It’s been a long, long time coming for me to post about this two day session. Maybe it’s because I’m still tweaking the final mixes at the time of this writing. I’m soooooooo close, actually I’m gonna finish them up tomorrow (Monday 29th)!
Anyway, Man’s Assassination Man showed up at Mix LA for day one of a two day session on the same day that I retrieved my stolen Honda Accord from the towing lot. I spent the early part of the day taking my boss to the airport at 5am, eating a solitary and wonderful breakfast at Cici’s Cafe, picking up my car from the tow lot and having it towed to my mechanic, Dad & Me Auto, and then selling the car to said mechanic. All before noon! That’s when the real fun of the day began, once the band showed up.
Day one started just like any other session. Band was running a little bit late, which was ok because it always takes a bit more time to set up the live room than I anticipate. By the time the group showed up, I was in the middle of eating my salad from the Tomato Patch and I was 98% ready for them. I have known Man’s Ass vocalist, Justin Hunter, since high school and we had been trying to get his band in the studio for at least a year. He introduced me to the other guys in the band, Greg on bass, Bill on guitars and Adam on drums. Everyone filed in, I gave them a quick tour and we began setting up. As is usual, I spent most time getting drum sounds. I sent all the drums through the Sound Workshop 1280 12-channel console and a Variac to kinda make all the close mics gel together. I tried out the Shure Beta 57′s on the snare and they took some of the pingy-ness out. Awesome! Other mics used include: Shure Beta 52, Sennheiser 421, Chinese Royer knockoffs (haha!) and AKG 414TLII.
The session officially got under way around 3pm when the group went through a practice run of one of their songs. We recorded everything live (except vocals and a few guitar overdubs), just isolating the guitar and bass cabs, but with everyone in the same room, feeding off each other’s energy. The band went through 12 songs in no time. Lots of beer was consumed, lots of cigarettes were smoked, lots of noisy, aggressive punk rock was created. We ended around midnight and I promised to pick up Justin and Bill the next day to record all the vocals and some guitar overdubs.
Around noon, I pick the guys up from the Orange Line Station in North Hollywood, we head to the liqour store to pick up some cheap-ass whiskey and beers and then off to Fab Dog to get some lunch. We head back to the studio, Justin and Bill start to drink and Bill does his guitar overdubs. By the time we get to vocals Justin is a bit tipsy, but he begins to drink the entire bottle of whiskey while he’s doing his vocal takes. By the end he could barely stand up. The vocals came out a glorious mess, slurred, distorted in parts, unintelligible. Amazing and beautiful. Justin said he wants the record to sound like you have the worst hangover of your life and I think we accomplished that. We didn’t do much mixing that night since no one really had any fresh ears, but even the first night ruffs sounded about how the band wanted the final product. I drove the guys home and then my assistant, Jenae, and I hit the Copper Bucket to meet up with Keith and his lady and some beers and darts. We just squeaked in at 1:30 before the place began closing up.
As of now, I think Man’s Ass have found a label to release the 12-song LP on vinyl and I think Burger Records might be releasing the cassette. I’ll post as soon as I know for sure.
Thanks to Jenae for assisting and taking all the photos.
