29.6.04

The Meat Market

I'm still digging the Ryan Adams album immensely to the point where it's taking me time to get focused on the new Cure album. Upon the first few listens, I'm really liking the songs and the band sounds really inspired and motivated. In particular, Mr. Smith is pissed as hell on this record. I like that. However, I think the production blows, the mixing is flat and the severe raping of the defining Simon Gallup bass tone severly damages this album for me. I have a feeling that after seeing them perform these songs live at the end of next month I will appreciate them more. While I love the influence the producer has had on the band in terms of writing and performance, I think he should have stayed far away from the mixing.

Since you last read me, I have been spending signficant time between both of my bands. For the aggression, I solidified the tracklisting for the album and it will truly complete that era of music. I then proceeded to go hogwild (heheh) and do 95% of the artwork for it. The front cover is something I have been dying to commit to CD for some time, It's a photo of Iceland at night (taken by Brandt), but I'm just waiting on a few fonts to get it totally into shape. Thanks to Leo, I have all the fonts from FLOOD, so there will be continuity from the previous full length (Similar to the first two aggression CD's). I'll post the cover when it's done.

Meanwhile, check out www.theaggression.com for details on the new album as well an update on what the various members who DON'T post on this Blog are up to.

As for Hypefactor, Brandt and I took another stab at 1956 on Monday. We cracked it even further. Usually I would think at this point we are overthinking the song, but in reality the song needs this work and it's becoming more organic as we progress. This time, Brandt finally had the live drums ready to play with the song and Robin is so fierce on it that we dropped another load of loops out of the song. Like I said, organic. Thanks to those new guitar parts from Leo, the vocal melodies need to totally change. Thats my next assignment. B did a really cool rough mix for me to take along so I'm at work as we speak!

I've started to give friends and family a sneak peak at the material and the response has been very strong, I'm happy to say. I gave Almost Bar Fighter Dan Hamill a sneak preview and he was impressed and very complimentary. He's probably my biggest litmus test of music outside the musical core. Because he is not a musican (he is a stage actor), he represents "the people"...I think.

In the meantime, the THIRD band I have had the pleasure of being associated with has a nice review in Outburn this month and a good interview with Mr. Louche himself. Read it HERE: http://trixvintage.com/outburnchemlab.jpg (Thanks to whoever posted it on the Cracknation site).

On deck this week is seeing SPIDERMAN 2 tomorrow night. Then, we have a gathering of the Factor Corp. principles (Brandt, Ash, Robin, myself and now Charles) scheduled for Thursday night to review everything. Hopfully no one will flake because I really want all of these people in a room asap. All that's left is the vocals for 1956 and Peterface. The light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter.

F

27.6.04

A special report!

I'd like to take a quick moment to announce the arrival of the newest little member of the MOGpac...Lucia Mary Magdalene Link, born June 24, 2004 12:36 a.m. 7 pounds, 8 ounces and 52 centimeters. First child of longtime founding member of MOGworld Chris Link and his wife Nina. Said child is already being spoiled by me and my significant other!

In other news, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE made me pee myself silly. Not a great movie by any means, but entertaining as hell. SWEET!

F


26.6.04

GIVE ME YOUR NAME

A whirlwind of a day ended at 3am last night and after a long day of the au bon pain, studio, chinese food, fixing my fonts, more studio, Pluck U, Saintface, many drinks, soical time with the ladies of Internationalpoontang.com, a near barfight, a guy in a thong (yes he was the near barfight), a very public threesome (yes this involved the guy in the thong), and some pizza, I feel we all earned the right to sleep in this morning...

We were able to find Leo somewhere in NYC yesterday and after a fun breakfast catching up, we dragged his ass into the Birdcage and put him to work. As predicted and hoped for, Leo again left his mark on EXIT STRATEGIES. Let me be frank with you, I was handling problems in my other professional life, but Leo, at B's direction (Earn that producing credit, son!) did some sweet ass backing vocals for THE MORNING AFTER THE LIFE BEFORE. I had many ideas for backing vocals for this, but they went way out of my range (and believe me I tried), but Leo really came up with some great stuff that I think really punctuates the choruses significantly. While doing all this, Leo somehow fixed a recent font related problem in my computer, for which I am very very greatful, while giving me thousands of new fonts to play with!

We then gave Leo a playback of the song we wrote with him and Jamie Duffy, OUR FAITH, because he hadn't heard our changes. There weren't many other than my new vocals, so he he was really into it. He will be playing his own version of the song with his band, AM PACIFIC, at their upcoming shows in LA. You can't get a better compliment than that! After some Great Wall, we put a guitar in his hand. Brandt had wanted him to tackle LENINGRAD, but honestly I feel that song is truly developed, so, as mentioned in a previous entry, I knew we could do more to 1956, so we got him on the verses and boy did this turn out to be one of my better decisions. I won't give much away, but it's still getting further away from Primal Scream and closer and closer to Hypefactor. The effort is worth it, and like Charles before him, Leo now has opened new doors to this song that I think are going to make for an amazing final song. We're almost there with that track.

Thanks to Leo, always the pro, for coming in and really pushing our material forward again...

Later, I met back home with Irene for some Pluck U (which means she worked late and is too tired to fight me on the topic of dinner) and then had a few drinks with the ladies of Internationalpoontang.com, some of whom are quite sunburnt from extended sunbathing on either Long Island or Asia, depending on which poontanger you are speaking to. Congrats to Poontanger D on her new digs and the excellent drinks and kudos to whoever made the jello shots that Dan Hamill and Irene consumed like it was nobody's business.

From there we were off to see the Face, back in action. I think I missed a gig due to an LA visit, so I was psyched. I think I have mentioned my hatred of the venue, Sine-E, before, mostly because of their horrible technical problems. This time, the face were problem-free and the gig was another enjoyable experience. If anything, my dear comrade Mr. Peter is far too prolific for his own good. I feel like we're on album 5 when I don't even own album 1. Right when I get attached to a song, he goes and writes three more. My concern is that songs I loved a year or two ago will never see the light of day in my ipod. I know the album will own and don't get me wrong, the guy doesn't write a bad song. It's just we're 5 albums in when I still want albums 1-4. I love the man, I love his band, (and yes you SAW me singing along to the last song, Joe) and I say all this purely out of love for the music that I want to own. As a musician, I understand not wanting to be stuck playing the same songs over and over again, but songs like I LOVE YOU, MADLY and THERE IS A ROOM (which I'm certain has to be on the album) got you to the dance and got a lot of people in that venue last night. Give them the hits, lads, give them the hits!

We spent some time with the lads after the show. Peter, B and I discussed the HF album, and while he has his head around EXIST, melodically, CLEAN UP is a problem, so we are going to get Peterface into the Birdcage in July to work on it as a gang. I have now given him a deadline and he promises to stick to it. He's the last person we need to finish recording this album (No pressure, guy!).

Then at some randumb (intentional spelling) lower east side bar that seemed straight out of 1981, Dan Hamill didn't like the way a drunk man (with his thong exposed and shirt lifted) was treating one of our friends and he made this known. Dan Hamill is not an easy man to provoke so when I accidentally walked into this I just stood quietly backing him up while he defended the honour of our friend. I'm still not sure what this was all about, quite frankly. In fact, I am going to try to ask him to write something for the blog explaining, but he made quite an impact on this crew. After, one of the guys, obviously intimidated by my beard while backing up Dan Hamill, tried to sweet talk me, and I responded with "As long as none of my friends are fucked with, you'll be ok". After that, they went to the back of the bar so the guy in the thong could resume his dry humping of the two girls who were making out (yes we have photos). We have travelled all over the world with very few problems, or three ways so this is one for the books just to see Dan Hamill as Harrison Ford. I already respected that kid, but after last night, I respect him more.

The lovely day ended with a slize of pizza and garlic knots for my girl and I. As Leo and I sing in a song: Mas Bien.

+F

25.6.04

Love IS Hell

I'm leaving shortly to go to the studio to work with B and our special guest Leo V23, who is in town for a spell and has been roped into to add even more to this album (hopefully in the form of some sharp backing vocals). I'm psyched to have Leo on our turf for a change and I expect a productive day (once we stop talking about the genius of Cerati). Stay tuned.

In the meantime, last night, Irene and I checked out RUNNING ON KARMA starring my man Andy Lau and the beautiful Cecilla Cheung, at the 2004 New York Asian Film Festival. I might have discussed this film when I saw it some months ago (I'm a big fan), so the chance to see it on 35mm in a screening room was a must do for me. Irene had heard about it and had wanted to see it as well, so that got us to the theatre on time. Seeing a HK film on a movie screen in a movie theatre brought me back to my youth when I would sneak down to the Bowery (aged 10) to see whatever new movies were coming out of HK. Sadly there are no more Chinatown movie houses, so one must recapture their youth at these new kind of events. But the feeling was great. Go to the festival before this week is out. Some awesome movies are playing (like HERO and INFERNAL AFFAIRS). You can learn about at the Festival at http://www.subwaycinema.com/frames/nyaff04home.htm

Meanwhile, and I'm not sure why she bought this, while we were wandering about the upper west side the other night (don't tell anyone we were up there), Irene picked up the Ryan Adams CD LOVE IS HELL. Now, honestly, the guy seems to be a douche. When I first saw him, he was a douche singing in front of the Twin Towers and happened to grab some press because he filmed it before the Tradge (as it's called here). He's always in NME being, well a douche and because he lives nearby here, until recently I would see him quite a bit, quite often at the Gramercy, looking like, well, a douche, and usually with extremely funny but insane movie star girlfriend (who I hope is not a douche). He was recently photographed at my least favourite bar ever Black and White, which confirmed his huge douchedom. Also the cover of this album has two photos of himself, which makes it twice the necessary daily dose of doucheness.

I'm under the impression Irene bought this for Adams' cover of Mr. Gallagher's WONDERWALL, which is quite legendary if you read NME enough like I do. I'm told this CD is two EP's combined into one CD because his label, obviously douches, felt the material was "too dark" to release as a full length. Well thats kinda wack because this CD is REALLY awesome. And the Oasis cover does live up to the NME hype. Yes it's dark, but his lyrics are solid and his melodies are sweet and I keep going back to the CD, no matter how many times I have the urge to listen to Ministry ;-)

Well, thumbs up for that douche at the Gramercy. The fucker can write some tunes. Lesson learned: look beyond on the douche and listen to the tunes. You'll be shocked what you hear.

Do that with Ass Cobra as well.

F

23.6.04

PLUGGED IN (?)

Matt is obviously poopy from the lack of aggression in his life, so let me tell you about the Skinny Puppy shows. The fact of the matter is, as Irene put it, this was a "reunion" show and no matter how much we loved this kind of stuff back in the day, and I was fortunate enough to see Puppy in 1992 (the best year ever), whatever we were about to see in 2004 just wasn't going to be the same thing. For some, like my significant other, this make the show skippable. For me, I can appreciate the challenge that was laying ahead for Mssrs. Key and Ogilvie.

Most of my interest in this was helped by the fact that the new album is really good. I respect their NOT going back and doing something they had done before (screw you diehards), so I expected them to do something different live. The quick comparison: Puppy was very performance art based in the old days, tons of props, big set, etc, which you could pull off back then without losing your shirt. in 2004, its impossible to pull off a big stage show, so the emphasis was focused on musical performance and to that effect, a guitarist/bassist was added as well as a drummer, while Mr. Key manned the keyboards. Honestly, I think that his moving from drums (he is amazing) to keyboards was perhaps the only true error of this tour. His style is unique and while I'm not knocking the drummer they had (he too was amazing), it did take away from their particular sound.

It seems I have spoken negative about this, but quite honestly, I had a blast, especially the first night. In an unusual move for me, I avoided reading about setlists, so I went into it all fresh. it was an open book for me. They played a great range of material spanning their whole career, including gems like GLASS HOUSES, TIN OMEN, TESTURE and INQUISITION, and other "hits". I was impressed by the way the music was presented and I thought the live versions, particularly of the olders stuff like SMOTHERED HOPE, were sharp without insulting the original versions. I would like to note that Ash marked out like a maniac at this gig, which is a big compliment. Also, we got TWO encores at this gig, which I'm told is very rare on this tour. By the time I left the first night, I was pumped to see it again.

The second night was interesting in that its like seeing a movie you really liked for the second time and you find things you like even more and now a few things you didnt like as much. But nothing I hated and I wasn't as excited as I was the first night, obviously, but it allowed me to appreciate the show more. I had heard from TODD RYAN (I spell his name in caps, so you can all yell at him), that Puppy had rehearsed 18 different set lists, but the set list was pretty much the same the second night. We stood in a different spot and got a better view than the night before, so it was fun to watch even more. Ogre's voice was much better the second night, and the music seemed tighter, but the crowd and the vibe was lacking the second night.

However, just when I was ready to get myself a drink, out of nowhere they brought out Grandpa Al to guest on TIN OMEN. It was 1992 (the best year ever) all over again. I don't think Al was plugged in, and he seemed quite zombified (and industrial Ozzy), but the idea of Al guesting with Puppy after all these years on a classic song he helped produce was enough for the crowd to lose their shit and for the 19 year old in me to flash a wide smile. It may not have been a classic performance, but it was certainly a classic moment. And in this day and age, a classic moment here and there with our old heroes is good enough...even if they look like theyre straight out of WEEKEND AT BERNIES.

F



 

22.6.04

nononono...i said BEFORE i was a walking coma...

first the "sad" news...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story?id=6197868&pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single1


next, skinny puppy was alright. i didn't walk out with the shock and awe i was expecting or that i had seen before - but i also didn't walk out. the guitarist/bassist guy - no complaints. the drummer - no complaints. cEVIN key - well, quite honestly he's fat, but he seemed appreciative of the crowd. ogre - homeboy can't navigate his own costumes, but that's ok - he's canadian. but on the whole, you spend two nights in NYC and you alter the set by one...two?...songs?!?!?! sure we got some bonuses that most cities won't: smothered hope on the first night as an extra encore and Al "i don't KNOW what to say about him" Jorgensen on "guitar" for tin omen - i'll let someone else comment on that one...i'm left speechless. but seriously, even the aggression would switch things up for gigs within a short time period (btw - i've heard they might be making a comeback). the techs for the band SUCKED as there were multiple occasions when ogre was left sans mic or mic stand or both.

and let's not even get into the crowd.

i give the first show a generous 3 out of 5 for the first night and a 2.5 for the second.

they highlight of last night was seeing the ESPN Radio dodgeball interviewer who remembers chatting with irene at length - like that's shocking ;)

19.6.04

"I think there is still plenty of aggression in all of us..."

I keep talking about how we are in the home stretch, and while these songs are pretty much up to snuff and just need drum edits before mixing, one song, called one.nine.five.six (which I'll herein refer to as 1956) has plagued us. It's been through several arrangement changes, and everyone has had a feeling for sometime that this track was not quite there yet. So now, thanks to our newest addition Charles breathing new melodic life into the song by adding some new basslines, I was now ready to tackle Track 2 of the new Hypefactor album, which by the way, is the angriest, heaviest song HF has ever done, and will appeal to the few aggression fans who might pick this record up someday.

This song was intended to be our Primal Scream homage. And while it's still a nod to Booby G and co, I decided to loosen the reigns while molding this song into shape. Again, kudos to Charles for his solid work the other night. Because of him, I was able to blow this tune wide open. The track is very loop-based and repetative in nature, so I decided to go over all of these parts with a fine comb. Doing so, I found that these verses could be cut in half without losing the intensity of the song. Originally, the song opened with a quick POW, similar to the aggression's CHEMICAL SUN or Primal Scream's MISS LUCIFER, but after going through these loops, we found several loops and feedback guitar (and of course some of Charles' bass) that I loved and was able to turn these into a cool new intro . B and I agreed that the intro should remain loop based so when the song starts, the impact of the drums guitars will hopefully knock the listener on their ass. At least that is the intention. During all this, Brandt's musical brain was working overtime and we tracked some new melodic guitars to put over the non-vocal verses. That nailed it as far as I was concerned.

And by the time it was over, 1956 had evolved into something new and exciting. It's in good enough shape for me to now lay down some vocals this coming week, but don't be surprised that once we have the vocals and live drums edited in that this song goes through another draft (mostly because there are so many loops that can probably be removed once Robin's drums are in). Not bad for a song that started 2 years ago with the aggression fooling around with laptops and guitars in my parents living room.

SPEAKING of the aggression, they will have a CD out in early 2005 featuring 14 (mostly unreleased) remixes from the course of their entire history. I'll get further into this as time progresses and details have emerged, but as Dan Hamill says "Nostalgia is IN". It is nice though to meet people who appreciate the aggression and their body of work and who want to hear more.

Keeping it old school I-Rock, The MOGpac at Skinny Puppy tomorrow and Monday, look for us. I'm the one with the beard (facial hair, not Ash)

F

18.6.04

"I'm not a lesbian. I'm bisexual."

Between an evening at the movies and a night in the studio, Thursday was a good day in MOGworld. This week I edited drum tracks for Exit Strategies about eight hours every day, so it felt really fucking liberating to do something else for one evening, even if sitting in front of a G4 PowerBook was still involved.

At last Saturday's dodgeball league tournament, the organizers were kind enough to give every team free passes to a screening of the new Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn flick Dodgeball. Vince is consistently fantastic, but Stiller is a hit-or-miss comedy writer (see Envy), so I was not expecting brilliance when I met FJ, Irene and her coworker at the Kips Bay Loews yesterday. And while this movie is not mediocre (though many will call it that), nor is it stunning (and a few may call it that), we laughed. A lot. Like Zoolander, some gags were bizarre or simply did not make any sense. But the great material veers between brilliant one-liners ("You're as useful as poo-flavored lollipop!"), cruelty ("You were adopted. Your parents don't even love you.") and pottymouth laughs (a bar called The Dirty Sanchez), not to mention the nut-punching physical comedy. The non-sequitors and Mexican jokes also had us in stitches.

By the time FJ and I reached my block of Maiden Lane, Charles was already outside. We had planned a full band gathering at the studio yesterday, but Ash and Robin both bowed out for personal reasons. So rather than summit about the progress of Exit Strategies with everyone, we focused on three specific songs with Charles that needed bass overdubs or full-on rewrites. As the live drum edits came together for the record, we took the time to replay or completely refashion many instrumental takes recorded against drum loops. The recent addition of Charles to the hypefactor studio crew gave even FJ - typically reticent to re-record anything - impetus to erase a slew of old parts and start from scratch. In the case of the song "Solar," last night marked the third time we had revisted the song's bass part. On "Exist" and "Oneninefivesix," early performances that we found somewhat lackluster were axed as well. We blew through the three songs quite quickly as Charles works at a steady pace and possesses a drum machine's sense of tempo, enabling us to keep takes to a minimum. There were some slow points during "Solar" and "Oneninefivesix," although I chalk that up to the fact that Charles was exhausted and I was pushing him to both write and play long, seamless takes for both songs. A bit much for midnight on a Thursday, perhaps, but he pulled it off.

While the work we did last night may seem mundane, I cannot stress the significance of the evening enough in terms of improving band dynamic. FJ and Charles had never been in a room together under creative circumstances (as FJ missed the "Descriptive" session in May for a Los Angeles trip), so it was important that they get a feel for each other (in a completely straight way.) By the end of the evening, FJ and Charles were avidly reminiscing about obscure 80s new wave (Nik Kershaw) and other "stuff," so all in all I would say it was a stellar session. Most importantly, Charles is smitten with the hypefactor material.

Plans tonight include !!! live at Bowery Ballroom, followed by another day in the studio tomorrow morning working on "Oneninefivesix" with FJ. The sold out !!! gig will almost certainly be a hipster clusterfuck, so I can only hope the set will be worth it (and better than Out Hud.) But I would settle for a mediocre set with an indie celebrity sighting (like Le Tigre's Kathleen Hanna moseying down West Fourth Street last Friday.)

Today's cheap entertainment: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/amg/, a customized mix tape generator. Worth reading to discover such situation-specific mix tape lists as, "Songs to Listen to While Deciding What Color to Make the Background Behind a Crotchless Panty Because You Took Your Fancy Art School Education and Got a Job as a Graphic Designer at a Lingerie Company" (requested by Nikki and compiled by Danor).

15.6.04

Kidd sized balls

Here's a quick post to put some whipped cream on top of a sundae of a Saturday... http://www.reuters.com/newsSearchResultsHome.jhtml;jsessionid=TTVMIAQRJ55RSCRBAE0CFFA?query=dodgeball&qtype=p&x=16&y=4

once on that page, click on the first link...pretty sweet, right? that's BTSH bad boy Reno in the background. the photgrapher got a mega shot of him jumping over a ball, but for whatever retarded reasons, it wasn't used. in case anyone is wondering, that is a partial view of my knee - sans knee pad.

when you're done with that, get ready to click on the third link, but hear ash yelling "token" in your head...can you hear it? ok now go click on the third link on the aforementioned page.

13.6.04

Despite not having Potato Pancakes, it was a good day...

Well, after months of anticipation, Irene and I were finally able to stay in town long enough to join MOG Athletics' Dodgeball Team for their second tournament. The whole experience was quite funny and enjoyable. It's an organized monthly tournament filled with a few hundred 20 and 30 somethings, all of whom take this game either quite seriously or in some cases, FAR too seriously. But believe me, those who took it far too seriously were heckled by the MOGpac and their cheerleaders, consisting of some of the ladies from Internationalpoontang.com. Most of the other teams were cool, but some were massive douches, but I guess in retrospect, it made it more fun to have heels to boo at (though people like the Douches of Rock, as I called them, reminded me way too much of why I never embraced the world of organized athletics or High School for that matter).

We had a solid (much better than I thought) and ethusiastic team, led by Matt, who is a focused and determined Captain and the man who scored our most dramatic victory. It was exciting to cheer him on as he claimed a huge victory when we he was outnumbered. It was easily the highlight of a very enjoyable day. Everyone played their hearts out and you can't ask for more than that. There were several times I was worried about Irene and Robin getting smacked around a bit (especially after hearing how robin was smashed in "the womb" last time), but everyone ended the day in good shape (and with free passes to the see movie DODGEBALL this week).

This was followed by a fun afternoon of beer and food at some German place uptown and a nice long walk back home to Gramercy. Of course the evening was spent dead on the couch watching my newly purchased FREAKS AND GEEKS DVD. I remain in extreme pain as I type.

Meanwhile, in the musical world, a remix the aggression did for the band DUBOK, has surfaced on their website www.Dubok.net. There's a pro and con this. The pro is that something I have worked hard on is now available and is receiving some nice comments, and the con is that this EP (which features lots of remixes by a lot of great artists that you can also download) was supposed to be released by Tinman last year, with the aggression's remix EP for THESE MILLION NIGHTS to follow it on the schedule.

In my heart of hearts, I kept hoping I would hear from Tinman asking them for the EP so we could get the last of the aggression's FLOOD-era material out. It might in fact be the last ever aggression release. There are some amazing remixes that have yet to be heard from artists all over the world who busted their asses at my request. It makes me look like an idiot to them and makes us look flakey to the few fans who have seen the EP teased on theaggression.com and Tinman's site (which hasnt been updated since last October) and want to buy it. I have tried repeatedly to contact Tinman to resolve this as well as to get copies of my records, in particular the first HF CD, of which we have no copies of. I know we're not a band thats sells many records, but the last thing I want to do is not be able to release something thats been advertised. More if and when I know.

I'm hearing good things about the Skinny Puppy tour, which member of the MOGpac will be attending here down the block from me one week from today. Some of us (like me) are going to both nights. I have a good feeling about this show.

And I'm wondering, does Brandt wear his dodgeball kneepads when he mixes?

F

9.6.04

CuriOHso

Well, hipsters, I'm looking forward to seeing you at the Cure's travelling festival next month and if you see me there, you can thank Mattagement because thanks to a Ticketmaster screw up, the Internet Pre-Sale didn't start as scheduled and computer glitches made it EXTREMELY difficult for Dan Hamill and I to obtain our tickets this morning. Jokingly, I said to G "If we don't have tickets in 5 minutes, I'm bringing Matt in", but then when I realized the situation wasn't improving, I, in fact, had to call in the trusty pal/manager. I was desparate. Matt, being Matt, once again brings good ticket karma to the table. As I conferenced called him and G on my cel while I rode through New York City in taxi cab on my way to the studio (normally, I take the subway, but I had to make myself available to the lads to get into my account to get the tix), Matt worked a miracle and was able to get the 4 tickets we needed for myself, Irene, G and Ash. Kudos to Matt, who's not even going to the gig (but he is seeing them in the South of France in a few weeks, so don't shed any tears for the fucker). This should be a good show. The Cure never disappoint and I haven't had a chance to see Interpol live, nor The Rapture. On the second stage, the music gods shine as Irene will finally get to see her beloved Muse and Dan Hamill will have the orgasmic time of his life experincing the hippy redheaded goodness that is Melissa Auf De Maur. And I'll laugh the whole time, I'm sure!

Anyhow, this ticket fiasco made me incredibly late for the studio, so we rushed right into the album's opening track, THE MORNING AFTER THE LIFE BEFORE. This song was written well within my vocal range, but what happened since I did the scratch vocals is that Ash came in and re-wrote the bassline, thus changing the whole dynamic of the song. Also, this was my first time hearing Robin's live drums and they are nothing short of excellent!! She OWNS this album, but I needed to spend considerable time re-adjusting the vocal melodies to fit the new material. Of course, we got a better song out of it, but it took quite a while to do. I was able to get everything down eventually, but it took a lot of effort. However, I'm quite happy with the final result. I had a lot of ideas for backing vocals, but they are way out of my range, so we are contemplating bringing in a female vocalist. I also heard Brandt's new closing guitars and closing edit of DESCRIPTIVE, our new B-Side, and it's mega. We just need to get those verses in shape next. I did speak at length with Ash yesterday about this and 1956, so I think we're going to see the Factor Corp gathered together in the next week.

Luckily, I finished my work today in time to make it to lunch with famous comic book artist currently drawing a popular book with an "X" in the title. We had a fun and productive 2 and a half hour lunch, and I really enjoyed my time with him. Plus he signed a copy of his latest hit for me! Speaking of comic books, the first issue of DC's big summer event book IDENTITY CRISIS, by bestselling author Brad Meltzer, came out today and it's pretty flipping amazing. This is a MUST READ. And since we're on the topic, big kudos to my friends at DC Comics for having the stroke of genius to create a DC Direct figure based on the old Earth-2 Robin. This is my dream toy and an wonderful, unexpected shocker. Can't wait for that!

And lastly on the can't wait front, thank you Mr. Lucas for allowing Cartoon Network to make a second season of CLONE WARS next year. Just don't screw up Episode 3, ok?

F

4.6.04

SING YOUR LIFE

Obviously he's been too busy staring at the birds across the way, as Brandt, in his genius, totally skipped over our Memorial Day session at the studio, which was in fact the First Official Vocal Session (tm) of the album. Let's start with this: I love writing lyrics, I like coming up with melodies, but I hate singing. Hate it. If I had my way, HF would have its own singer, but the only man I feel to be worthy enough to be the HF frontman has his own band to worry about, but he occasionally graces us with a vocal or two when it counts. You may have read about him here before.

In the aggression, it was easier because you could get away with not being perfect because we would just slap distortion over it. Hypefactor, fortunately (or unfortunately) is different. Doing vocals with Brandt is a much different experience than working with Tom and Ash on FLOOD. Quite honestly, while I love the lads, recording the vocals for FLOOD with those two mo's was a horrible and frustating experience as they kept forcing on me what they wanted as opposed to making the most out of what I am capable of doing vocally (which isn't much to begin with, but hey, you try it).

Brandt, while often a slow-mo, has the know-how to get the best performance out of me. He understands my range and what I can and can't do. What I learned from the last HF CD was that I work best demoing my scratch vocals and then listening to them for a month or so before coming in to record the final tracks. This approach also helps me in places where I feel the lyrics might be weak. I always carry my little lyric book with me to jot down revisions, so when the time comes to record the final vox, I'm ready to go.

One final thing I thought was important to this process was my desire to record my vox against the real drums recorded for the album. Brandt has been editing the drums in bits and pieces, so if something had a real drum edited together, I focused on those first. I felt having the real drums to sing against would create the right emotion for each song as opposed to singing to loops. This went out the door somewhat when I started getting into the groove of things but lets see what happens when the drums are all in there.

Because a lot of prep has gone into the vocals BEFORE I step into Brandt's bathroom to record, we're able to hit the ground running and this past Monday was no exception. We started with CREATION PHASE, and were able to wrap that up very quickly over several hours. Brandt would record several tracks of me recording different things in different ways so we had the pick of the litter later on when mixing. With this track we had the new ending that Ash, B and I wrote and I was able to come up with something on the fly to add to ending. It's a short vocal passage, but perfect in terms of the song coming to it's conclusion. This one is a stormer.

After a long tea and biscuit break, We then tackled SOLAR, the album closer. This had partial drums but I got caught up in the song, so we laid down the whole song over the course of a few hours. Again the same approach of recording several different takes was applied. Also note, Brandt is a stickler for detail. If I fucked up a nuance of a vocal, I was ordered (in a nice way) to re-take it. This kid is determined to make this album as live and as real as possible and I think he just doesnt want to have sit and play with auto-tune for a month. Needless to say, i did my best and he didnt argue or make fun of me too much, though he keeps telling me to sing "More Gay" on the mushier songs like SOLAR.

Feeling the vibe, I asked him to roll THEME FROM PROPAGANDA, which isnt a song as much as it is the dance ceterpiece of the album. I originally wanted to leave it alone, but I had an idea to take an Undeworld-y approach to it, so we put a lof of effects on the vocal and I just improvd a bunch of random lyrics about clubs, coat checks, and assorted random BS that you hopefully not be able to make out when you hear the final song. I'm not sure what I did here, and I don't think B did either, but hey.

So we're off to a good start. B has already filled you in on our Spanish Language Experience (tm), which was scary and fun. Luckily, Leo did all the hard work in advance, so I just had to make sure I was pronouncing everything properly. This is a lot harder than it sounds, kids. Anyway, I'm very high on this track, OUR FAITH, and the album itself here in the late stages is evolving into something better than what I thought it could be a month ago.

There is still more work to be done, but luckily my next two songs, THE MORNING AFTER THE LIFE BEFORE, and ONE.NINE.FIVE.SIX are currently in the very capable musical hands of Brandt and Charles, respectively. Until they do their things on those tracks, I can't cut my vocals for those tracks, and I don't want to be in a position where I do vocals and then someone alters something musically in the song. In the meantime, I have to finish lyrics and verse melodies for DESCRIPTIVE. This will keep me occupied as I'm trying a whole new approach (for me) to lyric writing and vocal recording with this song. Brandt touches on it below, but I'll get further into it later on.

Special thanks to my man Bisquit for sending me the studio version of RevCo's CATTLE GRIND (hilarious)!

F

3.6.04

More serious than "24 Pints"

I almost forgot to mention...

In non-hypefactor news, a recent Guardian newspaper interview with Scotch charmer Kelly MacDonald included some wonderful news for fans of British drama (such as myself). The BBC ordered a second season of State Of Play, a six-part series about investigative reporters and political corruption in modern-day London that debuted in the States last month. While substantially shorter than MOG favorite 24 - it is customary for a British TV season to run a mere eight or nine episodes - the two shows share a great deal in terms of pacing (relentless action, frantic dialog, radical camera cuts, heart palpatations.) In the first season, the i-team tied a government researcher's murder and a drug shooting to an energy scandal in the British parliament, with plenty of unexpected twists. Admittedly no arms were severed in the making of the series, but this program can effortlessly hold a candle to 24 or any other mystery-action show.

Need more convincing? The original cast, most of whom are tipped to return, includes MacDonald, John Simm (Bernard Sumner in 24-Hour Party People, a raver in Human Traffic) and Bill Nighy (the aging rock star in Love Actually), among countless others. And MacDonald, despite being married to a twit who plays bass in Travis, is worth the price of admission alone. Sadly, the BBC is rubbish when it comes to issuing DVDs in a timely fashion, and the first season of State Of Play is no exception: The Beeb's Web site lists a release date in February 2005. I hope, however, that BBC America will run the series a few more times in the interim for those who missed MacDonald's gorgeous accent. And the other stuff, of course.

The Mexican MOG

For the second post in a row the MOGpac heads south of the border. The circumstances: FJ and I booked another 10 a.m. session at BIrdcage on Wednesday to continue work on vocals. The day was unique, however, in that we decided to tackle a vocal track for the song "Our Faith." Which, as it happens, is sung entirely in Spanish... a language that neither FJ nor I speak.

The backstory in 100 words or less: I demoed in the song in the fall of last year, then FJ came and re-arranged it. Jamie Duffy of Acumen Nation/DJ? Acucrack/Chemlab stopped in the studio and added guitars, followed by another few months of writing/arranging. Then, in March, we mailed the computer files for the song to Leo Canneto (Virus 23/AM Pacific), who recorded more guitars and a Spanish lead vocal while FJ visited him in Los Angeles. A Gustavo Cerati homage, basically, and a damn good one at that.

While FJ knew he wanted the song to be a duet of sorts, he came to the studio with no real arrangement game plan yesterday. One idea floated earlier was to mix Leo's Spanish vocal with FJ singing in English. But after listening to the track on loop for about an hour, we realized that altering or eliminating any significant part of Leo's vocal to accomodate FJ was, well, pretty fucking stupid. It is a brilliant vocal, so why fuck with it? But in keeping with the duet plan, FJ saddled himself with the challenge of learning Leo's vocal in Spanish and doubling it. And he rose to the occasion, I must say, as he hammered the song out word-for-word over the course of a couple hours. One of his strongest deliveries yet.

We also found the time to track a rough vocal for a chorus of "Descriptive" yesterday, marking the first time we have ever recorded a vocal so early in a song's gestation. There is not much to write yet because the song is far from complete, but I think the final version of this particular vocal will be one of the finest performances FJ ever commits to tape. I predict that will be a difficult session, however, as the tune requires a delicate croon unlike most anything recorded by either hypefactor or The Aggression. More on how this plays out once we have the verse figured out...

Aside from the vocals, I have been putting in a lot of hours at the studio editing drums and trying to keep the album on schedule. "The Morning After The Life Before" is the priority song right now; we recorded a slew of guitar and bass overdubs in late April and early May, and we want to wrap up the vocals within a week. Once the live drums are mixed with some programmed rhythms (courtesy of Ash's wonderful TR-909 and, perhaps, Robin Emmet), this song will be a monster worthy of comparison to recorded music's best album openers. Modesty? Not in this case.

Also near the front of the editing line is "One.nine.five.six," the aborted song we recovered from The Aggression's final demo sessions. A vocal session for that tune will have to wait, however, as FJ and I agreed earlier in the week that Charles should be invited to re-write and re-track the bass line. While FJ and I have been on the same page from day one about what the song should be (Exterminator and Evil Heat-era Primal Scream, mostly), we both seemed to have reservations about our instrumental execution. In an effort to breathe some new life into our thinking, we gave Charles a wide berth in terms of what he can write and record, and I hope his ideas will allow us to revisit the guitar and vocal melodies later this month. If his performance on "Descriptive" is any indication, Charles' playing will properly anchor the song, and that is exactly what it needs.

And now for a non-sequitor: While the Birdcage studio (aka my apartment) has three rooms, most of the recording takes place in a room tucked in the northeast corner (as it is farthest away from my fifth-floor neighbors and, therefore, less noisy.) This is also the only room with a clear view of neighboring apartments, as it abuts directly on two other buildings. Lately, the view from my mixing desk has been getting more and more Cinemax. About two months ago, my distant neighbors decided to eat dinner in their lingerie. Last week, the people whose kitchen window looks out on the studio had some sort of professional photo shoot in their space, replete with many shirtless men. And last night, in a moment that would have thrilled Ash, I sat editing drums while a girl in the same kitchen walked around for ten minutes... topless. Now who said studio work was boring?

1.6.04

Mexico Spawned a Morrissey

If you weren't at Rothko's on Friday night, you missed it, meng.

I caught my first (and rare, for a NYer) glimpse of what would have been the result if Stephen Patrick Morrissey had been born in Tijuana instead of Manchester. This well-coifed man is Jose Maldonado, on loan from LA's Sweet and Tender Hooligans. He's got the hair, he's got the specs, he's got the cuffed jeans, he's got the cardigan, the paisley paisley shirt (i think it was paisley), the malnourished yet amorphic physique - but more than anything else, he's got the voice and the on-stage disposition and relationship with the audience that truly captures his idol's mystery. much unlike the fag (oh btw the douche - NO ONE LIKES YOU) that used to head up the Salford Lads (btw, guitarist John "Johnny" Capp if you're reading this - how's RVC, pally?), Jose possesses class. ash and i walked out on a Lads gig 4+ years ago at Don Hill's because the fagsinger was such a (coining G) nightmare.

back to the gig - kicking it off with the Queen is Dead, a few forgotten lyrics are quickly forgotten as he belts out the outro "life is very long when your lonely", the set consisted of standard Moz and Smiths tunes including Shoplifters (sent out to Winona Ryder), Last of the Famous..., Girlfriend in a Coma, November Spawned a Monster and This Charming Man. The Lads even assembled a great rendition of First of the Gang to Die off the new one.

All in all, SummerMan, my recently legalized S.O. and her teacher friend were all thoroughly impressed by the performance.

did i mention the four go's right in front of brandt and me that led us to make a pact to never smith smiths/moz tunes to each other? i'll let him tell you about those guys.

i'll leave you with a post i left on the Sweet and Tender Hooligans yahoo group in true fan appreciation...

hey all -

brand new to the group and i joined just to say thanks to Jose for
making the trip out here - your performance was jaw-on-the-floor
amazing. the last time i caught the Lads i WALKED OUT because the old lead singer was so terrible - in talent and personality - but that's neither here nor there.

i'm sorry i didn't get a chance to catch up with you, but i expressed
my appreciation to both ez and brian, the promoter. you kids in LA are damn lucky to
have this guy as i'm sure you are aware!

hope to see you out east again sometime soon.
cheers.
matt.

JOSE MALDONADO REPLIES: Thanks for that, Matt. Sweet and Tender Hooligans
played at The Knitting Factory New York last October and hope to return very
soon. I was real happy to come back and visit The Big Apple again and I'll more
than likely be back to run the marathon. Hmm.. maybe I can work a gig around
that..?



PS - someone had to respond to me...

From: "Jeremy Alisauskas"
Date: Mon May 31, 2004 4:43 am
Subject: Re: [Sweet and Tender Hooligans] NYC gig...

How very cruel of you sir!

Terrible in talent and personality? well if you walked out than you certainly
didn't speak with him, so how may I ask do you know anything about his personality?

Thats just a nasty thing to say, and being nasty doesn't make you look cool, it
makes you look insecure.

Goodnight Sir!



AND I SAY THIS TO YOU MR. JEREMY ALISAUSKAS...being a dick-sucking homo doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look GAY!
\ / Sir!