Please god, not another band... [diary of a fledgling rock band]

Our album is done!

pleasegodnotanotherband — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:44:59 +0000

We kinda played a show… Our record is a minute away from done.

pleasegodnotanotherband — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:04:58 +0000

It has been a while. There have been birthdays and business at work and finishing musics oh my!

So, we played at a friends’ house a while ago. A trial run in the worst case scenario [a tiny garage] was just what the doctor ordered. We scrounged a prototype of our backing musicians video and the music itself and away we went. It was rediculously fun even for being so half-assed and sketchy. The real deal is gonna melt faces. Flash photography of the Livers is not gonna work out well… You can kinda see those other 2 turds back there.

We have decided that we can and will get everything together by October. We like goals. So we are looking to book shows starting then… come and get it. The Livers may even have a Myspace page soon. After all, we are new to town and we just want to “hang out” and we love sex… have you seen our webcam?

The Livers photo shoot is gonna happen soon, so any ladies or gentlemen that love spaghetti and wouldn’t mind dressing up a little classy-like RSVP with Luke or Scot. Long-story-short, it’s gonna be a classy dinner that descends into a foodfight. Really.

We will be back soon. I promise something really dumb will have happened and there will be much excitingness to write about in the coming days. Oh shit I almost forgot about what happened yesterday.. fuck.. aw I don’t have time for that one.

The Livers word of the week::: Snutch
-SNUTCH [noun] :To be a jank-hole or a bitch. “That lady was such a snutch”
-SNUTCH, SNUTCHED [verb] : To snutch upon others or to be snutched upon. “I got so snutched last night, I’m shitting blood”

studio day 3, 4, and 5, and 5.5, etc. [vocal bonanza]

pleasegodnotanotherband — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:07:44 +0000

This is Luke playing Livers’ blog catch-up. Scot couldn’t make it today. He had to hang out with his lover.

Here we reach the fun part of our studio journey…the vocals.
The trick with doing vocals in the studio is maintaining a complex balance between two incompatible necessities: being able to sing and being able to drink. As we are pros at the latter, we decided to knock out the former with a kind of conveyor belt efficiency.

First, we divide our songs up into the songs where the vocals require clarity, pronunciation, consciousness, etc.; and the songs that require gross, guttural explitives, no sense of key and/or rhythm, and a tenacity only attained while doing the “potty dance” or fighting back a recoiling jet of hot Jack Daniels and Doritos. I couldn’t even tell you which song we started with.

Second, we test our mics and hit record. After about ten seconds of beautiful sonorific glory, our voices are shot so we can go ahead and start drinking heavily-er. At this point, you can get out about 2 measures worth of lyrics before the music in your headphones abruptly halts followed by a disembodied voice quipping, “I think the first syllable was pretty solid.” This house of rock we’re building is made out of a lot of broken bricks…that are drunk…and smoke too much.
Third, we cough and sputter our intensely deep and meaningful lyrics in a never-before-fathomed plateau of musical genius. Both Scot and I have very profound moments of whimpering about girls. Pulitzer Prize officials have been trying to get copies of our lyrics so they can show aspiring novelists and poets where the bar is set from now on.

Finally, we listen to our masterpiece, heads nodding, brows furrowed, taking in the pitch and timbre of each of our voices and how they meld with the whirlwind of instrumentation below, noting the small, serendipitous surprises peppered throughout each song, and then, after much(no) deliberation, deciding that we “can do it better”, scrap the entire take and sing it again…after a shot and a cigarette. And of course, any take will be better if you’re not wearing any pants.

Lather. Rinse. Drink. Repeat.
And so, song after song was relentlessly beaten into being very fucking good! They were asking for it, and they got what they deserved.
Danielle came by Saturday night (interrupting the nap I was taking to squander our studio time) and took an underwear walk up to 7-11 with us to buy some booze. Thanks, Danielle.

Everything is better in your underwear! Except for maybe defecating. Actually, there’s probably a few things that aren’t better now that I consider it more. Listening to our rough mixes on the bus ride to work is definitely better.
All in all, our week of studio time was an exhausting, drunken, wallet-emptying success. Now we just gotta mix this divinity which, of course, will be the difference between a double- or a triple-platinum album.
[L]

studio day 2

pleasegodnotanotherband — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:42:23 +0000

After being bloodied and battered from day 1 it was time to drink, i mean, record guitars and stuff. Luckily our friend Matt was there to hit the record button so that we could swim free in a sea of soundscapes.. and ride on the wings of a dream. Actually, we just played with a couple sounds and then re-learned how to play our songs CORRECTLY. Fun fun fun. It turns out my sausage fingers don’t make for a new Slash for our generation.
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Luke on the other hand, was dropping bombs. Espicially on a song called We’re Not Fine. I think the lighting in this one is telling of the epic-ness of Luke’s shredding.
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We also employed the dreaded “triple muff” technique in a song… so that was fun. It may be obvious to some exactly where we used it even!
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Inspiration:
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This could be the last time I have to play these sweet, sweet skins for a while if everything works out.
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I think they are still smokin’.

Since the blisters have subsided, and the swelling in my sausages has gone down, I can look back on guitar day as a joyous experience. Mr. Jack helped us out so I need to thank him. We are done with the limb-intensive part of recording now! “Fuck you, instruments!”
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[S]

studio day 1 [retroactive]

pleasegodnotanotherband — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 10:07:44 +0000

I have not slept in days. We were lucky enough to get some studio time at Firebrand Studios this week. I was hoping we would record a platinum record in 45 minutes. After loading in took 46 minutes we resigned ourselves to some kind of fairly realistic schedule for the next few days. First on the agenda of course was a measely bottle of jack and a case of beer from 7-11. check. Second, set up a bunch of gosh-darn mics on the drums. check. Now I have to do a lot of work for the next million hours or so… tracking the 10 songs-worth of drum parts and turning my hands into hamburger in the process.” alt=”" />
now i have to listen to drum tracks by themselves and decide whether the takes “rip” or not. I obviously think they rip.
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After I dropped drum bombs all over the place it was Lukes turn to suffer and record all the bass tracks. I’m starting to realize how convoluted our recording strategy is.. and I also decide not to shave until our record is done. Luke, being the boy-scout he is forgot his guitar strap which led to some scrounging around in the back room. Luckily, he stumbled upon this gem. The sunflower strap.

After slightly less toiling, Luke finished bass around 100 o’clock and it was time for a reward. I think our reward system of cigarrettes and booze is the crux of this session…

All in all, day 1 was a resounding success. Tracks sound good, morale is high, hangovers are intense.

I must also thank dear Ashley for her donation of my rock muse, the bashful kitty. He stood by us and inspired at every turn.
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Day 2 should be a doozy.
[S]

schnucked up…

pleasegodnotanotherband — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:21:40 +0000

It has been a while… We had much work to do this week. Finally, with most of our music written and somewhat recorded, we had our first “practice”!

Long story short, Livers’ practices basically involve us doing karaoke to our own pre-recorded drums and bass parts, so we knew it was gonna be weird. Luckily Zak had the forsight to pick up what can only be refered to as rock inspiration in a bottle: Schnuck E. H. bourbon.
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Mmmmm… it’s as good as it looks!

Our routine was essentially, run through the set once… and reward ourselves with whiskey and beers…. run it again… whisky and beers… play the set again… whisky and beers… again… wipsky.. beews… aben… wispy…… bees… here we are in chronological order [i think]

So we were all a little owie today but it was worth it. Truly. It was a moderate success and hope is on the horizon. This might not be the worst idea ever! Thats the best news ive heard all minute!
[S]

drinking and loitering.

pleasegodnotanotherband — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:51:42 +0000

Since what’s-his-name is out of town we don’t have much news this week. So I’ll tell you the story of Shroomfest 07′ pt I…. [based on a true story]

It was a terrible idea sure… But I had never done halucinagenic drugs before and Luke thought maybe it would help us write some weird shit. So I got on board and figured it couldn’t be that bad if Luke could handle it and enjoyed it.

Since we are already seasoned criminals…

finding a “drug dealer” was no problem. We are kinda from the streets ya know? Anyhow, $100 worth of these chocolate disc shroom nugget things were purchased from some jersey-hippy-gangster we knew through our old money laundering racket.

We went to the store and bought a lot of beer and supplies for what was sure to be a magic carpet ride on which we would write 5 records worth of great songs and maybe even shake hands with vishnu? Now we get back open some beers and start eatin’ em up. As a warm up we watched Jesus Is Magic. I was laughing my ass off.. but i would have done that anyway. Sarah Silverman… c’mon. After that I’m thinking.. “I am fucked up” but I have also pounded like 10 beers in an hour and a half…
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“hmmm… am I just drunk?” So I went outside and flipped a car over with my mind. I decided god was crushing me, and that was that. Ok I’m trashed, or “flying” as our dealer friend told me when i called him sobbing at 3 in the morning because my skin didnt fit. It is also about this time that Luke starts to flip his wig and starts a new genre of music called “electric pillow bass”. In fairness, it WAS pretty spectacular… anyway, he basically had a pillow fight with his bass guitar for about 2 hours. “always record!!” Motherfucker! I can’t believe I didn’t record any of that.

As madness faded we realized… we are all one being… why can’t everyone just love eachother?… it’s the soul that sees, not the eyes…

Ok this is all horse shit… well, most of it[some of the stuff actually did happen, like pillow bass for example]. The fucking shrooms didn’t work so we just got hammered drunk all night waiting to get all crazy, and didn’t do shit. Ambition turns to sludge pretty quick when you’ve got two hard drunks carrying a project huh?

The moral of the story: “ALWAYS KNOW YOUR DEALER”
[S]

please god… [episode 2]

pleasegodnotanotherband — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 09:21:26 +0000

So today we worked on a song about sex. It was a high-wire act of matrix-like dodging the fact that the song sounds kind of rapist-y. Rapists we are NOT, so we took much time making sure that the point was made as such. You wouldn’t believe how long it takes to write one last line of a verse about how bad you want to see some lady naked. Here is a picture of the beautiful process…
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This is my new favorite song of ours now [which is pretty much always the case with any band and a new song.. duh...]

Did I mention Luke and I work at the same place? Oh yeh, it’s a little gay, but we both had to be in at 6 this evening so we wrapped it up with haste. No elicit drugs were consumed.. not even beer. Thank god for daytime prctices/recording sessions.

All in all, it was probably a less blog-worthy day than most, but I’m trying to stick to my guns here!

Should I only post after we have done heroine and wake up in our own piss and a pile of hit songs?…
[S]

Please god… not another band. [episode 1]

pleasegodnotanotherband — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:04:24 +0000

I have never blogged before, but I will try to make this at least 1/3 as interesting as listening to your friends’ new demo that he/she has decided you really want to hear. I am certainly guilty of this heinous crime and for that i truly apologize to my friends and family. Before any English majors tear me apart i will also say that I’m not exactly certain how sentences and paragraphs are supposed to be formed.

If you checked my profile you already know the backstory… My name is Scot and I am from St. Louis. I have played in rock bands since i was 16. I was certainly no big talent, but I did get very lucky and got to have a very exciting time for several years. It was my life.. I got to go places and do things and meet people that were just amazing [I'll spare you the name-dropping and self congratulatory conquest list]. Lots of touring, drinking, puking, fighting, crying, schmoozing, wrecks, scams, managers [oh wait I already mentioned scams didn't I? har har], Etc… Etc…
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I moved back home from Chicago after my band was dropped from a major label. Being on a major was an arbitrary goal i had set for myself as some kind of token of success. I basically dragged myself back to STL with my tail between my legs and gave up. After all those years of sacrifice I was back at square fuckin’ one. Soon after I returned, I got a job at a bar in town and started working and got myself a car, a girlfriend, an apt, just the normal junk. It was quite comforting to know i just had to show up at work and watch T.V. after. Nothing crazy was going to happen to me anymore. That was close to 3 years ago.

Just as I started to go completely insane my best friend and fellow malaised musician Luke [whom I was actually in a band with years and years ago] Came up with, what at least I thought, was a great idea for a new band with him and I. He too was suffering with complacency and basically, the death of a dream, not to sound too emo. So we started working on it… and I remembered how great it is for two retards to hang out in a basement all night, getting drunk and writing a record that more than likely only we will find to be earth-shattering. I feel 16 again and it is a very welcome feeling!

This blog, should i have the temerity to return, will chronicle the exploits of Luke and I and our new musical endeavor [although i will give everyone a 100% no-music-link-crap guarantee]. But moreso I have a feeling it will actually be a diary of the minutia of our relationship and the wacky shit we get into on the pretense of working on our band. I may even make a few retroactive posts seeing as how new this is and how fucked up it has already been ["hey lets do shrooms while we write", "what if we did the whole thing... backwards", "sorry man... i puked on your guitar", "God is crushing me"...]

Wish us luck!

P.S. this might be the worst idea ever.
[S]