Anastasia

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Ingus – And we’re back!!!

After a couple week hiatus, we’re glad to bring you something you’ve most likely never heard before.  For real!

The next 17 tracks are the 4-track demos we recorded, again in my parents’ basement, before going into Jim Fourniadis’ Super Genius Studio to record the album that became State of Bliss.

We’ll elaborate more in the next 16 posts about the differences between these tracks and the final versions, but let’s cut to the chase and get to what’s really important here.

Thermos.

This right here is the first track on this here website / podcast / thingumy featuring bass player extraordinaire Thermos Clark.  These tracks, if I remember, were recorded less than a month after Thom joined the band.  Again, I’ll get into more specifics on that in future posts, but for now, enjoy some Toast that’s been sitting on a cassette tape waiting to be heard for 14 years. Oh, and I remastered it, too, so it’s got that going for it.  Which is nice.  Thom says there’s too much reverb.  He’s most likely right.

Today’s picture is from our now legendary (I almost got expelled, and we were banned from playing at UM-Flint ever again) Earth Day 1996 show.  After playing, we goofed around UM-F campus, and somebody (Alecia?) took this picture.  We were always going to use it for something, but never managed to.  Now we have.  Enjoy!

Louis – it’s weird, but I don’t remember recording this at all, but it’s virtually identical to the “SOB” version (y’know, except for the reverb).  This version used to start with Ingus yelling “No I don’t!” and screaming.  I don’t remember what he didn’t, so don’t ask.

If I remember correctly (which I more than likely don’t) Ingus wrote this song after we played a packed show at the original Local and saw a girl get kicked in the shin for no reason…which is mentioned in the song in almost that exact way…which makes the last sentence I wrote totally pointless…nevermind.

I don’t remember getting in trouble at the earth day show (I didn’t even know there was an “earth day” before this show, and I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to accomplish).  What could we have done to get banned?  I’m guessing that I mouthed off to somebody…it’s kind of my thing.

Thermos – Ingus is responding to a question he posed on the instrument tracks: “You got a problem with that?”  Then he screams and says, “Gotta rough my voice up a little bit.”

These recordings all suffer from being mixed by a guy entirely too enamored of ’90s shoe-gazer-need-to-swamp-this-in-reverb-’cause-that’s-how-you-know-it’s-good.  And, just so everyone knows, these are not the “original” mixes of the basement tapes.  I seem to have lost the master for that, sometime around the fall of ‘97.  Since I still had the 4-track tapes, I figured I’d give mixing another go.  And, while I was at it, since my vintage Epiphone bass had intonation issues in ‘95 (and because it had, at that time [1997 - stick with me, folks], recently undergone a complete overhaul), I re-recorded all the bass parts.  Mind you, this creates interesting problems, the most major of which I’ll discuss on the relevant tracks.

While I have very vague recollections of the recording process itself, I remember we did these in August of ‘95.  It sticks in my head because we recorded around birthdays: Louis’ for this set, mine for the actual SoB.

And, sadly for Louis, the wrath we incurred at the ED show was entirely due to Ingus.  I seem to recall it involved Ingus referring to the person in charge of the operation as something to the effect of what the Clint’s sign looked like it said.  I’m not sure I could have constructed that more awkwardly if I tried.

Joel took the picture.  There are a couple more from the 2nd floor of the UCEN where you can clearly see him reflected in the glass.  I think I still have my badge from this show that reads, “The Other Guy”.  I suppose that’s Joel’s reference to the frequency of bassist turnover….