Mudvayne

Last night Darian and I went ot Mudvayne at EarthLink Live. The show was sold out, but one of the benefits of working at EarthLink paid off. EarthLink corporate gets a handful of free tickets to every show at EarthLive so I did a little research and was able to get a couple of complimentary tickets for the show.

Darian and I got to the show about 7:00pm. Pretty much the scheduled start time. One of the bands, American Head Charge, had their bus break down so the show started a little later to accomodate the missing set.

We got inside and got a nice seat about 5 rows off of the floor. Darian wanted to live the concert so she went down to the floor, and I was quite content sitting back in my chair and watching and listening to the show.

Before the first band went on I checked out the merch booth and found out Mudvayne was doing an aftershow autograph of their new disc if you bought it. Since Darian is no longer a kid I ended up buying to copies, not to mention I already owned it so now we've got three copies of the disc.

First band was Bloodsimple. Out of New York and along the lines of the new metal scene. More hard core than progressive, more power than dynamics. Singer's voice was a little too cookie monster for me, but the music was good and the band was tight.

Second band was Life Of Agony. Also out of New York, and a band with some history. Vocalist Whitfield Crane from Ugly Kid Joe joined them briefly in the late 90s'. This was a reunited lineup from the early 90s and the music went over well. Darian commented that they were a little more commercial sounding than the first band.

Mudvayne came out and played a great set. I saw them previously on September 10,2001 the day before the dreaded 9-11. Ironically the night I saw them, absolute esacpe-ism. The band were decked out in full makeup, actually with bullet holes to their head just like they were to the MTV VMAs that year, actually just a few days prior. They played an outdoor venue which is always odd to me for this type of metal show. It happened to be at the end of the first tour so Chad's (at that time Kud's) vocals were pretty shot, and the band didn't really have as strong a catalog to pull from. Putting together an hour plus show for an album that was only 50 minutes without the interludes between songs prooved tough. I really enjoyed that show but was pleased to see how far they've come since. Ironically 9-11 was about the time they took off the makeup for good. I don't know if it was simply coincidence or not but the escapism is now less about the theatrics and more about the music.

Now back to the show in Atlanta. Fantastic set. Unlike the Austin show in 2001 they now have 3 great albums and for me their debut LD 50 is the weakest of the three. They opened the set with Determined and proceeded to run through a farily even set incorporating songs off the three major label releases.

In no particular order here is the set list I was able to cobble together.
Determined
Silenced
Internal Primates Forever
Happy?
Death Blooms
IMN
-1
Nothing To Gein
Mercy, Severity
World So Cold
Not Falling
Dig

Highlights for me were Determined, Happy?, and World So Cold. Chad's voice sounded fantastic on the melodic parts and the screaming never disappointed. I remember when World So Cold came out as a single about 18 months back, they were promoting it on tv and also released a live bootleg. I was disappointed with the performances, the band looked exhausted, and the music and vocals weren't up to the standard I was hoping. Last night World So Cold blew away any previous disappointments. Chad did a little let's hear it for our troops speech right before the song, with the main message being just because stuff isn't in your backyard doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Dig closed the night and although that was the song that gave 90% of the crowd their first exposure to Mudvayne it almost seems like it doesn't stand up to the newer material. I'm hoping Happy? takes this band from bringing in gold records to finally crossing into the platinum.

The aftershow was non-eventful. No pictures and you could only get one item signed. I asked Matt what drum pedals he uses and he said Pearl. No longer the Tama iron cobras, that I still play to this day. Ryan was extremely nice to Darian. As Darian had her cd signed she said "Thank you so very much" to which his reply was "You're welcome so very much". She defintely got a kick out of this. Gregg signed looked at me I said thanks and he didn't really say anything. And then Chad at the end actually reached out and waited for me to shake his hand. He was a true class act.

I'll post some pics from the show, and scans of the autographs and aftershow pass shortly.

It had been too long since I had been to a great metal show. Different than the 80s and 90s but a great experience nonetheless.

Direct from Portland Mr. Brown

The family got to hang with long time friend I originally met in Austin at pcOrder. Corregan has been on a heavy consulting gig living everywhere but home for the last 9 months. We joked about getting the original "Band" back together from Austin, renting a studio in some far-off land and spend a week recording an album.

Could be fun. And my chops aren't too far from being ready for a project like that. Just don't know if any of the other guys still play. Maybe I'll trickle out the emails in the next week and see if anyone is interested.

Studio Day 32 / 33

Tuesday we worked on the Kiss Me Goodbye bass part. Fairly non eventful and went pretty quickly. We wrapped up in a little under two hours.

Thursday it was time to move back to acoustic guitars. I had a confernce call for work that ended up lasting until about 9:40pm or so. As a result I didn't get to the studio until about 10pm. The band had been recording acoustic parts for Mr. Knowitall. They had tried several different iterations of setting up mics, first a 57, then a condensor, both had their pros and cons. Since the focus was on sound more than performance the acoustic performance wasn't up to the standard we had set. On listen back we also heard some things we wanted to change about the part. When Mike and Katie get back from their trip to Wyoming we will pick up where we left off.

The bad news of the night was on listen back the bass part to Mr. Knowitall ends up being too laid back. So we will probably have to retrack that part as well.

1 step forward and 2 steps back.

Studio Day 30 / 31

This past week the band made it into the studio twice. The first in some time. Tuesday we tackled the last drum track for Kiss Me Goodbye...kind of. After running through a rough take we went back and listened to the drum track from the demo we did last August. We agreed that it would be impossible to get a better performance. At the time we playing a few shows a month, and I was at the peak of my playing. The performance on that recording I feel is one of the best I've had. So, I spend about an hour figuring out how to lift that performance from the original demo and putting it into the protools template for the EP we are now working on. Success. I'll need to re-eq and re-mix the drums but the performance is complete. Now all of my drum tracks are done. That is unless I go back and re-record All About You. I'm not 100% comfortable with that performance and think I should go back and re-record. It will probably take 2-3 hours on a weekend to knock out, maybe next weekend.

Thursday we shifted gears to work on the final bass tracks. Mike G worked on Mr. Knowitall. We ran through the song a few times, at times Mike was right on top of the beat, at times he was just behind it. We decided we liked the feel of him playing right behind the beat. We stitched together parts to reconstruct the verse and chorus and had Mike re-perform the final minute of the song. We've got a bass part we are all happy with. One more bass part to go.

Studio Day 29

Mr. Knowitall drums are complete. I went in on a Sunday and cut the tracks without the band. Being bummed about last Thursday I decided I could go in and finish up the track. It only took about two hours. I had Terry, my brother in law who was in town for the Steve Vai concert, man the protools system. He handled starting and stopping of the recording.

Studio Day 28

Mr. Knowitall

Started working on drums around 8:20 or so. Got some good drum sounds and spent about 45 minutes working with Mike V on composing the perfect part. So far so good.

Time to cut the track. 2 hours later still didn't have a track I was completely satisfied with. I'll try to cut the track again next time.

Not a great night.

Studio Day 27

I made it back to the studio last night. We moved recording to Wednesday this week instead of Tuesday because Mike and Katie had a songwriting class.

I had a long conference call with the SK team last night so we got started just a little before 9pm. Ran through what they had recorded over the last two weeks and some great sounding acoustic parts as well as some cool bass lines on Lonely One. I could tell Mike G probably spent a good bit of time coming up with that new part.

Since my travel schedule doesn't appear to be letting up anytime soon they wanted to get me on drums to finish my last two tracks. Considering it had been nearly 4 weeks since I picked up sticks I knew there wasn't much hope for cutting a track. We started on Mr. Knowitall and realized the scratch guitar track didn't have the arrangement we wanted so first thing was to recut the scratch. Next, our time was spent on getting the mics set back on the drums and letting me run through a few takes. Tonight I hope to cut the track.

Goals tonight, spend about an hour working on sounds, and then spend 2 hours working on recording. Mike V had some good ideas on how to make the drum part both more tasteful and more interesting so that will probably take some time to work through. Fortunately this is one of the easiest tracks for me to play to so I'm hopeful we can get a keeper tonight.

Studio Day 25/26

Last week Katie sent a couple of more very quick updates.

So bass is done on Lonely and All About You and acoustic is done on Lonely One. It took us a couple days to get an acoustic sound. All About You won't take long to get the Acoustic done....so Tuesday should be a productive night assuming you can be here....if you won't to take a break from your travels we can start Wednesday.

And we even had an exchange about Mike G missing me :-)

Katie > Mike G said you sux!!!
Me > what is that about? Mike G sux!
Katie > I guess that is his way of saying he misses you!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha

Studio Day 25/26

Last week Katie sent a couple of more very quick updates.

So bass is done on Lonely and All About You and acoustic is done on Lonely One. It took us a couple days to get an acoustic sound. All About You won't take long to get the Acoustic done....so Tuesday should be a productive night assuming you can be here....if you won't to take a break from your travels we can start Wednesday.

And we even had an exchange about Mike G missing me :-)

Katie > Mike G said you sux!!!
Me > what is that about? Mike G sux!
Katie > I guess that is his way of saying he misses you!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha

I'm back

I got back in the States last night. It's good to be back. Sleeping has always been a problem when I return to the US although last night I slept until about 6am. Realizing I normally wake up at 8:30am or so this wasn't too bad. However I took a 3 hour nap today which I'm sure will screw things up.

This next weekend Terry and Buffy are coming into town and Terry and I will be heading to the Steve Vai show with the EVO experience and meet and greet. I was planning to see Kings Of Leon Friday night but it looks like they've already sold out. I'll have to watch for tickets to open up or maybe catch them on their next tour.

Speaking of meet and greets and platinum experiences, when I was in Korea I ordered a couple of tickets to the Motley Crue show in Atlanta. I ordered the platinum tickets through their fan club and are guaranteed seats in the first two rows with a photo and meet and greet after the show. Just like the KISS ticket I had back in 2003. The funny thing is the price for 2 tickets with all original members to the Crue is less than 1 ticket to KISS with 2 original members. I guess Paul and Gene can still demand more than the Crue.

Norah Jones in Seoul

After working a few days in Seoul I glanced onto Pollstar's Site to see if there was any interesting shows in Seoul while I'm here. Norah Jones was listed so after spending one night trying to read Korean web sites, and then working two days with the concierge I finally managed to get tickets.

Turns out they don't seem to have a 24 hour ticketmaster type site so the first night I went to the hotel concierge they just stated that the box office was closed and to try again the next day. I came back a couple of nights later and finally got the concierge to get some information. Once again the box office was closed but the concierge managed to call the production company and reserved two tickets under my name.

Picking up will call tickets always makes me nervous, much less doing this in a foreign country but we had no problems getting them. Since we had VIP seats we were able to go to a pre party and post party event for free drinks. Nothing too exciting, and it turned out Chivas was the only thing served but at least it was free. We get inside the venue and it turns out we have 2nd row center tickets and no one ended up sitting on the front row so we had a great view the entire night.

Concert was great, the band was great and the the show was well mixed. The hall had quite a bit of echo which lent itself well for some of the tunes. Toward the end of the show Norah played Creepin' In a song that she did a duet with Dolly Parton on her cd. The crowd had been extremely calm, no talking, clapping immediately after a song then absolute silence. When she was introducing the song she mentioned that with the large space in front of the stage between the front row that people could use the space to dance. And then things got out of control. You had probably a hundred people on both sides of the venue crowd up on the edge of the front row trying to dance. It was an extremely bizarre sight, and Seoul security seemed in over their head.

The show lasted about two hours and covered many of my favorites including Nightingale.

Studio Day 23/24 update from Katie

And progress in the studio continues...

Here is an update from Katie on the studio activities this week.

Hey David,
If you wanted to keep your blog going for the studio days here is an
update.
Tuesday March 1st we worked on Bass for Lonely One. Mike G got his amp
fixed so he played through his amp for a couple run throughs, but listening
back to the bass through the Peavy sounded so much better. So, the Mike's
set up the bass in the hall with the Peavy and got a good sound. Mike G
played bass all night....I fell asleep and woke up at 10:30 finding that
the bass part had been changed and it sounded really cool. I left about
10:30 and the Mike's stayed punching in parts and had a late night....think
they ended up heading out abut midnight with a bass part that they were
happy with.

Tonight March 3rd will be the guitars!!!!!
I will be playing my acoustic on both Lonely One and All About You, guess
we will pick one and see how long it takes!!!! Then I have my rhythm
electric and Mike V has his lead parts.....hopefully we will be done with
all the guitars for both by the time you get back!!!!!!

If we finish before you get back I told Mike V that I am interested in
putting a very simple all acoustic song on the CD...it shouldn't take
long....but I thought it would show a little diversity and it's a song that
I personally really like and would like to hear it recorded. Just me
singing and my acoustic guitar.....we can toy with other instrument
ideas...but i don't want an electric sound....maybe a snare, shakers,
etc.....this will be a good test too for if we ever wanted to play acoustic
live.....The song is called "I didn't come here for this". I think we ran
through it one time in rehearsal, but that was it.......
Talk to ya later!

Back in Korea

I've made my third trip to Korea in 4 months. The trip over was an eventful and we got into the hotel around 7pm last night. A quick dinner at O'Kim's our favorite Irish Korean pub and back to the room.

Before I left Jacki and I made a run to Tower and I made one of my largest single purchases in some time. I also picked up a couple of out of print discs from the used bin. The Four Horsemen - Nobody Said It Was Easy, which Amazon had starting used at $30 and new for $95, and The Wildhearts - Earth vs. The Wildhearts - which used through Amazon started at $20. The remarkable thing is I paid less than $12 for the two of them together.

I also got to try out my new headphones the Shure E3c. These are sound isolation headphones that do not use active cancelling, but act more or less like an ear plug with a speaker in it. My only complaint is that it sometimes takes some work to get a good fit with a good clean signal, but when they are in they work great. Several times the flight attendant had to tap me because I was either looking out the window or had my eyes shut and had no idea she was there. The other nice thing about the headphones is that since so much outside noise is blocked out you don't have to run the volume nearly as loud as you would otherwise.

I'm off to work in Korea.

Studio Day 22

Mike G finished up his part on All About You Wednesday night. We had a workable part after about an hour and half into it. I had to do some minor editing on the verse and Mike ended up punching in two parts. Remarkably all of the complicated licks he played he nailed, the trobule spots were around the verse and the groove.

Usually ends up being the opposite problem for me.

I'm off to Korea for two weeks so the band will be on their own. Mike V has been learning how to use the ProTools rig so I'm hopeful guitars and bass will be wrapped up for Lonely One and All About You when I get back.

Studio Day 21

Mike G continued working on his bass part last night for All About You. We aren't there quite yet but he is close. We should wrap up All About You tonight. The guy worked his ass off last night, and by far we have created the most complicated bass part for a Superlatives song to date.

I'm expecting he'll nail it within the first hour tonight and then we can work on Lonely One.

Some Kind Of Monster

Last weekend I was listening to Eddie Trunk's show on the Boneyard on XM Radio. Last weekend they had Bruce Sinofsky one of the directors on the show. Turns out that Bruce brought along a few copies to give away and I actually won one of them autographed by Bruce on the show. I got it in the mail today and watched about an hour and half.

I know I won't have anything interesting to say that hasn't been said by the press or in other reviews but Metallica was on their last legs. I hate to say it but it almost becomes comical considering they are the biggest metal band in the world and will probably have that title for many more years to come. If you haven't seen the movie check it out, the scenes with Metallica in group therapy are some of the best behind the music type stuff you will ever see.

And I must say thanks to Bruce Sinofsky, Eddie Trunk, XM Radio and Paramount Home Video for a copy of the DVD.

Studio Day 20

Tonight we spent working on Mike G's bass part to All About You. It was a pretty full night. We experimented with micing up both of his cabinets one with the bass drum mic and one with the floor tom mic. It was interesting to hear how the sounds differed. By itself the bass drum mic had very little definition, but the floor tom mic wasn't nearly as full sounding. Together it had clarity and punchness. I through a little compression onto the floor tom mic and we ended up with a good bass tone.

We ran Mike through the ringer tonight. Deconstructed his part entirely and built it back up. By the end of the night he had some pretty cool ideas and a good outline of a part for recording. Then all of a sudden we lost bass sound. He blew his amp. The first casualty of the recording sessions. At this point we went direct and Mike was able to lay down a rough outline of a final part.

We burned a cd with a rough mix for Mike to practice with and will continue again next Tuesday.

Darian joined us at the studio tonight and I took some pretty funny video of her dancing to and singing All About You on my Treo 650. I'll try to upload the video here so you can take a look. Pretty funny stuff!

Studio Day 19

Two hours and one drum track later All About You drums are complete. Drum sounds cooperated and I was able to get a good take the third or fourth time through the song.

We wrapped about an hour earlier than normal.

Bass tracks are next for Thursday.

Studio Day 18

Just the Mike(s) and I in the studio this past Thursday. Spent about 2 hours cleaning up the drum sounds. We had the ring problem on the second tom. When the bass drum is kicking a way the second tom just resonates. Nice sound, but not what you want for recording.

Once we got that under control I did a take and perhaps a first we kept the first take. The very intro of the song wasn't locked in so I lifted a part from the middle of the song that has the same part and then we had a finished drum part. The quickest recording ever.

I ended up spending about an hour listening to the take over and over to make sure there wasn't anything we needed to fix or improve. But no changes were necessary.

Lonely One drum part is recorded... All About You will be next.

Motley Crue in the news

Motley is back in the billboard top 10 with their new greatest hits compilation Red, White and Crue. The came in at number 6 with 90,000 units sold.

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000796781

And then in not so good Motley news is that Mick Mars is being sued for $10M from an ex.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/09/crue.palimony.reut/index.html

Not bad for a week in the Crue.