Dying Days (demo)

Do Not Eat (1994) — By Ingus on October 9, 2009 at 9:39 pm

Ingus – Feel that flange effect! I love this demo. We really put something into it that I don’t think comes through in the recording on the State Of Bliss version. That’s not to say that Jay’s baseline is any better than Thom’s, just that we knew the mood that we wanted to have, and we just couldn’t seem to replicate it in the studio. I was listening to a lot of Faith No More and Rush, and Jay and Louis were playing the hell out of Garage Days by Metallica. Not, mind you, that this is at ALL metal, but it’s the closest we get until Jesus In The Corner, I’d say.

And I love the flange and reverb effects we got out of our shoestring-budget recording setup. I’m positive that the Shure Vocal Master PA head did not have an effects loop (and we wouldn’t have known what it was if it had), and the Porta 03 recorder DEFINITELY didn’t, so we actually ran guitar effects pedals in between the pre-mix/eq from the head to the recorder, in series. For real. Thus the analog hiss on this song being much worse than on the other DNE demos. Still, you give a little, you get a little, and the end result was exactly what we heard in our heads – something that happened extremely rarely.

Since I’m waxing about basement recording, let’s do a shot of the basement recording setup, starring, especially, the SuperAwesomeRollyChair. This looks like it was taken during the recording of the EP, since I think we used Pete’s drums for Do Not Eat, but the setup is nearly the same.

From left to right we can see a coke can and some sort of snack cake wrapper on a tv table, another snack cake wrapper, lyrics, duct tape a harmonica and a patch cable on another tv tray (which I’m sure my parents were thrilled we were using), my fender strat in case, a mic stand of no doubt dubious ownership, the SARC leaning against a toilet pipe, and the CB700 drum set, which actually fell apart from Louis’ drumming. We’d find random lugs on the floor that just gave up and flew off the drum shells.

Slobs? Yes, but it’s the stuff home demos are made of.

Louis – I still miss the Superawesomerollychair ™ every time I play drums. I’m probably wrong on this, but I feel like this was a late Ratza era song.