ADAM N. COPELAND
An old, old song. The recording didn’t quite come out exactly as I wanted it, but we’ll be redo-ing all of these for the album proper.
Another new demo from Black Water. These things are hot like flapjacks, I tell ya.
This is - as my dear old dad would say - “angry young man music”. Then he would try to convince me to name my band SWOLLEN SCROTUM. It was originally about some particularly unsavory person I met. Then I thought it would be a lot more interesting if I made it about a girl. So, any likenesses to persons alive, dead, or imaginary are purely coincidental.
Trying to sneak this in before my battery dies.
Another Black Water tune:
No I have not forgotten about Coyote Park in the midst of all my Black Water excitement.
I still have to write a song or two for the upcoming Spring / Summer issue of Parlor. The theme is beverages, of the alcoholic type. I think I have finally (after several failed attempts) to come up with a song structure I am happy with. No crazy key changes this time, no weirdness, just a pretty straightforward 3/4 stomp in E major.
Coming soon, words and a proper recording.
This is a brand new Black Water song called In The Wild.
It’s compiled from many older parts. It was featured in a video I put up on the MySpace a little while ago, but here is a 99% finished version:
A lot of fussing and fretting on my part has gone into the mix so far, which is really quite comical considering it’s only really a demo and we recorded this using:
* The shittiest and least transparent mic preamps on planet earth
* A pair of $49.99 Chinese-made condenser mics
* Masking tape
* Bottle caps
I have a (rather petty) personal rule that involves beer and no auto-tune, which means there was a lot of going back to the beginning and trying again on this one, especially during the choruses. On a separate note, this tune is admittedly a bit more sentimental than I would have let myself get as a Meltdown.
No worries: The drum overheads are pumped LOUD and there are OOHs. When those OOHs hit at the end I feel a wave of energy going across me not unlike being on controlled substances and encountering a half waking / dreaming state.
Jon Stewart tells Rush Limbaugh to take his EZPass and GTFO of NYC. I hope the bastard doesn’t move to Jersey.
A crosspost from Black Water.
We’re hard at work on the demos. I think we’ve got our foundation tracks down I’ll be looking at the takes and picking out nice ones, then we’ll roll over them with some overdubs. I’ll then go back and sprinkle some engineering magic all over it by yelling at speakers and telling them to give me more “air” and “thwack” and “sparkle”. I expect to have a finished copy of something really soon.
On carpetbagging. Our previous act The Meltdowns used to refer to ourselves as being from Jersey City. The filthy truth is that none of us actually lived in Chill Town, it is just where we gathered to practice. Only recently did it occur to me that I find this particularly unsavory and somewhat comparable to political carpetbagging - like our buddy Jim Tedisco up in NY-20, right?
The good people of JC - whom I have great respect for - work too hard at being good artists and musicians for us to trample on their reputation. Thus the very vague designation of “SUSSEX / ESSEX, New Jersey” over there on the left in our profile. If anything, let us trample on the general reputation of two specific counties.
Cheers!
We decided as a group that other bands can eat it and we are going to name ourselves what ever the hell we want to. Well, at least those were Gerry’s words. The rest of us nodded in agreement. Never cross Gerry when he gets the crazy eye.
So here we are. If you are a casual reader of this blogosphere, do me a favor and go over to Black Water’s MySpace page, add us, chat us up and what have you. We are dangerously close to having several demos completed. I simply have wait for a particularly beautiful hard drive I ordered in the mail from OWC to show up. Then we’ll be in business. From there, I imagine we’ll gig shortly and then it’s on to conquer the North Jersey exurbs in a campaign of violence, completely unchecked by the military or federal government.
In other news was made aware, almost accidentally, by my boss that this week (probably today, unsure) marks my five-year anniversary at my current employer. I would definitely mark that period as the last major turning point in my life - during 2003 I was dead broke, living in Texas in a mobile home, in an unhealthy relationship. It was pretty much only because I had supportive friends back in Jersey that I was able to pick myself up in 2004 and move on.
So cheers to that, eh?
Appropriate then, that exactly a half decade later I find myself at another turning point. Tally ho, to the future and so forth.
I have been informed that there is already a terrible “NO FRILLS RIFF ROCK” band by the name of BLACK WATER RISING in the New York area. I certainly don’t want people to mistake us for them. It may be necessary to rethink the name for the 100th time.
Some times you have to struggle for songs, and sometimes they just fall out of you while you are sick:
Beware: Here be yellings