Before I catch you guys up on last week in the studio and the December 3rd show, let me just tell you that I’m on a big Sabbath kick. I’m totally listening to all the Ozzy stuff right now as I type this. I’m talking from Black Sabbath to Never Say Die. Fucking great stuff and even the last two records, where they become so dysfunctional that they are hardly a band, there are still moments of brilliance. Sabbath’s catalog are one of those things we all come back to and revisit often. Who doesn’t? This time it’s inspired from reading the Ozzy autobiography and I have to say it’s an inspiring, funny, and surprisingly sweet-hearted read. So, I’ll give it the Linus thumbs-up. Also, kudos to the fog machine Ozzy tribute band Lords Of the Universe (made up of some cool local musicians) that played at Mangos a few weeks back. Charlie and I went and it was pretty awesome.
One recent scare we had here in the music scene was when Chris Gray, the local music editor for the Houston Press, had a heart attack on his way into the office. The guy seems to be on the mend but that freaked everyone out. He’s much too young for this kind of stuff. I haven’t spoken to the guy in a while but he’s a good guy and all of us in the band wish him the best on a speedy recovery.
As for our music….
In Bag of Hammers news, we did some finishing touches on “Rust” and “Space Chimp” last week. Well, at least I did. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind this last summer and I was going through some heavy-ass shit that left me pretty useless. I’d love to say that I’m one of those musicians who can use music as therapy and crank out these deep emotional works. Balls to that! I need to have my head on and when I went into the studio to record my parts a few months ago on “Rust” and for the solo on “Star Chimp,” I was a completely worthless wacked-out wreck. My tone was ass, my playing was distracted, and my performance was so bad a one armed chimp hopped-up on coke and booze could have played them better.
We were trying to hit a schedule so I was prepared to live with them but when we had our friend come in and sing over “Rust,” there was no way I could let that shitty stuff muck-up her work. She kind of forced me to get my shit together and so last Tuesday we axed all my old crappy tracks and re-recorded them. I used two amps and three guitars to get different tones on different parts and I think I pegged them. Pretty bleeding awesome; I’d never done that before in all these years. I’ve very little patience for the studio but this time I kind of came with a mission to do everything I could to knock-out “Rust” with as much attention and focus as I could. (Funny, given that, to me, “Rust” and what left me a mess this last summer are not far removed.) Anyhow, I tried Steve’s patience a bit with those parts and the solo on “Star Chimp” but I think it was all worth it. Now we’re completely done with recording and should easily have all the mixes done and off to Disc Makers by early December.
From here on out it’s just going to be a lot of beer, shooting the shit, and mixing for a few weeks so I’m not sure how much there will be to report to you guys. I doubt things like “Larry thinks that the bass needs to go down .2dbs” is really going to be of interest so I’m sure we’ll be posting whatever bullcrack we discuss between mixes instead. That should be…umm … something…
In live show news, We have a final line-up for the December 3rd show at Ruds. It’s going to be Dead Mineral, us, and Defending the Kingdom. (Yes, we like the middle slot becasue we can drink after our set.) It’s no longer going to be an album release but it’s still gonna be a blast so come on out. Did I mention that John Cramer will be making the poster?
Oh and, I don’t want to give away anything but check this dude out…
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