Invasion U.S.A. - Day Nine

We finished up last night (photo of Justin, me and Vapid below), having spent the day belting out backing vocals in what seemed like an endless loop. Justin will be mixing and mastering the album soon. We're still working on the art but we have a clear idea of what we want so it's all a matter of execution. This is gonna be a good one, sportsfans.

The 4/18 Reggie's show is sold out. We're going to try to book something up here in Madison for the record release in July. I'd love to play Reggie's again but my wife and I are expecting twins this summer so I won't be traveling for a while once the album is out.

Anyway, it was a great session and I think it'll end up being our best album yet. It's out 7/14 on Asian Man. And in the meantime keep tuned here or over at our MySpace page for updates.

Invasion U.S.A. Days Seven And Eight

Sorry for no updates yesterday. Between studio work (I finished lead vocals) and a bunch of stuff to do around the house I was busy all day and then last night I was glued to the TV for Lost and American Idol.

Re: A.I., I loathe the new judge. Not personally, I mean. I just hate that they've added yet another person to dole out the same platitudes and cliches as Randy and Paula. Althouse has it right.

Speaking of Althouse, in the wake of the chimp attack tragedy in Stamford, CT, she links to this scene from Sunset Boulevard which contains one of my favorite movie lines: "He always liked fires and poking at them with a stick."

All of which has nothing do with the recording of the new Riverdales album, but ho hum. Vapid finished his vocals today and Justin is hard at working comping vocals while we relax here at Weasel Acres. Tomorrow we'll finish up tracking with backing vocals, a few extra rhythm guitar tracks, and percussion. I kind of feel bad that I didn't take any photos while we were working over the past couple days so I'm going to go snap one of an unsuspecting Vapid just for you.

Invasion U.S.A. - Day Six

Pretty easy day today. I just did two vocal tracks and Justin did a lot of comping. I would've done more vocal tracks but my throat is still pretty sore so I figured I'd save the last two.

The photo below shows me singing Werewolf One. You can't see it in this photo but for many years now I've had a habit of thrusting my hands in my pockets when I record vocals. I don't really know why. They're usually wrist deep in my front pockets, but every once in a while I'll just hook my thumbs there, and sometimes my hands end up in my back pockets. I wonder if it has anything to do with the way singing makes you feel exposed. I kind of doubt it but who knows?

The two songs took me about three hours, which might seem kind of long to you but that's actually pretty quick. Vapid likes to sing the song all the way through over and over until the producer has enough takes to comp the vocals. I prefer going a section at a time. Today I did verse + chorus, verse + chorus and outro (on both songs - they have a similar structure). I lose track of the number of takes pretty quickly but it's not uncommon for me to sing 20 takes. Even if I demo my stuff - as we both did for the new album - I don't really figure out all the little details of how I'm going to sing the song for the recording until I'm actually in front of the mic with the tape rolling (or the hard drive whirring, in our case). So usually my first 4-5 takes are just getting the feel of the song. Then once I figure it out it's just a matter of singing it over and over until the producer has enough good takes of every word. In this case we need twice as much, because we'll be doubling all the lead vocals in the mix. So I'll do the first verse, or like today, the first verse and chorus, over and over until Justin is happy, then move on to the second verse and chorus, etc.

Justin just sent a comp of Vapid's vocals for his ballad. It sounds fantastic. Vapid's written some great ballads for the Riverdales but this one is easily the best. I can't imagine putting it anywhere else but the three spot.

The storm watch is in effect from tonight at 6 until tomorrow night at midnight but it's only calling for 3-5 inches of snow rather than the 6-8 that was forecast yesterday. So we're going to try to reconvene tomorrow night so I can finish vocals on my last two songs and maybe work on some backing vocal ideas too.

Invasion U.S.A. - Day Five

It was an early one today but we've been making good progress so far. It's just me and Justin here today. I knocked out a little over half the guitar tracks in about three hours - the photo below shows me playing King Dinosaur, slated as of the moment to be the first track on side B. I've since moved on to vocals, having just finished Crawling Eye. I'm moving on to King Dinosaur next but the cold I was fighting over the weekend left the old pipes a bit raw so I'm taking a break to brew up some Throat Coat tea. I'm going to try to finish two more vocals, then go back and finish up the guitar tracks before calling it a day.

Typical

Larry's complaining about pants, which, by my estimation, puts him about six months away from starting to bitch about young peoples' music being too loud or the price of the specials at the supper club, but I can sympathize with his gripes about cheap Levi's.

I bought two new pairs about three months ago. I was wearing one of them yesterday while zipping up after a wee in the studio bathroom. The zipper became unattached from the opposing tooth rail and I couldn't get it back on track (see photo below). Well I still have my dignity so I left to go back home and change pants, only the luthier is only two exits down so I figured I'd head over there first to pick up my guitar. I did a sort of neat fold in the crotch and pulled my sweatshirt down low so as not to give the shop a free show. Needless to say, as soon as I walked in I realized the barn door was wide open for anyone who wanted a peek. And of course, the guitar wasn't even ready.

Which is all besides the point. I got the jeans on sale (half price to be exact), but still. What cheap crap! I am hopping mad! The frustrating thing is, I've been wearing button fly jeans for years - I only bought some zippered pairs because I was tired of the button holes getting bigger over time with use and leaving me semi-exposed. I've been wearing Levis' since I was a little boy but I am seriously considering changing brands.

And that's what I have to say about pants!

Invasion U.S.A. - Day Four

Vapid finished tracking bass about an hour ago. His tracks are teeming with those cool Dee Dee Ramone-style high octaves. I think half the songs on the album must end on the high octave on the bass. Good! You can't sit around worrying about that kind of thing. It sounds good so what the heck. We're not scoring the Phantom of the Opera here. The first photo below shows Vapid recording bass for one of my tunes, a peppy little number called Prince Of Space that recycles a riff for an unfortunately kind of crappy tune I wrote for the Lillingtons many moons ago with the title of Death Race. Great movie - lousy tune. They wisely chose not to release it (I'm not sure if they even recorded it) and I was able to use the riff in this newer and much better tune.

We're recording at the Madison Music Foundry, which is also where we rehearse. It's a terrific facility. Not some dump that smells like cigarettes, beer and piss. You know the kind of place - some glorified toilet where you have to haggle over prices with a deranged, bitter ex-musician who looks like he just got back from burying bodies in the crawlspace. This is a whole different experience. The staff are cool and very professional and the rooms are clean, comfortable and best of all, cheap. There's an unequipped studio in the back of the building that rents for peanuts so working here was a no-brainer. The second photo shows Sandy, the owner's dog. She's a pitbull/greyhound mix. I figure with that kind of combination you're either going to be dealing with a vicious killing machine that can chase down anything it wants a piece of, or a sweet, gentle pooch that just wants to be pet - thankfully, she's the latter. She has a bit of a licking problem - or maybe we just taste good - but we all have our little flaws.

Vapid just started vocals - the tune he's working on right now is called Teenage Strangler, a typically hilarious ditty about, y'know, a teenage strangler. The bottom photo shows him delivering the harrowing story of this wayward youth with the busy hands into a Violet Flamingo vintage tube condenser mic loaned to us by Lonya over at Full Compass. Thanks Lonya - the mic sounds amazing!

We're finishing early today - done by 6. Then we're off for the weekend so I won't be reporting back until Monday. Onward and upward!

Invasion U.S.A. - Day Three

Vapid put the old nose to the grindstone today and knocked out all 14 guitar tracks. I left just as he was adding a track of a clean guitar (with a capo on it, no less) to a killer ballad he penned. He was going to get started on bass after that.

Justin wants an early start tomorrow so it's an early bedtime for me. Sounding great so far!

Invasion U.S.A. - Day Two

10 songs down, four to go. I may have Adam do alternate takes of a few but we're moving along at a pretty good pace.

I know a lot of people - especially guys my age - prefer analog, but I'll take digital recording any time. I can demo my stuff in Garageband and then my drummer can play along to those tracks when he records. Then my producer can e-mail me the files as they're completed and I can yea or nay them or suggest changes or whatever. It's pretty nice to be able to track drums out of town while I can stay here and get other work done in between files being sent. Better yet, it takes less time and, most importantly, costs far less money to do multiple drum takes. Maybe I want to try a drum intro on a song, or a fill here or there, but I don't know if I'll keep it or not. No problem - the drummer can try it a few different ways and we're not burning through expensive tape.

Anyway, the drums are sounding fantastic. Vapid will start bass on Thursday, which is when I'll get my guitars back from the shop (getting the intonation set). We're taking tomorrow off.

Invasion U.S.A. - Day One

We start tracking drums today for the new Riverdales album - Invasion U.S.A. Recording a 14 song album on a shoestring budget can be challenging but we've managed to pull some strings here and proceed with duct tape and bubble gum there and the end result is that our studio time is pretty cheap, enabling us to spend 9 days tracking and another 7 mixing (it helps that the album will be mixed in our producer's home rather than in a studio).

When we were recording the second Riverdales album, Storm The Streets, in 1997, we worked at the Uberstudio in Chicago. It was a nice studio with a huge main room that was great for a big drum sound (listen to Bark Like A Dog by Screeching Weasel for an example - that drum sound is not the result of a lot of effects added in the mix. It's the room). Well, for Storm The Streets we were going for a dead drum sound, similar to what you can hear on The Ramones' Rocket To Russia.

The big room was out of the question so we set the drums up in a small walkway between the main room and the back room, the latter of which housed the bathroom, a couch and a TV. The walkway had sliding glass doors on either side but even with the doors closed it was too live for what I wanted. We hauled a bunch of large pieces of foam out of the back room and taped it to the walls. Still too live. We slapped more foam on the ceiling, and the floor. Better, but the snare wasn't dead enough. Finally, we threw a t-shirt over the snare, then another. The end result was a snare sound unlike anything I'd ever heard before or have heard since. It's not uncommon for drummers to put towels over drum heads when recording so it's not like we invented the idea, but it resulted in a really unusual, distinctive sound. I loved it, our drummer hated it, and a day into tracking the studio owner walked in, looked at us like we were imbeciles for having wasted a day and a half getting drum sounds and informed us that the Rocket To Russia snare sound was a simple matter of using a snare with a damper pad in it and tightening the pad much higher than you normally would. Which is exactly what I did on most of my subsequent recordings. It usually took me about 4-5 minutes to get the sound. (When I worked on the Queers "Today" EP [reissued as part of this album] I made do with a triangle of duct tape on the snare head which worked fine as long as the drummer hit the snare in the middle of the triangle).

On this recording we're not using one of those snares. Justin Perkins, the producer, is instead attaching a small army of moon gels (essentially a removable, reusable damper pad) to the snare head in order to get the sound we want. I expect to hear the first couple of tracks mid-afternoon so we'll see how it works.