Came in at 12 noon and after some food and chatting, got to work on re-tracking "Go On". Dave is mad crazy excited about re-doing this one. Like I said, I love the existing version, so I have been against it from the get-go. Stephen and Chris are into the recording of this new version a bit faster, more like we do it live. We got a great drum take with tons of energy, then Chris did his bass. The guys are really excited about this new version. I'm still not sold. If we get a better version from it, that's wonderful. But if we do, oh hell- I will never hear the end of it.

Greg Simon came by for a bit in the afternoon and we watched a series of Internet video courtesy of uselessjunk.com. It wouldn't really be the studio without a shitload of clips concerning skateboarding faceplants, motorcycle accidents, farting, creative German sex techniques, all things conducive to important creative expression.

By the way, here are some useful world peace links:
The Red Cross, Unicef, & Guidestar.

With the drums and bass all done, it's all on Dave and me now. For the next week it will be mainly Dave guitars, and a few of my rhythm guitar tracks. On "Said" and "Left" I don't play guitar, so guitar-wise I will just be doing "She Won't Last" , "Someone Else" and re-doing my parts on "Ashes" and "Go On".

The first guitar track of the day fell to me with the acoustic bed for "Someone Else". This is the one where I will lay the whole song down top-to-bottom, and we will all layer parts on top. We have no preconceived idea how it should be - gonna take this one part by part. I have been practicing it for the last few days, it's a bitch. My fingerpicking is okay, but not stellar. Also once you are recording, every tiny detail jumps out, and with acoustic, there is nowhere to hide. We hooked me up with a room mic, the direct from the guitar pickup line, and a weird little jury-rigged condenser mic Gummo taped on to the front of the guitar. I felt like I was wired by the cops to eavesdrop on myself.

I ran it down twice, and we punched me in where it got squirrelly. We tried using this expensive old Martin Guitar from John Shanks down the hall, but it wasn't quite right so we used my Taylor. That is cool, cause even with all this gear around to use, I am most happy when I can use my own stuff. I guess it makes me feel like my cash went to good use. Getting this acoustic part wasn't the nightmare I thought it would be. I still want to woodshed the part some more in the next week and give it one more pass later.

Dave started up on "Go On" guitars. He is super excited about this new version and it's infectious. When Dave is really into something he gets really passionate and it's fun to be around. He is half reproducing what he did on the "old" version of the song, and half just taking it from scratch and seeing what feels right in this new moment. I am just waiting til the new version is ready for singing to see how I like it against the old version. The new one does sound more energetic because it's faster, but I won't really know how it feels until then.

Marc Vangool, our guitar and amp tone wizard came by before dinner and set up his arsenal of amps for Dave to choose from for tracking. He has set up Dave's Marshall JCM 900, a Matchless, my rental Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Marshal plexi, a Bogner, and this crazy solid state "Wiggy" amp.

Today Dave has been playing his white Gibson SG, his white PRS, a sharp lookin Gibson ES 135 (a big hollowbody rockabilly guitar), and a Gibson Les Paul.

Marc needed some time to get the Guitarsenal together, so we broke for dinner. We all ate in the lounge (with my buddy Dan who came by to do some videotaping) and watched the beginning of the Metallica movie "Some Kind of Monster". Wow. Can't wait to watch this whole thing. So entertaining.

..."a little too much fucking perspective" ...
David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap

Dave got into full hero ripping mode after dinner and layered "Go On" guitars and did some great solo work. We got out around 12:30am.