Vocals and guitar overdubs chez Sweet..
Fred’s friends Robert and Aron who are LA music team Heavy Young Heathens have volunteered to help again (they were very helpful with the basic tracks – securing an excellent drum kit and providing some very useful gear). They pick me up at 12 and we drop by Bad Robot to pick up Matthew’s bass and my umbrella and then head over to Matthew’s place in the canyons. Humans may live in this house but it actually belongs to a family of Bengal cats. They are suspicious of strangers to begin with but eventually accept us, one of them accepting my accidental invitation to sleep in my telecaster case.
I have vague ideas of what I’d like MS to do but that’s all. First up is Blue Like Mars, and I think he might be able to do some Divine Intervention style block vocals. 6 parts later, all tracked 4 times each (eat your heart out 10cc) and he’s done it. It is majestic and exactly right. He used his new Peluso C-12 clone mic, and Neve Portico pre-amp. No EQ or compression.
I then plug the tele into plasticsoul’s Supro amp and try to sound like Jimmy Page. Not quite successfully but maybe it is useable, if not it will be an excellent guide for a proper guitarist.
Aron bounces the 24 tracks down to 6, and exports so I can import into Logic (Matthew’s system is Pro Tools). This takes a little while.
It’s quite late already, we order pizza and get working on the next song – Opposites Day where I’m looking for something similar but maybe poppier… M ends up recording 24 tracks again – 6 parts and he tells me it’s sort if based on a Lindsay Buckingham song I don’t know. It reminds me of Kraftwerk’s album where they sampled their own voices as instruments. It may be more than I need, maybe not. More bouncing and consolidating and back to Santa Monica. I check that the files are working in Logic. Then I type this.