We’ve been doing our ‘Messin’ With The Music’ series for a while now. A couple of years ago we decided to put all the song content on our YouTube channel. I think most people tend to find their music there – I do most of my Grapevine searching on YouTube. The first step of my music search begins in magazines, either print or online (I still love reading print). I use the reviews to try to determine if a band’s style sounds interesting – I’m not as worried about someone’s opinion on quality. I then search for the narrowed down selections on YouTube. Some songs have video, some have a static photo for the video. We realized that the first couple of songs we messed with didn’t end up on YouTube as we were just starting up our channel at the time. I thought this would be a good time to put the early ones up with the rest of the songs – that way people could find them all at one location. They’ll also end up on the ‘Videos’ page on this web site. Here’s our first three Messin’ tunes.
The first song here is ‘The Lovecats’ by The Cure. It was a non album single released by the band in 1983. To make our version a bit different we didn’t use the very prominent bass line and changed the vocal scat singing between verses to a line on banjo. We were just beginning to figure out how to convert ‘electric’ songs to acoustic instruments. I think our version sounds a bit ‘darker’ than the original. The studio doesn’t have any cats, so we’re using a picture of the studio ‘love dogs’ Bonnie and Samantha.
The next song is ‘It’s Gonna Be A Long Night’ by Ween. This is the first song we tried in the Messin’ series. The original song is a screaming blast of noisy crunch. It’s from their 2003 album ‘Quebec’. I’ve read that they were trying to make a song that sounded like Motorhead. Lyrically it’s about two people trying to ‘out substance’ each other over the course of a night. So we slowed it down and changed everything to acoustic. We thought the contrast of the lyrics and the acoustic version was a bit odd, so of course we had to do it. We even added a background ‘evil voice’ for the chorus. This really set us up for making the cover versions any way we wanted to instead of doing something similar to the original.
‘Messin’ With The Music’ is a labor of love for us. In our case it means we only cover songs we really love. I’ve always been a huge fan of The Gun Club. This song is from their 1983 EP ‘Death Party’. This is one of the few Messin’ covers that was primarily recorded on electric guitar. We didn’t record a lot of tracks – the main electric guitar, bass, electric slide guitar and hand drums. We tried to get the feel of a room bathed in black lights and incense. If you check out our YouTube channel you can find a live band version of The Gun Club’s ‘Ghost On The Highway’. I could happily cover their entire first album ‘Fire Of Love’.
One of the avenues we’ve worked on for both blog posts and our own entertainment has been covering songs written and recorded by other artists. We’ve labeled our endeavors ‘Messin’ With The Music’ although we were doing some cover songs long before we decided on that current format. We’ve already recorded over twenty songs in the series and are constantly discussing and working on more. One of the reasons we’ve worked on covers was to keep up our recording and playing chops. When you’re interpreting a piece of music that is already written, it allows more time to work on recording and arrangement techniques. You don’t have to work out chords and lyrics or worry if the song is ‘good’. We obviously pick songs we already like and think we can do something different with. I don’t really want to do a cover song and try to closely match the original recording. It feels like it would become a watered down version of something that I really like. What fun is that? When I was younger there was a big market for live cover bands. There were a lot of clubs that booked cover bands and if you were one of the better known bands you could make decent money doing it. When I was in college I made extra money playing in a wedding band. Most of those gigs are now handled by DJs or recorded music although there are still places where you can see cover bands live. The bigger trend tends to be in ‘tribute’ bands that take on the works of one specific band and try to match the sound and sometimes even the look and performance as closely as possible. I guess that’s fun for a lot of people that never had an opportunity to see the original band live, but I’m more interested when I hear someone reinterpret a song adding their own personality and flavor to it.
‘Covering’ songs has been around a long time. In popular music (where the term ‘pop’ music started – now ‘pop’ is used more to denote style than the fact that it is popular) songs were not always written by the bands who recorded them. There were song writers and there were recording artists. Some well known recording artists never wrote their own songs. That still exists today although I think that when most people hear a song, they think the artist doing the recording actually wrote it. If you look at the songs copyright, you may see a large number of people who wrote the tune as well as multiple people listed as ‘producer’. The ‘producers’ usually have decided on the instrumentation used as well as the song’s structure and sequencing. Think of a legacy rock band like Three Dog Night. They had three songs that were number one hits. All of them were written by different songwriters: ‘One’ was written by Harry Nilsson; ‘Mama Told Me (Not To Come)’ was written by Randy Newman; ‘Joy To The World’ was written by Hoyt Axton. Some of their other well known songs: ‘Old Fashioned Love Song’ was written by Paul Williams; ‘Celebrate’ was written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon; ‘Eli’s Comin’ was written by Laura Nyro. The songwriter versus recording artist split was probably greater in the early days of radio music, especially when you’re discussing songs that became ‘hits’. Even Jimi Hendrix had hit singles written by other songwriters. ‘Hey Joe’ was written by Billy Roberts. ‘All Along The Watchtower’ is a Bob Dylan song. These days most bands in the ‘rock’ genre (we won’t open the ‘genre’ and ‘sub genre’ can of worms in this post) tend to write their own songs. If you look at pop chart hits you’ll probably still find a lot of well known performers who do songs written by or with other people.
With that background in mind the impetus for this post was some songs I came across while scrolling through the internet. Led Zeppelin has remained one of my favorite all time bands. I still listen to their albums frequently and love the variety of songs they put out that don’t always fit neatly in to the ‘rock’ stereotype. Robert Plant has recently done another collaboration album with Alison Krauss who is a remarkable talent and has put out great material in a variety of styles but is most known for country and bluegrass. They have been out on tour and decided to bring in songs from the Led Zeppelin catalogue for their live shows. To do this they’ve reworked the original versions of the songs. First, to fit the songs in to the style they do as musical collaborators. Second, Plant’s vocal range has changed since his Led Zeppelin days, so they had to take that in to consideration. Let’s start out with something with a pretty big change of style. ‘Rock And Roll’ is a hard rock guitar classic. Plant and Krauss have reworked it with a wonderful bluegrass country sound. There’s pull back on the tempo. Replace some of the guitar leads with fiddle. The biggest difference for me is the change from 4/4 rock pile driver to country swing. This is my idea of fun. If you’re going to cover your own songs, let’s really give it a twist. I’m going to put up the cover version first, then the original for comparison.
The next song we’re looking at is ‘When The Levee Breaks’. This song is not actually a Led Zeppelin original. It was written in the 1920’s by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Led Zeppelin reworked it for their fourth album and that is probably the version most people are familiar with. John Bonham’s drumming and the recorded drum sound really set it apart and it’s a sound people have been trying to duplicate since then. You can find entire articles dedicated to how the drum sound was achieved. The live version by Krauss and Plant really creates a ‘graveyard at night’ sound with the softer percussion but especially the haunting fiddle parts. Those changes and the more restrained vocal lines give the song an entirely different feel.
The final song we’re going to look at is ‘The Battle Of Evermore’. This song has the least amount of change from the Led Zeppelin version to the live version by Krauss and Plant. The reason for this is the original song was based primarily on a mandolin part. That sound crosses over pretty directly to what Krauss and Plant are doing. The song is also very spare in it’s instrumentation. You could add more instruments to the live version, but it would probably destroy the feel of this vocal-centric song. Another similarity is that the original version was recorded with Sandy Denny from the band Fairport Convention doing the call and response vocals with Robert Plant. I believe this is the only song Zeppelin recorded with a vocalist other than Plant. Krauss takes over the Sandy Denny parts in this live version. They have pulled back the tempo a bit for the live version. Sometimes a tempo change by itself can make a difference in the feel of a song.
We’re now officially in the summer season for 2022. This is a fun time for me. We have our national park hiking adventures booked for the year. This is the time when I start to put together our guide for what to do and see in the parks. There’s scenic roads to drive, breath taking overlooks and many amazing trails to cover. We don’t make specific plans for each day, but it really helps to be familiar with all the options you have which allows you to experience as much of the parks as you can in the time available. What does this have to do with our music and blog posting? Inspiration. Creating music is an interesting process. There’s lots of things you do on a daily or weekly basis that don’t require any creative flow. I’ve found I can clean, workout or do household projects without needing to be ‘inspired’. Creating music, videos or blog posts takes a bit more creative inspiration. Practicing instruments from a technical stand point can be much like a workout. You focus on the process and try to improve your techniques. I’ve found, at least in my own case, I need to feel some inspiration to write and record music. If you’re ‘not in the mood’ it’s difficult to put ideas together that have any feel to them. When I’ve tried to force recording or writing, I’m not usually happy with the results. And yet there are times you have to push yourself to get going and work out musical ideas or nothing will ever get started. This is the mystery that has to be solved when you’re working on creative projects. Equal parts sweat and inspiration. At this time of year I’m hoping that the inspiration of trip planning carries over to musical creation. It usually does and I’m looking forward to new and interesting results that we’ll be able to share with you. Let’s move forward with the Grapevine selections and see what inspiration we can get from enjoying other artist’s creativity.
First Up: Graham Day – ‘Out Of Your Narrow Mind’
I thought we’d start out with a good blast of garage rock to wake everyone up. For me, the foundation of most songs that follow this style is the guitar sound. This is a good example of the impact of a song depending on two things: the song writing itself and the choices that are made in the recording process. For the perfect garage sound you really have to hit both targets. Listen to the guitar sound when the other instruments drop out at the 1:07 mark. It has a lot of top end, just enough distortion that it’s crunchy but not totally fuzzed out. Imagine if this guitar sound was more mid tone and the distortion was too heavy and actually smoothed out the sound. It would totally take out the impact of the guitar. The crisp, treble heavy sound is also applied to the drums and vocals. If you didn’t do that the other instruments would be overpowered by the guitar sound. This is an important part of mixing. When mixing you want to check the EQ levels of the instruments both separately and together. You rely partly on your ears, but it’s also a good idea to look at the EQ using the software or other tools that are available to you in your system. There’s definitely a late 60’s throw back feel to the song structure and sound. Good, chunky garage rock will never go out of style.
Next Up: Ditz – ‘Hehe’
We’re moving on to a song that practically weaponized the guitar sound. In some ways this song is more physical and visceral than musical. Guitar crunch and blasting feedback dominate this tune. There’s an interesting sound attached to the drums. Listen when the drums come in to start the song at :11. There’s some choices they make with the drum sound that set up the rest of the song. The snare and kick drums are drenched in distortion and reverb and yet if you listen closely, the high hat sound is clean. The guitar comes in and sits on a single note while the vocals appear and are placed in the background of the mix. All these mixing choices are used to set the feel of the song. You could take the same song structure, but if you had clean drums, put the guitars back further in the mix and put the vocals out front, you’d have a totally different song without changing the actual song writing at all. There’s also a lot of attention to dynamics – the drums drop down to rim shots before everything blasts in to full mode again. Again, the guitar sound is put in the spot light by separating the guitars in to left and right stereo channels, one side crunchy and the other side guitar drone. By the 1:20 mark the song settles in to a what feels like a more straight forward beat. There’s also an example of some very small choices that have a nice effect – see the one second drop out at 1:55. When you have a song this pummeling and it runs 4:30 you have to do something to break it up and add interest. At 2:50 the drums and song suddenly slow down before returning to full speed ten seconds later. At 3:15 the song begins to slow down again. At 3:30 the drums drop out and you have only guitar drone. This runs through the end of the song. I can picture the band setting down the guitars and walking off the stage as they feed back. It’s these arrangement choices that make the song interesting.
Finally: Kevin Morby – ‘Rock Bottom’
So for our final song, let’s have some fun. The first thing that hit me when I heard this song is ‘more cowbell’ (if you don’t know this SNL skit, you have to look it up!). The cowbell travels through the whole song. Somehow they pull this off without the sound becoming totally obnoxious. This points to another example of how important mixing is. You have to have that sound at just the right level in the mix that it drives the song without becoming overbearing. All the parts in the song have great energy and drive. Another song where I really love the guitar sound. The vocals are very syncopated and rhythmic which drives the song along with the instruments. There’s lots of nice drop outs where the bass comes to the front. It feels like the kind of song where if you see the band live the crowd would be bouncing along with the song. The song is great and what added to it and really sold me on it was watching the video. The concept is great and had me chuckling though the whole video. Sometimes a song has a video that feels right for the music and keeps the vibe of the song. There’s even a nice guitar solo thrown in that has the feel of a sax solo. Sometimes you hit a video that adds a whole extra dimension to the music. That’s definitely the case with ‘Rock Bottom’. It starts with dialogue and has some song breaks where the video takes front stage. Lyrically the song is for all the people who are treated as ‘losers’ – “All of my life, Everybody roasting me, All of my life, Like I was a piece of meat, It’s cold down here, despite the heat, In the rock bottom (bop-bop), Rock bottom (bop-bop)”. The video follows the concept throughout, with the people who laugh at the characters getting their comeuppance. The end of the video is the best. Enjoy!
Retro: Keelhaul – ‘Driver’s Bread’
So let’s go retro with some good old fashioned mathcore. Can you listen to Keelhaul at low volume? I guess you can, but why would you? When I want to clear out my head there’s nothing better than dropping on Keelhaul’s ‘Subject To Change Without Notice’ album and letting it rip. Loud, aggressive, multiple time signatures and loads of syncopation and changes in dynamics. I love the opening guitar riff in this song. So different from a straight forward time signature guitar riff. Then the drums come in like rolling thunder behind the guitar, sitting on another different rhythm. There’s knife sharp drop outs and returns throughout the song. At 1:35 the guitars drop on to another riff while the drums roll throughout the kit at breakneck speed. At 2:15 the bass guitar gets it’s turn at driving the boat. Then the song pulls back a bit with held guitar chords and rolling bass. This change in dynamics sets up the punch when the original guitar riff returns at 3:10. When we enter some ‘mellower’ sections of the song keep your ears tuned to the drums which stubbornly refuse to sit down on a straight beat. When you get to 5:30 the dynamics really pull back to a simple guitar part. The song rolls out to the end on this relatively softer feel. This style of music might not be for everyone. There are no vocals. But the aggression, time signature and riff complexity certainly have a place in my musical world. Try it, you might like it.
‘Round Trip’ is another entry in our ‘From The Vault’ series. ‘From The Vault’ is where we scour our old hard drives and CDs to find songs that we wrote and recorded preliminary versions of but for various reasons never made a full studio recording. ‘Round Trip’ was recorded live at ChurchHouse studios. This song was recorded a bit differently than some of our other live takes. The song was played straight through in a live fashion. For this song we were actually recording our parts in separate rooms with each of us hearing the mix in headphones. The vocals, guitar and drums were recorded live. The bass part was overdubbed later. This song, like many of our ‘From The Vault’ songs, didn’t receive any punch ins after the recording. We’ve done that a lot when we’re in the writing process. As with our other song ideas we’re trying to capture the essence of the song, let it age for a bit, then come back and decide if we want to do a full blown studio version of it. This is another song that has been around for a while. We’ll pull these songs out and listen to them once in a while to see if we want to revise parts and work on them. Song writing is an interesting process. I’ve found that you usually have more excitement and ideas for the newest piece you’re working on. Occasionally we’ll restart older projects, but the excitement tends to be higher on ideas that are brand new because you’re often working in a different style than older tunes. Doing our ‘From The Vault’ series gives some older ideas another look. This song may eventually be taken apart and totally reworked. Only time will tell.
In this post we’re presenting another ‘Live In The Studio’ performance by Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs. The video is a live take of the song ‘Mrs Jones’ which was originally on the album ‘Superior Olive’ with our previous band Conduit. The vocal and electric guitar parts are performed live for the video. We decided to record new backing tracks to work with. Each of those tracks were recorded the same way we do tracks for the ‘Messin’ With The Music’ videos – recorded straight through in the studio using one mic in the room. Along with the tracks you see us playing in the video we added a bass guitar and two tracks of twelve string acoustic guitar. You can hear the acoustic guitars panned harder to the left and right channels. One guitar is playing chords and the other guitar is playing a single note riff. This allowed us to give the song a little different flavor than the original version. Instead of a drum kit we used a cajon for the rhythm. We have the fun of doing a song live without having a full live band.
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