294. "Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell" by Das Racist

Well, it's coming to the point where there'll start to be a few "lasts" for 39-40, and this may be the first last. There's been a subgenre of the blog in which songs, always involving performances by the kids, have been recorded in part or completely in the car during long-ish drives. I don't anticipate there being any more of these. I do think the tradition is going out on a high note with this one, though, and the grotty recording quality probably lends more aesthetic interest to this one than any of the others. The kids are really, really funny in a few places here, too. And the song, being more or less a reboot of "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" in a way, is road-trip-perfect.

I also like the backing track I assembled the night before the trip, as rough and in need of further development as it is. Surely someone has used The Band's "Up On Cripple Creek" as a source of sampled funk before, but I've not heard it, and I had the idea to scrunch it up with the oldest and most straight-up of old school beats, and I think it played out-- most of the rhythm tracks here are jacked from "Cars With the Boom", slowed down to Satanic proportions.

Personnel:

Rex Broome ~ First vocal, track assembly

Eden Hain ~ Second vocal

Miranda Broome ~ Third vocal

Ridley Broome ~ Fourth vocal

"Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell" performed by Das Racist

"Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell" performed by Rex, Eden, Miranda & Ridley

293. "Hotel Womb" by The Church

A real embarrassment of a stopgap, this is the second of the two repurposed rehearsal recordings from this week's Skates & Rays rehearsal. I intended for this one to be less a recording of the song than one of those whispy ghosty in-between-song music fragments that were commonly found on the more mysteriously interesting college rock albums of the '80s, such as those of, hey, The Church. Somehow I made the thing too damned long to really function as such, but I still hope it can be heard as a distant passing conversation dimly overheard in a near-sleep state as you ride the 39-40 train to the next destination of some substance, glimpsed between the overproduced and undermixed edifices of the cluttered MIDI-scape or maybe out in the dark fields where the acoustical pisstakes grow in giddy profusion.

At some point I really should give this song its due; I've been dancing around it for years, and it even made a partial appearance on 39-40 last summer, appended to the acoustic version of recent cover-boy Tom Verlaine's take on this Kris Kristoferson song.

The image for the cover art turned out to be really cool. I thought I was in for a nightmare of creepy, crude fetus artwork based on my google image search for the title words, but for once I got lucky.

Personnel:

SKATES & RAYS ~ Rex, Derek & Cliff as per usual.

"Hotel Womb" performed by The Church

"Hotel Womb" performed by Skates & Rays

292. "The New Pollution" by Beck

I'm spending this week working as a camp counselor and band coach at the Burbank Music Academy, where my task is basically to organize a group of 10-14 year old kids (all boys, as it turns out, just to keep things out of my real of child-management experience) of wildly varying levels of musical experience into bands and teach them to play at least one cover song at a performance for their parents and other assorted worshipers on Friday. And indeed one would think that at this point I would be fairly qualified to teach people how to make cover versions of rock and roll songs. Unless, of course, you've listened to enough of my recordings to decide that I'm one of the least qualified people to do so on the basis of not having been able to do so myself. However, if you do feel that way and you are still reading this, you have bigger problems than I have time to address at the moment.

One of the songs we've been working on (and which is sadly unlikely to make the final cut) was George Harrison's Beatles classic "Taxman". The band who chose that one doesn't have a proper bassist, so I'm playing bass for them, unless, as hoped, Miranda gets back from her holiday travels in time to step in. But I have been messing around with that awesome "Taxman" bassline, which is up there with "Why Can't I Touch It?" as one of my favorites. The Jam seems to have agreed with me, famously borrowing it for "Start!", and I was thinking for obvious reasons of that one, too, but for some reason, when those two songs melded together in my mind, what I heard was not one song or the other, but instead "The New Pollution". During my lunch break today I lined up the Beatles and Jam songs, grabbed samples of similarly -pitched parts, and crammed them together like a sandwhich just for fun. Then I checked them against "Pollution", which was in yet a third key. By this time I had a pretty solid plan on how to re construct the Beck song out of the pieces, although for sanity's sake I put the whole thing in yet another key. Then there was much mirth to be had. Always fun to write fake Beck lyrics just to see if anyone notices... I really liked the ones I came up with here, "waxworks of the willing" being a favorite. I've just decided, thought, that I wish I'd sung "coalition of the clothed" instead of "clothes".

Personnel: Rex

"The New Pollution" performed by Beck

"The New Pollution" performed by Rex Broome

291. "Breakin' in My Heart" by Tom Verlaine

See, this was a day when I had to do a lot of stuff that involved driving to every location. Yes, I ended that sentence exactly where and how I intended. Anyway, already being behind yet again on 39-40, I'd planned to use Skates & Rays' weekly rehearsal as a session to trouble-shoot the new studio setup and record some covers to deploy over the remainder of the week. To be honest, I was hoping to work the kinks out of the board by having Derek and Cliff record some covers of Cliff's choosing and overdub them at home later... that sounded fun, anyhow. But due to the being everywhere including late to rehearsal thing, it happened that by the time I got there, Cliff and Derek had already set up the drums and PA several rooms away from the "control room", and I didn't want to waste any more rehearsal time wrangling that stuff around, so I contented myself-- well, not really, at all-- with a pair of open-air Mac mic recordings of songs only I actually knew, and the semi-confidence that I could manipulate them into something at least experimentally interesting later. And then I didn't.

It occurs to me that given our recent output here, some might be coming to view Skates & Rays as a sort of (shudder) jam band, albeit an arty, Beefhearty-Velvetsy jam band. I assure you, though, that if you listen to the album we put out last year and the singles we'll be issuing in 2011, you'll hear by and large concise and structurally reasonable literate pop songs. It'll be the same guys playing them, and they'll be singing more, and better... whether it makes much difference is up to you, dear listener.

Personnel:

SKATES & RAYS

Rex Broome ~ guitars, vocals

Derek Hanna ~ drums

Clifford Ulrich ~ bass

"Breakin' in My Heart" performed by Tom Verlaine

"Breakin' in My Heart" performed by Skate & Rays

290. "Wasted" by Black Flag

Two days ago when I scared up the Devo cover from the KHS reunion in 2009, I took a look at the other recordings from that fateful day, seeming to recall a scant few other listenable performances (not including the ill-advised Poison covers), one of which was a short drumless rip through this Black Flag classic-- the sort of thing I would've really liked to have heard at the prom but could not then imagine getting away with performing in front of the entire student body twenty years later. Unfortunately, all I have in my possession seems to be Heckman's soloed vocal track from the show. Odd. But it did remind me that I always have "Wasted" in my back pocket for emergency use. Having spent most of today putting together covers for other people to perform, including a Linkin Park tune (hey, it's a paid gig), I found that tonight's 39-40 had EMERGENCY USE written all over it in 80-foot-high hot pink comic sans. Which may explain why this version is even more jacked up than usual.

Personnel: Rex

"Wasted" performed by Black Flag

"Wasted" performed by Rex Broome

289. "Good Hearted Woman" by Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson

I wasn't entirely sure how to credit this one, artist-wise. The backing tracks, the bulk of the whole thing's being, really, including the jarringly enthusiatic crowd reaction, are from this summer's Thunderhill performance at the Honi Honi in Deep Creek, MD. I'm working through those tracks, and the ones from the Stray Cat in Keyser, WV, to mix the best of them for inclusion on the definitive Thunderhill CD collection to be released later this year. It's not easy work, and a lot of stuff needs to be replaced. For this version, I sang all of the lead vocals (as it's pretty easy to tell) and, for practical reasons, had to replace my dad's rhythm guitar track with an acoustic. So while this was originally performed by Thunderhill, in this version, there's no Jim Broome on it at all, so it definitely isn't Thunderhill. And it didn't seem right to retroactively name the backing band as "Rex Broome and the Whatever Boys" since neither Rich Frush nor Tom Heckman never signed up to be Whatever Boys, so, while it also seems sketchy for me to call it a solo track, that's pretty much the best I could come up with.

I've heard and played this song so many times that I almost don't hear it any more, but when putting together the pictures for this entry, I did marvel at the cover of that Wanted! The Outlaws record, as I do just about every time I encounter it. The family had that on 8-track, for realsies, and its impact on why and how I do music can't much be measured.

Personnel:

Rex Broome ~ Lead vocal, guitars, backing vocals

Rich Frush ~ Drums, backing vocals

Tom Heckman ~ Bass, backing vocals

"Good Hearted Woman" performed by Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson

"Good Hearted Woman" performed by Rex Broome

288. "Whip It" by Devo

No , I do not like the pattern into which I've fallen of missing days and then playing catch-up on posting recordings. That, along with the fact that I've basically chosen my own covers for almost two months now, seem to fly in the face of the original concept of 39-40, and I seem to be operating under the very definition of "limping to the finish line". I'm trying to do something about it, but I'm hesitant to promise anything.

This one is from the nearly-bare vaults. The original recording was from the set Heckman and I did as a guitar-bass duo at our 20 year high school reunion last year. It was supposed to be a full band, but, you know, it wasn't. This one track, however, got a special reworking by Heckman a few days later when he added the drums and keyboard to it (without changing anything on the original tracks, I'm pretty sure). He did this thing he's been talented at for decades and of which he is now an undisputed master, which is playing a drum machine live and in real time along with previously recorded drumless tracks and having it sound good. You sort of have to see it to be properly amazed. In any case, the weird vocal effects, off the cuff keyboard track, and the crazy ambient noise provided by our classmates partying in the background give the whole thing a really unhinged, chaotic feel which is, believe me, many times more exciting that what we did in the room at the reunion.

Personnel:

Tom Heckman ~ Lead vocal, bass, keyboard, live drum machine

Rex Broome ~ Guitar, backing vocal

Basic tracks recorded live, August 2009, at the Wind Lea in Keyser, WV

"Whip It" performed by Devo

"Whip It" performed by Tom Heckman & Rex Broome

287. "Kotton Krown" by Sonic Youth

I can't move my laptop for another six hours... it is tied to two external hard drives, serving as a conduit for backing up data. It doesn't demonstrate great foresight that I chose to set it up to do so in my bedroom. For all practical purposes I didn't have any other options than to record straight into the mic on my Mac for the first time in quite a while. I chose to do so experimentally, at least, with one blind and weird overdub, some ambient doubling of the original track via its tinny echo in the room, and a sampling of the feedback sound that greets me every time I open up a project without having remembered to close down all the mics the last time I put it away. Not easy on the ears, necessarily, but, it is to be hoped, interesting.

The song may well be called "Cotton Crown", but it says "Kotton Krown" scrawled right there on the artwork. Of course, it also says the band name is The Sonic Youth on one side, so it's up to the individual listener whether or not I got that bit right. I first did this acoustic arrangement of this song as a wedding toast quite some time ago. The lucky couple are still together, and I do believe they appreciated the effort I put into it.

Personnel: Rex

"Kotton Krown" performed by Sonic Youth

"Kotton Krown" performed by Rex Broome

286. "Lysander" by Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians

Another recording done by "earballing it" (recording without headphones), a process which seems to push me to use uncharacteristic guitar sounds. This one is a preset designed for an acoustic guitar (and no fucking way would I ever use it on an acoustic), but slathered on top of my Tele Deluxe's two Fenderfied humbuckers it seemed to suggest some of the solo electric tones on Hitchcock's solo albums (the awesome ones with the green covers). It probably has a little too much delay and chorus on it to sound truly authentic, and I probably could have twiki'ed it around a bit better, but given the compromised listening situation that would probably have just mucked it up yet still more, so I left it alone, figuring I might as well put some weird-sounding stuff out while I have the excuse.

The Perspex Island record comes in for a pretty severe drubbing from a lot of Hitchcock fans. I like it a great deal myself. The guy's got a deep catalog and doesn't seem to be slowing down, so it's easy enough to cherry-pick the best stuff. Just play nice, okay?

Personnel: Rex

"Lysander" performed by Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians

"Lysander" performed by Rex Broome

285. "The Wagon" by Dinosaur Jr

Spent most of yesterday trying to put together a studio for the band at our drummer's place of business (in a former meat locker, to be precise). There's nothing high-tech about this deal... we're basically pooling all of the resources we've purchased, scavenged, or otherwise accrued throughout the year at the most logical central location, the place where we rehearse, and gearing up to take on the project of recording ourselves more or less properly. That is, in large part, what I had in mind when taking on this project: forcing myself to learn how to do this stuff. By the end of the day, through a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error which was a good deal more rigorous than we can usually muster, we managed to have ten tracks clearly recording simultaneously. Sounds like a little thing, but it's a big deal to me.

Since a lot of the heart of the control room is the my laptop and my (well, Heckman's) MOTU unit, and my mics and stands are forming part of its gear complement, I'm going to have to get used to sorting out which stuff I can leave there and what needs to go home with me to keep 39-40 afloat when I'm not "at the studio". I managed to get a good slimmed down cross-section of what I need, including that new pop screen about which I'm so excited, but somehow I managed not to bring home a pair of headphones. So this recording was done entirely based on what I was hearing out of the laptops's shitty little speakers. Yeah, I should have "real" speakers to properly mix stuff anyway, but hey, I don't. I tried to create a track that came as close to using that kind of "blind mixing" as a positive. The acoustic and vocal were actually recorded on the same mic in mono. I don't know it it worked or not, really.

Personnel: Rex

"The Wagon" performed by Dinosaur Jr.

"The Wagon" performed by Rex Broome

284. "Why Can't I Touch It" by The Buzzcocks

I've been thinking recently that I should do a week of 39-40 with no guitars. There are plenty of instances of my having done that during the project, but not lately, and never for a sustained period of time. I'm not starting such an endeavor right now, but this song was a case where I needed something that could be done quickly and I just couldn't abide the idea of strumming my way through another anything. I learned the bassline to "Why Can't I Touch It?" a long time ago, and I really do think it's one of the best, most insanely hooky bass parts ever written, and I thought I could make something out of it in a dub sort of way fairly quickly, so that's the story with this one.

In an effort to atone for the recent rehearsal takes which have extended a song or two well beyond their original lengths, this cover is well shorter than the Buzzcocks' version. Make no mistake, though: by Buzzcocks standards, the original is incredibly long and jammy.

Personnel:

Rex Broome ~ Bass, vocal, radio controlled Dalek

Eden Hain ~ viola

"Why Can't I Touch It?" performed by The Buzzcocks

"Why Can't I Touch It?" performed by Rex Broome

283. "Shake Some Action" by The Flamin' Groovies

When I first met Gen, she was just coming off of a period during which she'd been rehearsing with a reformed version of her old band Backstage Pass. Backstage Pass never put out a proper album, but its members would go on to release records in other bands (most notably Holly Beth Vincent of Holly and the Italians, Marina Del Rey of Vivabeat, and the drummer Spock whom I was quick to discover had played percussion on the excellent and obscure Rainy Day record, to which I was listening a lot at the time). Gen had played in other bands as well, but not for some time, and the Backstage Pass reunion had gotten her working on music for the first time in a while. One of the things she and the band had been working on was a cover of "Shake Some Action". The reunion unfortunately didn't pan out, which is doubly a shame as Gen also wrote some very good songs during that time (and since).

I asked her to do a song for me for the first time in a while, and she was very keen to do Paul McCartney's "Junk". I really wanted her to play guitar on the track, though, and "Junk" has some pretty weird chords on it, so I suggested reviving "Shake Some Action" instead. Gen had the privilege of being the first singer to record a vocal using my new pop filter, a very useful Christmas gift given to me by Gen herself.

Personnel:

Genevieve Broome ~ Vocal, 12-string guitar

Rex Broome ~ Mandolin, backing vocal

"Shake Some Action" performed by The Flamin' Groovies

"Shake Some Action" performed by Genevieve Broome

282. "Regenisraen" by Game Theory

Merry Christmas to all the faithful who've followed me this far. Thank you for your patience... your call is important to us.

Personnel: Rex

"Regenisraen" performed by Game Theory

"Regenisraen" performed by Rex Broome

281. "Mississippi Kite" by Kristin Hersh

Not the first instance on 39-40 of the original artist appearing on the cover, but a unique one thus far, and hells of fun. Kristin Hersh is one of my very favorite songwriters and performers of all. I have met her, and stammered stupid stuff in her general direction on those occasions, but I've never actually collaborated with her musically in the traditional sense.

However, for the past three years or so, Kristin has released most of her material online accompanied by stems from the recording sessions so that fans can remix the tracks and share them with each other. I know a few other artists have done this type of thing, sometimes temporarily in the interest of competition or promotion (as with the recent Byrne/Eno release), and there probably are other artists doing this sort of thing, but Kristin's the only one I've tracked personally. It's rather extraordinary, really, and a bit overwhelming to think that one's Kristin Hersh library cannot be complete without tracking down every last fan-created reimagining of these songs, and I haven't tracked the developments as closely as I'd like to have done. It's been in the back of my mind to work with this stuff on 39-40, though, in a more-sophisticated-than-karaoke fashion, and I was just reminded of that idea when taking a look at her website to see what she got up to this year.

So here I worked with the stems from her recent song "Mississippi Kite", which first appeared as part of a work-in-progress record then called Speedbath which seems to have gone through a number of subsequent iterations, but which in its original form was my favorite work by Kristin in quite some time. Initially I intended to do all the vocals myself and add a little lead guitar spiralling around and answering the snaky lead lines Kristin played on the original, but as I got into it I started mixing it as a fake duet for us, with me bouncing between lead lines and harmonies with melodies. That engendered a not entirely successful attempt to match the recording tones between her vocal as recorded and mine, but after the initial shock of the contrasting qualities it seems to settle down and start to sound normal. The second guitar worked pretty well, I think, and it was fun to do the whole project... I just hope the new, homespun stuff I added integrates itself into the original tracks without calling attention to its living room origins.

Oh, and despite having listened to this song for a year or so, I had no idea that a Mississippi kite was a bird until I did a google search for images to use in the artwork. Always educational, those KH lyrics.

Personnel:

Rex Broome: Male rock vocals, lead guitar (stereo right), mandolin

Kristin Hersh: Female rock vocals, rhythm guitar (left), rhythm guitar, bass, drums, organ

"Mississippi Kite" performed by Kristin Hersh

"Mississippi Kite" performed by Rex Broome & Kristin Hersh

280. "My Beloved Monster" by Eels

If this seems more appropriate to the holiday back in October than Christmas Eve Eve, that's because Michael J. "Monkey" "SayntMykyl" Simpson and I have been planning on doing it since just about then. Monkey and I were just reminiscing about our first attempt to do a Holiday recording some years back. It ended poorly. This went better. Michael's a multitalented individual, responsible for, among other things, the art design of the Skates & Rays CD and the fine photography available for viewing here. I feel stupid in retrospect (among other ways in which I feel stupid) for not setting aside time in this session to photograph the unique group of players... I have instead stolen an image from his photo gallery for use as the cover art. So Happy Holidays, whatever be the holiday for which you deem this recording appropriate.

There were a number of cool things about recording this, not the least of which was the fact that Michael had never played, perhaps not even touched, a banjo prior to this recording, and one of my favorite things in recent 39-40 memory is his exact replication of the brief banjo intro on the original (which sounds more like a fragment of deleted track, and never fails to remind me of cruising past the dilapidated Cajun shack in the Bayou section of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland). His dead-on E-style vocal really brings it all together. Another watershed of sorts was how Miranda and Eden printed their contributions to the track... they both did it totally on their own while I was cooking dinner. We're starting to have a fully functional music making household around here, apparently.

Personnel:

Michael J. Simpson ~ Lead vocal, banjo

Rex Broome ~ Guitar, backing vocal, programming etc.

Miranda Broome ~ Bass guitar

Eden Hain ~ Ukulele

"My Beloved Monster" performed by Eels

"My Beloved Monster" performed by Michael J. Simpson & The Broome Household

279. "Dinosaur" by Mark Gloster & Big Rubber Shark

And completing the dividends from this past Tuesday's highly loose Skates & Rays rehearsal, we have... this. Which has no right to be make as much sense as it does. This is actually an extract from a very extended ending to a run-through of our song "Fort Ashby", which we did primarily because Eden was there with her electric ukulele and she knows how to play the song on ukulele. What I didn't know when we started it was that Eden was going to insist on playing the ending inna raga stylee. Yes, it's her and not us old relics steeped in our Crazy Horse and Sonic Youth who propels this... erm, "jam" isn't quite the word, is it? Weirder still, owing to my mic setup, her uke is barely audible (I overdubbed a substitute track) and owing to me kicking over the mic on my amp, my guitar is heard only in the most ghostly of manners. And that works pretty well... it's the Derek and Cliff show, which is not a bad thing.

I sent out a call for requests for the first time in forever, and the winner was, thankfully, this song by Mark Gloster, which lends itself quite well to this restructuring. The original has some elements of spoken extemporaneousness itself, and is hung on a musical piece which also can't quite be classified as a "jam" (because it has way better things to worry about) but certainly has a lot to do with live musical chemistry. It's actually possible that what this version of Big Rubber Shark is doing on the source track is pretty much the same thing as what Skates & Rays are doing on our version... ours just naturally turns out whooshier and wussier. In what I hope is a good way, though.

Personnel:

SKATES & RAYS

Rex Broome ~ Guitar, vocals, ukulele

Derek Hanna ~ Drums

Clifford Ulrich ~ Bass

with Eden Hain ~ Electric ukulele

"Dinosaur" performed by Mark Gloster & Big Rubber Shark

"Dinosaur" performed by Skates & Rays

278. "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish" by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

Yet another Skates & Rays rehearsal, and yet a few more refinements to our recording setup. This time I managed to get an actual discrete mic on the kick drum and better sounding stereo drums in general, but between having forgotten a few key cables at home and having Eden along with me this time (we had the band cut backing tracks for demos of her most recent songs, which is a pretty cool development), I failed to check the signal I was getting from a few of the more obvious sources, so I ended up with too little guitar signal and a frequently overdriven bass sound (which I just rolled with here by converting it to a full-on fuzz bass, a choice I doubt Cliff would have made, but damn does it sound good on the type of stuff he played here). Personally, I was in an off mood in terms of my own playing and couldn't think of a good cover for us to do as a troubleshooting experiment, beyond the vague idea that a Beefheart tribute might be cool.

I had an unusual conflict about how to present what turned out to be our version of "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish". The full track is close to 15 minutes long, and, frankly, I like it that way. The recognizable Beefheart part only surfaces around nine minutes into it, though. I've posted quite a few epic-length Skates & Rays tracks since rehearsals recommenced, so it didn't seem fair to those expecting to hear us doing Beefheart to saddle them with ten minute of not that at all, but what in fact starts off as a bit of stiff white funk. Now, like I said, I like it, but that's partly because we started this thing of with me literally calling out to Derek and Cliff just lay down some kind of groove, any kind of groove. Once they get going, it's pretty good stuff they're playing, and I'm able to keep up enough to fill it out... but it was only about halfway through the "jam" that I decided that this was going to be the Beefheart tribute, and I switched to a more Magic Bandy approach on the guitar. My favorite aspect of this is that the rhythm section really had no idea of my change of heart, so they kept on cooking up what they'd already thrown on the grill.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in the full performance, they can find it here as yet another 39-40 Appendix Track. And there's absolutely nothing to stop you from retagging it as 39-40 track 278, and pitching the truncated version.

Personnel:

SKATES & RAYS

Guitar & Vocal ~ Rex Broome

Bass ~ Clifford Ulrich

Drums ~ Derek Hanna

Additional commentary on the biology of the octafish ~ Miranda & Ridley Broome

Recording assistance ~ Eden Hain

"Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish" performed by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

"Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish" performed by Skates & Rays

277. "Star of Bethlehem" by Neil Young

This is the second of the three aborted Skates & Rays Christmas tracks from the 2007 Heckman project. The third was a slightly sleigh-bell-laden version of my song "Double Blades", which I'd love to get before the ears of the listening public in some form, but can in no way justify as a cover, so this is it for vintage Christmas tunes, I guess. We're working on getting some new Skates & Rays stuff on a release schedule for 2011 as 39-40 winds down, though, and a superior version of "Double Blades" recorded with Bradley Cain is on deck for that.

This time around we have backing vocals by both Cliff and Derek. And interestingly, I didn't have to replace all of the guitar. I just added an acoustic and that was it. I retained the original guitar leads from three years ago for my own personal satisfaction: I really worked to be able to do those leads at the time, and it was literally the first time I made an effort to play something that came from a true place of "country" picking. I've done a great deal more of honing that style since then, firstly for a few tracks on the You Are My Home, then in a few rounds of intense learn-on-the-job effort as the substitute lead guitarist or Thunderhill, and recently on quite a few rootsier tracks for 39-40. Much to my surprise, this really early effort was pretty solid, especially when it trades off with Cliff's harmonica playing, so I was pleased to preserve it. The whole thing is still a lot murkier than I'd like it to be, but it's interesting as a Crazy Horse-like version of a non-Crazy Horse Neil tune.

Another small piece of trivia here: Derek's drum part on this tune was previously edited into another structure by me and used as the loops for the Dwight Yoakam tune "The Big Sandy" early on in 39-40, a tune I tackled in a similar fashion (electrifying an acoustic tune) with no real idea that I would resurrect this one at the time. I hope I may be forgiven... it's good drumming.

Personnel:

SKATES & RAYS

Rex Broome ~ Lead vocal, guitars

Derek Hanna ~ Drums, backing vocals

Clifford Ulrich ~ Bass, backing vocals, harmonica

"Star of Bethlehem" performed by Neil Young

"Star of Bethlehem" performed by Skates & Rays

276. "Didn't Know Where I Was" by Jack Frost

I simply got sick of being a day behind, and decided to record the first thing that came to mind as some kind of deal that I could probably do without thinking much about it, a guaranteed one-taker. This song, from the obscure-ish Grant McLennan/Steve Kilbey collaboration Jack Frost's self-titled album, rose to the surface for reasons not immediately apparent to me, although it is a great favorite of mine... this track was a mainstay on the French radio station Oui FM during my time in Paris in 1991, although at the time I didn't know who performed it and only later began to suspect it was a Kilbey solo project (and I wouldn't even become a Go-Betweens fan for another four years or so after I picked up this record). In any case, it was indeed a first-take affair, and by the time I reached the lines "Torches search the heavens/It's raining out at sea", I realized that that was probably what was behind the whole thing. It's been raining for days in LA now and I'm starting to feel a bit washed away by the whole thing.

Personnel: Rex

"Didn't Know Where I Was" performed by Jack Frost

"Didn't Know Where I Was" performed by Rex Broome

275. "It's Cold Outside" by The Choir

There are a couple of ways in which this one might disappoint you, so I'll get those out of the way: this is not a cover of the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (for which I would be grateful, were I you). It's also not a cover of a song by the '80s Christian rock band The Choir. It's a cover of the classic single by the '60s garage band and Raspberries precursor The Choir. If you don't know of that song, at least I've done one bit of good today by pointing it out to you.

One other thing that this recording is is the culmination of a much-delayed project. Skates & Rays did the basic tracks for this one back in December of 2007, around the same time The Chiggers were doing "Frosty the Snowman". "Frosty", this tune, and two others were slated for a Christmas compilation Heckman was putting together in Morgantown, WV. I recall running myself ragged trying to get the recording setup figured out, and to make the sessions happen. I had no confidence in my mixing abilities and no gear to speak of on which to test them, so I was planning on sending the raw tracks to Heckman for him to mix them. The project fell through, and the basic tracks have languished on the Cinemelon server ever since (although I did pull them down early in the 39-40 project in order to convert some of Derek's drum parts into loops, many of which you've been enjoying for most of the past year). With the holidays rapidly approaching, it seemed like it was now or never to actually do something with these, so I have, re-recording every single one of my tracks in the process. And thanks to the magic of having done it a long time ago, this one actually *does* have some backing vocals by Cliff. Otherwise, I would record these tracks dramatically different if I were doing them today!

As a side note, the original version of the lyrics aren't Christmassy at all... it's rain that's falling down, not snow. I could have changed it back, but it seemed a shame to waste all of that enthusiastic three-year-old sleigh bell jingling, so a Christmas tune it remains.

Personnel:

SKATES & RAYS

Rex Broome ~ Lead vocal, backing vocals, guitars, percussion

Derek Hanna ~ Drums, percussion

Clifford Ulrich ~ Bass, backing vocals, percussion

Original tracks recorded by Mark Erwin, December 2007.

"It's Cold Outside" performed by The Choir

"It's Cold Outside" performed by Skates & Rays