Thursday, Jan 13, 2005

DAY 3
You Pleasant Dirtbags:

Michael nailed song after song after song over the last 48 hours, and at 6:29 p.m. on this, the third day of recording, all the drum tracks are in the basket. "In the basket", by the way, is a music industry term that means, basically, the stuff is now inside the basket. Still not clear? This pictorial essay should explain everything:

Michael does his thing, which all the pictures and words in the world couldn't explain to you. Best for you to think of it as magic. As you can see, there were many mics on the guy; all told, 126 mics. Yep, 126 mics. No, you credulous idiot! But seriously, there were 17 mics on the guy, which if you think about it is a lot of mics. You, for instance, will never have more than one mic recording anything you do, maybe. But history cares quite a lot about what's going on in that sound room when Michael's rapping out his rhythms, and so the government has asked that we have at least 17 mics recording everything he does.
Rob Brill, Master of Drums, sits next to the highly nuanced, incredibly sensitive, massively articulate, infinitely scalable mega-soundboard that mixes all those mics, and puts his feet up on it.
Producer Ariel takes a five and a half hour time-out on the couch with Rob's birthday champagne.

The whole gang. From right: Chris, Michael, Ariel, Rob, and, on the far left, some random dude who wandered in from the parking lot and started drinking Rob's birthday whisky (Johnny Walker Black). And since there was a big swath of bare wall in the picture, you've also got Lewis's head up there peering down on us benevolently, wondering where's his whisky.

Speaking of Lewis, he continues to kick the ass of all comers. One of the best games to play with Lewis is to take him up to the top of the stairs and set him down and then return to the bottom of the stairs and crouch down and wiggle your fingers around on the lip of one of the lower stairs like a pack of small crazy worms here to threaten Lewis's territory. Lewis responds with maximum brio: he launches himself down the stairs at a speed three times too fast to be safe, knowing that the mad invading worms can't possibly deal with such a high-speed assault, not one brought to the table by a little tiny cat. In conclusion: Lewis is going to be a tremendous addition to our nation's military. --------