Volume War (1993)

The year was 1993 and that behemoth called grunge rock was going strong, bands with punk backgrounds playing sludgy spluzz with lots of guitar and little else added. Bands like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana and many, many, too many others.

I had just completed a tour of the United States with my band Trash Can School and it was largely a success considering many people didn't have any idea who we were. With the momentum of the band gaining its new-found popularity, our record company SFTRI wanted us to go in and record a new album.

Cutting a new album was easier said than done, because A: our previous engineer got a fat head and wanted a hefty producer's fee in addition to getting paid studio time, and B: the album budget was something like $3-5,000, pretty minuscule even by early Nineties standards. To put it in plain English we had to look for a new engineer, studio and they had to be nothing short of amazing.

A fan and friend of the band told us Geza X was in between big jobs and was interested in recording any crazy indie bands. When I said I was interested I asked her to remind Geza that we were in Arthur J. and The Gold Cups together. Geza accepted immediately and he was nice enough to take our poverty row budget like a mensch.

Half the album was not only written in advance but was road tested on our national tour - DT's, TV Blues, Dog Town Girl, Powershred and Steel Purse, to name a few. The other half hadn't been written yet so I had to cobble together at least seven new numbers. The newer songs were Steroid Shock, Big Time Full-On Cop Out, Taxidermist, Volume War and a couple of others.

Geza X's studio was called City Lab and was situated in a house above the Sunset Strip, high above the Comedy Store. In fact, Pauly Shore, Mitzi Shore's son lived next door with his purple jeep parked out in front. Across the street lived Peter Weller, who had a huge, resplendent villa-style home. Not bad for the guy who played William Burroughs and Robocop.

Having Geza as producer was important to me, because by this time the band had fallen heavily under the influence of the Great Pacific Northwest and the Sub-Pop sound, and to me Geza was a kindred soul in the pursuit of strange and unusual sounds, and encouraged me to go farther out than I ever had before.

With the band becoming more musically conservative in their musical tastes it was important to assert my influence on the band by emphasizing even more bizarre sounds than was previously displayed on the first album.

I made concessions toward the trendy grunge sound by writing songs like Taunt, the Ballad of Peter Green and Big Time Full-On Cop Out, but even the latter composition had a quirky Voidoids-style bridge that broke up whatever Mudhoney vibe ran throughout the song. And then there was that atonal saxophone break.

In spite of these concessions I still created walls of discordant noise with a free-form jazz ending to Taxidermist with a wall of guitar feedback. Then there was Powershred, featuring a sample of Sun Ra playing white noise on his synthesizer while a scratch vocal imitating a sax solo made the final mix, bringing some Yoko Ono good cheer to the proceedings.

Steel Purse had a stop and go pulse all through the song, like a demented roller coaster, and for good reason: it was about the Long Beach Pike, a busted-up amusement park where sailors got rolled and gangs got into knife fights and tranny hookers flashed steel, as well.

I also incorporated a great 12-string guitar that Rebecca made for TV Blues and Dog Town Girl. It added a very light touch to the band sound, which we needed badly. DT's had a backwards saxophone track to add to the menacing voodoo drone the band was laying down. I don't think we're in Seattle any more, Toto.

And perhaps that was the big problem in a lot of the fan's eyes (and ears). The album received unanimously bad reviews and even earned the enmity of Papa Bear at SFTRI. He felt he got gypped out of his money because instead of getting Nevermind Part II he got Andy's Wild Years. He'll never realize he got the most original album ever released on his label.

Making a bad grunge album would have been the easiest task in the world but that's not my calling. I made in abundantly clear to everyone that I was dedicated to making the most unusual rock music of its time, and people kept nodding their heads like I was talking drunk again.

Needless to say, the accompanying tour in support of the album was an unqualified disaster, leading up to the breakup of the band. I still listen to Volume War (named after the three guitarists turning up their amps over each other throughout rehearsal until one couldn't even hear themselves anymore) and am amazed at what a great piece of work I created with these guys. One day Volume War will have its day because all maverick works get the recognition they're due.

Producing Is 10% Seducing and 90% Reducing

In the course of playing music in the past twenty-two years I have produced four albums of my own, remixed two for other performers (Michael T and No Policy), released countless singles and compilation tracks as well as played on a million other bands' records like Pressurehed, Ether Hogg, Anubian Lights, and a few others. If there's one thing I've learned in all those years is that no two recording sessions are alike. Musicians never get to say that each day in the studio's like "just another day at the office". It never is.

Generally, there are basically two kinds of producers: highly skilled, well-seasoned engineers who can work miracles in the studio and make any band sound brilliant, or someone who sculpts the band's sound and carefully arranges all the songs so he goes into the studio with the sound already worked out completely in his/her head. I belonged to the latter camp.

ARRANGING: My band Trash Can School had three guitarists and I had a pretty good idea of each one's strength and weaknesses, so when it came time to arrange the guitars I already had a clear idea of who could play which part the best. One guitar was delegated the lead, one for the rhythm and the third would play fills to thicken what the other two guitars were doing.

If one song needed a fast, complicated solo the first-string guitarist would get it, but if another song needed a slow, simple solo then the rhythm guitar played would get the lead, because they were usually good at that sort of thing. It always worked out real well.

Some guys played slide better than the others so they got the lead part to show off their slide guitar skills. It was great having three different guitarists with diverging styles to choose from. The funny thing was that Trash Can School was the reverse of the old Fifties band where there was one guitar and three horns, with us it was one saxophone and the three guitars, a veritable guitar section. The result, on tracks like "Silver Surfer", was astonishing.

Whenever I arranged a song I always thought of showcasing a band member if it enhanced the song, which is why I stuck in a wild Gene Krupa drum break in "Yes I Mean No", or a melodic pulsing bass solo in "Pistol Whipped/Pussy Whipped". I wanted to give everyone a chance to show their stuff.

When it came to arranging covers I wouldn't tackle anything unless it fit within the parameters of what we could play. We tinkered around with "Horses" by Patti Smith by playing the first half of "Gloria" and the second half of "Land" as a slide guitar drenched dirge. After performing "Shove" by L7 a few times and getting bored with it I decided to gravitate towards "Godzilla" by Blue Oyster Cult, which sounds identical and allowed me to insert a ripping saxophone solo on top of it. Later on in Cockfight I covered The Plasmatics' "Sometimes I" and gave it a driving, moody Cramps back beat.

RECORDING: But enough about arranging, let's talk about the recording process: some of the best recording studios I've worked in were as small as a living room, which is exactly what Radio Tokyo was, a converted living room in a craftsman style house. We got some big sounds there.

Setting levels is something adjustable to your preference, but one thing I distinctly went for on my records was more of a jazz drum sound. I always veered towards rhe ride cymbal rather than the crash cymbal. A rock record will always emphasize the crash cymbal but I went for a hot ride cymbal sound. The ride rules in jazz; the crash rules in rock.

I also think too much baffling can make a record sound too sterile and flat. Baffling for those who aren't familiar with the expression is when baffles, which are large dividers, are placed between the drums and the guitars and the keyboards so each instrument gets a good, clean sound in their channel. I always enjoyed working at Radio Tokyo because of all the leakage in the room. Leakage means when the other instruments sonically leak into each others tracks, which gives the band a definitely live sound.

My records sounded pretty live to me but there always a few people who said my "record didn't sound like the live show". Of course not. When I'm in the studio I have a large vocabulary to work with in terms of effects and instrumentation. Why would I want it to sound like a live show when I can make it sound so much more dynamic? Some people think too small.

On the other hand there have been reference vocals that turned out better than the polished vocal, like when I kept the Yoko Ono braying in "Powershred" that was originally meant to mark the saxophone solo, but it sounded do witch-like I kept it in.

Another reference vocal I kept was in "Liquor Store" where I overdubbed a more frantic vocal over the reference, then we lower the octave eon the reference like a slowed-down record, so you get a double vocal with different octaves. I was pretty happy with the end result.

Now as the title of my essay states, producing involves seducing, also known as persuasion, persuasion meaning making musicians play things that they either don't think they can play or simply won't play because they don't think it "fits their style". While there's nothing wrong with having a style, it's an artistic thumbprint, I know, it wouldn't hurt to expand their skills to make their bag of tricks that much more exciting.

As a result I have assured many musicians that they can play all sorts of strange things they're not accustomed to doing. Reluctant at first, after a few takes they actually find themselves very excited in the knowledge they've just expanded their vocabulary because somebody believed in them. I've never accepted a drummer saying "I can't play that" or a guitarist saying "That's not what I'm known for". Too bad. You begged to play in my band, prove to me you were worth the trouble of my bringing you into my band.

Sometimes you have to make lemonade out of lemons, like when the drummer came in a beat too late at the beginning of "Horses". Instead of throwing a fit about it I simply overdubbed a horse whinnying saxophone line covering the flaw, which enhanced the drums kicking into the song pretty well. Happy accidents mean covering any flaws that happen during the recording process.

I hate the idea of having the band just coming in and playing the same rock band crap over and over again. I'm definitely a fan of bringing in sound bites, non-rock instruments like vibes on "Hardware", or even industrial percussion, like Ted Carroll of Distorted Pony banging on car parts during "Godzilla". Once you're in the recording studio you have an unlimited palette of sounds to work with. Fuck this live band sound bullshit.

Sometimes the way you visualized a song in your mind doesn't pan out the way you wanted it to once you get into the studio, and it's a battle you sometimes can't win, so be prepared to let go, or else you'll just go crazy. You'll have to settle for less than perfection, or to put it more coldly: IF YOU CAN'T GET IT DONE IN FIVE TAKES IT CAN'T BE DONE.

MIXDOWN: Many terrible recordings have been saved through the magic of mixing tracks and adding effects to make the unlistenable sound listenable. Its truly miracle working made flesh. I remember leaving the studio after recording "Baby Lust" and almost crying, thinking I'd just wasted my money on a shit recording. I called Donnell Cameron at Westbeach Recorders and booked some time and he helped me save this track from being a bomb to being a hit.

I already had some familiarity with Donnell's work when he pre-mastered my track "Silver Surfer" for the Flipside compilation "City of LA Power". Donnell had a pretty unique approach to mixing I'll never forget. Halfway through mixdown once our levels were set and we did a rough mix of the song, he would transfer the tape to cassette, and then pop the cassette into the world's most beat up boom box I'd ever seen.

"Okay, we know what it sounds like on some nice, big, expensive studio speakers. Let's hear what it'll sound like booming out of your car".
The song started playing on this dinky player and all the cool parts as well as the shitty parts rang through loud and clear.

"Well, dude what do you think?"
"Wow, this makes everything sound totally different", I opened my eyes.
"Track definitely needs more low end and the vocal needs to come up higher. A little chorus on the guitars should smooth out a lot of the overdrive on the treble".
"Yeah, I agree. Let's go back in and make those changes".
I think we did the Ghetto Blaster Test two more times as we went along, the last pass being the final mix and sounding pretty majestic.Donnell's a brilliant engineer and we got a wild Plastic Ono Band sound on that crazy song.

Getting Geza X and his studio on my album Volume War was great because we already had a history together. He mixed the sound for The Screamers when I played with them and we played in our punk big band Arthur J. and The Gold Cups in the late Seventies. His guitar playing in The Deadbeats was legendary for its twisted inventiveness and made even more manic in his solo configuration Geza X and The Mommymen.

We also shared an affinity for avant garde music, so I didn't have to explain myself or my strange musical ideas to him. He already knew where I was coming from, so there wasn't a lot of head scratching as some engineers did whenever I asked them to use weird effects or filters on my tracks. In fact Geza came up with a lot of great sounds and contributed greatly to the hairball cacophony of that record.

Mixing tracks also gives you a chance to have the last word in the recording process. I had a guitarist who had to end every track with an orgiastic wail of long, long droney feedback. EVERY track. Instead of losing my shit after every take I simply thought, "Well, we'll see about this idiot's feedback orgy when it comes to mixdown". Once I was alone with Geza X in the studio, we'd look at each other smirking and do a quick audio fade on his track as soon as that clown would do his feedback dick slapping. Geza X is the best recording wizard on the planet.

Then there was another time when the rhythm section in Cockfight decided to have a party the night before our recording session (GOOD TIMING, ASSHOLES!) so they ended up hungover the next day at recording. And they played like a pair of bombed out dick heads. The drummer was guilty about his shitty playing he offered to pay for the session. I said, "No, the damage is already done, thanks a lot".

When it came to mixdown Randall O'Malley and I did a lot of jumping up and down of levels with the drums whenever it was time to hide his fuck ups. It was like an audio trampoline. No shit. There were some parts that were so tore up that we had to throw a few space echoes just to hide how shitty he played. Thank God for Randall O'Malley, he rules.

The funny thing is that after all the bullshit you go through you DO end up with a great record that makes other bands want to use your engineer and recording studio, and sometimes even your musicians. The magic is in the music and the music needs your magic.

The Legend of Arthur J. and The Gold Cups

Describing a punk band from the deep, dark past has always been hard work but when there's precious little documentation on the band then it's well near impossible. I played in a first wave Hollywood punk band (1977-1978) called Arthur J. and The Gold Cups and although we played with every huge band of the era (Avengers, X, Germs, etc.) we never recorded, so there's almost nothing to go by, but that's never stopped me before.

Arthur J. and The Gold Cups was named after two Hollywood coffee shops that catered to gays; Arthur J.'s was on the corner of Santa Monica and Highland - it's now a strip mall. The Gold Cup was on the corner of Hollywood and Las Palmas and it's now a trendy tourist trap tattoo parlor. Both establishments provided late night hustlers and Quaaludes.

One block away from the The Gold Cup was a tiny alley off Cherokee Avenue with a huge steel doorway that took you down to a basement that held several rehearsal rooms; a long, cavernous room with a stage; and tons more space for anyone to do whatever they liked. This was The Masque, leased and operated by Brendan Mullen, founder and drummer of Arthur J. and The Gold Cups.

In Charles Martin Sharp's brilliant book on the Los Angeles avant garde music scene, "Improvisation, Identity and Tradition: Experimental Music Communities in Los Angeles", he described The Gold Cups as "attracting and bringing together people who were already interested in experimental aesthetics by merely advertising for members at The Masque".

In Mullen's book "We Got The Neutron Bomb" I am quoted as saying, "When I saw the bulletin at The Masque for Arthur J. and The Gold Cups, everything that was listed in that ad was right up my alley. I said 'this is the band of my dreams' cause it mentioned Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, James Brown, The Soft Machine, T. Rex, The NY Dolls, and The Sex Pistols all in the same band. I couldn't believe it. This in some bombed-out punk basement? A pretty sick concept. Then I found out it was Brendan and Spazz (Attack, Gold Cups vocalist) and Geza (X, Gold Cups guitarist) and a bunch of other people who worked at The Masque who jammed there all the time for fun, so I rushed home to get my horn".

When The Gold Cups first performed it was on a Sunday night at The Masque. I passed on playing the first show because rehearsals were a shambling mess with no direction all, and I lived to regret not playing that night because the band was simply amazing. On stage there were three Deadbeats (Geza, Pat and Scott), The Moreland Brothers from The Skulls, Hal & Kelly (Weirdos roadies), and Brendan on drums.

Center stage on vocals was Spazz Attack, so named for simulating a full blown twitching and drooling seizure and performing eye-popping back flips - he always landed on his feet, brilliant. In addition to being a brilliant acrobat Spazz also designed his own punk-bondage fashions. He had a crazy habit of dyeing his hair - two, sometimes even thrice a week. Ouch! He's notorious for his strait jacket seizure in Devo's classic "Satisfaction" video. It's right after Booji Boy sticks a knife into a toaster.

The band sounded like they were combining The Standells with John Coltrane's "Ascension", furthering the punk big band sound with a dense wall of sound: two guitars, two keyboards, a horn section and drums that played whatever the fuck it wanted to. The band always returned to Earth by drifting into The Soft Machine's "We Did It Again", which sounded more like "You Really Got Me" than the hoary psych classic, but that's the point. Musical anarchy made reality, and not just sloganeering about anarchy from the musically structured punk bands.

To further elaborate on Charles Michael Sharp's profile on the band, Arthur J. and The Gold Cups went beyond the joke band tag for something more exploratory (click on images for better reading):

Although they only played for half an hour it was the greatest drag noise band of all time, Brendan, Geza and Scott wearing makeup and dresses serving up some Albert Ayler realness. I couldn't kick myself hard enough for boguing out on this awesome punk display!

I finally pulled the stick out of my ass and returned to the band a week later and toughed out the rehearsals - try getting nine mentally disturbed musicians to show up to rehearsal at the same time. Mission impossible! We ended up learning a few ridiculous covers, like The Beach Boys' awful "Long Tall Texan", the Cal Worthington used car ads commercial jingle, The Challengers' surf classic "Out of Limits" and we also did "Miserlou" (aka the Pulp Fiction theme song). "We Did It Again" always got played every six minutes.

I wore a mask on stage every time in honor of the now departed Marc Moreland, who wore a mask that fateful night on stage, to maintain the tradition of masked musicians. This not only got me attention when we played but I even scored a pic in Slash Magazine when our show got reviewed. Unfortunately nobody knew it was me on stage. I was always in disguise!

Reviews for the band were always hateful - the LA Times said our "joke wore thin" and even Slash Magazine said we were "annoying". I've met both reviewers in person since those reviews and I assure you these are the two most pompous, humorless people I've ever met, so the reviews weren't terribly shocking.

Since Brendan promoted the band he'd package three-day weekend shows at The Whisky A Go Go with us playing every night and a revolving door of punk bands supporting us. We played with The Avengers, X, The Alleycats, The Dils, Negative Trend, Black Randy & The Metro Squad, The Plugz and The Germs.

The band had one particular fan at the time: running down to LA after his band's legendary show at Winterland in 1978, Malcolm Maclaren saw the band perform at The Whisky and enjoying our penchant for shambling punk covers, he returned to England to produce "The Great Rock 'N Roll Swindle" featuring, you name it, shambling punk covers of songs like "My Way" and "You Need Hands". Oh well, it was cool seeing him laugh his ass off at our show.

With the band's advancing notoriety new members joined: Paul Roessler (Screamers, Nina Hagen) on keyboards, Hector Penalosa of The Zeros on bass, Steve Berlin of The Blasters on sax, Jeff Jourard of The Motels (!) on guitar, KIra Roessler of Black Flag on bass. It was a busy rehearsal studio.

The usual humbug broke the band up: a side project called Hal Negro & The Satintones featuring half the band doing awful lounge music covers, combined with a more polished and ordinary set of covers (Love Potion Number Nine, Let's Get Together from the movie The Trouble With Angels). The drag and the noise disappeared, no fun. Plus some of the members took the band way too seriously.

Geza left to pursue his own band Geza X & The Mommy Men and became one of the foremost producers in the industry, Spazz joined Toni Basil's dance troupe, Pat Delaney became a college professor and Brendan wrote several successful rock biographies. Everyone left and did better, anyway, even me.

Slash Magazine ultimately delivered the best eulogy for The Gold Cups. It went something like this: "One of the most lunatic outfits to hit the scene, but unfortunately one of the flakiest. Made up of various outcasts from other bands, The Gold Cups also featured some inspired fringe cult figures. In limbo at the present, but if everyone involved (all 250 of them) ever learns to show up at rehearsals at the same time their long promised comeback may add a welcome touch of madness to concert nights. Probably forever unrecordable".

To read more about Spazz, Geza and Brendan pick up "We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk" by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen, available on Three Rivers Press.

"Improvisation, Identity and Tradition: Experimental Music Communities in Los Angeles" by Charles Martin Sharp can be read via Google Books.