Recording the new album - Day Eight

Start of a new week, and early in the morning I’m already with my headphones on, the guitar hanging, the amp buzzing and ready to continue where we left off last time. I brought my goold old SG guitar with me, the one I bought in LA and later almost destroyed after a gig… you can still see the scars on the body, oops. So we used it for the first track of the day, “No Better”, the newest of the songs on this album. Doing fat rhythm guitar tracks is always the best part of a session (as opposed to vocals, which is a drag to do), so that was the logic choice on a Monday morning to lift up the spirits and get energized, first on the SG and then on the Explorer. “No Better” is one of those songs that keeps pushing forward from the start, a lazy headbanger kind, but I love it. Getting the guitar licks on the chorus later proved a little bit more difficult that thought at first, as I’m such a lousy solo player anyway and couldn’t stop having a laugh all the time. The lack of sleep and the overcaffeinated coffee sometimes plays tricks on you...



After finishing with “No Better” we shifted all our attentions to “Frames Of The Past”, which we had already started with acoustics. We took out the Les Paul and did all the clean tracks, the fat tracks and than the solo tracks, for which we used an old CryBaby wah. The good old sound of a Paula into a wah, just classic. Even the solo went well, in less than the usual takes, hehe.



As we had done enough tracks and felt a little relaxed, we decided to start doing some vocals. I mean, you have to do them sooner or later, but better later than sooner. Or rather never than later, but we are pros (are we?). So back into the fishbowl, as we call the separate cabin where I have to hide to do the vocals. And off we went into “Frames Of The Past”, “Peaches” (one take of punk rock), “If You Only”, “Berlin” (that sounded really nice) and “Voltage”. By the time we finished with it, it was already fucking late again and time to go. And so we did after listening back to a few songs from the day so that everyone was happy, and off to bed.

Songs done:
“No Better”: all guitars
“Frames Of The Past”: electric guitars, solo, vocals
“Peaches”: Vocals
“If You Only”: vocals
“Berlin”: vocals
“What’s The Voltage William?”: vocals