parae - the blog thing

recording last night

2009-06-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

so last night we finally got around to actually recording. we did the business live, with the four of us all playing together, and our friend Em joining us on tambourine. we did Corey's two songs, the Mole and Dead Roses (which we were re-recording, as we deemed the previous version from February to not be good enough). it took about five takes on each tune before we got one that we were happy with, as the mic on Jimo's amp cut out on the first couple of takes for the Mole (fucking shitty xlr cables). anyway, we basically did all of Dead Roses live, over-dubbing the vocals and backing vocals (on which Tommi hollered louder than i've ever thought capable) and a 2nd guitar part Jimo wrote. i think it's going to sound so much better than the previous attempt, as we're all playing together, the sounds of the instruments are a bit rougher and dirtier, and our playing is more focused and tighter. the previous version just sounded too clean, but not lived in enough. with the Mole, Corey's still gotta finish writing all the words, and Jimo still has to record his guitar solo thing (which i think we're gonna do tonight). after all the bullshit with recording the Mole, mics cutting out and my hand cramping up from playing the bass, we finally got a good take - but lo and behold, one of the drum over-head mics had some kind of power surge or some shit that caused it to clip really terribly three times during the first chorus, so i had to pull some voodoo in order to save the take. hopefully the voodoo will be for the most part inaudible in the final mix, but...fucking murphy's law.

we've still got two songs to go...running a little bit behind schedule, but i figure we should have a record by the end of august.

oh yeah, we're playing a show! thursday july 16th @ the stud!

status report

2009-06-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

still rehearsing, soon to be recording. we finished no questions no answers awhile back...not sure if it's going up on the internets or not. we're going to re-record dead roses, cuz i want a rawer sound for that song. basically just arranging these last three songs for the record, which is taking a fair bit of time. hopefully we can get started recording them in the next week and then things will move a bit faster. my goal is to have everything tracked by the end of the month.

we still have no idea what the record is going to be called, nor any of the artwork put together. been trying to take steps in those directions...

also working on getting some show together around town for july and august. would like to put together a week long tour once the record is done, but it ain't done, so no movement on that front yet...

2 shows, one week

2009-05-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

so we played 2 shows this past week. the first one was opening up for two star spark at their cd release show. not a good show for us. we fucked up persona and it turned into an argument onstage between me and corey. wasn't cute.

then we played a free show at thee parkside yesterday/saturday afternoon. it's amazing, people won't come to free shit. it was all ages too. we played to bewildered looks of boredom. except for our friends that come to every show and heckle us. we did in fact record the show, so once that gets a good looking at, we'll probably put it up maybe? jimo says we sounded pretty good. i thought we played solid, not that it seemed to matter, ha! but we're getting there anyways.

we played at thee parkside:

statement of intent
persona
the escapist
don't you want to play with me?
dead roses
the dichotomy
do you wanna mess around?
anal fixation
no questions, no answers
sing pretty or die!

we're going to record the band's arrangement of jimo's no questions, no answers this week, and then i would like, a song a week for the next 4 weeks. that probably won't pan out though...never does. oh well!

currently...

2009-05-07T15:59:00.000-07:00

a couple of finished new songs are up on the myspace. the dichotomy was the one that took forever, and it sounds about as good as the band can make something like that sound at this point in time, so yeah, which i've accepted as ok. the other one, statement of intent, that's the one where jimo wrote the riffs, and i did the words. we tried to do it all live and just overdub the vocals, but ended up having to overdub the guitar afterward too. that one was kinda hard to mix at first, but i think it came out really good. it's not 100% perfect performance wise, but %95 ain't too bad i suppose, as long as the energy is there.

we've been working up a few more new ones, two are jimo songs, and one is by corey. not sure how many are going on the record. guess we'll sit down and listen to them all together once there are 15 and see what the general feeling is. we don't have anything resembling an album title, album artwork, nor quite enough money to put out the kind of elaborate vinyl product that we envision...so we'll see how long it takes. maybe july?

we are playing some shows though - this sunday May 10th with Two Star Spark (which is their record release show, a record i just happened to record and sorta produce!) @ Kimo's, and then Saturday May 16th at Thee Parkside which is a FREE ALL AGES deal. maybe we should pass around a collection plate, cuz the venue is only paying us in beer. i'm not against playing a free show, but i would like to make enough money to break even on the rental van.

been talking about getting a DV camera with Jimo helming the project parae - the tv show. so yeah...we'll see what comes out of that!

herrachick show

2009-04-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

well we played a show and scared off half the audience by the first song again. fucking people 21+, they've just heard and seen it all already, haven't they? we were pretty noisy. i don't think we made much of an effort to properly soundcheck our acoustics to the wetness of the room at the eagle. it all definitely sounded pretty washed out from where i was on stage. whereas the band before us, aim low kid, they had a much cleaner sound than i had anticipated based off of their myspace jams. whatever. they played for like an hour or something...i hollered and cheered for them to warm up my voice, which pretty much blew out 3/4 of the way thru our set, cuz i couldn't hear shit. anyway, we played:

do you wanna mess around
persona
don't you want to play with me
the escapist
eve white/eve black (siouxsie cover)
fem politique
dead roses
statement of intent
anal fixation
sing pretty or die
teenage werewolf (that fucking cramps cover, which we failed to even complete cuz we were pretty drunk and the guitars were totally out of tune, haha. a total fucking abortion)

anyway, it was a successful show i guess, cuz we got hella paid, so yay, more funds for the record, i guess. but the whole thing left me kinda bummed. the other guys seemed fine with everything, i dunno, i guess i was expecting something more? everyone at the eagle seemed cool and nice, except for one douchbag patron in leather who bitched about having to pay cover as we loaded in and shot us some nasty words. so we dedicated dead roses to him.

moving along

2009-04-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

so we think we've finished mixing the song that has been a total pain in the ass. not sure if it's any good though. we're sitting on it for a few days and soliciting some opinions on it for the time being.

gonna record the next one later this week at some point. it's called statement of intent, jimo wrote the music and i did the words. it's very riff driven and is my usual musician based meta commentary style horseshit. we may try to record it live (and just overdub my vocals), as it's another under two minute barn-burner.

our next show is april 15th @ the eagle tavern here in SF. it's $10, or $5 if yr in drag, 21+ and we play around 11:30pm. come out!!

that show in san jose...

2009-03-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

was fun! it was at this place called the smile factory, which was really just a rehearsal room in the back of an old thrift store that had been converted into a tax office, or something. anyway, we rented a minivan drove down once everyone was off work. corey's mom and her partner were there, haha. unfortunately they couldn't stay for the show, cuz it was getting late. anyway, we hung out, watched the other bands, dranks some sparks and tecate and had a pretty good time! we played:

don't you want to play with me?
do you wanna mess around?
persona
fem politique
the escapist
you don't love me anymore
dead roses
i was a teenage werewolf (the cramps)
anal fixation
sing pretty or die!

the set was pretty solid, no major fuckups, though tommi insists that many drum fills were all messed up - but none of us noticed, ha! i could have done the cramps cover better, cuz i re-heard the original yesterday, and my vocal take was soooo vanilla compared to the original. oh well! all of our songs came off pretty good, a couple people kept hollering "do you wanna mess around" at us afterwards, so yeah.

sunday we spent hanging out and working on the mix for the dichotomy song, and eventually we went down to the studio to put things back together and record some percussion type parts for the song. hopefully we'll get the mix close to finalized tonight or tomorrow and be done with the damn thing!

going to san jose

2009-03-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

so we're playing a show tomorrow night in san jose. i think we're all pretty excited to get out of san francisco, especially with the weather being so nice this weekend. it's an all ages show put on by a friend of jimo's at some new venue that may or may not be a house...we're not really sure. it's called the SMILE Factory. anyways, other than the hundred bucks it's gonna cost us to rent a van, it should be a total party.

as far as recording goes, we finally have got all of the major tracking done for the song that has been a real pain in the ass (the dichotomy). corey laid down his bass parts this past wednesday, and i honestly didn't think he'd have it together yet, but he brought his game proper. pretty much all that's left to do is mix it and add some auxiliary percussion. i've let jimo kind of take over with producing the direction of the song, cuz i kept getting lost, and had recorded a bunch of unnecessary bullshit keyboard and guitar parts. anyway, he's really kind of pushed the damn thing back into focus with burning it down to the essential rhythmic components. it'll still sound huge on some parts, but we're trying to focus on the rhythms of the drums and bass, with the guitars and synths being more secondary. plus, he's got some really fucked up guitar playing on it that he's pretty proud of.

after this weekend, we're gonna work on getting solid on a few more songs, and then see where we're at with what we've recorded so far and see if we wanna write a couple more songs or not for the record. i suspect we'll probably bash some shit out...

things we're working on

2009-03-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

so we got the new version of do you wanna mess around? up over on the myspace, and it sounds pretty fucking good. jimo and i are probably gonna do a remix/re-version of it with synths replacing all of the guitars just for shits and giggles (on top of the original bass and drums take). we were supposed to start that yesterday, but we got drunk on lemon drops made from the lemon tree we discovered in the back yard of our apartment building, and we ended up watching the movie stuck, which was pretty cool. been a bit hungover all day, sux.

anyway, we've been rehearsing over and over this god damned song i wrote called the dichotomy. it's been a really annoying and fucked up process for everyone in the band, but hopefully the end result will have been worth it. i basically wrote the song backwards, having only a few bass riffs that i wrote on the keyboard like two years ago, that have slowly been fleshed out into this labyrinthine suite-like arrangement. it's a bit of a mess, and corey has been very vocal in stating his opinion that the song sucks. but the more we rehearse it, the more it's starting to sound more parae, as in almost like real music. if it still sucks after we record it, then i guess he'll have been right, but jimo has been backing me up on this one. it's kinda like the blood brothers, public enemy, public image ltd, and miles davis all mixed together. poorly. talking about doing two versions of it, one stripped down live style with just vocals, guitar, bass, and drums, and one with all the needless bells and whistles, like queen on acid. hopefully it will be easier to record that it was to write and arrange. not sure when we'll start, as it's about 85% of the way there with the guys. maybe next week?

we've got several more songs that are written and arranged, it's just a matter of rehearsing them so that we're tight on them (and the recordings don't half ass suck). corey has a new song we've been jamming on, and jimo keeps threatening to write a song called hibernating rattlesnakes. oh yeah, he was supposed to do the lyrics to that last night while drunk...that didn't happen.

re-recording: do you wanna mess around

2009-03-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

last night we re-recorded do you wanna mess around. we were only about 80% happy with the original version, and of course it turns out that this new take is 100 times stronger! continuing with are no click tracks prerogative, we recorded the bass and drums together as a single take with jimo playing guitar along in the headphones (and tommi and corey pretty much nailed it on the second take). it just sounds SO MUCH BETTER, almost like a real band! after that, jimo and i obsessed over the guitars a bit, which was not too bad, at least until we ran out of beer. but i'm happy with all of my parts, haha! i got a really cool fuzz sound out of my death by audio pedal that i never get to use. and jimo got to use his q-tron a bit too! we're gonna do the vocals tonight after i get off work, and hopefully have it mixed by monday.

sing pretty or die!

2009-03-02T18:44:00.000-08:00

so we got a new song up, it's called SING PRETTY OR DIE! and we're pretty proud of it. jimo wrote most of the music on piano, i wrote the bridge on guitar, he sings the first part, and i sing the second part. it's basically about when yr hero's sell out, and do so very poorly. the initial inspiration came from a jaguar love show, they fucking suck. we recorded it a couple weeks ago very quickly over two days, and it was the first time we did a song without a click track. and what we learned is, we don't need no fucking click tracks anymore. they were actually holding us back! we finished mixing it over this past weekend and added a few guitar overdubs just to fill out the sound. anyway, we think it sounds pretty good!

report on the show at kimo's for tommi's b-day last night

2009-02-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

we got fucked up. it was tommi's birthday yesterday, and we all had a bit too much to drink before we played. so had the audience apparently, and they seemed pretty forgiving, haha. new killer daze, the band we share our practice space with, played first, and they were cool. i thought the sound guy should have mixed the vocals a little higher, but they were tight sounding, had a smoke machine and some imitation pyrotechnics which were fun. dadfag played second, and they were a lot of fun, i'm glad they played with us! we played:

don't you wanna play with me? (was kinda fucked up, but generally held together)
birthday suit (i invited jerry to come onstage and play with us, and corey was like SIKE! just kidding - and then i couldn't stop laughing the whole song)
the escapist (we didn't fuck this one up, yay!)
you don't love me anymore (somehow this came across alright too!)
do you wanna mess around? (we were a little shaky on this one, fucked up a transition)
dead flowers (corey's guitar was WAY too loud - oops!)
i was a teenage werewolf (cramps cover - i remembered all the words! went well for a song we learned less than a week earlier)
fem politique (smashed through this one)
sing pretty or die! (best thing we played all night...though i don't know if i was on key towards the end, couldn't hear shit in the monitors)
anal fixation (played this cuz we were nervous about the ending on persona, so we cut it. instead we fucked up the ending on this one, ha!)

anyway, it was a fun night, but load out was a real bitch, and it took like forever to get home. lots of our friends came out, yay!

report on the show at thee parkside last night

2009-02-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

so we finally played thee parkside last night. it came about when a week or so ago, and old co-worker of mine from the jazz club, Patricia, called me up and asked if we wanted to play a gig with her new band and a friend of her's that would be stopping though town while on tour. anyway, her new band, We've Been Robbed, played first. a bit of a mix of 90s alterna-indie rock, their first song reminded me a lot of the breeders. it was their first gig, and they had only just found a drummer a few days prior. but they were good, showed lots of potential once they get their sound tight!

we played second, our set was:

don't you want to play with me?
do you wanna mess around?
dead flowers
fear of death
sing pretty or die!
mongoloid (mangled and fucked up)
the escapist
you don't love me anymore
birthday suit
anal fixation

we started off real strong, btw this was our first show as a quartet. nick and jessica were at the show and nick was like, wait what bands is this? during the 2nd and 3rd songs. dead flowers is a new song that corey just wrote less than a week ago, and we're gonna fast track recording it in the next couple of days before he gets bored of it, haha. anyways, we were doing alright, but kinda stumbled through the bridge of our other new song, sing pretty or die! then david in the audience was like, play mongoloid, and so corey started the riff, and off we went even though we had already decided we weren't doing it cuz jimo didn't remember the chords and i couldn't remember all of the words. it was kind of a sucky rendition. anyway, we came back strong for the rest of the set and then got the hell off of the stage. c.gibbs played last and he did his folk type thing with acoustic guitar, a fuzz pedal, a looper, and some kind of wood block he hit with his foot to make a bass drum sound. he was really good! i mean the lyrics i didn't really pay attention to, but the guitar playing was very good and fun to watch. he was a super nice guy too.

anyway, our next show is in two weeks at kimos on tommi's birthday. we're playing with DADFAG and New Killer Daze (who we share our rehearsal space with). it'll be fun i think!

ciao jerry!

2008-12-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

jerry has left the band. it's all very amicable. both he and the rest of us had come to the decision that it was time to move forward as a four piece without him. we all value his contributions over the past year and wish him well and all that shit.

anyways, we're super excited about moving forward as a four piece. figure it'll be easier keeping everyone on the same page and also aid in having a more coherent live sound with less shit going on the whole goddamn time. jimo and i will be splitting keyboard duties as necessary rather than try and find a replacement. we reckon that four people is a good amount for a band to have, as it was, five just seemed to be a bit too much noisy sound. we plan to be A LOT more productive, with writing and recording, primarily getting the 2nd half of the new record figured out. we have like a half dozen songs that have just been sitting around, so we're ready to move!

videos up!

2008-12-23T22:44:00.000-08:00

videos r up from the show last friday!

post-partum bloody xmas

2008-12-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

so we did a show last night at el rio here in san francisco. we called it our bloody x-mas. there were 3 and a half bands, and there were supposed to be drag queens, but that didn't work out, unfortunately. tommi and i did bake a cake. a red velvet devil cake! anyway, we played with 123picnic, Deeper, and Corey's side band the Wildmen, with Walter Crasshole DJing.

123picnic and Deeper were really really good. Super glad to have played with them, hope to do so again in the future! we really tired to make the event a real party, Kristy from Deeper even brought balloons. unfortunately they ended up tied down due some policies at the venue or whatever. i dunno, they seemed unduly strict at the club last night, but whatever. like there was some drama at the end of the night with an ID, and it was just retarded. i really did not have the patience to deal with it.

anyway, we played:

do you wanna mess around?
birthday suit
don't you wanna play with me?
the escapist
persona
fear of death
undercover lover
fem politique
mongoloid (devo)
anal fixation

highlights included, my beloved pink furry guitar strap breaking after the first song!, constant electrocution from Corey's vintage Vox amp which isn't grounded!, Corey striping down into his underwear!, and the random dancing underwear guy in the audience! yeah, you missed it...boo! however, we did get the whole thing on tape. Nick was kind enough to film us, so all that good stuff will be going up on youtube so you can see why you should absolutely come to our next show - where we may be an even better band!

until then, we're taking a break until the end of the year, and then we're gonna finish recording the new album in January and get some more shows line up shortly after that!

112808 show

2008-11-29T21:48:00.000-08:00

so we played the retox last night. it was kind of a fiasco. the Gibbs invited us to play and they were awesome. so were the Prey from san diego. anyway, we played:

fem politique
the escapist
don't you wanna play with me?
persona
fear of death
undercover lover
do you wanna mess around?
birthday suit
anal fixation

i thought we played pretty good. anyway, afterwards we had a bit of a band meeting in the van outside and it was decided that something is missing, as we still tend to frighten off audiences back to the bar and incur quite a bit of bewildered looks. is it that we are too loud? too noisy? not catchy enough? all of the above? do we try to make ourselves into something we think an audience wants in order to seek out an audience? well whatever we do, we've decided to get more aggressive with the marketing of our live performances, or something...

that nov 4th show

2008-11-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

so like we played at el rio last monday. a fair amount of people came, but we didn't make any money, haha. we played:

persona
fem politique
don't you wanna play with me
fear of death
you don't love me anymore
369
the escapist
undercover lover
birthday suit
anal fixation

we played pretty damn well i think so thank you very much. the power was cutting out for the first third of the set due to power strips foolishly plugged into power strips. it was pretty fucking retarded. but the sound overall was pretty good. people said it sounded perfect from outside, haha. anyway, we played with Street Pyramids and the New Agents, who were both pretty cool. unfortunately everyone who worked the door let all the friends in, so not enough money was made to pay the sound guy, so we were like - gotta go! when it's our event, we at least break even, haha.

anyway, we're playing next on black friday, nov 28th, at the goddamn retox lounge with our buddies the gibbs, and their buddies the prey (from san diego). we're trying to get 2 or 3 new songs ready by then, hopefully they'll be good to go!

seven

2008-10-23T23:10:00.001-07:00

so we got seven mixed now. they sound pretty good. at this point we're just rehearsing a bunch for this show on nov 3rd. after that, full speed ahead on more new tunes.

six down

2008-10-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

six songs mixed and done so far. three more of this batch to finish. jimo and i got more, just need more time for the band to learn them...wish we had more time to do this stuff.

recording and mixing

2008-10-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

so we've been recording. a lot. we have 3 songs completely done (which are on the myspace page), and 6 more almost all done or done and ready to be mixed. i've been procrastinating a bit on mixing, cuz it is just such a tedious process. having jimo help is really good, but it's still painful trying to figure out how to fit everything together sonically. especially with the song 369. so at this point, we're kinda stuck for recording anything else, cuz we don't have anymore songs ready that the whole band can play. we have about 2 1/2 half that we've been working on, but they've still got a ways to go, and while i've got like 3 or 4 more that we could start doing, and jimo's got a bunch too, it's just a matter of finding time work them out and still rehearse the ones we have so we can play live and sound decent. probably we're going for more than we're able to do, oh well! hopefully we can get the next 5 or 6 sorted out over the next few weeks and start recording again by november. our goal is to have a 7" by our show in december, and the record done by january or february, and try to do some kind of southwest tour that hits las vegas and los angeles around then. also gonna try and get us into SXSW and Noisepop, cuz we're like noisy pop...sorta.

nick's palace or worms cd is now available at amoeba and aquarius records here in san francisco. so yeah...i'm credited with recording and mixing, but let me also say that i produced the fuck out of that thing.

should have some pics up in the next few days of our latest drunken adventures.

sept 4th @ the stork club

2008-09-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

gonna make this short cuz i'm not feeling to good right now, kinda sickly. anyway, we played:

fem politique
don't you wanna play with me
inspire
birthday suit
fear of death
the escapist
persona
anal fixation

thought we played more than that, but i guess we decided to quit while we were ahead. it was really hot and sweaty, i even took my shit off. we were getting electrocuted by the stage equipment like a motherfucker, i could feel current going through my arm whenever i held onto the microphone, and corey got shocked real bad a couple of times when he bumped into me. good thing we were drunk! i thought we played really well, consistently full of energy throughout, no trainwrecks. balanced sound - not so much. i was really unhappy with my guitar sound, way too trebly. i had just gotten my amp back, and then i let the other bands borrow it cuz their amp blew a tube or something. so my settings were all fucked for a club. we ended up with a soundboard recording of the show. turns out i was over singing again, but at least mostly in key. there were no stage monitors to speak of, so we could barely hear vocals on stage. anyway, we ended up playing last, cuz the bands that invited us wanted to go first. none of their people stuck around for us. and my coworkers and boss that came all had to leave before we started playing around midnight. fortunately corey's gang of richard, gilbert, and david were with us and they were a lot of fun!

anyway, since the show, me and jimo have been doing a shit load of recording everyday. we're moving full speed ahead on the record, so perhaps it might actually be close to finished around my birthday after all! we now have five songs pretty much all recorded, and just did drums last night for two more.

new song up

2008-09-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

at the myspace - don't you wanna play with me? pretty good, maybe almost final mix. oh i hate mixing, thank goodness jimo is here to help!

oh and we're playing the stork club in oakland this thursday sept 4th!!

assorted recordings

2008-08-09T13:46:00.001-07:00

so we're recording our record thing. right now, we really only have six new songs that we can play. we each individually have enough material, like another six or ten songs...just getting everyone on the same page is kinda tough. it's really kinda hard to focus on new material with five people in the band at once. anyway, as for the recording, it's going pretty well i guess. drums are done for five songs, synth for three, bass on two (we were gonna do more bass the other day, but corey fucked up his finger somehow while wrestling with his friends...i don't know either...) i did guitar and vocals for don't you wanna play with me on thursday, so that one just needs lead guitar and it's totally a hit single.

nick's black metal record is still being mixed. i've got rough mixes for 6 out of the 7 songs, though they all still need more work, mainly with getting the drums to sound right at the proper levels of compression. basically, he wants the guitars to be really fucking loud, so that's what i'm trying to give him, really fucking loud guitars. but i don't want the drums to be completely buried, otherwise it'll just sound like total guitar wankage.

also on thursday night i started recording four songs for two star spark, my friend charlie's pop rock band. this went really well, we managed to record all the drums in 45 minutes, cuz elliot was able to do each song in one take, with just one overdub of a section total. he really had his shit together and impressed me. and he's a very dynamic drummer too. after that we did all of the bass, and then a few flourishes of keyboards. so all that's left to do are charlie's guitars and vocals. i think it's gonna come out really nice. i honestly wasn't terribly impressed by the tunes from the scratch demo tracks we had done, but once we started tracking the drums and bass, the songs really came alive and are definitely gonna sound really cool.

first song done

2008-07-24T20:58:00.000-07:00

so the first song recorded and finished for the record is now up on the myspace. it's called Anal Fixation, it's the one corey inspired, haha. we recorded it on sunday and basically played it live and over dubbed the vocals. i think it took about four or five attempts before we got a clean one without any mistakes. we wanted it to sound live and full on energy, and i think that was definitely captured. so even though it's somewhat muddy sounding, it sounds real and fast!

we've done bass and drums now for two other songs, and are well on our way to making a record. the god damned jazz club is closing in a week, so me and jerry are gonna hit up the piano at the club before it's completely shut down early next week and record as much as we can with what has already been demoed and requires piano, cuz fake piano sux.

currently mixing nick's palace of worms black metal record and started recording some songs for two star spark. buy mainly focused on making our record and getting a bakers dozen of songs done by my birthday at the end of october.