Hey you, out there in the cold getting lonely, getting old can you feel me?

You know how very soon some us will have to vote to see who runs this quagmire? Well why don’t you get some voting practice in by voting for The Devil For Sympathy single and video.

Vote for the song on Triple J here

Vote for the clip on JTV here

Spent the morning with Rob Cranny finishing keyboard bits and pieces. He laid down some stuff on a bunch of songs including: The Weight Just Right, Au Expose, Got You On My Radar, Killing Ira, I Find The Words, and Synaesthesia.

In the early afternoon Bruno finished off his vocals. Part of this included redoing the verses of “The Weight Just Right” to suit these fruity French vocals Sarah Blasko added to the song on Friday night.
Chamie started laying down his back-ups. Rob sang a falsetto part in “Wrecking Ball” and Jamie sang a Balls to the Floor (or is it wall) harmony in “Wrecking Ball”.

We were gonna do percussion today as it was meant to be the last day of tracking but we’ll just do it first thing tomorrow morning and then move on to the mix.

Well that’s about all I’ve got to say about that.

With all the guitars done, I started doing the vocals. I’m always paranoid that I’ll lose my voice or that I’ll just physically give in and give up… like that loser who let the Australian rowing team down. I should’ve known however that that wouldn’t be the case…. I was awesome. Seriously though I got through quite a few little ditties, finishing off my night with Wrecking Ball which from now on will known as Wrecking Voice cos it really fucked me. I’d had quite a bit of Stone’s Ginger wine and Canadian Club Whisky by that stage which was great for that Barnesy feel.

During a break, Jamie got on the acoustic guitar and had a tambourine which he was playing with his feet. Graeme got on the bongos and Trumpy played some other fruity percussion instrument. Add to that Jamie’s wails of “save mother earth… I can hear mother earth cryin’…” and you’ve got yourself a sensitive, singer-songwriter, bluesy, rootsy, acoustic fucking HIT - much in the mould of Jamie’s heroes, John Butler, Pete Murray, Xavier Rudd and Jack Johnson.

After that, the wonderful Sarah Blasko came in to lay down some sexy whisky and ciggies-type vocals on Song For Val, Got You On My Radar, Got Your Hooks In and a very cool, counting-in-french bit on The Weight Just Right. Chamie suggested that the song, with Blasko’s french touch and my ocker Aussie accent, sounded like an Aussie backpacker in France. Blasko basically added a bit of class to this whole circus. Jamie also did some singing on Got You On My Radar.

Up next was Robert F. Cranny who made a start on his keyboard bits. He’ll have to do most of them tomorrow but he’s made a good start. It’s Friday night and there’s lots of people around so there’s plenty of drinking going on. Good times… good friends… right guys? Guys?

I hate my life.

Most of today was spent doing guitars which can be a lot of fun, but can also be quite frustrating. Okay, let’s get the nerdlinger, “gear” part out of the way. I used two amps, run simultaneously (that means “at the same time”). One was my 1965 Fender Bassman and the other was Yamiv Finklestein’s Orange, running through Josh Morris’ Bandmaster box.

They both sounded like we were playing at Wembley. We had quite a lot of problems with noisy pedals and amps. I think something in the wiring of the studio was giving it an extra “buzz”. Anyhoo, we got through those little problems and proceded to rock. I layed down guitars for pretty much all the songs, with my favourite being Wrecking Ball. I used my trusty Rickenbacker for that.

Nothing much more to tell… the new Jazzmaster got used on a couple of the more “indie” sounding tunes. While the SG was used on Got Your Hooks In, for that “AC/DC meets the Pixies” feel.

Hello.

Day 3 has gone along a lot better than yesterday, in terms of productivity and overall “vibe”.

We finished tracking drums and bass on The New Violence and Got Your Hooks In. They were done in the larger outer room at Razors Edge studios for a bigger roomier sound and it sounds pretty cool. Then we started tracking guitars on Killing Ira, Got You On My Radar, Au Expose and Wrecking Ball. Jamie and Trumpy, Producer and Engineer respectively thought we should get Lemmy to do vocals on Wrecking Ball. Dickheads.

Finished the evening with a few beers which when you pour a bit of Stone’s Ginger Wine into the bottle with the beer you get an alcoholic and yet therapeutic to the vocal chords elixir of good health - ching ching!