Splunge - 11/13/2011

Jason, Sal, Nick and I all on board again. I really wish we could keep it going solidly every other week at least, but especially as we approach the holidays, it's hard for all of us to be available. It's going to be another month at least, and the next time it's going to be my fault because I'm going to a wedding.

Jason showed up a little worn around the edges and apparently not in the mood to play. He wasn't terrible, but definitely wasn't at his best. At least one of the guitars was far too loud throughout the session (I think it was Nick) and we went back to some of our bad habits. Vocals were erratic (even on the songs Nick and I know cold) because we were having a hard time hearing ourselves. I turned the bass down to try to encourage everybody else to do the same, and naturally, they didn't. I should have just said what was on my mind.

We again passed on "Surrender" and "Space Oddity" because Nick and Jason still weren't prepared for them. Nick had lost power at this house for nearly a week, so he had some legitimate reason. Jason has just lost his focus for a while, by his own admission.

Sounds pretty negative the way I'm writing this, but it wasn't all bad. In fact, the overall sound was in the top four sessions or so since we've been playing, in spite of the negative aspects to it. We played our best versions ever of a couple of songs, most notably "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" with the group riff, and "Psycho Killer". I continued playing aggressively (if too quiet) and made some changes to my bass sound based on an article I'd read, and really liked the difference.

We discussed trying to do a medley involving REM's "Orange Crush", since all agreed that the song doesn't go much of anywhere as originally performed, and tentatively agreed to go from that song into the Theme from Shaft (probably with just Jason and I), then on to Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out". I'm not sure how that will actually pan out, but it'd be something really different for us.