2000-06-20

Rock

I've spent the past several days in a recording studio, learning just how totally un-rock-n-roll I truly am.

This is what it means to be a drummer in a band full of Recovering Theatre Geeks: you get to the studio, you drink a beer, you make Scenester Small Talk with the engineer. Then, when everybody's assembled and feeling their collective muses, you choke up in the middle of a take and burst into tears. The engineer, fortunately, likes you and gives you ample time to recover, even offering Sound Technical Advice ("You really have to put more wrist into it, Lees; that's why your forearms hurt.")

On top of the bass drum you have gingerly placed a ratty sock monkey. Your bandmates make fun of the sock monkey. Your bandmates have no sense of whimsy.

There are long periods during which the bass player is doing overdubs. You listlessly leaf through several 35+-year-old issues of Playboy, trying not to think about just what is making the pages stick together.

The studio is haunted by the ghost of an engineer who literally drank himself to death. At one point, the engineer makes you sit alone behind your drumkit in the most haunted spot in the entire building, so that he can "punch in" the one part that you sucked at during that last take. Bewildered, you call the engineer a "fuckstain," yet somehow manage to play better than you have the entire night. You secretly decide to leave an asspocket of Jack Daniels out where this ghost can find it.

I mean, is this rock-n-roll? I have no idea...

lisamcc at 21:58:16

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