Geoff Duncan

Have you ever woken up and wondered what happened to the last week? Where did it go? Did you sleep through it? Was the week abducted by aliens? Did some Trek-like "temporal rift" occur? Wait: maybe this week really is last week, but you're the victim of a government conspiracy to make you think this week is next week! Yes! Maybe your disconnectedness is the result of little things they didn't get right when they changed everything in your house to make you think it's next week! There's too much cereal in the container; the bananas aren't ripe enough to be a week old; too much shampoo remains in the bottle. And there are cameras and microphones and pocket-protected beancounters behind one-way mirrors monitoring your every move as you act as a not-quite-unwitting subject of their nefarious experiment. Maybe Rod Serling will walk in from stage left, cigarette in hand, to note, sometimes, things are just weird.

That's what it feels like after spending the better part of a week in a recording studio.

The original plan was to track one or two songs worth of drums with good mics in a nice room, but one thing led to another, then another thing led to another thing, and we wound up diving in for the better part of five days, tracking drums for four tunes, editing drums for two, then layering on a bunch of guitars, bass, keys, and vocals. In the window-less world of studio recording, days are mostly punctuated by the arrival and departure of various studio and band personnel, and the selection and consumption of beverages and take-out meals. You pretty much run on fumes after the first ten to twelve hours, the remainder of the time being a careful balancing act between calories, caffeine, and analgesics.

There were a few other punctuations to these sessions, at least for me. Shortly after arrival, a fault in an extension cable sent a nice fat burst of juice into my good amp (apparently causing some damage) and burning my left hand in a way which was more dramatic than harmful. The initial jolt clamped my hand uncontrollably over the live wire; fortunately, the cord's insulation melted from the heat and broke the connection so I could let go. (Yep: dodged a bullet there.) My heart ran about 30 bpm too fast for 15 or 20 minutes, and palm hurt pretty good through the next day, but there's no lasting damage. More depressing was that, when I've only had four hours sleep, I seem to still occasionally suffer Clorox Boy Syndrome doing late night recording—except now the problem extends to bass parts. And on the last day we turned a perfectly elegant nine-foot grand piano into a travesty of itself by playing a few parts with an empty tissue box across section of strings.

And, arriving home after 3AM one night, I pulled into the garage to find four sets of glowing eyes peering back at me from behind some lumber and an old bathtub stored there. I got out of the car, grabbed a flashlight, and peered around the pile: momma possum and three good-sized young'ens. They couldn't have been there long: there was hardly any leaf litter or other nesting material back there, and nothing smelled funnier than usual. My guess is that they'd been soaked or flooded out of their den with all the rain we'd been having (28 continuous days at that point, I think.) Plus, if I remember, possums are mostly transient, rarely staying anywhere more than a few days. So I sighed, explained that I was really tired so they could stay the night, but they needed to be out of the garage by 10 AM the next day. I mean, I like possums just fine (they aren't aggressive, and eat lots of pests like slugs and rodents) but I don't want one gnawing on my brake line or crawling up into my car's engine to keep warm.

Anyway, by next morning they were gone, and I changed the pile of stuff around so I'll know if they come back. No harm, no foul.

As for my bass amp…sigh. That's going to be a lot of work.