Shane Rennick all over your *boink*
Studio Diary - Day 2
Woke up late, to learn that Judge Reinhold had died of thyroid cancer. Got to Bow Road a bit late, and ended up wandering around for about 40 minutes because I couldn't remember the way, and everyone had switched their phones off. Finally Matty answered his:
"I'm at Bow Road, and I'm in desperate need of directions."
"What's that?", he answered, "You've got a desperate erection? Hold on honey, I'm coming."
At the studio, everything was busy already. Matt was laying down guitar for Gonzo - he ended up using the little Spanish guitar for the first section, and Matty added some extra percussion in the form of tambourine and a cowbell. It sounds wonderful.
Today was a looong day. Matt delivered some amazing guitar for Gonzo, and ended up layering about five tracks worth. Then Shane came in and put down some crunchy rhythm guitar. The first vocals to be recorded was the "Sophie says" dialogue between Shane and I on Gonzo. "Camp as a row of tents, darling," Shane instructed, and started prodding me and grabbing my arse whenever he felt I wasn't being camp enough. "I have never felt so homosexual in my life," I remarked when I came out of the booth. Though amazingly, listening to it back, it seemed to have worked.
Then it was Matty's turn to put down Gonzo's opening monologue, which marked the beginning of studio tensions when Shane asked him if he could remove all the "fucks", because it would make the track "unsaleable". I was absolutely bewildered by this, and I think Matty was too. Matty tried it with "goddam" instead of "fuck", but it just wasn't the same. Finally, we settled on removing one of the fucks, leaving the other one in, and creating an alternative bleeped out "radio version". I want to use the "boink" sound from that "Bo Selecta" song.
Shane was hungover and tense, and very restless, and further studio tensions erupted over the rest of the vocals for Gonzo. Mark was desperately trying to steer the activity away from bickering, and back toward recording. He then suggested we all get in the booth together, and belt out the chorus as a mass singalong. We were a bit skeptical about this at first, but did as we were told, and sang our little hearts. His idea was a good one, and it added the "bigness" of the chorus that we felt was really important to this song.
The rest of Shane's vocal takes for Gonzo were fantastic, effortlessly switching between a range of different voices including a Elvis-stylee, and the whole thing is starting to sound acid-trip fucked-up.
The highpoint of the day was putting down everything for Playing the Gay Guitar. We had envisaged this being the quickest song to record, but it's ultimately taken the most time, but for the right reasons. It's swelled from a tender little acoustic number into a huge anthem (think Dark Mavis by Mansun). Shane played a wonderful acoustic guitar part on it, and Matt's lead is beautiful. The bass and drums we'd put down yesterday really shone, and I'd go so far to say it's the best bass I've played on anything. For the big singalong vocal parts, we all crammed ourselves back in the booth - even roping in Mark's friend Duncan, who had been hanging around with us in the lounge - and delivered a huge anthemic singalong.
Then we were told we could all add extra percussion - and like pre-primary school kids who had just been told it was playtime, we excitedly rummaged through the boxes of tambourines and maracas, and picked out something to shake. I got a big white tambourine. The first take was a shambles, but Mark said "the sounds is so good that you can notice very clearly when someone falls out of time". Shane suggested that when someone fucks up, they have to remove their clothes. The next take was completely mistake-free.
It was getting late, but there was still work to do, and we ordered in pizza to keep us going. Next up was "Are you lookin' at my missus?". Shane got a tremendous amount done, completing the rhythm guitar, and laying down a lot of the vocals, but when it got to 11pm, we were all exhausted and couldn't continue. We're slightly behind schedule now, with more guitar and vocals needed for Missus, so sadly getting any extra songs down is pretty much out of the question now, but the extra time we've spent on some of the stuff has been well worth it.
I am really really proud of how this record is sounding. It's so streets ahead from the first one it's in a different town. Even people who are already familiar with these songs are going to be bowled over. It sounds like a real big production, this time, and much more than just a studio rendering of the songs as we've done them live.
Now we've just got to get through day 3 without killing each other.
Day 3 >>