Tag: Rob Gal

HEY, CALIFORNIA
me – vocals, mandolin

OVERTURE
Rob – guitar, baritone guitar
me – piano, tambourine

Things seem back on track. I did backing vocals for the end of HEY, CALIFORNIA. A small struggle at first, since it was early in the day for me and my voice is always a bit rough then. They were these atypical three part harmonies, that Rob kept making “the Mamas and the Papas” jokes about. He came up with them, though, so who’s to blame? I ask you. I also played mandolin during the bridge-like portion of the song. The song is very sparse up until the end, it should really stand out on the CD.

Rob added another electric guitar to OVERTURE, the Les Paul, and a solo. He also did a track playing my baritone guitar with a lot of fuzz on the sound. The baritone was in the studio throughout Slumberland, as well, but was never used. I did a piano track, the same method as the original version of this song that was scrapped, with the piano mic’d and run through the rotating leslie. That’s a fun sentence if you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I also played a really jazzy tambourine, in honor of my friend Scott (who isn’t dead).

We’ve added time this week, which is good. I’ll be there tomorrow during the day again, then Thursday day and night, and then Friday during the day. So I feel a lot more confident about getting the recording finished and getting “Jeff Lynne” mixed by Friday.

NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR
Rob – keys, guitar

OVERTURE
Rob – guitar

Some days just don’t go well. Nothing seems to catch and it just feels bogged down. Today was one of those days. NOW WAIT may be finished, it’ll depend on how we feel about it when we listen to it later. Rob was still doing some work on OVERTURE when I left, so I can’t say with any certainty that he finished his guitar part. Meanwhile, time grows short. Hopefully tomorrow will go smoother.

It occurred to me this morning that this is what I will remember in the long run about this CD, these last few days recording. Spring-like weather and listening to Swag on the drive in. Ah, the other high point of the day was during “Now Wait…” when Rob and I started trading T Rex songs for no reason. When Rob started doing the guitar tracks he kept breaking into Marc Bolan riffs. I doubt you’ll hear it in the song, but it was there. Rob also wrapped up the guitar work for “King Sham” after I left yesterday.

More tomorrow.

FINÉ
me – backing vox, guiro

HITCHCOCK BLONDE
Rob – guitar

JEFF LYNNE
me – backing vox, mellotron
Rob – violin samples

KING SHAM
me – backing vox

Well, you can see we got some work done. We’ve had a list for a while, I posted it here a few months ago, of what we had left to do on each song. Today we just started going down the list.

FINÉ didn’t need much. The ending has always seemed a little abrupt to me so we added some echoey backing vocals to it, and me playing the guiro (that’s that wooden fish looking thing that you play with a stick. I looked it up). Rob did a guitar solo for HITCHCOCK BLONDE on the Telecaster.

I added some backing vocals to KING SHAM, and we stacked some more on a couple of parts. I was a little distracted during it, because for some reason, I thought about Joseph Cotten’s character in The Third Man and couldn’t, for the life of me, remember his name. It drove me nuts the whole time I was doing the vocals.

The one disappointment was JEFF LYNNE. When I got asked to play IPO a few days ago, I wanted to put something on the CD they put out every year, and so I sent him some unfinished songs, and he requested this one, which didn’t come as a total shock (song about ELO on a CD for power pop freaks?). With Rob leaving town on April 8th the main priority is to get that song mixed and mastered, because the deadline is May 10 and Rob won’t be back before then. One of the remaining things was to add strings, but it’s become apparent that my ideas for the strings are simply overly ambitious given my budget and the time I have to complete them. So, Rob used some samples and doctored them so that they work well enough. I did manage to add the trademark backing vocal chorus to the song (we used a combination of me singing, and me playing the mellotron vocal sound), so at least that’s there. It’s hard to listen to the song and know whether or not it works, simply because I’m hearing it through this ELO haze that it doesn’t match up to.

I am happy that I’m playing more instruments, even if it is in a very limited fashion.

So, the plan is… Rob leaves town on April 8, so we’re shooting to have every bit of recording done before then. We’ll also mix “Jeff Lynne.” He’s back in town on May 24, when we’ll start mixing the rest of the CD. So, if I have it done by June 1, that’ll give me a month to get it pressed (with another 3 weeks buffer for problems) and ready in time for IPO.

I hope.

I did find out that Josh Joplin is recording his new CD at Adam (Fountains of Wayne, wrote the music for That Thing You Do!) Schlesinger’s studio. Rob says he’s a nice guy. I should get him to give him my CD.

Ah, one more thing. I have mentioned many times, I know, how long this CD has taken to record. I started work on it in October of 2000. But that length of time was deceptive, I know, because it’s been a bit here and a bit there. I totaled up my hours today and we’ve only actually spent 111 hours on it (including today, which was 6 hours, the longest we’ve spent in one day the whole time). Three weeks worth of five hour days. That’s all. Stretched out over a year and a half.

Next CD I’m doing in one shot. Oh, and Joseph Cotten’s name was “Holly Martins.” I thought of it after I finished the vocals.