uglyredhonda

Ryan wrote the song. Matt just helped out with the original demo. The version on the Limblifter Myspace is at least the third version of that demo. There was a second version where Matt's voice still appeared during the chorus and the ending.

Not sure about the four-track, but I wouldn't mind having him try an album on Garageband.

http://www.mixmastermac.co.uk/steviemac/

Van Gogh had a blog?

I've probably said this already, but I think it was everything. By 2001, music tastes had shifted toward Limp Bizkit and company. (I'm pretty sure I said this already: it was the right album for 1999 and the wrong album for 2001.) MGB had been supporting BM for almost two years by that point, and the US tour was far too short to break the band. (By comparison, Our Lady Peace undertook several full-scale US tours before they started to catch on, and each one of them hit more cities than the one that MGB undertook.) And, at that point, MGB were ready to deal with Audio of Being, removing some of the incentive to supporting BM in the US. At the same time, I think Atlantic thought it would catch on quickly, given the presence of six songs that had already been singles in Canada. But MTV had major issues with the HTB video, and I doubt anybody was happy with the edits. I think the failure was both sides - that both the band and Atlantic decided (though probably separately) that it wasn't worth the effort. If the band and the label don't want to support something, no amount of grass roots marketing will save it. And BM is all of the promotion that MG has had in the States. "Weapon" got played on Queer as Folk, and was on the third season soundtrack CD, but it was licensed via Universal Canada.

Looks like someone already found him first: http://www.nearfantastica.com/bored/index.php?showtopic=2654 And second: http://www.nearfantastica.com/bored/index.php?showtopic=4106 And a couple other times in there somewhere. We need a good Dave Genn scavenger hunt. Just keep finding him over and over again and letting him know he's been found.

I'm not going to speculate that this had anything to do with it, but Limblifter scheduled a few dates for June of last year that conflicted with some dates Matt had scheduled on the west coast. Matt's dates were called off, then Limblifter's shows ended up getting cancelled with no explanation. At the time, it sounded like Ryan and Meegee would still be playing with Matt. When Matt announced shows later in the summer (Klondike Days, etc), Meegee posted that she and Ryan were not going to be playing the shows, and Matt posted that Rich and Christian were back. I wondered if it was the miscommunication, or if it might have been the fallout from the 1st Annual Chuck & Duck. (Bad shows can do weird things to good bands.) But I don't think either Matt, Ryan, or Meegee ever specifically explained what happened.

The song's about fear. "Robot heart" is a heart that can't feel. "A robot heart for theme park world" is a way for people to cope with the world - feel nothing, pretend everything's happy. The narrator can't live that way - he feels everything. He rejects the idea, scoffing that it just allows us to claim that we're civilized. "Fireman, time of fires, paralyzed" - as a fireman, he was trained to deal with fires, but, when confronted with it, he was unable to act, paralyzed by fear. I think the whole "I can't remember 1989" is that something happened since then that changed him to the point that he can't remember what life was like before he felt the fear. He didn't feel the fear back then, and equates it to being drugged. ("Robot heart for robot boy / who dreamed he was a lion" might relate to a youthful notion of believing you can fight off anything - the narrator might be talking about himself.) It's about being afraid of the world, afraid of outside forces, feeling like you have to carry a gun to protect yourself. Other people seem to be able to turn off that fear, but he can't. That's why Matt talked about how surprised he was at how relevant the song was after 9/11, even though it was written beforehand. We spent a great deal of time living in fear of those outside forces. It was hard not to read that line about "i'm tired of watching them wind you up to see if you'll run" in regard to the US government's constant attempts to scare the populace (through the color-coded warning system, etc). No offense, but I'm kind of astonished by some of your interpretations. "when a child is born the child is usually drugged" - WHAT?!?!?

Most of Matt's releases use Helvetica. (Arial is similar, but not exactly the same.)

http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=19274 Not particularly authoritative, imho.

Matt originally titled the song "The Commoner's Guide to Suicide", but Universal convinced him otherwise.

Yeah, but dissonance is all about context. It's what you do before and after that makes it work. I love good 9 and 11 chords when they're used the right way. Geoff - props on the bass on "Enjoy the Silence". I'm a big fan of reworking covers by being only moderately familiar with the original. (Though, in your case, being completely unfamiliar is kind of a bonus.) I hate it when bands use the exact same parts as the original and just try to use their "style" to make it different. It's way more interesting when a band can take the idea of a song and make it into something completely different, even when certain elements seem iconic. Though, I have to admit, I may have to give the edge to Failure's version of "Enjoy the Silence", but maybe only because I heard it many years before the MGB version. (I think they were recorded around the same time, though.)

Two words: tetanus shot.

Yeah, reading is kinda complicated.

It was multi-tracked like any other studio recording. The difference was that all of the instruments were recorded simultaneously instead of one at a time. The mix was processed like any other studio recording, just with Warne trying a few "old-school" tricks. While whole takes were used, I've never seen any assertion or implication that the band only recorded each song once. I assume they did multiple takes of each track and "finished" the best one. I certainly doubt it was "just a few mics". There's no reason that they couldn't have had twenty-four (or more) individual mics recording at the same time. (They more than likely avoided the bleed-over between guitars and drums by stationing the amps in separate locations, away from where they were performing.) I think some of the recording process for WLRRR has been confused or overstated. It has certainly not been uncommon for bands to record albums this way, it's just been uncommon for major albums. (Frank Black has recorded several albums where the entire album was recorded and mixed live to two-track.) More from Livesey's point of view, via 49music.net: "Matt has his own interpretation of LoFi, which is cool, but I am not sure this record really sounds LoFi in the accepted sense, but definitely Retro. We wanted a 70s vibe to the recording and a simpler sonic picture to previous records. We used simple mic'ing on the drums involving old tube and ribbon mics, old mic pres, Eqs and compressors and took a much more 70s approach to guitar and bass tones, utilising a lot more vintage guitars than before. We wanted to be as far away from modern rock as possible. Controversially, we did not use tape, but recorded on Protools. Many people would believe that tape gives you a more old school sound, but what is far more significant is the attitude of the people making the record and the kind of sounds you are dialling up. We used Protools primarily because it is way quicker, cutting out a lot of spooling and tape changing time, and speed of working and keeping that momentum was by far the most important factor in keeping to what we were trying to do. By the way, this was the first time we recorded using an HD Protools system, which sounds far sweeter than the older systems and thus not as different to analogue recording." http://www.49music.net/main/?type=menu&act=2&headid=13 As far as my own opinion, I wish Warne had used more of his usual processing concepts. I personally think two guitars can be enough on a record, but the way they sound on WLRRR sometimes seems flat / dead / empty. Plus, whoever did the mastering should be smacked for killing the low-end.

July 27-30 http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/

Here's a mirror of that page: http://www.chrisblackburn.com/oldlinks/studio4.htm I wish he'd kept some of those studio pics online. I only vaguely remember the website from that period, but it was nice getting a peek into the recording process.

Maybe Earnhardt's a nice guy who likes rock music? Matt's not the only one who's friends with him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DaveGrohlphoto.jpg I mean, I hate NASCAR as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to judge the guy solely for his career choice. Given how some people feel about that song, I'm not sure I'd use that info to support Earnhardt. ;)

I liked seeing it, but kind of in a "deleted scenes on a DVD" sort of way. It's cool to see what else was filmed. But, just in general, it's kinda generic. It really doesn't say anything, which might work for a song that really didn't say anything.

Careful! I don't wanna get my visa revoked.

I could be mistaken, but I believe Matt said he didn't care if people shared the demos so long as nobody profited from it. (Ex: the guy who made and sold the original History Teacher, which is when Matt stepped in.) This guy's certainly not profiting from it, and is apparently paying for the copies and shipping out of his own pocket, so I don't see a problem here.

You know, you could spend a few minutes reading up on things. The BM you bought? Released in America by Atlantic Records, and isn't the same as the version they sell in Canada. To date, it's the only MG album that's been released in the States. American labels promote their own releases. They don't promote releases by foreign companies, even their own affiliates. When you buy, say, Radiohead's OK Computer, you're buying a copy made in America by Capitol Records. You're not buying a Parlophone/EMI copy made in the UK (unless you intentionally buy an import). Capitol promotes Radiohead the US, Parlophone/EMI does not. If Capitol didn't release Radiohead's records here, you would only find a Radiohead album in an occasional music store, maybe Tower Records or HMV. Capitol would not promote them, and you would hear a lot less about them. Though I'm still baffled as to how you came to the conclusion that it's all about "them" not caring about Canadians. They don't sell Avril Lavigne records at your local music store? Or records from Broken Social Scene, Feist, Arcade Fire, etc? Then again, you are the same jackass who feels the need to respond to threads that ended six weeks ago.

Fire departments are often the first response to medical emergencies, given that they're often closer than the nearest hospital. (Firefighters usually have medical training.) The nearest hospital is more than six miles from where I live, so we typically see fire trucks responding to medical emergencies in our neighborhood.

Close to that, but not exactly. Trent Reznor: "Rick Rubin has been a friend for a long time, and he called me asking how I felt about Johnny covering 'Hurt'. I was flattered, but frankly, the idea sounded a bit gimmicky to me. I really didn't put much thought into it, as I was working on something at the time and was distracted. A few weeks later, a CD shows up with the track. Again, I'm in the middle of something and put it on and give it a cursory listen. It sounded... weird to me. That song in particular was straight from my soul, and it felt very strange hearing the highly identifiable voice of Johnny Cash singing it. It was a good version, and I certainly wasn't cringing or anything, but it felt like I was watching my girlfriend fuck somebody else. Or something like that. Anyway, a few weeks later, a videotape shows up with Mark Romanek's video on it. It's morning; I'm in the studio in New Orleans working on Zack De La Rocha's record with him; I pop the video in, and... wow. Tears welling, silence, goosebumps... Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore. Then it all made sense to me. It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. Some-fucking-how that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning-different, but every bit as pure. Things felt even stranger when he passed away. The song's purpose shifted again. It's incredibly flattering as a writer to have your song chosen by someone who’s a great writer and a great artist.

He actually didn't sing it that way. From the album bio: But when producer Rubin brought ['Hurt' and 'Personal Jesus'] to Cash's attention, he recalled the demons in his own life and responded to them instantly. "I think 'Hurt' is the best anti-drug song I ever heard," says Cash. "It's a song about a man's pain and what we're capable of doing to ourselves and the possibility that we don't have to do that anymore. I could relate to that from the very beginning." You can thank Mark Romanek for the retrospective aspect of the song. He begged and begged Rick Rubin to let him film the video, and offered to do it for free. And, honestly, without the video, the song wouldn't have had the same impact. At the same time, the "Hurt" movie that was shown during the 1994/5 NIN tour was one of the most emotionally powerful and disturbing concert moments I can remember. (It's partially seen in the "Hurt" video, but I wish they'd left out the closeups and just captured the movie on its own.) For me, it really helped sell the strength of the song.