Searching for a Green Head Man ... Vibe

Hello!

Bit of a surprise blog this, I was expecting to be a little quiet for a bit but we had an idea – or two. Ron is going to be out of Acton (sic) for a while so we decided at short notice to get a studio recording of some sort initiated (drum parts the essential bit) so that whilst he is recovering we could be overdubbing and generally making great a few songs for a studio e.p for release the back end of the year. As we have had to do the unthinkable and cancel/rearrange/redeploy a few gigs then this would keep our and possibly your momentum going until our victorious return(!) on the 30th October 2010 at Katififzgerald’s – the irony of course being that we don’t fitz on the stage there!

So, where are we? Well we didn’t feel like we needed to enter a commercial studio for this for many reasons; cost of course, the fact that we have got (and it has to be said) some very good recording gear and also that we prefer the manky environment that we affectionately call the Chicken shack (due to there being chickens running lose all around it). Basically it is a rectangular room and that’s what we wanted.


With the day cleared we arrived around 14:00 (well some of us did) and got to work with the load in. That’s a feat in itself, and Canadian Dave started assembling his hard disk recording environment. Regularly being attacked by wasps and me getting a little Spinal Tap about it affecting my performance we got a fair bit of it setup.


Just as Ron arrived we popped out to the shops. Now that sounds simple but for us it gets a raucous affair. Timmy decided that he wasn’t going to bother with food and just bought larger, I was under instruction to get something cheesy and I lived off nuts and Pan au chocolat – middle class rock stars! You don’t need anything too upsetting as the “recording studio” has no erm.. facilities if you know what I mean. Actually I lie, after two years I found a little shed claiming to be a toilet. Actually it wasn’t too shabby expect for the JESUS spiders, occasional Rat and the lack of light or electrics – not that I wanted a shave there or anything just good to see what’s crawling up your leg you know?


Anyway as I was saying, Ron came in late (we checked his note his excuse was valid) and got to work setting up the drums. Once they were in we could get all the microphones in place (boring bit: AKG Drum Mic, SM57 on the snare, Senhiser clip on Tom mics – I liked them! – left and right ambient condenser mics and a central Rode condenser about 2 foot off the floor 4 foot in front of the kit). We had been compromised down to 8 tracks simultaneous recording due to a technical FAIL that is even too boring for me to explain so I won’t. That said I managed to link up my 16track porta studio via optical to Canadian’s computer and was able to sub mix all of my amplifier's inputs into an extra 2 stereo tracks making it 10. Still with me? Blimey! Good….

Next was the incredible bass booth. After the first take there was more hi hat on the bass track than on the hi hat track!! How could that be? The ceiling was to blame and we created a little Den or Fort for Timmy to play in, he liked that.




When recording in a live environment we like to play at a decent volume as we can bounce off each other and make something special. This band is about the interaction and the chemistry – that’s our strongest card – so playing stiff and regulated isn’t going to represent the band very well. The problem with this though in recording terms is the separation, the fact that everything is recording on all mic’s. Timmy went for a stroll. He came back with a couple of 6foor square corrugated roof panels – you just know something somewhere is raining in don’t you – and these made excellent walls so we didn’t have to see little Dave’s face, marvellous.


I’ve not mic’d up a Leslie speaker for proper recording before and there is a trick to it. Seeing as the speaker inside the cab is rotating and giving it that spinney sound you need to calculate how to reproduce the Doppler effect. I’ll leave it there as I can hear you snoring already. All you need to know is less than 120 degrees.


With everything in place we started a take. It was stiff. All too quiet and too “sterile” for us. I think we really wanted to get it right but maybe a little too much you know. I ordered everyone outside to immediately down a pint of Bank’s Bitter. Which we did. When we returned we turned up a little and had another go, much better. Come 20:00 Green Head Man kick into gear as the night band they are and the groove was getting better and better.

We did about 3 takes of our first original composition – “Human Zoo” and it was starting to sound good. Moving swiftly on to our second composition – “Golden” with a slightly Jon Lord-kinda-perfect-strangers-intro-sound going on. Very much liked being Jon for a song, when I first started on Hammond and indeed in this band I simple WAS Jon Lord and over the years my own style has developed but for this track is was 1972 Machine Head and Maybe I’m A Leo mixed with Perfect Strangers and a good old helping of 60’s fizz and pop.

Mistakes were abound and even arrangement and 12” and 18” versions were occurring on the spot. We had forgotten about the recoding and were just having fun – Green Head Man brought to you by Bank’s Bitter, a name you can trust. Things were good and we got the last take right down I think.

We then popped into recording a cover as a warm up, The Open Mind’s classic Magic Potion. This song suits us so well, and is a good indicator of how we want the heavier side of our set to sound. Stick that in with Lucifer SAM and you get the idea. Can’t wait to hear how that worked out.

It was getting late and we had another song to do. Another Original song of Little Dave’s called Moths to the Flame. By all accounts this has been well gigged by him for a few years now but we gave it the GHM treatment and hopefully it’s come out rather well.


Last thing I suggested that we hacked out another 3 versions of Human Zoo from earlier on, on the basis that we were all too tired to be up tight and we were in the groove and all that. They went well, the penultimate version was pretty definitive but the step up to the chorus was going to need to “post work” dynamically we thought. Timmy then had an idea and insisted that we recorded it once more and refused to let Ron play anything but hi hats. Madness pure madness. But we often forget that Timmy is a secret genius….

The song sounded mean, ironic, moody and just waiting to explode out (which of course it never did). Wow! The step up into the chorus is now going to be handled by Ron and Canadian Dave in post by overdubbing some percussion in afterwards to lift it. IT really did sound quite good.

It occurred to me that there were a lot of hats being worn that night. Have we turned into a “Hat Band”? One hat even turned into a rather neat and ornate mixed unsalted nut selection receptacle –which was nice.


Anyway, I think I’m all off topic. Time to pack up! Wow there was a lot of gear and wires all over the place and remembering who has what was an event. We packed up and discussed the very short notice offer of a gig at the Stagborough Arms in Stourport on Saturday. We’ll do it! Definitely the last time you will see us as a band until late October.

So the recording is done. Just the mixing and overdubs now. That’s the tricky bit. Canadian Dave is up to the task and I’m going to help him with it too. It’s got to be done right but I’m also a keen that it is done soon too but I must wind my neck in a little as I am impatient to the extreme! We are hoping that this Studio ep of Original songs plus the Live at the Stag CD will help us get bigger gigs and festivals in 2011 – Here’s’ to that eh?

Thanks for your time,

See you soon,

Nick