Recorded in the moment… as it happens?

Mj and Tj wait for the moment…

Aaah that question…. We often sit in our Acton studio,  trying to get to …er, the … essence of how we want the record to sound.

Yes I know we’ve been at it since we finished the American tour last May…(apart from the gigs during the summer)  We came off that tour with a couple of great guitar riffs that we played in the sound check. The Manic riff to “Whats up Doc?” had become a staple sound check choice. The amazing thing is that the lyrics came to me on the Virgin Atlantic flight to Chicago on the way to the SWSX festival.

This time I was flying alone.  Mick had travelled ahead via New York to see friends and we were to meet up in Austin Texas.  I was looking forward to the flight – a little luxury time with myself.  I was hoping for  8 hours of indulgence…. a film (I started Michael Clayton and got bored…) catching up on some serious reading and thinking but as always, a moment grabbed me,  a lyric idea jumped into my head and I was off.  “What’s up doc?” ….basic concept is that a man goes to the doctors and says, hey I’m still determined to rock and even if the bones don’t wanna shake, the heart does, so here I go whatever you tell me…..simple idea, but then the best ones often are…..anyway, before I knew it, the lyrics were scrawled all over an A4 sheet of paper and thousands of miles of Atlantic had passed and I hadn’t even looked up.  Actually I was aware during the whole journey of two Australians sitting at the bar in the cabin, getting drunker and drunker with a joyful determination that did not falter until the flight started it’s descent.  Those guys were like my soundtrack and they were having a really GOOD time.  I liked that.  I also noticed glamorous women changing out of glamorous clothes into track suits at the start of the journey only to disappear again at the end, re-emerging once again perfect as we began to land at Chicago airport.  Apart from that, the journey had passed in the blink of a lyrical eye.  The long flight had been of great benefit I told my manager as soon as I spoke to him on landing.  I had a new song idea down, the guitar riff was there in my head and it rocked.

And that’s how it happens. Is it inspiration? Mj always says the song is already there in the ether…  you just have to find it. Tap into it.  Maybe it was being so high in the air, but I like to think …….

And the riff in my head had it’s debut at the first sound check and at every sound check subsequently we’d blast through it. What fun. You know it works when you cannot stop playing it because it FEELS right, it has the energy.  Mj was starting to feel the tune coming on.  “PartyWorld” had the same feeling.

God it feels good when a 4 piece rock band taps into that energy and it…it just rocks..you feel like…. wellll…

So when we came back that was the first song we recorded.  Mj arrived at the studio in a bad mood – well, an angry mood actually – but the tune was there now in his head and he just got up and sang it in the space of a few minutes. That “aaaaah fuckin’ hell” at the beginning. Thats for real. tapped the mood onto the record. Live in the moment.

Hmmmm “For real”

Those words keep coming up again again to us. How do we keep it real.  We want the record to be real.. of  “the moment”. No demos.  No going back in and re-recording or layering. Real. Every grunt and breath. Every guitar buzz and feedback. Every bum note that was bent to find the tune…. just in time to just make it cling on to the express train.  When we were 18 you just did it, there are are so many other factors now.  Family, money, kids, fear, reputation, prejudice, experience…. can we exchange the naivety that comes with youth for something just as powerful, something that  is just as good as not being scared to look over the edge?

We don’t want to edit this record.  Don’t want to censor it. Don’t want to make it work within the accepted rules. Don’t want to be professional guys making professional records. Does that keep it vital? You tell me.

The burst of energy.  Its there in the recording. The raw emotion of the song recorded in one take of “Unbelievable Pain” is there sung from the words taken straight off the Laptop – we didn’t even have time to print them out.  That pain you hear is for real……

Real.  There I said it again.

So ok we’ve been at this for a year now.  Why? Because it does not grow on trees.  Does not come every day like a desk job… it comes…… when it comes. Saw a film, read a book, read a story, heard a new track by someone that sets it off. We go to the studio every day looking.

This week we’ve been going back through the tracks recorded… each one usually in a two hour burst of creativity. Two hours from lyric on a page to a living song. And we’re trying to keep the energy of those moments.

Trying to UN-learn what we’ve been taught, what some producers back in the day taught us. How would Spector have done it? – wish we’d worked with him. Look at Kanye’s new album…so simple its magic, so raw its…… No fat there.

So we’re nearly there… the titles tell it… PartyWorld, What’s up Doc, Unbelievable Pain, Reach for the Sky, The Lucky Day, Believe or Leave, Make it Alright….. and more

What if Prodigy could jam with the Yardbirds, If I could close my eyes and be watching the MC5? …..What if Hendrix had a Laptop ……..if the Faces were still down our local and we as wide eyed teenagers felt the dream, felt the rush? I wish.. yeah, but you have to look up!! But that’s what I’d love to hear if it was out there.  Check out the “Jim Jones Revue”. We love them. We watched on YouTube and went wow!!! Uncanny about the name too… spooky.

The records coming soon. We’re nearly there.

Oh, and I’m filming everything now as well. God I love technology. I’ve got this tiny HiDef Kodak Zi6 camera and I just leave it on now, big brother style.  We argue, we’re surprised. we’re thrilled. We’re inspired. We get tired, disappointed, disheartened ….and then a magic moment blows the doubt away, blows it all away and we fly again.

HiDef, filmed as it happens, broadcast live, see the story unfold. Thats the future. The music is the sound of that time, that story. You can’t copy time as it happens, only replay it.

I’ll be editing lots of those moments to make an album documentary… real moments, the real moment when we recorded the guitar solo… even the mistakes.

Hang in there..our futures coming to a screen in your room  soon.

Tony James

Friday 13 march 2009.

Note:
“Reach for the Sky” – recorded in two hours from lyric on a page to song in the air…. one take guitars,  grunts and all.  A stream of consciousness. Imagine every book you pull from the shelf inspires… I want to reach for that highness…. The video shot in two hours, no lighting, no steady cam just shooting the room we live in… and a couple of days with iMovie09 – I love technology. Hope you enjoy our rush. See it here