Recording Diary - Day Five

FRIDAY 19th MAY 2006

Luckily we had the foresight to leave all the instruments at the studio yesterday as we ended up walking to the studio this morning. No Purcell (obviously) no Clint and no limos. Have the Akoustik Anarkhy coffers run dry already? I suppose we'll have to wait until Monday to find out but in the meantime it was kind of nice to get a bit of fresh air as I reflected on the week gone by during my early morning stroll. As I got near the town centre something strange happened. I heard a commotion emerging from an alleyway ahead of me and as I got closer saw two teenagers scrambling over a wall and running away down the entry, knocking over wheely bins and laughing. The back gate of the house that they had came from opened and out came a very irate middle aged man shouting "TELL PURCELL THAT'S ENOUGH! TELL HIM I'VE HAD ENOUGH!!! YOU TELL HIM!!!" The two lads ignored him and carried on their way.

On arrival at the studio I was greeted by NTL, PTL and GTL who were on their way back across the car park to the "...errr.....shop...." They seemed extremely cagey about what they were up to but I did'nt think anything of it really.

Once inside the rest of us sat around, had our morning brews and watched the extras from the This Is Spinal Tap dvd and did a bit of laughing. Yesterday I brought a flask full of whisky in preperation for our first vocal takes but today I had'nt done so and my throat felt terrible as we again began the days recording. Vocals first then!

JTL has a specific way of singing sometimes that makes him sound a little bit 'unstable' if you will. DTL and I like it when JTL sings like this but find it hard to get him to do it on demand. The first song of the day needed this style and after an hour or so of trying and failing to get a good take tempers began to get a bit frayed in the control room. Two men arrived to fix some flapping material in the studio window so that called a halt to proceeding for 20 minutes or so. We used the time to go back to Spinal Tap and calm ourselves down, remerging with the plan to move on to a different song and crack on.

The song we chose to move on to was 'Get Along'. 'Get Along has been a source of much argument over the past few months of organisation and planning for the album. It is almost always the first song to be dropped from a set when we have limited time and we have never gotten the feeling that we have quite nailed it properly live. The quiet sections have never been quiet enough and the timing can be suspect on many an occasion. Because of these reasons some members of the band called into question it's inclusion on the album. DTL and I had argued the opposite and thought that it could be great if recorded correctly. Two incidents have made me feel better about arguing for rather than against. The first incident was Paul Brennan's visit to our practice rooms last week with his ideas for the album. One of the ideas was a trombone line for the verses of 'Get Along' that fit beautifully and brought a completely new feeling for that section of the song. The second incident was JTL's vocal recording yesterday. After the initial raucous start to the day he calmed right down and began to sing. Frankly it was ace. I recorded my vocal parts over the top and the song seems to have changed to something else completely whilst still being only partially recorded. I can't wait for the rest of it.

There had still been no sign of NTL, PTL and GTL and none of them answered their phones when we tried to contact them so we moved on.

Another worry for the album was to get a superior re-recording of 'I'm Gonna Take Your Girl'. JTL's newfound crooning status meant that he recorded the new vocal in almost one take. We all agreed that it is a much, much better vocal than the single version and again I can't wait to hear the song together as a whole.

The dvd lady appeared at the front door of the studio and after much arguing I went to answer it. DTL said that he needed the toilet but I'm fairly sure it was blind fear that made him go into hiding until. He asked us to pick up a copy of Sex And The City Series 4 if she had one which was a dead giveaway that he knew he would'nt be back until she had left. All the time she was there I could see her glancing over my shoulder as if she was looking for something....or somebody. Unfortunately she was all out of Series 4 but JTL and I put what little money we had in our pockets together to buy a copy of Grease 2 as a present for DTL. He bloody loved it.


Because of the unexplained absence of half of The Loungs the chippy run did'nt happen today. Instead DTL was sent on an errand to the pie shop which he did'nt like one bit as he is used to giving the orders not being on the receiving end of them. I'll give him his due, he got the order right so is'nt as stupid as he can sometimes look.

Vocals filled the rest of the day as we completed all the main ones with the intention of getting Mr.McCartney's microphone back to him before the end of the day. What I was'nt expecting was that he would come and pick it up himself. He seemed an amiable chap and it was very nice no meet him despite DTL going and hiding in the toilets again for completely different reasons this time. Macca kept eyeing up NTL's bass and eventually offered to play on a track. We really could'nt resist seeing what it would sound like and were so impressed that we eventually ended up re-recording all of NTL's bass tracks with Macca but drew the line at vocals despite him being very keen. We thanked him for the microphone, made plans to meet up for a little drink and bid him farewell. Nobody mentioned Heather.

PTL's guitars needed tidying up a little and after re-recording a few of GTL's drum sections (completely changing some and giving them a nice 'world music' feel with the hope of getting on Jools Holland) that was it for the day. Despite there only being half the band there we progressed quite a bit today and got plenty done. Maybe they will show on Monday. Who knows?