Making Category Two
by George Ziemann -- March 16, 2010
Almost two weeks have passed since our
first session for Category Two, which lasted four days
and yielded nine songs.
It's possible that we could've gotten
more done if I hadn't wasted the entire first day and half the
second pursuing Plan A, which was simply not gonna happen. But
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Lessons Learned
The first, most obvious lesson we learned
from Cateory One was not to put a picture of a bunch of old dudes
on the cover. So we went back to Chris Davies, who did the Hayden's
Wall cover. Chris provided the art shown at left. We liked it.
The next lesson fell into the "there's
gotta be a better way" category. For Category One,
I had used an ADAT tape deck to record the eight drum tracks,
relatively flat, then pulled them into ProTools to edit, EQ and
mix. I used an optical cable to send the 8 tracks to the ADAT
from our mixer.
The problem with the ADAT was that the
speeds were imperfect. Not enough that you'd notice at first,
but by the end of a 4 minute song, things were obviously out
of whack and I had to go back and edit to nudge the drums every
so often. This added up to a lot of time spent before the band
could even listen to the complete song with a decent mix.
I
wanted to change the recording procedure and record everything
into ProTools at once so that we could listen back immediately
and keep or replace individual tracks as necessary, right away,
not three weeks later when I come back. You know, like a studio.
Plan A was simple. Take that optical
cable and plug it into ProTool's optical input instead of the
ADAT. This pulls in the drums and still leaves the eight primary
inputs available on the ProTools interface, more than enough
for one take of the complete band.
Saturday
I got there on a Saturday afternoon.
Tim had a table set up outside, which was actually a door, anticipating
duplicating last year's outdoor set-up. It looked like maybe,
just maybe, it might rain, so we rearranged some of the random
stuff that was stacked up around the room, and brought the door-table
inside. It was perfect for the mixing board, allowing it to occupy
one far end of the table, leaving me enough room to set up the
computer equipment, the ProTools interface, a 4-out headphone
amplifier (allowing us to turn the PA off completely and skill
get some scratch vocals as a guide) and still leave room for
my keyboard.
By this time, Manny's wife has stopped
by to listen to us record. Unfortunately, I hadn't even run microphone
lines to the drums yet, although the mics were in place. She
got bored not long after, and I spent a couple more hours before
I'm to the point where I'm ready connect the optical cable, only
to realize that they're in a plastic bag in the same rack with
the ADAT which I intentionally did not bring. What a dumbass!!.
On the other hand, I had almost left without the ProTools interface,
which would have been even worse.
By then, it was almost 7 p.m. We rehearsed
the songs we were going to record, trouble spots were smoothed
out, beers were consumed, and it was suddenly 10 p.m. The rain
had begun. It would keep raining until Tuesday morning.
Sunday
Carl and Cara went on a mission to locate
and purchase one optical cable, a quest made more difficult by
several factors, including just being Sunday, Tucson and everyone
wanted to sell them home theatre gear instead of audio accessories.
Finally, they just headed to Guitar Center ('surely, they'll
know what it is') and about 2-1/2 hours later, returned with
an optical audio cable. Perfect. Plan A is still a go.
Annoyingly, my right ankle was red, swollen
and it hurt to put weight on it. I had spent the night in Carl's
RV, which is really pretty well decked out, including a bathroom,
shower, sleeping space for about 5 or 6, refrigerator, freezer,
electrocity, TV with DVD player. It actually gets a lot of activity,
so it seems more likely that we disturbed something crawly and
poisonous when we rearranged the Shred Shed/studio, which promptly
bit me.
Anyway, Carl and I go back to the studio
hook up the optical cable and get 8 tracks of pure noise. I know
it comes out of the board clean because that's how I get it into
the ADAT. We're using filtered power, I make Tim turn off the
pump for his swimming pool long enough to verify that it has
no effect, either. As I go to pack away the optical cable, I
discover my original pair of them -- I had them all the time.
Dumbass again! They didn't work, either. The optical input on
the ProTools card obviously sucks.
Now we're back to only 8 inputs, so I
can't use 8 tracks for the drums anymore. Plan A is now officially
screwed. The only alternative was to do a stereo drum mix at
the board and send it to ProTools as a single pair. I mixed a
jillion concerts, I can do a drum mix on the fly if necessary,
so all I had to do was take a few minutes, do all the necessary
compression and some EQ and we were ready to roll.
We spent about 5 hours recording before
everyone was too burned out to continue.
Monday
We only had a couple of songs left to
do rhythm tracks for, then guitar and vocal overdubs. Got an
early start (Carl's a stockbroker -- we have to wait for the
market to close). The alley we use to access Tim's house is now
a mud pit and we feel lucky to have a 4-wheel-drive vehicle to
get in and out, which is now covered in mud. It's still raining,
though, so it's rinse off while we work.
I intended to leave on Monday night.
We worked about 6 or 7 hours, both Carl and I pushing to get
it all done. By then we both were cold, tired and there was still
a couple hours worth of work to do before I could even think
about packing up. So I stayed another night.
By this time, I'm really pretty settled
in the RV anyway, which is better than many motel rooms I've
stayed at. Every time I go to Amado to record, I stay at Carl's
house, but I never camped in the RV before.
Tuesday
My ankle is still killing me from the
spider bite, having swollen slightly larger each day, but it
only really hurts right near the bite. It isn't spreading up
my leg or anything, so I'm sticking with a wait-and-see attitude.
On the bright side, the rain has stopped and the sun is threatening
to appear. So went we went up the alley on Tuesday afternoon,
the rain would not be washing the mud off today.
We systematically went through each song,
finishing them off as far as guitar and vocals, with Cara appearing
to do vocals for one song as well. We were done by probably 5
or 6, an hour or so to pack and load up the gear, then I headed
home.
On the way out of Amado, a truck of some
sort started following me, and for the next 20-25 miles it stayed
right on my ass. If I slowed down, the truck slowed down; if
I sped up, the truck sped up. I was just about ready to pull
off at the next exit and see if he was still going to
follow me when he lit up the flashing lights. I was getting pulled
over by a pick-up truck?
No! It was the Border Patrol, even though
I hadn't been closer than 20 miles to the Mexican border. Word
was that just before I left town, they had received a call that
a vehicle was leaving Amado loaded with illegals. So I rolled
down the windows so he could look around. No Mexicans. He barely
remembered to ask me if I was a citizen, since he has just driven
20 minutes following the wrong car.
So that's our story for Category Two.
The music is decidedly different from Category One in
several ways, one of which is much more consideration for keyboard
tracks, as well as the more "live" feel of the drums
(a result of pre-mixing them to a stereo pair).
P.S. -- On the following Saturday, the
spider bite, which had expanded to a 6" diameter, reverted
to a 1" circle at the site of the bite and all of the other
symptoms disappeared.
Whatever doesn't kill you...
Update
-- April 4, 2010
As it turns out, whatever doesn't kill
you might not be finished yet.
The spider bite had been gone for a week.
I'd been diligently working on all the tracks, doing my tedious
manual compression (which I swear is infinitely superior to what
any processor will do) to them, automating the mixing, blah,
blah, blah, and Saturday rolls around again. My ankle is red
again and hurts to walk on. By Monday morning, it's swollen bigger
then it was the first time, having now spread to the other side
of my ankle as well. WTF? I think it's time to visit the ER.
After a mere four-hour wait, I get in
to see a doctor and we've got a problem because it's two weeks
after the fact and since it went away, I didn't see the doc about
it, so the venom has been hiding out and slowly poisoning me
the entire time. An even bigger problem is that I didn't see
what bit me, so it becomes a game of ruling out thing.
Couldn't be a scorpion sting because
you just don't get stung by a scorpion and not feel it when it
happens. I was guessing black widow, just as the most probable
thing to be hiding in the corner of our beloved Shred Shed, but
I'm told that it would be surprising to be bitten by one of these
and not notice it at the time either.
Bottom line was that since I hadn't caught
the spider or whatever, or even seen the damn thing, we were
going to take a shot in the dark (via my right ass cheek) with
high powered antibiotics, and a 10-day dosage of pills. They
drew a dotted line around the red area with a Sharpie and sent
me home with the instructions to see the my doctor in two days,
but come back to the E.R. if it grew outside the lines before
I got in to see him.
It's already past the doctor's office
hours, so I have to wait until the next morning to even try to
make an appointment. And the usual wait time for an appointment
is about two months, so they're going to be thrilled when I ask
to see him the next day, I'm sure. I get the prescription filled
and the pharmacist mentions that this is what they usually give
you when they think it's a brown recluse. The ER doctor never
had hazarded a guess as to what he thought it might be.
The next day, I wake up and it has spread
outside the dotted line, so I go straight back to the E.R. Today,
there is no waiting, a miracle in and of itself. I get right
in. They look at it and say, "Yep, it's bigger than the
line." Then they told me to see me regular doctor tomorrow.
When I rolled my eyes, the doctor said, "You think that'll
be a problem?"
"For the next day? Yeah, that's
asking a lot." So he went and called my Doc's office to
make sure they'd slot me in.
Oddly enough, when I got the bills for
these two visits, the first day cost $450 and the second day
cost more than $800. Must have been a $400 phone call, I guess.
Anyway, I visit the doc the next day
and it's still bad, but it is actually a little better than the
day before, I'm taking the pills like a good boy, and yes, I
know to take them until they're gone, even if I feel better.
I'm told to keep it elevated and come back in a week.
So I prop my foot up and get back to
work on the record. Almost a week passes. The foot gets better.
I'm almost done with the meds.
Monday night comes around and I'm back
into the fevers and chills, plus, I turn into a strawberry --
red and covered with bumps. I deal with it for two nights and
my scheduled doctor visit comes up. I'm allergic to the antibiotic,
but it had to build up for a week before I reacted.
So now it's a cortizone-steroid drug
for the allergic reaction. It's a declining dosage that lasts
six days. I've got three days left, but I've spent the first
three days mostly sleeping, living in a bizarre dream world that
recurs relatively consistently night after night. I'll wake up,
work a few tracks, get tired, go back to sleep. Considering that
becoming psychotic is one of the possible side-effects, I think
my almost hallucenogenic Dreamville has been a comparably nice
place to live in for a few days while I recover from all of this
shit going helter-skelter on my ass.
To be completely honest, for months now,
maybe a year, whenever I dream, there is a core scenario that
remains the same, a distorted version of reality that brings
all the relevant bit and pieces of my life together in one place,
though they are really thousands of miles apart. So a canoe trip
from Toledo could get me to Phoenix almost instantly, although
I might have to drive across a mountain range to get to the next
town. Take a different branch on the canoe ride and it culminates
in a ride at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio, located
conveniently next to Las Vegas for your dining and gambling pleasure.
So my dream world has always been a little
weird, not to mention vivid. The last three days have been almost
overwhelming, to the point that I have a hard time separating
from it when I wake up, whereas I generally have to struggle
to remember dreams.
At the heart of this all is a showroom,
in which our gear and equipment is never set up properly, or
something needs rewired -- something is always just not right.
Rock stars show up to play sometimes. McCartney did a show one
night, Emerson, Lake and Palmer did a set one evening. Yes was
supposed to play but there was an issue with the grand piano
-- it had the leg support structure and the keyboard, but the
rest of the piano was missing. Rod Stewart showed up a couple
of nights ago. Not to sing, just stopped by. Nice guy. Didn't
have much to say. Drank a beer and left.
Last night, I got drafted into the CIA
for reasons I never quite understood, but it got me my old job
back, which was really a CIA front and now has a dock for unloading
freighters, which kind of hide the three small subs docked there,
too. It happened while I was in Toledo, running through the snow
trying to find my car. It was about 15 feet deep in places, but
some of the streets were plowed. I knew where I put it, but it
wasn't there. I ran into the parking lot in Las Vegas, showed
some guy my valet parking receipt and that's when they made me
a CIA agent. I was supposed to go back to my old job and do what
I used to do, which was fine with me because I could use a real
job.
Conveniently, the office also has access
into the showroom through a side door, so the scenario can change
back and forth as required by the constant cast of changing characters.
My former boss alternately hates me and acts like my pal; former
band members return so they can quit 10 minutes before we're
supposed to play; equipment is constantly being relocated. And
there's one item that keeps getting repeated where a button needs
to be pushed (a choice between A and B) that everyone except
me is afraid to push. It's always the same problem, the same
button, the same positive result (we switch from A to B), but
everyone else still backs off and I have to do it.
So the cure for the cure hasn't been
that bad. No more chills. The spots are gone. The ankle still
looks good.
I guess there's some sort of lesson in
here about Arizona critters, but I'm not sure what it is, other
than the fact that they pack a nasty payload. Tomorrow will be
a full month since I was bitten and, though it has disappeared,
I'm still not right yet. But I'm getting there.
And the album is coming along. It's going
to be a good one, despite all of this.
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