| What an onslaught of power! I vaguely remember coming up with that slick little guitar melody line that plays throughout the song and working the basics underneath it. Other than that I can't even conceive how I came up with the arrangement but's it's among my best. Maybe the lack of drum machine forced me into different modes of arranging. Again Jeff just floored me (in a good way) with his words and arrangement. Lyrically this has his mark. Setting up words and phrasing in a verse then using those same words and phrases in a different configuration in the next verse. I'm not one for trying to covney my music in an evil light but if the shoe fits... and it fit this song. Jeff's down right manic in his performance. The song doesn't have to be interpreted as negative- it's just reality. We all die as flesh. Rich or poor, healthy or sickly, intelligent or challenged. There's one battle none of us can win. I did the lead break and got some really deep bends on the low E string which sounds lie a whammy bar but it's not. I thought this was an excellent example of the type of solo you could play in the mid 90's. One that fits in character with the song as opposed to trying to outshine everything with fast fingers. There could have been more of this from bands without compromising this unspoken rule that solo's were "so 80's". Brian once again was devestating on drums. This probably was his signature song. All double bass, all energy, no let up! There were 2 instances of "after" editing on this song. The first occured while we were mixing the song. Jeff accidentally hit record on Brian's drum track and erased a couple seconds towards the end of the song. We thought about editing the song shorter but first tried to fix it by punching Brian in on the track. The drums were recorded a few months earlier in a different location so it seemed improbable given the crude equipment and the fact that the puch in was during solid double bass but Jeff set it all up and they got it. I did a similar edit when I put it to CD in 2000. Where the lyrics read "bite my dust", at the end Jeff recorded an off-the-cuff "Lick my shaft". I didn't care for it then so when the opportunity arose with computer editing I cut the first "eat my dust" in the middle of the song and pasted it over "lick my shaft". I decided not to be too much of prude and leave the 800-F***-YOU in the intro. The final mix is probably a bit too dirty though the song as a whole is hard to judge because as of this writing I've already redone the music for the UDM 2007 release and I'm use to that clean mix. |
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This also was very refreshing. We had a lot of fun with this one. Brian Blaine worked incredible magic with this tune. In retrospect, he did so just about every time he had sticks in his hands. The lyrical content is about life and reality. The fact that life isn't fair. The fact that you need to take control of your own life and not seek sympathy. You'll get farther in life by controlling your own destiny. One can be born in this life without. It's what you make of that life which will determine what you can be. Never be swayed by critics and cynics. If you have a vision and a dream, stay true to it. So you see, this song, which may seem somewhat negative to the lay person at a glance, has a positive underlying message. It was a bummer to have recorded over Brian's drum tracks during our sessions. At least I was able to fix it. I do, however, have the original drum tracks in their entirety on video tape including the multi-track mix. In the final days of the Smyrna old school rehearsal space, we were in the part of the building which a former sound engineer had turned into a studio complete with control booth and live room. We were afforded the conveniences of audio and video recording gear although it wasn't the highest quality. Since we would need the space on the multi-track recorder for all of the instruments including vocal tracks and leads, I decided to use as little space as possible for the drums by recording them in stereo and panning left and right of center. Since we videotaped some rehearsals, I thought why not run the audio signal into a stereo VCR as well as the multi-track recorder and we could record our sessions on video. We had a camera mounted in the center of the room up on the wall which picked up all of us in rehearsal. I aimed it at Brian and the sound quality on video tape was incredible. The tape which I possess today is the only one in existence to my knowledge and it contains three songs worth of drum tracks including all of the takes. I don't recall why none of the other instruments were not documented. I am disappointed that Tom dubbed some segments on the actual recording when migrating from cassette to CD. I have original copies of this cassette and the quality seems much better than what is on CD and mp3.
Tom's Rebuttle: If that's the case then I'll remaster them from your cassette. I originally downloaded them from your 2 track master.
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