After great ideas are conceived, they need to be born unto this world like a child. Here's the story of how the Seagull was hatched from its egg and given life.
Bubba and I had played the song so many times in the past that we knew it like the back of our hand. It took us no time at all to show Chad and TJ how to play the song. I showed them the chord progression that I remembered from back in the day and then we modified it a little, a couple of notes here and there, and made it our own. We eliminated the guitar solo more or less as a simple oversight but it worked to our advantage because it cut the song down to roughly three and a half minutes (which ended up working to our advantage because the video would've been ten minutes long instead of eight if we had kept a solo).
The recording process for any Bubba and the Government Cheeze song always starts with getting a clean drum track down for the song. We record everything else around it and the vocals always go last.
One afternoon, Bubba and I went down to the BGC Studio and after a few takes, we recorded the drums. It probably took us three or four hours total. I played the bass in the background just to help Bubba know where he was in the song. The bass was turned down low and we covered the amplifier with a blanket to try and keep the drum track as clean as possible.
Once the drum track was complete, then we brought in TJ to record his guitar part. It took him about a half an hour to record his track (which, my friends, is extremely fast). We had so much time left over that we recorded my bass track. As we were thinking about wrapping up for the afternoon, Bubba and I started looking at Chad's organ (not the one you can see clearly in the video but a piano-type organ). I don't remember which one of us suggested it first but we both thought it was a great idea to add a sinister sounding organ to the song.
Instead of calling it a day, we recorded the organ part too. It was a simple part, so simple that even I could play it, which I did.
After Bubba mixed the tracks together, he burned a CD for me to listen to.
"Check this out," said Bubba as he pulled out the CD. He put it into the CD player in my car and cranked up the volume. We were in the parking lot of his mother's apartment building when the radio began belting out our song. It was loud, dirty and sounded awesome!
"That's fucking killa, dude," I said sounding like a fifteen year old from the 1990's.
"I know," said Bubba proudly. He had done a great job mixing and editing the song and he knew it. "Now all we need to do is record Chad's part and the vocals."
"Correction," I said. "We need to figure out what the lyrics are first."
"What do you mean? You must know what the lyrics are."
"I only remember the first part and the chorus," I said. "I don't remember the rest."
"Didn't you tell me that someone put up the original song on Facebook?" he asked.
"Yeah, it's the Dunn Street Hall show we did with Missing Youth back in 1992," I replied. "We're probably gonna have to listen to it a few times to figure it out."
"Well, let's do that now while we have nothing else to do," he said.
"Fine, we'll go over to my place and watch it," I said.
When we got back to my apartment, we sat at our usual seats around my kitchen table. Bubba pulled out his iPhone and I showed him where the link was to the song. I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and we set about to decipher Nizzy's old lyrics. Personally, I never paid much attention to the lyrics of 'Satanic Seagull' because Nizzy used to change them all of the time. The lyrics were never static, they were dynamic, changing every time we played the song. All we had to go with was the live version of the song from 1992 and we wanted to stay as true to form as we could. That meant using as many of the original lyrics as possible. Unfortunately, the original lyrics were written when we were sixteen years old and contained a shitload of profanities and vulgar phrases!
I was actually amazed by how profane the lyrics were! Bubba and I sat at my table, listening to the song over and over again transcribing lyrics and laughing our asses off! There was one time when I asked, "Did he really say that?"
"'Fuck like a twat'? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what he said," replied Bubba.
"Oh man," I said. "Are we really going to put that in?"
"Do you have something better?"
"No," I said as I wrote down the words 'Fuck like a twat'.
The last verse Nizzy sang back in 1992, neither of us could figure out.
"I have no idea what he said," I said.
"Me either," said Bubba.
"Alright then we'll have to make something up," I said.
"Okay, what?" he asked.
I thought for a minute. Since we couldn't recognize any of the words coming out of Nizzy's mouth, I suggested, "'Satanic Seagull, Blah, blah, blah.'"
Bubba laughed.
Another idea snapped into my head. "Then it goes, 'Satanic Seagull, Ha, ha, ha!'"
There it is folks, my contribution to the lyrics! I believe in the KISS principle (Keeping It Simple Stupid).
The following Monday, Bubba and I went to the BGC Studio (aka Chad's house) and worked with Chad on recording his guitar part, which was slightly different from TJ's. The three of us fooled around with an old amplifier that had built-in sound effects until we got the sound we were looking for. It didn't take Chad too long to record his guitar part. Everything was falling together nicely! Then we spent the rest of the time we had left recording the vocal parts. Bubba sang the verses and Chad sang the chorus. All that was left was for Bubba to mix the song after we left the studio that day.
About a week later, Bubba had the song mixed and showed us the rough mix.
"Check this out," said Bubba. We were in my car. He put a CD in the CD player and waited. "I made an intro for the song."
I loved the intro the first time I heard it. Bubba recorded himself saying "Satanic Seagull" and played it backwards over the sound of seagulls with the audio from a video Chad sent from his phone of him banging on a broken piano at the city dump. It was the perfect intro for the song!
We were both silent until the music kicked in hard and heavy.
"That's fucking awesome!" I told Bubba. "Great job!"
Then he told me about the subliminal message.
"Now we are in league with Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne!" I joked. "Subliminal messages! Fucking awesome!"
Bubba laughed.
Now that the song was done, all that was left was the video!
Stay tuned for the next chapter, 'Satanic Seagull Part 3: The Rise of the Seagull'.
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