’t you play something else?

Indignant Evan: Because it sounds better this way, Hank.

- “I messed up again start it over”

- When does McDonald’s close?

- “I messed up again start it over”

- I can only assume at this point Evan’s hands are only getting sweatier.

- “I messed up again start it over”

- “Siiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhh”

- Hahaha but that’s all part of being in a band, isn’t it?  A Saturday evening spent arguing over guitar tracks and microphone placements and stuff is a Saturday evening well spent to me anyway.

- BUT I will say this, Evan’s new riff is one of the more complicated guitar parts in the whole Lemon Party oeuvre, and if he had more time to practice it I am confident that it would have gone more smoothly.  Also, his riff is a lot better than the one I was making him play before, which was pretty boring.  The song is better for it.

- So anyways, that was the first day.  We did the vocals in roughly the amount of time it takes to listen to the song, and they suck.  I begged Hank to put tons of reverb and delay on it to make it more listenable.  I also begged him to turn the volume on them way down but the bastard wouldn’t.

- I put TV Life on the widget to this blog.  Hank doesn’t want anyone listening to any of the songs until they’re all recorded, but like I said that will be in seven fucking weeks so.  Yea.  Besides, I guess it’s not the “official” version of the song because Hank’s still messing with the levels and shit.  And I won’t put up any more of the songs we record on this blog until the whole EP is presentable.

- Hank is the only one who knows how to do anything.  Seriously.  And i’m including knowledge of how to play musical instruments in that.

- So yea there it is if you want to listen to it.  Hank on bass (Hank if you’re reading this I think you should add another bass track), Jacob on drums, me on guitar and attempting to sing, Evan on second guitar.  But know that it will sound a little different when everything is done.

- (Un)Interesting note: my guitar that starts the song was actually edited into the song after everything was pretty much done, because Jacob couldn’t keep time and I couldn’t play the riff on the weird staggered rhythm he set for me at the beginning of the song.  Hank the editing wiz just made me play the riff three times without any accompaniment after we recorded everything else and just copied and pasted it into the beginning of the song.  It worked out pretty good, don’t think anyone can tell.

THE END