Froggy B-sides and besides: Stormy Girl (2006)

And here goes another one from the vault. In September 2005, shortly after releasing Allergic, we had a call from a guy who directed movies asking if we'd like to do a few numbers for his latest film, tentatively called Ludgers Fall. Hard-working lads as we are, we wrote a song almost on the spot, loosely based on the story. The song later evolved to "Off The Tide".

And ater we'd finished writing it, a week later we entered the studio to record it and another one, "Sometimes", which I had in the shelf and had never used before, not really sure if it would work for the band. But for a film it's a different story, you can throw in all kinds of tunes, they'll somehow always fit in somewhere.

Anyway, we went again in March 2006 to Soja Music's Skyline studio in Fürstenwalde, which was being built at the moment, I believe we were the very first band to record there anyway (I think the last one too, but don't quote me on that). Toying with the idea of releasing the two songs on a EP, we needed two more songs to make it complete, one of them was a cover on Britney Spears' "Toxic" and then decided to do a run through one of Timo's numbers, "Stormy Girl", which he had written for his newly born daughter. We hadn't rehearsed the song all that well, really, but gave it a try even though I'm still not so sure about the chorus melody...

Tobi did his drum parts on a Monday, and a few days later, Timo and me went in to finish it. Music Man Sting Ray into his Marshall amp, and Paulina into the new Peavey Classic 30, clean and overdrive channels, no other amp used. And then a little wah festival for the, ehem, "solo" (if you can call it that), and fast vocals and a scream that wasn't supposed to be on the finished mix, but there it is anyway. Patrick Lyhs did the knob-tweaking in the studio and the mix was done by Michael Ehninger, a good friend of Tobi and film score writer.

We never went back to the song again (we played it just twice live, I believe), instead kept on writing new material. Timo, too, and not long after he came up with "Peaches" and "Time", so we settled for those two and left "Stormy" unused.

And there you go, another piece of froggy history.

Froggy B-sides and besides: Tomorrow Never Knows (2003)

Broswing through my computer files the other day I found a few interesting songs we recorded at some time or another which have never been used/surfaced/are too silly to release. It's quite a few, so what better time to start dusting them off than right now, huh?
Here's the first of them, Tomorrow Never Knows, a Beatles cover from the Revolver album and one of my favourite songs of them.




Way back in May 2003, after we had finished tracking the drums and bass parts for Allergic at Jürgen Block's TB Sound Studio, and being still rather early in the afternoon, I asked Tyronne (our drummer back then), to play a double-bass straight groove for a couple of minutes, and I would tell him when to stop.
'What is it we're playing then?' he kept asking.
'Just track it, get that double-bass going like a true metalhead, dude' I kept telling him.
I had only told Jürgen I'd love to record a cover of Tomorrow Never Knows, frogstyle, Timo didn't know it neither, but as it is in the same key all through the song, he'd get it quicker than usual.
And so for the next three minutes, Ringotyronne beat the shit out of his drumkit without a clue of it all. And finished it was.
'Hey, Stone, what song was that, pretty heavy, man!'
'Just wait and see, hehe'

A few days later, Timo and I got back to the studio one afternoon to finish the song. He tracked his bass in the blink of an eye, and then it was time for guitar mayhem. I had just bought my first Les Paul (Paulina) and used it here for the very first time. After rather straight-metal rhythm guitar and its obvious oberdub, Timo got hold of a Guild SG-style guitar lying around and I went down to the floor to tweak all possible pedals at once in order to get that very freaky "solo" in the middle. It's just Timo playing the chords and me fucking around with the effects. Meanwhile, Jürgen was having the time of his life (give the man some gadgets and he'll be pleased for a loooong while).

And the result... well, you can hear it. I bet Lennon would love its freakiness for sure. This one's for you, mate.

Hello?

Long time, no see/read. Well, we've been getting some well-deserved vacation time and keeping a low profile. But here we are again.
As you might have seen, our latest record Not Completely Clean is out on BlackRock Records, and at the moment you can pick it up at Amazon or at our gigs. We're currently rehearsing again with our newest band member/oldest band memeber Jorge, who seems to be liking it here in Berlin, and whose guitar you might have already heard at one or two gigs lately.
Oh, and by the way, this Wednesday we're playing the Oxident bar in Berlin, an intimate acoustic show for free for our closest friends, to make up for the last-minute cancellation of last time due to some asshole neighbour. Take care!