Feester's Queest

Toby and Preston finished the cover art. It is an awesome triptych which I'm sure will look amazing printed-up. Here is the center panel:

A few statistics

So... I've been kind of obsessed with this album. I'm still waiting on Toby and Preston to finish the album art, but the recording is done. So I've been listening to the complete 2 1/4 hours of the album quite a lot lately while I wait for them to finish. Try as I might to listen to other things, I find myself returning to Fustercluck!!! again and again. Fortunately, I think it's an album that can withstand that amount of concentration.

But, I found some interesting patterns emerging as I listened. For example, I think this is an album that has a lot of "seams showing": there's some false starts, a lot of count-ins ("1, 2, 3, 4" then music), and chatter. I don't think there's any greater meaning to it than that I liked the mood created for the listener by leaving this stuff in, but when you're obsessed about a thing (like I am right now)... well, you think maybe making some stats might be illuminating -- or, at least, maybe fun. Or at least give me some outlet for my obsessive compulsion right now.

A few statistics
*Total number of tracks on Fustercluck!!!: 45
*Number of tracks with count-ins: 8 (includes 2 songs where Doug counts-in for the band after Justin has already done the beginning of the song solo)
*Number of tracks with chatter before or after the song: 7
*Number of songs with false starts: 2
*Number of collaborators (non-band members) featured on the album: 11
*Collaborator who appears most on the album: Debe Dalton (plays banjo and/or sings on 5 songs, including the 8-minute "A Boy Named Snommit")
*Collaborator who appears least on the album: Joe Crow Ryan (sings backup on the choruses of "(Re-) Run-DMC")
*Number of hidden tracks: 1

Profiles in Fandom and Collaboration #7: Chris Andersen

The group featured above is The Christian Pirate Puppets. The guitarist is Toby Goodshank. The keyboardist is Peter Speer. And the singer is Chris Andersen.

The CPP started off as band that set the writings of teenagers and preteens to improvised musical backgrounds on their first 2 CDs, White, Manlike Structure... and Unpruded, before they shifted to original compositions like the video posted above, "Untimely Death, Pt. 2." ("Untimely Death, Pt. 1" is an excerpt from a shitty novel about sex and murder full of the purplest prose not written by teenagers and preteens. Both tracks are on the highly recommended Unpruded, available from Olive Juice.)

Listening to The Christian Pirate Puppets, I was inspired to recruit the very talented Chris Andersen to help us out with a song that just wasn't quite working. The song is called "Red," and it is about being besieged with bugbites at night. For some reason, the song lacked oomph. Elastic No-No Band played it both fast and slow in live shows (one of the fast live versions is included on Fustercluck!!!), but the tune never really made anybody jump for joy -- in the crowd or in the band.

But what if I subjected the lyrics of the song to the kind of recitation Chris did for CPP all the time? His brand of melodramatic mania might goose the song right where it needed it. And, by jove, I think it worked.

To show you what I mean, let me offer you 2 live clips: one of the original version of "Red" and one featuring Chris Andersen.
MP3: "Red" - live 11 March 2007 (slow and mediocre)

MP3: "Red" - live 21 February 2008 (faster and markedly improved - feat. Chris Andersen)

There. See what I mean? It ain't bad without Chris (although the mix is kinda lame so you can't hear Herb very well during his piano solo), but the tune is a heck of a lot better WITH Chris. And the studio version on the record is even better.

Profiles in Fandom and Collaboration #6: Liv Carrow

Liv Carrow has always struck me as simultaneously a tender and tough performer. The songs she writes are simultaneously sweet and cynical -- naive and worldly. One time when I saw her perform at Sidewalk, she did a Harry Nilsson cover from The Point, and I immediately saw the connection.

Nilsson is the kind of guy who can sing a tender love ballad, then sing an upbeat number with the hook "You're breaking my heart/ You're tearing it apart/ So fuck you," then get a sing-along going with a tune about wanting to die before you get too old and incapacitated. That mixture of sensitivity and irreverence that characterizes Nilsson reminds me of Liv Carrow too.

So immediately after that Sidewalk show where she did the Point cover, I told Liv that we should do a cover of a Harry Nilsson song. I suggested "Daddy's Song," which I had first heard covered by The Monkees in their wacky-ass movie, Head. I even lent her my copy of the Head soundtrack, which has since disappeared off the face off the earth (if only I had had a CD burner at the time!!).

For the next year and a half probably, I would sporadically email Liv and say "Hey, let's record that song. Whadaya think?" And she would write back, "Sure." And nothing would come of it.

But I never forgot about the song. Last year, when I figured I needed better cash flow and I started busking in the subway, I added "Daddy's Song" to my repertoire, so that I could practice it a bunch.

Finally, a couple months ago, Liv and I found an afternoon where we could meet up and finally record the damn song. And once we were finally in the same room, performing the song was really fast and easy. We decided to trade verses back and forth, and as you hear the switch from person to person, it's kind of clear that I know the song from the Monkees' version and Liv was studying Nilsson's original version because she emulates his vocal acrobatics while I (and Davy Jones) take the more straightforward melodic route. Nonetheless, it turned out to be a nice blend. It's what I would characterize as a pleasantly bittersweet addition to the album.

Unfortunately for you, right now the tune is not posted anywhere as a download or as a stream, so you'll just have to wait 'til the album is out to see if you agree.

Album mastering complete!

John (our electric guitar player and leader of The Telethons) finished up the overdubs and final mix on "Snap Snap Goes The Mousetrap" mid-last week, which concluded all the mixing for the album.

Yesterday, I visited Major Matt at Olive Juice, and we mastered disc 2 of the album. My initial opinion that Disc 2 has a more natural flow (with a few oddball inclusions to break things up) than Disc 1 was confirmed as I sat there listening to Matt work his way through the disc.

This is certainly not to say that disc 1 is inferior. I feel like both discs are equally weighted with top-of-the-line "hits" and intriguing "deep cuts." This double-album is 2 1/4 hours of solid, worthwhile entertainment. Hell, a lot of James Bond movies can't even promise that.

Also, I realized yesterday (the 17th of October), as we were finishing up the mastering, that we were finishing the album 2 years to the day after we started recording it. The first Fustercluck!!! recording session was 17 Oct. 2007, and I recorded basic tracks for "Emotional Tourism" and a few other songs that day. At that time, the album was still going to be called Get Happier!!! (a reference to Elvis Costello's Get Happy!!); now, only the triple exclamation points remain.

So... now the only thing I'm waiting on, before sending the materials off to the pressing plant, is the finalized cover art from Toby Goodshank and Preston Spurlock. When I ask them for updates, all they can tell me is "Feester's Qweest" over and over again, which I'm sure is just some artist thing.

Profiles in Fandom and Collaboration #5: Brook Pridemore

I gotta admit something. The first time I met Brook Pridemore, I didn't really like him. The first time I heard his music I wasn't impressed.

Now, 2 or 3 years later, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking then. Now Brook Pridemore is not only one of my favorite performers, he is also one of my favorite people. His work ethic (he's on tour most of the year) and remarkable talent are incredibly inspiring to me as a fellow performer.

The music video I directed for him is one of the favorite things I've made:


Asking Brook to collaborate on the writing and recording of a song for this project was a no-brainer. And Brook was excited to do it. At first, he really wanted to do a gay disco song -- inspired, I'm pretty sure, by "Friends" by Ween. Of his many ideas for this fabled song, the only one I remember is "The Dancefloor (My 4th Addiction)." (Get it?)

We had one main songwriting session where Brook and I met up with Preston at the Brooklyn Tea Party, the sometime venue where Brook lives. We all goofed around and swapped instruments. Eventually, with Preston on piano, myself on bass, and Brook on drums, we worked out a chord progression for the gay disco song. Brook freestyled some lyrics over it. Then we never touched it again.

Brook had also gotten an idea to do a Folk Implosion rip-off -- a grunge throwback, a pastiche. So I got out the acoustic guitar, and I'm pretty sure I came up with the chords. Again, Brook freestyled some lyrics and the seed of the best song ever written -- "The Color Machine" -- was born. Later, Brook and I ironed out the lyrics in a long, painstaking session that took dozens upon dozens of seconds.

When it came time to record, Brook recruited his Crabs on Banjo bandmate Ariel Bitran to play electric guitar. Mere moments after first being introduced to "The Color Machine," Ariel came up with the scorching riff that is now the centerpiece of the song. We got Preston to play bass because... well, why not? And we got another of Brook's Crabs on Banjo bandmates, Brian Speaker to record the thing live at Brooklyn Tea Party.

We started recording about 45 minutes after we had all learned the song, and we didn't work out an ending, which is why the fade-out on this track is almost as long as the "Na na na" section of "Hey Jude". We actually probably had a better jam on the end of the previous take, but Brook's false ending (which he only did on the last take) was too wonderful to not have in the official version.

Go here to savor the mysterious lyrics and download an early demo version of "The Color Machine".

Also, you can hear the final version streaming on ENB's Myspace page.

Recording update

I am a little tardy with this, but the album -- less one track* -- is all mixed!

The past week and a half, Major Matt and myself have been working on the last 5 unfinished songs. They needed some backup singing and a final mix. This was more hellacious than it should have been.

I have always been fond of doing backup singing on ENB recordings, but I am not a technically good singer. So the ability to hold a note without wavering -- which is required for the kind of backups I hear in my head -- is often out of my grasp. Add to this the change of seasons, which has messed with my respiration and hindered my breathing, and you have one pissed-off inadequate singer.

A balance has to be struck between my perfectionist side (no really, I have one) and my more, shall we say, "antifolk" side, which doesn't want to sacrifice the spark of life from a performance in the service of getting it "right." People who are more talented than me can get away with only doing it once and saying, "Let's just go with that because it's fresh and unfussed-over." I even did it with a tune or two on this record. But, this time, I just had to sit in that fucking sound booth and do it over and over again. Sometimes the end product still isn't in tune.

Fuck.

Well, I've finally allowed these raw tracks to be pried out of my fingers in order that Matt could mix them and... I'm pretty damn happy. I think this album is fucking awesome, and I hope the reaction of listeners is at least half as excited as me.

*(The one track that remains to be mixed for the album is a tune that John Mulcahy and myself wrote and recorded in his parents' basement in New Jersey, and John will give it a final spit polish the next time he is New Jersey.)

That is all the news for now. Matt is on a tour with Barry Bliss and Toby Goodshank until mid-October, so we're taking a forced breather before the final mastering session. In the meanwhile, I will edify you with more Profiles in Fandom and Collaboration, so keep checking in.

Profiles in Fandom and Collaboration #4: Dave End

The first time I saw Dave End perform, I was literally astounded. I may be misremembering, but I think he only played a half-hour set, and yet he jammed in a full program of songs (although he has said Ani Difranco is an influence, he has a punk-rock-ish tendency to keep his songs under 2 minutes) along with a heaping helping of hilarious, ingratiating banter, into the brief time. A tremendous showman and a heck of a songwriter; I would normally be jealous, if I wasn't so happy just to watch him do what he does.

He is also a willing member of the Mutual Appreciation Society: he dug the No-No's CD that I gave him upon meeting. He has also said he's a big fan of My 3 Addictions, especially what he described as the "essay" structure of it, which he thought was kind of similar to the way he structured his own (extremely excellent) albums.

Before I had an exact idea to collaborate with a bunch of people for this album, I decided I wanted to do a duet with Dave. I hadn't really written any duets since "Nobody's Wife", but that didn't stop me. I took a song I wrote about a conversation I'd had with Daoud Tyler-Ameen, the bespectacled leader of Art Sorority For Girls, discussing the fact that I wore glasses throughout my childhood but now I am glasses-free. The song is called "Hey 2-Eyes." In the song, I turned Daoud into "they," as in the lyric: "'That never happens,' they said, when I said, 'They got better.'" In real life, it was Daoud who said that never happens, although he was far less strident about it than the "they" I created for the song.

Anyhow, I thought I would try Dave End out in the role of "They" -- giving him all the dialogue in the song credited to "They" -- and he did a marvelous job, adlibbing taunts to me during the live performance, some of which we kept for the recording (such as his cry of "Liar!" during the third verse).

During our initial rehearsals of "Hey 2-Eyes," Dave mentioned that he wanted to co-write a song about perceptions of masculinity with me. I always kept a spot earmarked for that song on the album, but circumstances -- such as Dave moving to Philly -- intervened and have prevented us (so far) from writing a song like that. Nonetheless, I think Dave's offer to co-write a song put me in the mindset of wanting to work with other writers on this album, and it led me to co-write songs with Thomas Patrick Maguire (a fella I already told you about here), with our electric guitarist John Mulcahy (also of The Telethons), and with Brook Pridemore (a fella I'll tell you about soon enough).

Anyhow, Dave: if you still want to write that song sometime, I'm still up for it.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to hear "Hey 2-Eyes," it is streaming now from our Myspace page, at this link.

"A Boy Named Snommit" and other songs about my friends

"A Boy Named Snommit" feat. Debe Dalton on banjo (final mix, unmastered) - free mp3

One of the first songs I explicitly wrote about one of my friends was called "Jeanette Is Working". It's about a woman named Jeanette, and how she... you know... works and stuff.

Jeanette is one of my high school friends from Toledo, Ohio, and once that song was done, there was much clamor amongst my other high school friends to write songs about them. Nonetheless, I did nothing of the sort.

I did end up writing a song called "You Think It's Wrong", about people who are too afraid to sing along to songs because they are afraid to expose their less-than-perfect singing voices to the world. I was admittedly inspired to write this, in part, by watching some of my Toledo friends play Karaoke Revolution (if you are unfamiliar it's kind of a singing-only forbear to the likes of the current slew of Rock Band/Guitar Hero games). In fact, my friend Evelyn assumed the song was explicitly about her, despite my protestations that it's not about any single person.

Since then, her husband Steve -- one of my very best friends from high school -- has been on me to write a song about him. When Steve told me that he and Evelyn were going to have a baby -- making them the first couple in my direct circle of friends to procreate -- I figured I had something to write about.

The finished song, called "A Boy Named Snommit," is about 60% fact-based, 15% false but based on some sort of inside joke that makes it poetically true, and then 25% completely false probably just because I needed to make some rhymes.

It is the longest song I've written, taking up four pages of typewritten lyrics and lasting around 8 minutes, and it also probably took the longest to write of anything I've ever done. To give you an idea, I started the song when Evelyn was a couple months pregnant and I finished writing the song when the kid was nearly a year old. That is, of course, if you don't count the fact that I had to redo the final stanza AFTER I HAD ALREADY RECORDED THE SONG because I got some facts incorrect (if you listen carefully to the recording, you can hear that the last verse was recorded in a slightly different ambience).

Because of the fact that I was writing this song through most of the planning, recording, and so forth of this album, I thought it was fitting to end the album with it. So that's why it is the final track on disc 2.

However, I know it might be hard work, when you're listening to the album, to get all the way there in a timely fashion, so I'm providing you with an early listen at the link up at the top of this entry.

Profiles in Fandom and Collaboration #3: Thomas Patrick Maguire

"The Congregation" by Elastic No-No Band and Thomas Patrick Maguire - free mp3

The first time I met Thomas Patrick Maguire was at the Anti-hootenanny open mic (now called "The Open Stage") at the Sidewalk. I don't remember many specific details of the night, although I do remember he gave me a copy of his first full-length CD, Pissing Streams. It's a great CD. Not only is it a great CD, but I found it very inspiring as both a performer and a recording artist. This is because Pissing Streams is ultra-lo-fi (a lot of times the drums are overmodulated and there is plenty of hiss) but it does not affect the quality of the album. The awesome songwriting and performances hold up well despite the low-budget circumstances.

Tom and I didn't immediately start hanging out after that, but at some point, we started going to movies in Queens (where Tom is from) together -- because I am a movie addict, and because tickets are mad cheap where Tom lives.

I also wound up shooting 2 super-low-budget music videos for Tom, from his latest full-length, A Slight Return.

One was shot in his apartment, for the song "Unemployment Dreams":


The other was shot all around his neighborhood -- "Evening News":


Sometime last year, I had a couple of pieces of instrumental guitar that I wasn't quite sure what to do with. I thought, since I was I trying to do a bunch of collaborations, that I would try them out on Tom and see if he could come up with any words. And boy, he sure did.

For the first, more developed piece of music, he sat in my living room and started spinning lyrics about a religious fanatic inspired to murder his fellow parishioners by an insane preacher. Not at all the kind of thing I would write about, but hey -- that's why you collaborate, right? I wound up writing a couple of lines myself. The one I am most proud of -- because it seems like something out of a Johnny Cash murder ballad -- is this: "And the choir sang 'Hallelujah'/ But that ain't much good when my bullets cut right through ya." I also gave the song its title: "The Congregation." Click here for lyrics and an mp3 of the song.

The other guitar bit wasn't really very developed and was more of a repetitive rhythmic thing -- which is partly what made think it would be a good choice to work on with Tom. A lot of the guitar parts for his songs have a strong rhythmic quality that is part of what makes them so entertaining.

Tom couldn't really come up with full lyrics as he sat in my living room, so I quickly recorded about 45 seconds of the guitar part on my laptop and put it on his mp3 player to take home. The next time we met up, he had composed a terse little tribute to Omar from The Wire, a character and a show I am completely unfamiliar with.

In the spirit of keeping it real, we recorded both songs on my laptop using Garageband -- going so far as to record "Ode To Omar" in my bathroom to get the right reverb.

I haven't talked to Tom in a little bit, but I think our next collaboration will be a new music video for a song from his new EP, Corporation Town. Keep an eye out for it.

Probable tracklist for disc 2

Last month, I put up the finalized tracklist for disc 1 of our upcoming double-album. It's in this entry:
http://fustersongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/finalizing-tracklist-on-disc-1.html

If you've been paying attention, I've also edited that entry several times in the past months, rearranging the order slightly. But I'm pretty sure we've got the final finalized final tracklist up there now.

Well, I think I've got disc 2's order pretty much pinned down now too. Here goes:

1. Emotional Tourism (go here to get a free mp3 of this song)
2. Making Out At Work (Don't Work) (feat. Toby Goodshank)
3. Oh Magali
4. Go Tell Aunt Rhody (feat. Debe Dalton)
5. Something You Should Know (go here to hear the original 2004 demo of this song)
6. No Elephant Likes Cheese, Baby (Homage To Brion Gysin)
7. Hot As I Are (go here to hear the original 2004 demo of this song)
8. Another Day, Another Night (feat. Octavio Lafuentes)
9. I Wonder How Many People Are Screwing Tonight
10. I'd Love Just Once To See You (Beach Boys cover, feat. Toby Goodshank)
11. You Make Me Sick
12. The Worst Thing On My Resume
13. Turn Out Right Rock
14. New River Train (feat. Debe Dalton)
15. Snap Snap Goes The Mousetrap
16. I'm Gonna Treat This Room
17. Frankfurt, Frankfurt
18. Red (Ramshackle, Live Version)
19. Ode To Omar (feat. Thomas Patrick Maguire)
20. Americana Feg Meloxany
21. A Boy Named Snommit (feat. Debe Dalton)

It's interesting listening to the two discs and seeing the similarities and the differences. Disc 1, for instance, is much more distinctly batshit crazy, while disc 2 is a bit more conventional with a few oddities sprinkled here and there. Also, disc 2 has significantly fewer cover songs and fewer collaborations.

However, both discs feature a version of the song "Red" (an unconscious tribute to "Don't Cry" from Use Your Illusion I & II?) and both discs feature a song with a city's name listed twice in the title: "Abilene, Abilene" on disc 1 and "Frankfurt, Frankfurt" on disc 2.

I'm sure there's more interesting idiosyncrasies, but if I sit here thinking about them, I'll lose what's left of my mind.

Recording Update

So yesterday, I went over to Major Matt's with our electric guitar player John Mulcahy (also of The Telethons) and laid down the last bit of electric guitar for the album. I also recorded the last bit of lead vocals (barring any potential freakouts on my part, where I will be so ashamed of my voice that I will replace all my singing with Kanye West and a vocoder). This means... we are WAY CLOSE TO BEING DONE!

All that's left to record is just some backup vocals on 3 or 4 songs, and any random sound effects that the band can dream up (and trust me, our percussionist Doug Johnson, does just sit around dreaming of sounds he can layer onto a song -- and so far, all of it has sounded great... so we'll let him keep dreaming.)

Also, only 7 of the 45 tracks on the album have not had a final mix done. Yet.

So, in other words... we are WAY CLOSE TO BEING DONE!!!