Weakdays

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Thermos:
After the State of Bliss sessions were over, I dreamed that Ingus and I had a fight while recording this song.  I mean a real, knock-down-drag-out brawl.

Now, those who know the two of us well enough understand that we both have killer tempers, but neither of us are very likely to take it out in a directly physical manner (we’re more like cats: we refocus the anger onto a different target – inanimate, as a rule).  It was a bizarre dream, and I woke with a strange feeling that maybe it had actually happened.  Thankfully, the incident was truly only in my head.  To this day, I couldn’t say what could have triggered a dream like that at that particular time.  We were all riding a pretty good high, since we felt recording had gone so well.

For this recording, Jim decided to use a new gadget he’d acquired: an amp simulator.  He plugged Ingus’ guitar into it and dialed in a cleaner tone than Ingus’ amp was really able to produce.  However, the sound is … ugh.  And the G-string (yeah, I just wrote “G-string”) is flat.  Jim then had me play an acoustic guitar as accompaniment to Ingus’ electric.  He also had the idea for the intro “Ahhh…” bit.  Louis’ backing vocals were recorded at the same time, and with the same mic, as my lead, so there was no way – other than moving Louis back and forth – to balance us out evenly (the joys of recording with only eight tracks – four of which are drums).  To top it off, I couldn’t hear the track very well while tracking, so my pitch accuracy (never the greatest while recording) is a bit off.

So, in a nutshell, this is a middling recording of a song I never really cared for (though I’ve since re-worked the structure and feel of the song to where it suits me better).

Ingus:
I’m also pretty sure I knew about as much of what was going on with the amp modeling as Louis did with the drum trigger, which is nothing.  I always wondered why I sound so… plinky on this song.  As if Jim was thinking, you know what would sound tough here?  A mandolin!  Yeah, let’s make it so that Ingus’ guitar sounds like that!

At any rate, I still like this recording, even if it is plinky.  Which is kind of like Plinko, but without the fabulous prizes.  They don’t do Plinko on the new Price Is Right very often.  I blame Jim.