Styles

[ateolf]

I watched Identification of a Woman last night and it was good. Even got to hear a little bit of Tangerine Dream on the soundtrack. Got up this morning to have practice/recording with Jacques. We got to work on the songs for the soundtrack that need drums: the classic rock one and the reggae one. So we got that out of the way and I recorded the classic rock drums and then the reggae ones. First was pretty simple, very straightforward. Then the reggae one I had to uh I guess figure out how to do that and it was very bad at first but it started to come together. The performances aren't perfect, but whatever. It's been a long damn time since I've even played any drums (and the drums haven't been put together since the damn Bands for Bernie concert). And to top it off I almost tired myself the fuck out the first time I tried to play through. So out of shape. But the sound we got was super spot on (especially for the classic rock one, and I'm gonna try to throw on some gated reverb on top of it later too). Next step was to figure out music. So Jacques was coming up with classic rock riffs for the first one. I had suggestion to ask what Bowie songs he knows (just "Ziggy Stardust" and "Panic in Detroit") and to take those chords and mash 'em together in a different order. Then we got the perfect distortion sound with the Ratt and it was scary how spot on it all sounded. Then I came up with a guitar part that Jacques said sounded like MX-80 when he heard it without the rest of the music. The last thing we did was have Jacques come up with a bass part for the reggae thing. We actually got a really good sound given that we were going through my guitar amp with a kinda buzzy and trebley bass. But some good knob moving got a nice heavy sound. Okay now that's about it. Am pretty sad to hear about Alan Vega. I'll always remember the time I saw him fifteen years or so ago at Noise Pop in Chicago and he rubbed my head (and I also hi-fived both him and Martin Rev). And how that was such an incredible show with such energy (and from dudes in their mid-60s).

Comments

[walruscrimedog.livejournal.com]

After Lou Reed died I managed to buy his old RAT 2-in one rackmount. It's awkward to use because it's a rackmount distortion box and requires the midi-cabled footswitch (which is the same size as 2 rats anyway) to be plugged in to even turn on, but... Lou, man!

Double RIP in this comment as of course Alan Vega. The one time I saw him featured the most crowd-walkout I've ever seen, after like a couple of songs. Only in retrospect does that seem like the experience I deserved.

[ateolf.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a weird-ass "pedal." I mean, I'd hardly turn down something owned by Lou if I had the chance, but it is weird imagining a rack-mounted Rat.

That Suicide show was kinda bizarre. For the most part, it was some rhythm box playing what amounted to Casio preset music (drums as well as those dinky basslines and maybe cheesy chord progressions) and Martin Rev had the keyboard set to drum samples and he just banged on the keys randomly while Alan Vega did his screaming thing. At the time I was realized that if I'd heard a recording of it without actually being there, I'd probably think it was bad, but being there it was a truly incredible experience. I do have a recording of it, I taped it on a cassette. I need to dig it up and listen to it sometime soon.

[walruscrimedog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's from a dumb, weird era. Oh those hott rack mount nights....