There comes a time when sightseeing, long car rides and “the business at hand” take a back seat to hedonism. Rather than rush to an appointment or take time to soak in the local color, sometimes you just have to kick back and relax. Today was such a day.
Matt, Gretchen and I went to breakfast at Millie’s Pancake Haus. After yesterday’s disappointing meal, we figured that the only way we would find true happiness would be through taking the advice that was offered to us. We arrived with high hopes, which were quickly dashed by the waitress. Sure, the food was fine, but the atmosphere was a downer. Also, for some reason, their menu made a point to inform customers that undercooked breakfast meats could cause severe illness. My meal came with a side of breakfast meat. I have no intestinal parasites to report just yet. These things take time.
We came back to Matt’s place. Matt stated that he couldn’t do work at home because of the TV and computer distracting him, so he went out to a coffee shop to complete his school work. Gretchen and I killed a six-pack and watched TV. Back to the Future was on, and various other shows. When Matt came back we finished another six pack, ordered a pizza, watched The Acid House, and eventually decided to stumble out and be social.
We three went over to Matt and Mike’s apartment (see yesterday’s entry). Matt was trashed, Mike was drinking, and they had some of Matt’s work friends over. We stayed only briefly, long enough for them to utter some drunken rambles. I’m still surprised the two of them remembered me from last year, considering their faces were being bashed into the sidewalk at the time.
Upon returning home, Gretchen departed and Matt went off to sleep. Here I sit.
Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day and night with my cousin Will, his wife Liz, and their baby Emily. On Sunday I’ll be in San Diego. Sorry for the lack of pictures or interesting stories today. I was going to check out the Biodome located somewhere near Tucson but it turned out not to be as near as I thought it was. To quench your thirst for information, here’s a small outtake from the Bubba Kadane interview:
BUBBA KADANE: RECORDING TRANSACTION DE NOVO WITH STEVE ALBINI:
BK: I met [Albini] at a show in Minneapolis in ’95, and then we wanted to try recording with him. It was after Beheaded came out. We went and we tried his studio, which was then in his house. We recorded a few songs and we thought it was all right. We weren’t that happy with it, but we got to know him really well. He, Matt and I kicked off our friendship with a huge argument that kind of set the tone for our friendship and we’e been great friends ever since.
EL: What’d you argue about?
BK: Oh, you know… we were arguing about mixing [laughs], you know? And that was when we first… we don’t butt heads about that stuff anymore, but that was the first time we really butted heads about anything.
EL: So after the first argument he grew on you?
BK: Well that, and, the first recording we did with him I still don’t like. You know, there were just a couple of songs and it was recorded when he was building the new studio. We had talked about going back to try the new studio, and we went up to record all the songs that would be Transaction de Novo. So we went up there and we got to this new studio, and… you’ve been there?
EL: Yeah it’s such a beautiful place.
BK: Oh yeah.
EL: I worked at a studio outside of New York City last summer and when I went to Chicago for my sister’s graduation at Northwestern I went there for a day. The difference was just…
BK: Yeah, it’s great. Well, imagine Studio A completely undone. It’s not constructed yet. So all there is, is Studio B. I think we were the second band to ever record in Studio B, I think Dirty Three had just recorded and they were the first ones. So we go there, and you know, it’s a cavernous place. So we go and record, the first song was “More Than Ever.” So we recorded that and it we thought it sounded terrible. So much reverberation on everything. And it did sound bad, in my mind. We just got into a huge argument about it. And it was tense, really tense. And we were like, “This isn’t working.” So we got in this huge, hours-long argument. And Steve eventually sort of threw up his hands and said, “I can’t do anything about it. This is what it is.” So Steve left at some point, and Matt and I were saying, “What the hell are we going to do?” We talked about going to use a studio in Memphis called Easley. It actually caught on fire recently…
EL: Oh! Right. I read about that.
BK: So we were seriously thinking, “What are we going to do?” So we finally just went to bed and we were thinking of leaving, that’s how bad it was. We had basically written it off and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do. So we get up the next morning, and it turns out Steve was feeling the exact same way that we were, he was pretty upset about it. So he said, “I’ve got some ideas.” Whereas, the night before, he put up a brick wall. So we moved things around, we put the guitar amps in the Dead Room. We got things balanced. We did things like putting filters on the kick drums and snare to get rid of the [makes wash-y sound], you know?
EL: Both of those studios just have so much natural reverb.
BK: Oh yeah, it’s insane. We made it work. We rerecorded “More Than Ever” and started over, and I’m really happy with it now. But you know, we had just gotten to know him at that point. We went from this period of just wanting to strangle each other to great friends. It turned out to be something that we obviously kept doing. Now, Studio A is, I think, just incredible, and it’s everything that Steve wanted it to be, too. When we go there now, we’re not having too many problems. We still have little things that he gets irritated with us about and then new changes come about. We’ll want to redo something and he won’t see the point. But you know, he’s not a producer so ultimately it’s the band’s decision.
