Notes from Derek Studio Day 2 & 3 (Thursdays March 19 & 26 2009)

The Cast:
Rich (bass )
Flo (rhythm/lead & vocals)
Ed Vadas - Producer
The Couch
Greg Steele - Engineer
Locale - Derek Studios, Dalton MA

This is our 4th recording project @ Derek. Ed, (producer), & Greg (engineer) have a healthy push & pull, keeping a banter going, often trying to get a rise out of us, the hardworking musicians (i.e. Flo & Rich). More than once, Flo has asked them what they thought their wives would say, if they heard them. I should mention for those who don't know us well, that Flo can swear with the best of them. Still there are times when the goading has a purpose. for ex. If Flo is trying to sing an angry part, she might not get it right until they taunt her with something totally politically incorrect, and then she really does get pissed.

Jopey nailed all his drum track on Day 1, Saturday March 7, now on the 19th, Rich finished bass tracks for Accelerate, Beyond De Feet, & Dryada. Flo recorded vocals and guitars on Accelerate and guitar tracks on Dryada. And while Rich & Flo were doing all the "real" work, what were our esteemed producer and engineer up to? Here's some quotes ...

Ed (wondering what's holding up the works) "C'mon! We're on a limited budget & limited talent".
Ed, "Now where the f*ck did he go?"
Greg, (in the midst of hooking up mics & chords), "Hey, It takes a long time to make the magic happen"
Ed. "Listen Merlin, If you don't hurry it up, I'll stick a wand up your butt & that will really make some magic happen."
Greg, "Oh boy! Gee really? Thanks"


Greg: "That's the spot you're going to come in. No animals will get hurt."

Greg, "Play me a little bit, so I can hear what you're gonna do. Better yet don't" (and he heads out to take care of something else)

Greg to Flo, "Would you like to try another guitar for a different tone?"
Ed, "Give her a smelly Tele"
Flo who has to date recorded all TagYerit material on the Rabbit Guitar asks fretfully, "Will it make me sound like everybody else?"
Greg, "Tune that guitar again"
Flo, "(expletive deleted)

Greg, "I'm going to take a whole other track so I'll have some options."
Ed, "Moptions? Is that what you use to clean up problem areas?"

After hearing Flo's lead for "Dryada", Greg said, "Either she's crazy or she's a genius." Then he added, "Flo, I think what you should do is get a heroin habit
& smoke a lot of shit & it will really open you up."

Flo."I went to the wrong note."
Greg, "How can you tell?"

Day 3 March 26
Rich recorded the bass tracks for Mt. Katahdin, Neat Junk & Neva Prepared. Flo finished all known guitar parts & lead vocals on Beyond De Feet & Dryada. And she did the rhythm guitar on Neva Prepared.

Imagine a room about 15' square with one corner cut off. That corner becomes the diagonal wall that faces into the recording room with the help of a 2' h. x 4' wide window. The window worked well when the room was first built, but now as Greg sits at this station, he has to look around a large Mac monitor that blocks much of the view. The floor is carpeted except for the area where Greg sits on his desk chair. There he has a wooden parquet floor, which he slides across from side to side as he adjusts knobs & patch chords on some of the dozen pieces of equipment that blink & pulse and whir in perfect synch to the music. The finish on the floor is gone except for the corners which attests to Greg's constant tweaking.
The Mac screen shows a series of black sine waves across half a dozen gray horizontal roads. Flo's singing a new vocal track for Dryada. The new live track being recorded grows across a red roadway.

The song Dryada is about meeting a tree spirit (dryad) who is speaking in her native language. As Flo sings into the microphone "Ah da Keena Ah da keena wayah", Ed sits next to me on the couch singing his own spin (off microphone), "Ike & Tina, Ike & Tina Turner."

Ah yes, the couch. The back wall of the room facing the board has a most benign looking monster, posing as a couch. You must be very careful if you decide to sit there. This beast will do its best to ingest you. If Ed weren't such a big man, it would certainly have swallowed him whole. As things are, Ed must make a supreme effort to escape this sponge that pretends to be a cushion. I am not exaggerating that I watch Ed huff & puff for 5 minutes until he was red in the face before he was able to free himself from its gravitational pull and stand upright. For a moment I thought I was witnessing Ed have a heart attack. I'm just a skinny guy, so I do my best to sit gingerly on the edge. I don't doubt that more than one band has lost a drummer to its bottomless depths. For years, Flo has begged, threatened and tried to bribe Greg to ditch the couch. She can't remember EVER attempting to sit in it, since in her mind it reeks of boy cooties (lost drummers?).

(back to Dryada)
Greg, "We should do the Pink Floyd thing and have a bunch of children sing it."

Flo, "I've put a breath in there, like a breeze blowing through the trees. It's a girl thing."
Greg, "It's brilliant".
Ed (to Greg), "Can you hike the breath up about 8 dbs?
Flo, "Can you hike my breasts up too?"
Greg, "That'll be extra."

Flo, " I keep tripping over the word 'sensation'."
Greg, " Just sing it from the top and I'll plug it in & you'll never know what hit you."

Ed, " Great! what song's next?"
Rich, "Beyond De Feet"
Ed, "Oh, the ankle song".
explanation: the song's about how the music travels from a musicians hands to the dancer's feet.
"It's their insides going through their hands and coming out your feet". So we came to calling the song "Beyond De Feet".

Flo, "I want to redo the E part"
Greg, "Do you want more roll time?"
Flo, "Yeah."
Ed, "Chicken shit."

Subject: It´s up to you and me. Let´s bring Cape Wind Home!
From: "Clean Power Now"

We're winning! Thanks to your support, we are very close to making history: the first-ever, fully permitted offshore wind farm in the United States!

But, I need your help. We must raise $50,000 in the next 4 weeks to counter the numerous "frivolous" legal challenges by the opposition. In addition, your donation allows us to continue our mission to educate and empower the public about clean renewable energy. Simply click here to donate on-line.

If you and each Clean Power Now member could help us with $5 right now, we can reach this goal before the end of the year!

And, please pass the link with Eve the Electrician on to your friends and family. It's a new campaign, just launched by Clean Power Now. Eve is a "live wire" who will help educate the public, young and old, and politicians, on what's involved in bringing electricity from renewable energy projects into our homes.

Please click here to make a secure, special year-end gift to Clean Power Now. It is an essential investment in a more secure and clean future, right here, right now, and right in our own backyard.

It's up to you and me. LET'S BRING CAPE WIND HOME.

Thank you and happy clean energy holidays.

Barbara J. Hill
Executive Director

P.S. Just click here to make a secure tax-deductible gift to Clean Power Now for clean energy for many years to come... Thank You and Happy Holidays!

Okay, so the world has now changed and in a good way. There is no way to undo the election of a promising black American. And that in itself may be more important than many other things that happen in the next 4 (or maybe 8) years.

Unfortunately this is no time to sit back and relax. Especially if you read articles like this :
"Conned again"
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Nov 11, 2008, 00:26

If the change President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America´s wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama´s choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama´s selection of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama´s election. The only thing different about the new administration will be the faces. ..."

For the full story in all its terrible aspects, go to:
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3989.shtml

And then remember we still have a voice. Just keep using it.

Now that we've all had a chance to digest a historic victory ...
And before we start worrying about how our next president won't quite live up to our expectations ...

Here's Prev1's take in pumpkinese on the Republican candidate for President and Vice President and why they most likely lost!



Apparently Senator McCain got lost in acting the part of Frankenstein and Sarah Palin thought she was playing The Bride of Frankenstein. Many thanks to PRev1 for sending these in.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/1568b00337/leap-year-patriot-from-jm-finholt

Check out the video on The laziest American

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/1568b00337/leap-year-patriot-from-jm-finholt

The Impeachment That Never Was…
Story & painted pumpkin illustration by Kathy Luttkus

I ´impeached´ George Bush in my backyard, fueled by the belief that only elbows – and not impeachments – should be kept off the table. The process wasn´t hard. I purchased a can of peach halves (in heavy syrup), picked out a pumpkin at the farmer´s market, painted on a dumb facial expression, bought a gray wool suit from a thrift store, found a red, white and blue polyester tie on the dance floor of a Libertyville chili cook-off, and scored some Mickey Mouse cufflinks on eBay.

I accomplished in two hours tops what our representatives couldn´t do in five years. All 34 vertebrae of a good and sturdy spine aided the creation of the impeached pumpkin. But in the end, it was a little testicular fortitude that accomplished the task, even though I am a woman.

A scary precedent is being set by not impeaching a guy like George Bush. A majority of Americans agreed that Congress should impeach Bush if Americans were wiretapped without the approval of a judge. The 2006 Democratic takeover of the House and Senate meant – according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – that people were calling for a "new direction." But the Democrats didn´t keep their pledge for a change of course in Iraq, just as George Bush didn´t make good on his promise that the economy would grow. By 2007, the Democrats preferred the beatitude about inheriting the earth to being called peacemakers, whose only reward is to be deemed children of God. For them, regaining power mattered above all else.

John McCain said in June that he didn´t agree with Dennis Kucinich´s Articles of Impeachment, yet in 1999 he voted for President Clinton´s impeachment because a president must be "held strictly accountable to the rule of the law." (Behaviors of mavericks often defy logic.) So, manufacturing wars, lying about weapons of mass destruction, authorizing illegal wiretapping, and condoning torture of prisoners doesn´t even warrant a slap on the wrist, neither does killing and wounding more than 34,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands Iraqis. Presidents just can´t do something really heinous, like hang out in boardrooms with bereted interns who make nasty handbags. In 1998, Republicans put politics ahead of country when they impeached Bill Clinton. In 2008, Democrats put politics ahead of country by not impeaching George Bush.

Was there any satisfaction for me in carrying out a symbolic impeaching of my president? Perhaps a little bit, but not much. I would have preferred seeing a chapter in future history books detailing how President Bush endured the House passing articles of impeachment, probing questions by a responsible Congress, subpoenas, and sworn testimonies. Vermont Congressman Peter Welch said history would impeach George Bush. That may be true, but hopefully we´ll also see a few paragraphs about how Congress failed the American people.

Story and picture © Kathy Luttkus 2008

The following were sent to us from a carver who identified himself/herself simply as "Angry Voter" ...

The Clean Machine takes the lead, but the Mean dirty carbon-chugging machine is still too close for comfort.

I'm sure I'm not the first to consider two men in comparison. The civil rights issue brought to a head by the first Illinoisan President, Abraham Lincoln, who had lost his senatorial election bid and yet because of that, went on to become president. Lincoln had less legislative experience than Barack Obama ... yet went on to be one of the most memorable presidents in US history.




On a side note, showing how some issues never change ... during the Lincoln Douglas debates, Lincoln defends his votes when in the House of Representatives for voting against the war with Mexico (as illegal) and yet supporting the troups by voting for the allotment of moneys to provide them with adequate supplies and equipment.

On a completely different side note ... it's curious that the "conservative" administration is responding to the current financial crisis with its sudden support of a very socialist mindset when trying to head off disaster with its bailout of major financial institutions. This pumpkin headed punster will refrain, at the moment, from deciding whether this is a good move or a bad move, but we sure do find it curious. We guess that socialism is really not so bad if it means helping your wealthy buddies stay wealthy.

Oh Yeah! It's Political Pumpkin time again. Since TagYerit's pumpkin pages receive hundreds of thousands of visits during these months ... the world's YOUR stage ... We're putting a call out to all you interested parties, be you pundits, pumpkin carvers, pumpkin painters, or just someone with a promising idea. Send us your pumpkin pics and ideas.

Pumpkins (and TagYerit) are avid environmentalists and are still pissed off and reeling from 8 dismal years of Bush's Reblican REGIME. Now, since McCain has aligned himself with Bush's failed policies 95% of the time, you can just guess where the pumpkin patch votes will go ...

So we're looking for:
pumpkins with strong pro-Obama visuals and statements
AND
pumpkins portraying McCain's record (like his support on issues such as torture; oil drilling; Iraq, etc.)

Even if you're not a pumpkin carver - send us your best ideas and we'll attempt to carve as many as we can

Help us and the pumpkins make this the year of "No more Business As Usual with Greedy good ol' boys in the White House"