Fear of People Progress Part Whatever

I thought I'd start describing in more detail some of the scenes I've witnessed as they unfolded around me during the recording of the Fear of People album. These first two stick out in my mind because after each of them I felt as though 1. my composition had created an opportunity for a musician to have some real fun, and 2. my good friend Mike Bardzik's longtime vision of having an awesome studio has become a reality to such an extent that it allows musicians to have real fun as they create quality work.

"Annjhilation." -- Back in January, when Moses and I started to cook up this plan, we agreed that he should have about 7 songs on the album that he would for the most part produce. For one of these, he decided on not one of his own compositions, but "Annihilation," one of our oldest tunes, by myself and Hicks. We only ever made a demo recording of it, and a version that ended up on a 7" but which had veered way off-course of the band's original vision for the song. So Moses thought that the song, done truer to the original concept, would surely fit nicely on an album called Fear of People

So, watching Moses record the bass and drums was cool as always. Sure, watching/listening him do this for his own comps is always cool, but any songwriter will tell you that there's a special thrill witnessing a fine musician at work on something that was born in the songwriter's brain. A shared vision, a common goal, something from nothing.

(I wonder at what age or at what number of songs written / recorded or at what level of success that thrill typically starts to fade?)

So then it came time to record the guitar parts. Earlier in the session, Moses had unveiled the vintage semi-hollowbodied Fender Tele a friend of the family gave his mom to give to him. He told Mjke and me how the friend might or might not have known what it could be worth, how the overwhelmed Moses could not accept it, how his mom hushed him up and told him to. That guitar was put to phenomenal use by Moses on his song, "Zen in D" and a couple others if I remember right.

But after Moses completed the first take of the first guitar part for "Annihilation", I felt compelled to stand up and say, "That was awesome, Moses, but on this one I don't think the Tele... we need something..." I began to gesticulate in a way that made sense to me, and apparently did to both guys as well (such is not always the case) and Mike bolted out of the room.

Moses said with zero commitment to either sincerity or sarcasm: "Oh, what's he getting -- a Les Paul?" to which I muttered "You'd be surprised what he has lyin around here."

I wish you could have seen James "Moses" Crowder's change of expression when Mike came back into the room with a Gibson Les Paul Swamp Ash Studio.

Suffice it to say, we had to wait a bit for Moses to get over his giddiness long enough to capture the aura of tension and dread that the song demands. But between each of the four tracks Moses was right back to behaving like a giggling schoolgirl, in the presence of - and playing!! - this exquisite vintage axe.

Bernie Bernie Headflap is not accustomed to performing on extremely fine gear.

The song still needs one more vocal track, and then mixing and mastering, but even in its present state it is scorching enough to fool any listener out of suspecting that its guitarist was a quivering puddle of girlie-man-ness between every take.

(btw when i first saw the guitar Mike brought into the room, I shit a massive load of diarrhea in my pants. Again. And smeared it all over my face between every take while double-dutching with my imaginary friend Thnoopah. Meanwhile, Mike sat non-judgmentally at the board.)

The other scene stuck in my mind occurred during the song 'Livin on the Fringe," and I'll tell you about that soon.