Say Deny

In the mid-to-late '90's I was in a band called Gleaner. Kind of a "Power Pop" thing, which I always hated calling us as it was such a buzz-term of the time.

Our drummer was a contractor-type-guy and did a bunch of work at a downtown studio in trade for some recording time with the engineer. We recorded four songs total, two were my songs. This is one of them. It was a "real" studio, totally freaky and new for us; no one wanted to do their song first, especially the singing. So I had to go first, into the studio proper with everyone watching me through the big control room window and trying not to laugh at me. As soon as I started, it was like I forgot how to sing, and when I hear this now it sounds to me like I didn't know my voice yet. It's strange.
I switch between liking this for what it is and being horrifyingly embarassed of it.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by chococat (5 comments total)

It's funny but I like better the sound you get out of the instruments in your home recordings. Perhaps it's that thing that often when going to a "real" studio, there is never the time to tweak things to get the actual perfect sound you'd like.

But I like the song. And I'll always respect a one note solo. I know this one actually had three or four, but you probably know what I mean.
posted by micayetoca at 6:52 AM on October 25, 2007

Ya, it was pretty soon after this that the band dissolved and I got more into figuring out how to record myself the way I wanted, without the clock ticking and a bunch of people staring at you. This engineer was nice, but he wanted everything snappy and compressed and big. It was the '90's, after all. Also he panned my guitar hard left and turned it way down on all four songs, which bugged me.

It's my brother playing the lead guitar, and after we suggested a one-note solo (HUGE Neil Young fans we are) he was very unsure of it, "Is it dumb?" I made him keep it and I think it's my favourite part of the song.
posted by chococat at 7:59 AM on October 25, 2007

Hey, chococat! Cool story and song. It's funny about your vocal, it sounds good but it doesn't sound like the you that I'm used to. It's interesting to hear the difference.

I like the lead guitar too, fellow HUGE Neil Young fan.
posted by snsranch at 4:23 PM on October 26, 2007

I, for one, found this to be utterly fantastic. Thanks for posting this, really.
posted by ORthey at 8:49 PM on November 2, 2007

I'm way late to this party, but I really dig this. It reminds me of everything I liked about late-90s-power-pop. Sounds a lot like a band a friend of mine was in in the early-mid-90s (which is a good thing; they wrote one of my favorite songs ever, which I will maybe have to cover someday).
posted by uncleozzy at 8:12 PM on November 12, 2007