Bloody Xmas Bloody Carols

The Scrooge in me is never more prevalent than at bloody Xmas. I refuse to say the version of the word which has "Christ" in it, because that fellow was murdered by a wicked dude in a red uniform just doing his duty, and it wasn't Pilate, it was Santa. At roughly the same time, because Santa is a serial killer, the Spirit of C*****mas was murdered (possibly in the 50s or 60s), leaving us with the dazzling, gaudy, grumpy-relative'd, commercial spend-fest called Xmas.

It doesn't help when you sit on a bus for an hour and listen to bloody Xmas bloody carols played on bloody stupid bloody instruments (I mean, honestly, who wants to hear a techno medley of Xmas carols?) with no option to escape the bloody torture but to jump out of the moving bus and -- because it was on the way up the mountainside -- over the cliff (it was tempting, let me tell you). Oh, and then, 2 hours later, the return journey with exactly the same shite muzak.

I bloody hate bloody Xmas bloody carols. And these tortuous journies prompted me to consider -- really consider -- these songs, especially in the modern context. So if the words "Bah, humbug!" are not enough to convince you of my Scroogeness, let me pose the following:

• No one ever jingles bells at Xmas, nor does anyone own an open sleigh, or a horse to pull it
• The wonderful invention of alcohol ensures that no Xmas night is ever silent (let alone holy) -- or still if you're German
• A "white xmas" is a vain fantasy that people in cold places never experience, so I've got no chance
• O whacking day, O whacking day, our hallowed snake-skull-cracking day
• I don't wish you a merry xmas, although I do hope your new year is a blinder
• Who the hell "decks" halls with "boughs" of anything? Have any of us even seen holly?
• Frosty the snowman? Hang on, is he, like, Jesus's brother? Does he bring us presents or something? In Australia, you'll have to try harder than that.Maybe he's, like, Santa's supplier of "ice" ...
• I'm willing to bet that Santa Claus would more likely come down Mrs Claus's lane than Santa Claus lane (my female friends and my mum will not approve of this one)
• Walking along, singing a song, walking in a winter wonderland -- I think Frosty the Snowman delivers more "ice" than we ever thought of
• O come all ye faithful, for you do not exist
• You better watch out, get ready to cry, get ready to pout, I'm tellin' you why: Mum and Dad are having you on
• If you're going to call a song "Jingle Bell Rock", you'd better make sure that it actually does rock
• The fact that I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus only goes to show that either a) Santa Claus is really just Daddy in disguise (or step-father, de facto or whatever arrangement you have), or b) Mummy is a whore
• No kid is stupid enough to say "all I want for Xmas is my two front teeth" when they know that some seriously cool toys are in the offering...
• Even a seriously RED nose would be dubious guiding light on a foggy Xmas eve -- and for that matter, Santa is a moron, since it surely cannot be foggy the whole world over. Far better to get an angel to help, but ... oh yeah, Santa murdered Jesus, didn't he? Probably not wise to mooch favours from angels, then
  

Over twelve days, my sensationally generous true love gave to me:

• 12 drummers drumming
• 22 pipers piping
• 30 lords a-leaping
• 36 ladies dancing
• 40 maids a-milking
• 42 swans a-swimming
• 42 geese a-laying
• 40 golden rings
• 36 calling birds
• 30 french horns
• 22 turtle-doves, and
  
• 12 partridges in 12 pear trees

If you really must have Xmas, and buy extravagent receipts (with boxes of plastic attached) for ingrates, and lie to your children (for shame!), could you PLEASE stop singing these bloody dreadful bloody songs?

Screw Xmas, and I hope your day is in the same margin of horrible as mine (slightly better or worse, I don't care), but I sincerely wish to you a happy new year!

keeponrockin
Tom

...and it's done.

Funny thing, making an album, really. When it gets to the point where it's done, it always surprises you. It hasn't been mastered yet, but everything else has been done.

And of course, the biggest shock is that there's all this different stuff on there. Michael came up and did some more guitar tracks, and it's suddenly a much more rockin' album. He was initially a bit hesitant to rock out on the tracks, because he felt that the music wasn't really rock, but Christian told him to "make it rock", which I think Christian always wanted anyway (without it becoming, you know, a rock album). So DESYL has a lot of guitar work on it -- Jono didn't use my guitar track on that for the final mix, which disappoints me, because I think it sounds the tiniest bit empty and not punchy enough, but Christian really pushed for it so ... who knows, we might do another mix, we might not. "Yesterday's Growing" is just frickin awesome now, with an amazing guitar solo in the middle section. It saved some arses, too, because the bass bit that I laid down for that section was deleted, causing me to complain constantly that it requires the bass in that bit. Well, in the final mix, I can't tell whether the bass is there or not (my guess is that it still isn't), but it suddenly doesn't sound so empty -- the guitar really fleshed it out.

The other songs all sound really great, too. It's not totally surprising, but Jono has managed to be subtle with a lot of stuff and it's a really well-rounded mix. He does a good job, and considering the ridiculous time-frame he was given to work with, he's done absolutely amazing. The previous rough mixes we heard were, to be honest, kind of terrible. They were certainly listenable, but there was just some sort of ... I don't know, like nothing was sitting nicely on its rock, I guess you could say. Now it's all very smooth, which is fantastic since we allowed plenty of blemishes through. It's ironic -- I wanted this to be a bit rough round the edges, to show that we're not obsessed with perfection, and the result is something that sounds really tidy, quite brilliantly done.

Of course, I'm biased, and I suppose in a few months I'll call it crap, as all artists inevitably do, but for now I'm lovin it. Now all we have to do is wait for it to be mastered, and I'm sure that will give me occasion for another rant about brilliance and so on. But for now, I'm happy to say that this is an album which will make me

keeponrockin
Tom Hauville

Partied Down & Fired Up #171

It's been a whirlwind these last few days, and the sort of period in which it all starts to come together.

To begin with, Justin came in and laid down a few more sax tracks, including "Don't Even Say Ya Livin" and "Seek It". It's a bit tough to keep track of it now. Then on the same day I put down a bit of guitar work -- just minimal stuff to flesh out certain songs. This is because Michael isn't able to give us much time for the rest of his work, so we decided to let me do the rhythm tracks and bring Michael in for the solo work -- that way, we get the most out of him in the limited available time.

Then yesterday ...

Well.

We had a miniature party for a couple of reasons, one of them being a celebration of sorts, and the other being recording the sounds of partying. So after the eating, boozing and smoking, we stood around a mic that Jono had set up earlier and just talked shite. The idea, of course, was to sound like a big party, although in truth it was just six adults and one little girl making noises, clinking glasses together, talking absolute nonsense (the idea was to say things that sounded like snatches of conversation) and making cheering noises occasionally. I'm not gonna say which song just yet, but it's so very appropriate.

After that, it was vocals. And what a marathon that was.

We set up the studio to create a little vocal booth, which in truth was just blankets draped to one corner of the room, with one of the lounges stood on its end to create a booth, and a foam mattress propped up against this to create a sort of door.

Six hours (thereabouts) later, Christian had laid down vocals for the whole album. I pretty much missed all of this, as for the first few songs I stood outside and talked with Bones, and for the rest of the time I was in a state of semi- or total sleep. The guys woke me up at about 3:30 in the morning to tell me not to snore, and then didn't do anything for half an hour after that. Wonderfully considerate it was, but then they did the same thing to Steve too.

Today was more work on the vocals, with Christian redoing a few takes and altering his approach. Then just now I laid some heavy-arse guitar onto "Got Issues" and then Christian redid the vox for that too. I'm so happy about this too, because now "Issues" sounds like the sort of thing I always envisioned ... and I always wanted to lay some guitars on there as well. In fact, I ended up recording more than I intended, as Christian wanted the song to sound fatter, fuller and harder, which is fine by me.

And just wait til you hear it! Goddamn, but we've got a pretty nasty track on our hands now, and of course it makes me happy to have some killer guitar on the track. Being the rock dude and all that, well, I'm glad now that I can more appropriately use Juicy Mountain as context when I say

keeponrockin
Tom Hauville
Juicy Mountain Blah Monster

p.s. Thanks to Todd for letting me use his guitar amp.

Sax and Bone #148

...and the horns are mostly done.

I'm wary of swearing on my blog, mostly in case I get censored, but holy fuck that was good! It was astonishing to see two masters of their respective tools coming together so quickly. We had Bardy and Justin get to work on the "Government Song" and they just flew into it. With some brief discussions and maybe two run-throughs of the song, they had the whole thing. They agreed on some riffs and just got the hell into it. They locked in together like I've never seen, and this is two guys who had never met before. They even locked in on some stuff that I could swear they didn't even discuss -- the professionalism was through the roof!

It bodes well. They had good ideas and just did their thing wonderfully. So there's horns on "Gov't Song", "Yesterday's Growing", "DESYL" ... and "Happy Man", which some plain sax as well. Justin did some soloing on "Happy Man", then just now he did "Across the Park", which Christian describes wonderfully:

"Imagine you're the lone saxophone dude in a park, playing along while someone's getting murdered somewhere else in the park; the sax dude knows they're getting murdered and keeps playing..."

And right now, we're getting some sax for "End Days" as well. It's like we've given the guys a picture with some light colouring and they've just added a few new colours to completely change the colour-scheme. Suddenly the album is looking much more fleshed-out, and we have some elements which will tie it all together in terms of sound. Prior to this point, I would say the drums 'n' bass were what tied it all together, but that ain't saying much, since just about every album is filled with drums 'n' bass.

And I think I'll conclude now with a sigh. It's a sigh of exhaustion -- I can't explain how exhausting this process can get, even when you're doing nothing -- and it's a sigh of exhilaration. Juicy Mountain is just exciting, which is one of its greatest strengths, and also what attracts me to it so much. I have this sense of doing something original, unique ... something that's never been done before. Maybe it won't take off, or capture the imagination of the population en masse, as I really hope it will (and, for that matter, sort of can't see why it wouldn't), but who cares? I think that, no matter what happens, this album will be something that I can always look back on as something special that I was a part of ... something that no one else has done. And I wouldn't have such a strong feeling if it weren't for the sax and 'bone...

keeponrockin
Tom Hauville
Juicy Mountain Bass Monster

Feeling Horny? #146

It's horns, today. We have a trombone player in the studio, an accomplished fellow that we call Bardy, although his name is Simon. He's the consummate professional -- the sort of dude who can show up on gig day, have a brief jam, and then play a hell of a show. I know this because Bardy has done so with us before, a few times. (It probably helps things that Juicy Mountain's songs aren't all the complex.)

So Bardy was in the studio today, going through the songs, working out his strategy. He had a bit of a brainwave, which was to save the recording for tonight, because then there would be himself and also a saxophonist -- Justin -- to lay down the horn section. By doing it all at once, we'll get that group dynamic that a horn section deserves.

Presently, we're waiting for Justin to arrive so that this can all take place. During the meanwhilst*, we'll get some food and take it easy and all of that.

It'll be cool having Justin in on this, too. I've met him once, and he's another professional. He has just graduated High School (more accurately, he's just done his exams -- the graduation part is yet to come, although it's almost assured and academic at this point anyway), which is saying a lot, considering both his talent and professionalism as a muso. He came and jammed with the band at the studio -- ironically, the same night I was invited to join the band. I got to watch him closely, and there I saw a dude who'll patiently wait for his time, bust out a few licks, then patiently wait for his next cue. He also added his talents to the original recording of the "Government Song" -- good stuff.

Another issue today, recorded now for prosperity more than anything else, was that the mixing desk had a bit of a tantrum this morning. In short, it wasn't getting any signal through it at all. Scary stuff, especially since Jono 'cleaned' the board yesterday. Cleaned is an accurate term, although it's not wiping the thing with some Windex. What he did was to run some pink noise** through the desk which sort of 'pushes' the crap out. It was great and everything was working afterward, but this morning it wasn't working. Jono did everything to get it sorted, and in fact was going to have someone come over and service/repair the thing, but it seemed to work itself out after a few hours. Mechanical things are so weird.

And now it's starting to rain. A nice big storm is sweeping over, but that's nothing unusual as there have been lots of storms during the whole recording process. I see it as a good sign, much like that superstition that if it rains on your wedding day, your wedding will be blessed and long-lived. Besides, rain represents lots of good things, such as cleansing.

As for horns -- it'll have to wait until roughly 9pm, which is when Justin arrives. Working with Bardy has been cool, he seems very switched-on about the songs, and it helps that he really likes the music, too. So he's probably going to coach Justin a little bit so that we have a nice, tight, well-arranged horn section.

So it's a date for 9pm tonight ... and I'm feeling horny!

keeponrockin
Tom Hauville
Juicy Mountain Bass Monster

* Monty Python humour.

** As Jono explains it, basically white noise but different -- it sort of covers the whole spectrum, whereas white noise stays almsot a monotone