The Strange World of Davidh - Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE (Originally Written and Posted Friday, October 20, 2006)
"A Step in a Different Direction or Is It Just Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen?"
I started recording my own solo stuff as well as stuff with Jay, we did lots and lots of boombox recording, we set up camp in his garage, luckily his mom let us set up in there because we had nowhere left to go...this is one of the many reasons Jay is so important to this story, he is one of the four elements to this story that without, there would be no story. The others i will not point out so obvious, it is for you to try and figure out...
In the summer of 1994 i was involved in a car accident, weirdly enough it happened turning on to the road i would end up living on 7 years later. I received a paltry settlement of 500 dollars but it was put to good use as i bought my first four track recorder. I bought a nice "Tascam Porta 02" Kit, came with the four track multi-tracker, headphones, a mic, some cassette tapes and a big multi-tracker trick book. It was nice to be able to do everything myself and do it quickly, it also schooled me on the art of mixing although in the early days i didn't push my vocals up to much as i was still coming to terms with them. Still friendly with Brance and Chad i rounded them up to try and record a full band piece, we recorded one song, a funk number and unfortunately that was the only song we recorded, however, for a few months in 1995 we got together a number of times to rehearse new material in the hopes of giving it another try but after awhile we realized the tree just wasn't going to bear any fruit.
In the Next 2 years Jay and I recorded hours and hours of material, some usable some not, by now Jay's mom had moved out and we had total run of the house...the first four track i had bought had burned out, most likely it wasn't built to be used as much as i used it, my brother had one in storage that i decided to borrow and we kept going, we used that thing to death and near the end it was barely usable and held together with duct tape, my friend Chris Butler and his band of merry men needed a four track and that's the last i ever saw of it. We went back to boombox recording for awhile and that got old really quick, i did some trading with our local instrument dealer and traded my amp for a "Fostex X" series multi-tracker, awesome machine, especially on the go. Sessions started again and were done with electric guitar/drum combo, some we only used keyboards/drum machines, and for a short time when Jay was without a drum set we did some Acoustic/homemade drum set sessions...while i talked earlier of Chad's homemade drum set, this one was not like it at all, this one resembled more of a normal set and sounded more like a normal set. Jay fashioned a tambourine as a snare, a bucket as a tom, a floor tom as a bass drum and a ride cymbal as a high hat/cymbal combo. The desire Jay had to create music by any means possible has remained unmatched by anyone i have ever known. In these 2 years it was like the floodgates of our minds had burst open, every sound emitted from our stockade of instruments was turned into a song...at the same time i was at home doing my solo stuff, i was limited to what i could do at home because my dad was not a fan of the loud music i played, so he was forever telling me to turn it off, all i had were Walkman headphones and they allowed to much background noise in so sessions were quick and to the point at my parent's house. I have never been to confident in my singing so doing that while my parents were home also became a problem, some sessions i would complete by using batteries in my four track and doing the vocal sessions in my car, in fact i did one complete live session (balancing guitars, keyboards and vocals all at the same time)of about 8 songs in my car when it got to late to record in my room one night, anything to be creative. It was also around this time i stared to flirt with horror imagery in my lyrics.
I had grown up exposed to the horror culture as my dad and brother were both horror fans so it was natural to me, some early movies i can remember going to see were The Brood, Halloween 3 and the Alchemist, i also have the slight memory of leaving our local drive-in one night and looking through the back window and the seeing the opening segment of Scanners, the part where the guy's head just explodes. So of course we got into film making, more or less horror film making. A few short movies were made consisting of either a maniac killing people or some type of comedy elements of the maniac, we did one on the art of low budget magic and another about a guy who had a magic skateboard that aided him in the search for his missing cat.
Marc Peterson was another friend who i recorded with around this time, we recorded a 4 song session but not much after that, but Marc's role is an important one as well, for one, he was one of the people who got me interested in being a musician in the first place. Marc started out as just a drummer before he came a multi-instrumentalist, in a way, back in the late 80's Marc effected me the same way Chad effected Jay, drums were cool and the looked like fun to play, skating killed my early interest in wanting to be in a band so for a while and i lost the fever. Somewhere floating in space is a tape of me and Marc playing a the songs of Skid Row and the Cure. Secondly, when the Smashing Pumpkins debuted the were shoved down my throat and i hated them, Gish could induce sickness in me, i would ride to school with Brance and he play the tape over and over and repeat, but over at Marc's one night i heard the opening snare of Cherub Rock and my ears pricked up and i thought "damn, that could the best thing i have ever heard in my life", and so now this is my mantra, "Billy Corgan is a Genius", say it with me and say it loud "BILLY CORGAN IS A GENIUS!". Word.
Their first album that came out with me as a fan was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and it greatly impacted my life, it got me through some of the worst times of my life, and it also helped shape my playing style and a lot of Jay's style as well, we were fully aware of the Billy/Jimmy writing connection and we were going to do our best to fully embrace that dynamic ourselves. While we are on the subject, another band that heavily influenced us was Helmet. They were like us, guys who had short hair, wore skate clothes but wrote these heavy metal songs, their look did not match their music and they were way ahead of their time, i was fortunate enough to see them in concert around this time and it was amazing, but unfortunately a lot of stuff from this time period i don't remember, this was the time in our lives when people were moving out of their parent's homes, or their parent's were excepting that their kids were growing up and let go a little bit and we took full advantage of it and partied quite a bit in those days and it's all kind of a haze to me now. There are plenty of bizarre things that happened during this time that weren't music related but we'll save those for another time.
We had a strange chemistry in those days, i felt we shared one mind...Jay always knew where i was going, i always knew where he was going, sometimes we practiced pre-written arrangements and then other times we were the improv machines, no doubt we were the demo machines, we demoed anything and everything, I love to record. Late into this time period we named ourselves 6ft Ghoul, (2 other names used briefly early on were Specimen and War Machine) the 2 years we played together were fantastic but something different was just around the corner.......
CHAPTER THREE (Originally Written and Posted Friday, October 20, 2006)
"A Step in a Different Direction or Is It Just Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen?"
I started recording my own solo stuff as well as stuff with Jay, we did lots and lots of boombox recording, we set up camp in his garage, luckily his mom let us set up in there because we had nowhere left to go...this is one of the many reasons Jay is so important to this story, he is one of the four elements to this story that without, there would be no story. The others i will not point out so obvious, it is for you to try and figure out...
In the summer of 1994 i was involved in a car accident, weirdly enough it happened turning on to the road i would end up living on 7 years later. I received a paltry settlement of 500 dollars but it was put to good use as i bought my first four track recorder. I bought a nice "Tascam Porta 02" Kit, came with the four track multi-tracker, headphones, a mic, some cassette tapes and a big multi-tracker trick book. It was nice to be able to do everything myself and do it quickly, it also schooled me on the art of mixing although in the early days i didn't push my vocals up to much as i was still coming to terms with them. Still friendly with Brance and Chad i rounded them up to try and record a full band piece, we recorded one song, a funk number and unfortunately that was the only song we recorded, however, for a few months in 1995 we got together a number of times to rehearse new material in the hopes of giving it another try but after awhile we realized the tree just wasn't going to bear any fruit.
In the Next 2 years Jay and I recorded hours and hours of material, some usable some not, by now Jay's mom had moved out and we had total run of the house...the first four track i had bought had burned out, most likely it wasn't built to be used as much as i used it, my brother had one in storage that i decided to borrow and we kept going, we used that thing to death and near the end it was barely usable and held together with duct tape, my friend Chris Butler and his band of merry men needed a four track and that's the last i ever saw of it. We went back to boombox recording for awhile and that got old really quick, i did some trading with our local instrument dealer and traded my amp for a "Fostex X" series multi-tracker, awesome machine, especially on the go. Sessions started again and were done with electric guitar/drum combo, some we only used keyboards/drum machines, and for a short time when Jay was without a drum set we did some Acoustic/homemade drum set sessions...while i talked earlier of Chad's homemade drum set, this one was not like it at all, this one resembled more of a normal set and sounded more like a normal set. Jay fashioned a tambourine as a snare, a bucket as a tom, a floor tom as a bass drum and a ride cymbal as a high hat/cymbal combo. The desire Jay had to create music by any means possible has remained unmatched by anyone i have ever known. In these 2 years it was like the floodgates of our minds had burst open, every sound emitted from our stockade of instruments was turned into a song...at the same time i was at home doing my solo stuff, i was limited to what i could do at home because my dad was not a fan of the loud music i played, so he was forever telling me to turn it off, all i had were Walkman headphones and they allowed to much background noise in so sessions were quick and to the point at my parent's house. I have never been to confident in my singing so doing that while my parents were home also became a problem, some sessions i would complete by using batteries in my four track and doing the vocal sessions in my car, in fact i did one complete live session (balancing guitars, keyboards and vocals all at the same time)of about 8 songs in my car when it got to late to record in my room one night, anything to be creative. It was also around this time i stared to flirt with horror imagery in my lyrics.
I had grown up exposed to the horror culture as my dad and brother were both horror fans so it was natural to me, some early movies i can remember going to see were The Brood, Halloween 3 and the Alchemist, i also have the slight memory of leaving our local drive-in one night and looking through the back window and the seeing the opening segment of Scanners, the part where the guy's head just explodes. So of course we got into film making, more or less horror film making. A few short movies were made consisting of either a maniac killing people or some type of comedy elements of the maniac, we did one on the art of low budget magic and another about a guy who had a magic skateboard that aided him in the search for his missing cat.
Marc Peterson was another friend who i recorded with around this time, we recorded a 4 song session but not much after that, but Marc's role is an important one as well, for one, he was one of the people who got me interested in being a musician in the first place. Marc started out as just a drummer before he came a multi-instrumentalist, in a way, back in the late 80's Marc effected me the same way Chad effected Jay, drums were cool and the looked like fun to play, skating killed my early interest in wanting to be in a band so for a while and i lost the fever. Somewhere floating in space is a tape of me and Marc playing a the songs of Skid Row and the Cure. Secondly, when the Smashing Pumpkins debuted the were shoved down my throat and i hated them, Gish could induce sickness in me, i would ride to school with Brance and he play the tape over and over and repeat, but over at Marc's one night i heard the opening snare of Cherub Rock and my ears pricked up and i thought "damn, that could the best thing i have ever heard in my life", and so now this is my mantra, "Billy Corgan is a Genius", say it with me and say it loud "BILLY CORGAN IS A GENIUS!". Word.
Their first album that came out with me as a fan was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and it greatly impacted my life, it got me through some of the worst times of my life, and it also helped shape my playing style and a lot of Jay's style as well, we were fully aware of the Billy/Jimmy writing connection and we were going to do our best to fully embrace that dynamic ourselves. While we are on the subject, another band that heavily influenced us was Helmet. They were like us, guys who had short hair, wore skate clothes but wrote these heavy metal songs, their look did not match their music and they were way ahead of their time, i was fortunate enough to see them in concert around this time and it was amazing, but unfortunately a lot of stuff from this time period i don't remember, this was the time in our lives when people were moving out of their parent's homes, or their parent's were excepting that their kids were growing up and let go a little bit and we took full advantage of it and partied quite a bit in those days and it's all kind of a haze to me now. There are plenty of bizarre things that happened during this time that weren't music related but we'll save those for another time.
We had a strange chemistry in those days, i felt we shared one mind...Jay always knew where i was going, i always knew where he was going, sometimes we practiced pre-written arrangements and then other times we were the improv machines, no doubt we were the demo machines, we demoed anything and everything, I love to record. Late into this time period we named ourselves 6ft Ghoul, (2 other names used briefly early on were Specimen and War Machine) the 2 years we played together were fantastic but something different was just around the corner.......
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