NO SLEEP 'TILL........... GRAFTON!

It's Monday afternoon. I'm knackered. Well and truely knackered. I'm sat at my PC contemplating a nap for a while, but I keep getting distracted by another song. I haven't had much sleep the last few days and I'm achey and my fingers are rather blistered and my throat rather sore yet I'm the happiest I've been for a fair number of years. Here's the rundown of my weekend.

Friday:
Get up at 5:30 to start work at 7am as there's some stuff to do to a system before people start using it at 8am. This all went fine. Finished work at 3pm, stopped off at the music shop to get some picks and other gubbins. Headed off to bed at 9.30pm because I had an early start the following morning. Despite being physically knackered, my head was overactive, so I watched a couple of episodes of Sherlock Holmes on DVD. Around midnight I tried to get to sleep but the cats were aware something was different and were extra-active.

Saturday:
Got up at 4:30am after about two hours total sleep. Moved all my gear into the hall, showered, then went out to the drive to wait for Shane and Justin. Justin arrives about 5.20am, Shane about 20 mins later. Load all three of us plus 2 amps, 7 guitars, 2 large boxes of effect pedals, cables etc and 3 people's bedding into Shane's car. Hit the road at around 6am.

About 7:30am we're driving past Byron singing "It's the End of the World as we Know It and I feel fine" (REM) at the top of our lungs, followed by "Stand" (REM) and "Lake of Fire" (Meatpuppets). Road Trip is well and truely underway. Sometime around 8am we were in Ballina and needed a pee break. What better place to stop than a Bee Pee servo? This servo had a collection of porno mags that would put Lemming's DVD collection to shame. We were definitely in New South Wales then. Back on the road, we had a small titter at the absurdity of The Big Prawn and cooed at an inquisitive wallaby. Ended up at Taf's in Grafton at around 10am.

11:30am Shane and I had set our amps up in the studio, Justin had befriended Taf's tribe of kitties and I'd discovered the miniDV cam I'd borrowed was complaining it had dirty heads despite cleaning them a couple of times. With a few re-takes, smoke breaks and a REALLY nice cheese and ham roll (thanks Taf!), that afternoon we recorded the main guitar and scratch vocal tracks of 9 songs (Emily, Drugfucked Mona Lisa, Before You Fall, Lights, Relapse, Cult of the One, D, Chrominance and two versions of No More Kings at different speeds). After a well accepted dinner of KFC, Phil and I headed back into the studio to record the basslines. Phil lent me one of his basses for this. It was a wonderful guitar to play, and had a great sound. Basslines took until around midnight. Justin had crashed hours before, whilst Shane had stayed up chatting to Taf and Alex (chookie tiramisu) and talking to Dave.

Dave had realised an hour from Brisbane that he'd left some kit behind and had turned tail to go and get it. Now on his way a second time, the combi of doom had decided it wanted to enjoy a theme park and broken down outside Movie World. Shane was all set to go and get him, when Dave called back to say that Simone, drummer girlfriend extraordinaire was driving him down and we'd see him Sunday morning.

Sunday:
About half midnight I crashed on the floor of Taf's computer room. Justin was snoring away in the living room and Shane was muttering to himself in his sleep in the doorway. I slept suprisingly well, getting up at 5:30 when the birds were fooled by the false dawn. Sat outside on the veranda watching the real dawn for a while, then had a smoke and a coffee with Justin and Shane when they woke up around 6. Went back to sleep until abut 8:30 when we sat out on the veranda with Phil, Taf, Alex and the cats for coffee and optional toast.

Sunday morning Justin did main vocals on the 9 songs we'd put down on Saturday. Dave and Simone arrived just as Justin was finishing off. For someone who'd had such a shitty time the day before, Daveo was doing well. He set up and put down drum tracks on 8 of the previous days songs. We discovered that Emily had a tricky bit where (playing along to a click track) we'd deviated from what we normally played with Dave, and so we had to re-do it, recording drums and guitars simultaneously. So we redid Emily, and while we were all setup, did Tear as well, bringing our song total up to 10. We did Tear differently to normal and it sounded great. Quite EMF really as Shane was wah-wahing away like a man posessed. That done, we loaded Dave and his kit in Simone's car and waved them on their merry way.

With main guitars, vocals and drums down, it was time for me to record my solos and a couple of guitar overdubs. I had suprisingly little trouble with the Lights solo for a change, did the solo for Drugfucked in 2 takes (1st take was ok, but had a couple of slightly late notes). I then did the bass on the new version of Emily and came up with a funkier bassline for Tear that fit its new style. Justin then came in and did vocals on the two new tracks while Shane and I woke up our vocal chords in preparation for doing backing/harmony vocals. I did a couple of tracks then handed the mic to Shane while I got my voice back to do my remaining tracks. Had reheated KFC for lunch. Yum. Made a mess though (cats didn't mind!). Finished off the backing vocals once Shane finished.

It had taken a while longer than we'd planned, but saying that, because Dave hadnt been able to make it on Saturday due to work, we'd recorded more tracks than we'd originally intended. As we loaded Shane's car up for the trip home, Phil recorded a very rough mix of each song onto a tape for us, and burned me CDs of the source material. We're both going to have a go at mixing it and compare notes. The trip home was fairly uneventful save a rousing rendition of Bye Bye Love (Everley Brothers) with 3 part harmony and discovering that Ballina's local radio station had a good mix of songs on at 1 in the morning. Oh, and that ruddy big prawn is illuminated at night, which caused me to choke in Iced Coffee in mirth. The servo at the big prawn is good though and Julie behind the counter's a hoot (she pointed at my "I am God" t-shirt and said "I have a son who tells me the same" before asking what on earth we'd been up to to be so tired and have a car so loaded up)

We got home safe and sound at some time this morning that I didn't really take note of. Despite being well and truely exhausted, I couldn't sleep so I watched an episode of Sherlock Holmes before passing out. Got up today about midday to do my washing, and couldn't resist having a go at mixing a couple of songs. So far I've looked at Before You Fall and Relapse, and it's very easy to get a mix that sounds good, so it shouldn't take too long to get this demo completly mixed and mastered.

Taf took a number of great pics of us over the weekend and sent them to me last night (they got here hours before we'd even started off home!). I'll put a couple of them up on this page soon.