THE MAKING OF POP ART

THE MAKING OF POP ART

Well I came up with another idea for the website! Here it is THE MAKING OF POP ART! I thought it might be interesting to give a detailed account of the making of our newest record! Well it might not be totally detailed, but hell it will at least be interesting...I hope. So anyways, a little background on this CD project.

This is the first CD of ours to come out with the same lineup as the one before it. Ken, Wayne, Chris and Brian did STILL UNKNOWN in 1997-98 and they were back at for POP ART in 99-2000.

In about October of 1999, Ken was talking with Aston of Boss Tuneage Records in London about doing the new Unknown CD on his label. See Aston had been distributing all of the Unknown's material in England and in Japan over the better part of the year. Aston even released the PUZZLES 7" in August of 1999, and the Change CD in early 2000. He has had a lot of success selling the Unknown in the UK and Japan. So this was a natural fit. POP ART was to be the next Boss Tuneage album. As Ken and Aston kept in touch, talks of a UK tour, thats right a UK TOUR! crept up. It was decided that POP ART would come out in time for The Unknown's UK tour in July! Well that was that.

But then the hard part began. We needed to record a whole new album!

It was quickly decided that we would go to our old friend and old engineer Chris Keffer of Magnetic North Studio at his new location in downtown Cleveland. We recently had gone into MN to record one song, SWITCH, in Sept/Nov of 1999 because Chris had some time to fill up due to a cancellation and he offered it to us at a discount! woo hoo! So with SWITCH already under our belts, we began to record the 13 songs that would be POP ART.

... The mighty Chris Keffer....

We already had most of the new record written. We had been playing out most of the songs for a long while now. LIES,LETS GO, NEED TO KNOW and ANOTHER VOICE were already, in some cases, almost 2 years old. Plus the Cars song we were going to put on the CD, YOU MIGHT THINKwas a mainstay in the set for the last year and a half. So we were ready to go despite the fact that a few of the songs that would eventually make the cut were still not even written!

We went in to the studio for the first CD session on January 20, 2000. We spent the next 15 hours recording drums, bass and guitars for these 8 songs: NEED TO KNOW, LEAVE ME NOW, LIES, ANOTHER VOICE, YOU MIGHT THINK, DISAPPEAR, LETS GO, and BEST FRIENDS. 15 hours you say and we only did basic tracking for 8 songs???? Well yeah, we work slow. Basically for those who dont know, the way we record is this: You set up the mics and equipment and get the sounds first, then you play the songs with the band only (guitars,bass,drums...vocals come later) Then after the songs are recorded as basic trax, the lead guitars are recorded and then the vocals and then backup vocals. Then you mix master and burn it to CDR, then you send it away to the label, then it gets made!!

... Keffer sets up the drums....

It takes a very long time to get the sounds and the performances you want for your record. Hell I think we spent 3 hours alone setting up the drums and getting the right sounds. Plus then you have bass tones, guitar sounds etc, etc, etc.... I think when it came down to it, the power trio of Wayne, Chris and Brian probably only played for 2 hours at most together. After the first 15 hours we had a great session of basic trax for the 8 songs I listed....

... Wayne and Chris adjust the drums....

... Brian listens to some hot bass trax....

On February 24, we came back and put the finishing touches on the music. Chris put the final touches on with lead guitars and the next few sessions would be for vocals. Recording vocals for the Unknown takes about as long as it takes to record all the music if not longer. Ken and Brian do a lot of singing and harmonizing and sometimes getting all of those notes to "hum" can be a real pain in the ass....so i hope that when all of you hear the new CD you will appreciate all the vocal work!!!!! haha...no seriously, we worked hard....we hope it shows.

... Ken belts out some vocals....

So we finished up the vocals over about 6 or 7 days. With all of our work schedules we couldnt just do it all in one week. Those 6-7 days were spread out over about 1-2 months. We did 4 hours here, 4 hours there, you get the idea. Finally those 8 songs were totally finished....but wait, with SWITCH, we only had 9 songs!...thats not enough!

By May of 2000 we had decided which 4 songs would be recorded for the rest of the CD. We had just recently written the song, LISTEN TO ME (the song that would eventually be the first track on the CD) and we had also just finished the song FEELINGS. The other two songs were going to be and Instramental that Chris wrote and a remake of the song INCREDIBLE that was unfinished from the STILL UNKNOWN sessions. We went back in and started working.

... Wayne helps out brian and gives him a beer....

The last basic tracking session went very well. In fact so well that the sounds on that session were even better than what we had on the previous songs! The performances were great and the tracking by Chris Keffer was amazing! It was partly because of this that LISTEN TO ME ended up being our first track on the CD....also, a first for us, we ended up writing a song in the studio! The song BLINK was written while in the booth tracking...

... Chris and Brian work on the guitar....

So we finished up all the music and went back in to record the rest of the vocals. Everything went smoothly. In fact, it all went better than we thought! For example the song FEELINGS was so new that Ken had never even sang the song live before! But the tracking for that song went flawlessly and everything went great. It was also at this time that we decided to not use INCREDIBLE for the new CD. It was at Chris Keffer's advice to not use this song because it was no where near as good as the songs we just recorded. In fact, in his opinion, it would make the CD not as good. So we listened and agreed and INCREDIBLE got canned.

So we were nearing our deadline. Aston had told us that he needed the CDR master by the first pasrt of JUNE and that was rapidly approaching. We finished up vocals in the last week of MAY and we went in and mixed and mastered on June 1st and 2nd.

Now during all of this work we had to think about the other important aspect of the release....the artwork! Recently, Ken had become obsessed with the artwork and photography of the Pop Artist Andy Warhol. After talking it over with the band and various other close friends of the band, we decided that POP ART was a good title and the artwork would be based on the works of Andy Warhol.

So Ken went to work designing the Booklet and cover for the CD. The cover was orignally going to be the question mark logo done in a smattering of colors ala Warhol. But eventually we went with the faces instead and moved the logo to the back of the CD. For the inside pages of the booklet we used a picture of each member of the band playing live and we toned the photos in the style of how Warhol did some of his work with silkscreens.

We also decided to use a center spread in the CD booklet that depicted the band and a bunch of our friends all done in the same Warhol style of photography and silkscreens....the result was AWESOME!! we cant wait for you all to see it!