- Forget About The #1
- Disintegrate
- Ashamed
- Aztec Scratching
- Old Man Drinking
- Song About Nothing
- Digital Def Boy
- Beautiful Anne
- Misery
- Hymn For An Atheist
I recorded this album in my garage studio (The Hive). Tom Murray and I wrote all the songs together. We used John Montgomery (our regular drummer) on most of the songs and our friend Nick Lane (from Tuscaurora) on the others.
Drum samples were triggered on my vintage Akai S1000 via an ancient MIDI interface card. I had borrowed a MIDI drum kit from Nick or someone which the drummers all used to record their parts - all the drums on the record are "faked" this way, except for some live hi-hat on "Aztec Scratching" and some tympani and oil drums on "Hymn For An Atheist".
At this time, The Hive used Cubase mostly as a virtual tape machine, with a large 24-channel 8-bus Mackie mixer and 3 racks of outboard gear(!). Plug-ins on the CPU were kept to a bare minimum, because it just couldn't handle them while playing back 10+ tracks of 16-bit/44.1 kHz audio. Mixes were done to DAT, which was then digitally transferred back to the computer for editing and CD burning.
Both Tom and I wanted to go for a big, radio-friendly "commercial" sound to offset the deliberate rawness of "One Last Page". I think we achieved that admirably, and we even had a record guy "discover" us on MP3.com and be interested in signing us for about 15 minutes, until he found out that we were old, didn't live in the same city anymore, and didn't love Jesus.
This record sounds great partially due to the efforts of Ken Kessie and Chris Fudurich, who loaned me gear (I miss those Distressors and NS-10s!), advice, and mixing skills; and partially because of the incredible mastering job Evren Goknar (then of Tower Mastering/Capitol Records) did on the album.
Chris actually did a full set of mixes which Tom ultimately didn't like - he preferred my sloppy demos, so I remixed the whole record in a very short period of time. I believe Tom even used the demo mix of "Beautiful Anne". Though the guitar mix is really nice, the overall track is ruined by the excessive electronic kick I had dropped in as a joke.
I'm still very proud of the sound of this record, and think the better songs are as good as anything on the radio in the "pop-punk" style we were aiming for.
