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myspace - listening - wal-mart - zombies

well will you look at that. two postings in a week. i've decided that since i get half of my comments from emails from here and the other half from comments from myspace, i'm going to try to integrate the two. its great to be able to post blogs that have been subscribed to on myspace... but it sucks that there's no real / coherent format for blogs on myspace.

i'll figure it out. if you haven't already noticed, the site has been halted for the 452nd time. i have ONE MORE EDIT to finish, which will be done by thursday night. I HOPE.

as of this friday night, if the cosmos is on my side, we will have v 1.0 of our record on disc. what does this mean?

it means a week or two of listening on every possible system and taking notes... at that point we will go back in the studio and make the needed tweeks in order to get it to sound good in the "real world."

since we are leading up to the mastering process, i've been listening to alternate media lately. cassette, older cd masters, vinyl, etc. its interesting how the ear of the western world has changed since let's say...

1977. that was the year of steely dan's aja and fleetwood mac's rumours. both hogh points of those bands careers. i've also been listening to old prince, madonna, michael jackson, peter gabriel, joe jackson, etc...

there's this girl i'm kinda sweet on at the moment... and she not only has a blackbelt in karate... she has a fetish for my 80's vinyl. she actually has the hots for my dusty records. and what does this mean?

well first of all she's my age - which means unlike most of my friends, she actually get's my references. and unlike today's 21 year olds who listen to 80's music from a glazed over lens of pop cultural irony, she listens to it based on the pea-soup that is pre-adolescent memory. this also means that she has pulled out some tracks on wax from my collection that have kinda blown me away.

viva la vinyl. what else...

oh... i've also been comparing the older and newer tracks of wiseblood to each other and its funny that this record actually has a production life span. there's an entire record that nobody will ever hear. the drummers who's tracking session were replaced... the songs that were recorded, then re-recorded and then DROPPED from the record...

the initial "scratch" vocal tracks that were replaced by home studio vocal tracks that were eventually replaced in the studio... the acoustic and electric guitar parts that were recorded and re-recorded, etc...

may of the songs on the record have vastly different versions sitting on hard drives around birmingham.

for instance... there's this song that ashby wrote after we had basically recorded the record at home... just before we decided to re-record some drums and acoustic guitars and most of the vocals... the song is called hwy... and by now, a lot of our inner circle of friends have either heard it or have some early demo version of it.

he started singing it at sessions about 13 months ago... and at the time it was really fast. i had him slow it down and instantly i heard a huge gem. it had to go on the record, no matter what. everything about the song has been a joy. i did the drum track in one take. the bassline in a really spooky way, wraps itself around the acoustic guitar part and vocal...

the lyrics are among the best on the record, and personally, i think my contributions production-wise is some of my best work. in order to give a few of you some clarity on the "wiseblood" lifespan thing.

wal-mart continues to suck ass... no matter what they are telling you in the press...

it is still bullshit on top of bullshit. but at least they know that some of us americans are onto them. there are hundreds of cities and towns that have managed to keep them AWAY as opposed to the thousands that have welcomed them in only to have their small towns liquidated. welcome to mass corporations.

do yourself a favor. walk around a busy stretch of town. count the corporate logos around you. look at the buildings vs. the parking lots.

YOU ARE ONLY WORTH AS MUCH AS YOU ARE ABLE TO BUY.

but whatever... if you shop there, i hope you kill yourself eventually. if you are afraid... i might be able to assist. in the meantime... go fuck yourself.

if you don't shop there... bravo. you aren't a consumer zombie

speaking of zombies... i finally watched land of the dead... i may have mentioned this already. i've started filling up my netflix Q with zombie movies. nice. do yourself a favor... rent some. they are SOOO fun. and in closing...

the spots are on a roll in the creative department. everything we messed around with this weekend was great. i'm excited about our "non-record, record"

next time... my thoughts on the birmingham rock scene.

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