Recording Today

I took some more shots of us recording today, including this one of the rarely-seen Renee playing Rhodes on "The Fists and the Fighting"


Here's Kris manning the controls while Dave sings.


I also took this one a couple of days ago of what the screen on the Mac looks like when we're "laying down tracks." I think we were recording drums on Fists.


We're so close to done!

New Jamz & Wrapping Up The Year

We started working on two new songs last night, a breezy New Wave jam by Sam called Haunted Drumset and a jaunty poppy song by me that still doesn't have words or a title. Pretty happy with how both of them are turning out and hope to unveil them both soon.

It looks like we'll most likely be playing one more show this year, on Wednesday, November 18th at Tea Bazaar with Massachusetts rockers, Viva Viva, and local boys the Left and Right Band. Our other year end goal is to finish the ep which we're very close to doing. Thanks to everybody for helping us make 2009 the Year of the Posters! Hopefully we can make 2010 even more rockin' with twice as many shows and a full length album! That being said, this will most likely not be the last time you hear from us this year! Thanks for reading!

Last Week: Part II

Seriously, I don't know who's iTunes library this is, but it's pretty weird. Like s/he only has one Replacements song (Alex Chilton, duh) but then The La's entire LP. What the fuck is that about? There's no Big Star, just in case you were wondering. I was, however, pleased and surprised to find the entire Cold Cold Hearts album in the same library.

On Sunday we recorded a bunch of stuff for The Fists and the Fighting. We did drums, bass, and guitar. Once we get keyboard and vocals on it our five-song opus will be recorded at last, and only the mixing will be left to do.

In this picture Dave is rocking the guitar so hard that he's developed a nimbus! Let's hope it's not malignant.

The Fists and the Fighting is going in kind of a psychedelic direction, which will, I hope, garner some mainstream attention without alienating our core fan base.

It's election day, and I have a sad feeling that in our commonwealth the voice of reason will be drowned out by the shouting of tea-party lunatics. The really depressing thing is that these people are not crazy to be angry, but their anger has been mobilized and narrated for them by corporate fat cats, and so their so-called movement is working to defend the very economic order that has caused their problems. They are attacking government interventions which, imperfect though they may be, are our last and best defense against the rise of a post-state corporate order, like in Rollerball. Anyway, just the fact that these people can show up to vote at all should remind them that the implicit parallel they draw between themselves and the eighteenth-century Boston Tea Party is crass and rhetorically irresponsible. You can look all you want; there is no latent argument in the actions of the founding dudes against a democratically elected government levying taxes on people who can vote.

Last Week: Part I

It's been a while since anybody has dished the HP dirt on here. Lots has been happening. I'll post a few separate items today about what's been going on.

First up: we played at Tea Bazaar last Thursday with US Royalty and our specially invited guests The Moore Brothers from California.

US Royalty did a rock thing, and their singer had rockstar moves. They had a really good guitar sound. The guy had a Thinline Deluxe -- the kind of '70s Thinline with "Wide Range" pickups. I didn't get a good enough look to see if it was a reissue or the real thing. If it was the real thing I'm way jealous, as those original Wide Range pickups had CuNiFe magnets and sound incredible, and nobody even makes a replica of them. The current-production Fenders have AlNiCo magnets, which is fine and all, but they pretty much just sound like a Gibson PAF-style humbucker. Those original CuNiFe pickups sound amazing! Either way, though, the guy's guitar sounded good, and he had a pretty lame amp, so I was really impressed.

The Moore Brothers were up next. They sing as well in real life as they do on their records. They passed the guitar back and forth for each song, which I think Dave and I should try some time.

I'm listening to the theme from The Monkeys on the library's collective iTunes server right now. Did you know there's a long version of it that has all these extra lyrics? Now Day Dream Believer is on. It's a weird stereo mix with everything but piano on the left.

Production Log: October 15

Re-recorded acoustic guitar on Sugarbread last night. Then we had our first actual practice in several weeks.

I'm really into the new setup in the basement, where we can use multiple rooms and isolate the control room from the performance room. I wish we could get some badass wall plates so we could have the people in the performance room just plug into the wall and send that from the other wall to the computer. That would be the shit! It'd be all like white-album because you could record with people and not even see them.

I also really want some small-diaphragm condensers for mic-ing the acoustic, but they're not that high on the list right now.

It's looking like our EP will not be finished this month, but it should hit shelves in time for the holidays.

Sam

Production Log: October 1, 4

Lots of stuff got done on Thursday last week and yesterday -- mostly finishing up stuff like trumpet, rhodes, and backing vocals on Little Boy and Absence.

I thought rather than just talk about what happened I'd create a record of what guitars were used for what on the songs we've recorded -- or at least on the ones that I play guitar on.

Little Boy is pretty much all done on the silver Stratocaster I played in VHS & The Babies. The evil distorted riff is done on the Flying V (aka the Nekrolog guitar) though. That riff is distorted using a 1990s ProCo Rat (yes, for those who care, it has the lm308 op amp) on the left channel and a green late 1980s (?) Sovtek Big Muff on the right. Both those pedals were christmas presents from my brother Isaac in 2006 and 2007 respectively, so props to him. All the guitar was recorded through the Super Reverb. The tremolo on the arpeggio at the end of the song is the on-board tremolo on that amp.

Geniuses is more complicated. The main guitar part (the chords during the parts that have singing) is on the yellow Les Paul Special. That's the guitar we use live. I can't remember if it was recorded through the Super or the Dr. Z, but probably the Super. The "lead" part that basically doubles the trumpet is on the Flying V; that was definitely recorded through the Super Reverb -- no pedals on either of those, though the Flying V part was recorded with the amp turned way up to get natural distortion.

As for the double-bend riff that opens the song and divides the verses from one another, I sort of had a dilemma, as the original demo I made when I wrote the song (probably in like April of 2008) had this really great guitar sound on that part which I couldn't duplicate. It was recorded with the strat through the Stang Ray, but I was running the signal through an Analogman NKT275 Sunface with my guitar's volume dialed way down. That was one kickass fuzz pedal, but unfortunately last winter I was forced to sell it for a mess of pottage. I tried to get the same effect with another pedal (the amazing but different Fulltone '69), but I still don't think it quite captures the lo-fi nastiness of the original, which I preserve below for posterity:

Geniuses demo, Spring 2008.

Sam

The Box (moderately murky) videos!

Finally after several days of very slow encoding (time for a new computer,) I have gotten all of the videos we took of our performance at The Box on Monday the 28th, up on YouTube. I will just post a link here to the playlist that should play in the order of the set. Check it out and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoQnbWoXyZY&feature=PlayList&p=68B9F5A5D174E330&index=0&playnext=1