Toby sang “TJ”, the Redfern-song.
Cam tried out an idea in studio B where he re-overdubbed a piano idea on “TJ” using a dictaphone and pro-tools.
Then in the evening: started on the vocal for “Under the Underpass”.
Wayne Connolly's track sheets on Seedy Underbelly's API desk
In the afternoon Toby sang the rousing “Let It Go” and got it down quick fast. Super-fast considering the tinkering in the chorus melody that happened. And in the evening he sang for “Christmas Windows”. This song is the one on the album that we've been doing live the longest, right back to the Spectrum in March 2005.
Meanwhile in the house, in Studio B, Cameron and Patrick put a synth-thing on “Underpass”.
I spent most of the day trying to write a short article for Socialism Magazine www.socialismmagazine.com on pop-psychology. You might like this site.
What else? We’ve been cooking meals a lot. Well Cameron has. Tonight’s meal was Pasta Pudenesca, pardon my Italian.
Cameron at work in “Studio B”
We went shopping for percussion stuff today. Down to Guitar Centre on Sunset and then five different pawn brokers on Santa Monica and then Toys R Us on La Cienega. Like Mediterranean fishermen in a TV documentary, the net was depressingly bare when we hauled it in.
Toby did singing on “Start Today Tomorrow” + “Sorry”, starting to get into a two song-a-day regime upon which Toby comments. We are all very relaxed here now. The street is so quiet and leafy, sleeping so late.
We had a late dinner at Lancer’s Diner in Burbank where we saw Uncle Rico!
So … today the legendary session bass player Carol Kaye came to the studio. Refer to www.carolkaye.com for her discography.
It was cool. She littered the studio with 70's-muso-jive talk incl: chops, cut a hit, that’s how you cut a hit, etc.
She even played a nice bit of Glen Campbell-esque bass on “Start Today Tomorrow”.
She managed to tell a thousand stories in her 3hr block. Truth be told we kept her back slightly longer than strict old-school union block of three hours. Stories incl: how she once called Phil Spector a c*** and how she once met Charles Manson in the company of Brian Wilson. There were many more besides.
In the evening Toby busted out his first LA vocal, for “On A String”.
Dinner: Burritos at Poquito Ma’s
This is Carol Kaye with rapt audience: Toby, Ryan (assistant engineer) and Danny
Cameron sets up Studio B in the house. We do a keyboard bit for the chorus of “Catching and Killing”. Then we attempt to record a clicking sound emanating from Danny’s mouth for a percussion idea. It will later be replaced by a wood block.
Toby re-did some guitar on song:”Sorry” that had been out of tune but now isn't.
Nasty Boy C. (Cam) did some dirty guitar on “Catching and Killing”
All I'm sayin' tho is that it's still 95% live (that might be an underestimate too). That's all I'm sayin'
Toby playing Rob Schnapf's 60's Epiphone
We have Frijoles Charros in the morning and in the evening we find out that we've gone number one in Australia. Who would have thought it? No-one really.
Got to admit that I was a grumpy shit today. Sorry everyone. I went for a walk up to Ventura Blvd cause I was feeling a low . In LA the pedestrian can feel himself to be a low form of existence. In NYC my anxiety is being knocked down by a speeding cab looking the wrong way on a one-way street (constantly), in LA it is a feeling of being the centre of attention as a pitiful creature. Anyway it's all horrible, blah, blah, blah…
At night we got out and went for dinner to Bob’s Big Boy Diner in Toluca Lake where David Lynch wrote down his ideas on napkins after having a milkshake and six or seven cups of coffee. But we didn't get a table so we ate across the road.
Cameron did some more guitar today (but the photo's from yesterday):
Yesterday evening, in the first Day One activity, we listened back to all 17 songs we recorded back in Sydney. We're trying to get the list of songs-to-finish down to 14. Too bad for “Osama” and “Dolphins and Crystals” (one I was pulling for) they'll not get done in LA.
Cam does some (futuristic yet raw) guitar today using a whole lot of pedals and an e-bow someone misplaced on his amp at the Mercury Lounge in NY.
Cameron playing on his whammy
We arrived in clear-skied Los Angeles, sun-shining from the beaches to the easterly horizon on the clearest day I've ever seen here, having flown from SFO to LAX. We went over to Beechwood Ave. in the Hollywood Hills and then to the 101 Diner on Franklin (please excuse my place-name obsession). In the booth opposite was a hobbit (the one who’s also Charlie in Lost) and at the counter was Johnny Knoxville. Also present, super-producer Wayne Connolly and Steff from the legendary Decoder Ring.
The next stop our new home/workplace, The Seedy Underbelly studio over the hills on the 101 Freeway. I'm not alone in my obsession with the geography of this city, every book about LA shares the same descriptions of mobility.
The house and garden at the studio are amazing. It’s a Spanish style house. I hesitate, through ignorance, to say Spanish Mission. The garden is an amazing collection of exotics, with a laden orange tree, a 30ft cactus that’s either an Organ Pipe, a Mexican Fence Post or a Sagauro and other species from Old or New World, or Gondwana you name it.
Toby, by the pool in the garden of exotics:
