It turns out, “not at work” does not necessarily mean “on vacation”, but even so, I have squeezed in some time in the last few weeks to finish writing, recording, and mixing the second Vacation album.
For this set of songs, I tried something different. It began in the fall when Steve lent me his Peavey amp and a giant cabinet. Once I set it all up in my basement, I had the loop pedal running guitar and bass through separate amps. I’d make up a simple guitar part, lay down a quick bass line, and then jump on the drums. It amazed me how much more fun it was playing along with a real bass amp than when running both instruments through the guitar amp.
Inspired, I began coming up with parts. I’d force myself to lay down A and B sections each time I played. After recording over 20 song ideas, I went through them and culled the less interesting ones. Below are three that didn’t make the cut to the final album.
After settling on eight that I liked, I began recording each as produced songs using Reaper. The idea recordings that became each track on the album are below.
This idea would later become track 1: A Room Apart
This idea would later become track 2: Break 2
This idea would later become track 3: Figure Out Who I Am
This idea would later become track 4: Stay Outside
This idea would later become track 5: A Figure on a Window
This idea would later become part of track 6: Break 7
This idea would later become part of track 6: Break 7
This idea would later become track 7: To Do List
The lyrics and melodies were, as usual, the hardest part. I decided to make the lyrics personal and heartfelt – something that I don’t often do. I didn’t scour Wikipedia for fun topics, but instead tried to find big important things and small moments that resonated with me. I ended up with songs about applying for new jobs, playing hide and seek, and simultaneously thinking about missing my dog when she passes away and my daughter when she grows up. For many of the songs, I ended up “stopping” working on them rather than truly finishing them. As often happens, I’m left hating some of the words and feeling indifferent about many of the melodies.
I started recording the album during my winter break at the end of 2019 and finished it during the COVID-19 lockdown of March and April 2020. I don’t know how the tone of the album fits across both of those “vacations” – but it is what it is…
In late 2012, I began recording a followup to Vacation, which I ingeniously titled ii. The resulting unfinished tracks are some of the best recorded and produced that I’ve done. Certainly some potential in a few of these. Not much cohesiveness, though.
AAA: Not sure what these lyrics are supposed to be about. That’s definitely a theme among many of these unfinished tracks. I’m messing around with mixing acoustic and electric here, trying to update the original sound of Vacation. As I continued recording, I realized I missed the raw-ness of the original album. The breakdown on this one loses focus and the drums never received the cleanup work to the MIDI that they sorely needed.
Electric: The beat for this one is a direct ripoff of a Name track. Not sure that I did it on purpose, but it happened anyway. Some of the synth and guitar interplay here is kind of fun, though.
Funk: This track fulfills my urge to play something a little groovier and funkier about once or twice a year before I realize I can’t pull it off without Blonski and Devin. I assume the whistling was a melody idea. Not sure.
Rock Dance: Rock! This definitely doesn’t fit the sound that was defined on the first Vacation release. That album’s sounds grew organically, mostly around the restriction that only one microphone be used throughout the recording. Without that restriction this time, these tracks varied wildly in style. Decent solo-y thing in the middle of this one.
Slow Rock: Looking back on this one, I really like most of the sounds I got out of the instruments. The guitars are crunchy and satisfying, the bass is defined, and the synth layers in the background. I purposely broke with expectations for structure for this track, which gives some parts of it a little bit of a Tool vibe. I think I was looking to channel Rated R era Queens with the ending section. Would’ve liked to see a good singer finish this one – which is why I didn’t bother and it remains unfinished.
Summer Vacation: No bass and some hastily thought out guitar parts make this the least finished of all of these unfinished tracks. Could have been decent, but it’s hard to tell from this early edit.
Meat Without Feet – WPOP scrapped initial sessions:
Track 01: This was the long version of what ended up being “Introduction” on the final album. The “verse” section mirrored the outro track from the original Meat Without Feet album, but it ended up getting cut from the final release.
Track 02: Kind of unremarkable in most ways. Some acceptable grooves, but obviously not much came of it.
Track 03: The first track with some vocals. As mentioned earlier, I have no idea what these are supposed to be about. Meat Without Feet has a vague focus on romantic lyrics (see “In this Town” and “I’ll be There” from the first album), but they’re neither very relate-able nor interesting. The chorus vocal performance is decent and the outro is somewhat interesting.
Track 04: This song was appended to the conclusion of the previous track. I like to think of them as a pair and this was to be a response of sorts. This might be my favorite of the unreleased WPOP tracks. Had I thought of a melody, it could’ve made it to the final release.
Track 05: The vocals on this one are somewhat unlistenable, but I’m glad I was trying to get out of my comfort zone. The lead guitar line in the chorus is pretty neat – both in tone and writing. Most of the lead makes me happy, actually. As long as I don’t think much about the words (which I assume was intended to me some kind of parody?), this track is enjoyable to listen to. The drum parts in the middle and end are fun and the half time bridge-y thing is kind of cool.
It’s not a challenge if there were never any failures. Besides CRAXYBRAIN, a few other one or twohourchallenges have fallen to the wayside and were left unfinished for a variety of reasons.
The first is one written by Jim and I while messing around on my son’s guitar. Sort of a bossa nova, but the rhythm and strumming is a little wonky because both Jim and I played during different sections. In the end, we were out of time, didn’t have lyrics done, and weren’t totally happy with the progress so far, so we let it slip.
The second track is one that I wrote just after Blonski finished Blizzard last winter. I wanted to get back to recording live drums in the style of Vacation, but didn’t want to go through the trouble of setting up my full set. I resorted to using my son’s toy drum set. The results were predictable. Still, I like some of the guitar writing and Blonski’s bass and keys are solid as always.
I still have to get around to mixing down the initial unfinished WPOPtracks, but after that my vault cleanup should be nearly complete. Looks like my house is almost ready for Windows 10 clean installs!
A few weeks ago I took a look at the small glowing pig discography page and was immediately saddened. As of even this morning, the only release this year was an album written and recorded over two years ago that finally saw overdubs, mixing, and mastering in May of this year. Had we really not completed anything new? Was this really the most musically devoid year for small glowing pig since 2006? How did this happen?
Before building a resolve to right what was wrong, I reflected upon the causes. Surely much of the blame can be laid upon the doorstep of SpaceBase’s continued expansion into it’s third production year. Having a one and a half year old with a 7:30 bedtime also didn’t encourage late night rock and rolling. For most of the year, Steve was also busy playing in approximately three dozen bands ranging from renaissance and Celtic to blues rock. Jefim had moved to Boston and Devin and Angello continued to be busy working a ridiculous schedule and shredding the Les Paul in a new band, respectively. So, considering all this, what was to be done?
Acid pro
Jefim uses the nexus 7 as a lyric sheet
Musical instruments
Inputs and outputs
Blonski likes playing the bass
Over the shoulder shot
Jefim likes what he hears
How about release that six month old two hour challenge and then do another one last minute when Jefim comes to town? Yeah, that sounds alright.
First, take a listen to “Parcel Octopus” by Parcel Octopus off of their album Parcel Octopus. We random band name generatored the name and then surmised that they were a punk band that had expanded into psychedelia and left behind their days of protest on route to their eponymous album and song. Nailed it.
Next, it’s about time we released a song that Jim Hernovic and I put together about six months ago. We started by feeding the lyrics of the then-current top 10 pop songs (“Get Lucky,” “Radioactive,” etc.) into a word cloud generator.
So what’s next for us? Maybe some The Name. Maybe a new Vacation record. Maybe we’ll even get around to the Small Glowing Pig 10th Anniversary Album (13th anniversary?), who knows. I’m pretty sure that we’ll hear from Predicament again soon, and that Blonski and I will bang out at least a few more frames of SpaceBase before having a catastrophic hard drive failure that drives us to the brink of suicide. Whatever it is, hopefully it’s more than a two year old album and two challenge songs.
UPDATED 9/20/2011: Bonus unfinished tracks added to the end of the original write-up…
It’s been a month or two since release and close to a year since the last recording for the Vacation EP. I gave it a listen recently for the first time in months and figured I’d post my impressions of the project now that I’m removed from making it. Overall, a few things jump out at me as I listen.
The new Small Glowing Pig website is finally here. Be sure to update your bookmarks to smallglowingpig.com, as it’ll be our home for the foreseeable future. On to the celebrations…
First up is a new release from Steve Blonski & the Victor Frankensteins. It’s the first proper followup to a “Steve Blonski & the” album. It also marks a return to a band last heard from way back in 2000. Two tracks from that year’s Not Gonna be Splitting the Atom Any Time Soon are featured on the new release, Antimony. Enjoy!
Steve Blonski & the Victor Frankensteins: Antimony
Next is the first release from Vacation. Meant to be a catch all “band” for all the random nonsense I come up with during my breaks from school. Think Desert Sessions but generally alone and not as interesting. It was originally intended to have a real “band” feel, so I restricted myself to one acoustic, one electric, drums, bass, and vocals. I don’t remember if I kept it up throughout the seven tracks, though. I did, however, only use one microphone for the whole thing – including the drums. Craziness!
Vacation
We’ll have more news about The Name and about a new project soon. The 10th Anniversary album seems to be on hold. It’s already the 11th Anniversary, so what’s another year?
