Weeks 2 & 3. “Blog about THAT, bitch!”

…is what Evan triumphantly (and with a shit eating grin, to boot) says to me after nailing his guitar part for the song “…For Relaxing Times” in one take.  What.  A.  Turnaround.  Little did we know how short lived his victory over his recording jitters would be because…

Yea, it's a pretty janky setup.

Fast forward five minutes later…

“No, nononononono…please don’t tell me I deleted everything” whimpers Hank right after realizing he has deleted almost all of “…For Relaxing Times” off of the recorder.

Ten seconds later…

Hank frantically pressing the buttons on the recorder seemingly at random, trying to recover the lost tracks.  The phrase “I can’t believe I fucking did that I’m such a fucking idiot” becomes a sort of mantra.

Fifteen seconds later…

Hank is completely still, clearly distraught, fighting off the urge to break down into a heap of tears in front of me and Evan.  The two of us looking at each other wondering if he’s going to cry or not already.

Forty seconds later…

Me trying not to laugh at Hank desperately scanning through the recorder’s manual for “How to Undelete Shit” in the table of contents.

But STOP.

 

Collaborate and listen.

REWIND.

Let’s back it up to Week one, when we recorded TV Life and it turned out pretty good.  Week two, Evan wasn’t in town so we figured we wouldn’t be able to record anything that week.

But Hank had a sort of old sort of new (“sort of old” meaning Lemon Party had practiced it before Evan joined and Hank scrapped it anyways.  And “sort of new” meaning we revived fairly recently so we could record it for the EP) song called “Shoes,” which we figured we would be able to knock out a recording of fairly quickly without Evan.  So we did.  ”Shoes” is pretty much Hank’s baby, recording wise, because he sings on it, plays bass, egg shakers, and most of the guitars, not to mention he wrote it and recorded it.  Jacob played drums and I played a little bit of guitar on the chorus and second verse but not much.

In fact, we recorded “Shoes” so quickly, we had the gall to get started recording another song, the aforementioned “…For Relaxing Times.”  A song that I want to be stupidly loud on the recordings.  This was roughly the exchange:

- Me: Hank turn the drums up.

- Hank: It’s already loud!

- M: I want them louder.

- H: It’s going to be too loud.

- M: I want them louder.

- H: You don’t want them that loud.

- M: I want them louder.

- Hank turns the volume knob up a smidge.

- H: There, that’s loud enough.

- M: I want them louder.

- H: IT’S TOO LOUD!

- M: I want them louder.

etc and so on until I finally got Hank to turn them up to a volume that was satisfactory to me, and then he agreed it sounded passable.  He probably still thinks it’s way too loud.  But that’s how I want it.  I wrote the song wanting it to be really loud, and especially at the outro, where really the only thing I care about hearing are the drums and my guitar riff over it.  Everything else behind serves a strictly utilitarian purpose – just noise filling in the gaps between the drums and the riff.

I’m probably just being an asshole about it.  Like, I know Hank believes the drums are way too loud.  Evan and Jacob probably do too.  That’s a valid opinion, and a good one.  But I don’t care that they think it’s too loud, because that’s how I want it you know?  Actually, the fact that Hank thinks the drums are too loud is a good indicator of how loud I want it to be.

Like if you asked me ,”Hey Kevin how loud do you want the drums on this song?”  I would reply, “louder than Hank wants them.”  That can’t be a sign of a good bandmate, can it?  That he judges how satisfied he is with something by how much it upsets the other members?

But it all doesn’t really matter now, because Hank accidentally deleted the song and now we have to start over next week.  I wasn’t really that upset about it, because listening to it again, I was wishing we could record the drums again anyway because Jacob has a tendency to speed up and veer off time.  All the time.

Anyways, “…For Relaxing Times” is probably one of the simplest and dumbest songs we have.  No surprise, seeing as how I wrote it.  I feel mine and Hank’s songs are pretty indicative of our methods, the long and short of it being his songs are good and mine are not as good.

Usually, I don’t know how a Lemon Party song I wrote is going to turn out, because most of the time I haven’t written it yet.  I mostly come to practice with a riff or chord progression I’ve been playing for a while, and we hash it out from there.  Later, I throw some shit together haphazardly and viola.  A really lazy and dependent way to do it, I’ve come to realize.  Half the time when they ask me about it I reply, “I don’t know, haven’t got that far…” or “do whatever.”

Jacob: That’s good, what comes after that?

Me: I don’t know, haven’t got that far…

Hank: What’s the melody on that part?

Me: I don’t know, haven’t got that far…

Evan: What’s this song about?  Do you have any lyrics?

Me: I don’t know, haven’t got that far…

Anyone: What do you want me to play at this part?

Me: Do whatever.

“…For Relaxing Times” started out like any other song I wrote – I just had three chords and we just played them over and over until a riff started emerging that I knew I wanted to end the song with and then over the next few weeks I slapped some more chords on the end and that’s that.

Whereas Hank is an actual songwriter.  So he actually spends time with his songs before bringing them to us.  Consequently, he comes to practice with a fully formed song in his head with lyrics and arrangements and everything and then basically proceeds to teach us the song he wrote.  We take direction from him.  His song “Shoes” that we recorded last week is a good example.

Anyways, we recorded everything for “…For Relaxing Times” except Evan’s guitar and left, excited for next weekend to come so Evan could put his finishing touches and we can move on to the next one.

Week three arrives, and you know the rest.

OK RESUME.

Fast forward five hours later…

Me and Evan and Hank are walking past a liquor store.

I’ve spent the last four hours and fifty nine minutes wondering when it would be appropriate to make a joke about Hank deleting “…For Relaxing Times.”

Evan: Kevin, get a forty of Miller!

Me: Ah, I don’t know if I want one.

Hank: Hey how come you never try to get ME to get a forty?

Evan: Because I don’t have to tell you to get a forty, you’ll do it anyway!

Me: Yea, just like I don’t have to tell you to delete our songs, you’ll do it anyway!

Hank’s face.

I would say I wish I had a picture of it, but it wouldn’t have done the moment justice anyway.  I’m a dick.  I’ve come to terms with it.