 |
| That's my girlfriend, Tina G from the SPC! |
I nodded my head and smiled. "You know it!" I said.
The poor lady thinks me and my friends are crazy. She's probably right! I suppose all artists are crazy in some way. We see the world differently than normal people. We look at the mundane and make art of out it. We hear symphonies when we put a seashell to our ears! Artists also think differently than regular folk. We take an idea, an intangible object, and we bring it to life. We make the intangible, tangible. Period. Simple. We take an idea for a song titled "She's Got the Herp" and make it a MP3 file you can download on Reverb Nation for 89 cents and play on your cell phone! That's what we do!
Speaking of MP3 files, here is a link to She's Got the Herp on SoundCloud!
Believe it or not, I can say this with a straight face, all of us at Bubba & the Government Cheeze are artists. We are more than just musicians. We are, in fact, artists above all else! I suppose this might sound funny coming from a guy who thought writing "She's Got the Herp" was a great idea!
Here's how the song came about.
One day, Bubba and I were hanging out at my apartment and we were bouncing ideas off each other for new material. Bubba whipped out his iPhone and started playing recordings of ideas he'd been working on. One such idea he played for me was chorus for a song titled "I'm Gonna Fuck that Girl Like a Tubesock". Yeah, that we pretty much it. It was a recording of him singing those lines. When he played it for me, I burst out laughing.
"That would be a funny song," I said when I stopped laughing, "but I'm not sure I want to put my name anywhere near that song!" I was still a little worried about my reputation back then. A lot can change in a few months!
"I'm always recording stuff on my phone," he said. "When I get an idea, I record it. I could be anywhere. I could be doing dishes, I could be laying in bed, I could be in the bathroom when an idea hits me and I just record it. Hell, I come up with some of my best shit in the bathroom!"
"Literally," I said laughing.
"You never know when you're going to get inspiration," he said.
The next recording he played me was "She's Got the Herp". Just like "Tubesock", it was just him singing the chorus of the song. It tickled my funny-bone.
"We could do that song," I said. "It reminds me of an AC/DC song."
"Instead of 'She's Got the Jack', 'She's Got the Herp'!" laughed Bubba and then he began improvising by playing drums on my kitchen table and free-styling some lyrics. It was funny stuff.
"Do you think Chad will want to play that song?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Bubba. "We'll ask him."
Then we worked up a rough draft of the lyrics.
Since writing, performing and filming "Hell Street", Bubba and I had been jamming with Chad. One time, he invited TJ Hubbard to play with us and he was a perfect fit with for our little group. The first time we played with TJ, I knew I wanted to keep playing with him.
TJ is an excellent guitar player and song composer. He writes some awesome music! I dig it! Also, he is one of the easiest guys to work with, he doesn't have a big ego and he has the same sense of humor as Bubba, Chad and me! He's a very creative guy and I enjoy bouncing ideas around with him because he always has something cool to add.
"We need a blues riff," said Bubba to TJ while we were horsing around in the studio, "like something AC/DC would do."
"Like this?" asked TJ as he rattled off the riff that would be "She's Got the Herp".
"Exactly like that!" said Bubba enthusiastically.
"Okay, what's it for?" asked TJ.
"A song called 'She's Got the Herp'," Bubba said with a smile.
We played around with the riff for a little bit. TJ showed me what he wanted me to play and Bubba worked out his drum part. Chad played along with us and came up with the intro. Then we showed Chad the rough lyrics we came up with and we jammed the song out!
At the end of the night, Chad began working on the lyrics. He started by reading what we wrote while trying not to laugh.
"What if I sang it like Bon Scott?" asked Chad as he sipped his rum and Diet Pepsi. Then he did his best impersonation of Bon and we all laughed. I swear that Chad was channeling the spirit of the former AC/DC front-man.
It only took a few nights to record the song. We did it over the next three weeks. It went a lot slower than the recording of "Hell Street" but it was well worth it! We were learning a lot about the recording process for Bubba and the Government Cheeze and getting used to each other.
When I was recording my bass part for the song, it took me a few tries to get it right, after all, I hadn't really played the bass in eighteen years!
"Do you want to do another take?" asked Bubba.
I looked at him and said, "Dude, this is a song about herpes. How much time do you really want to spend on it?"
I'm impatient and the recording process for "She's Got the Herp" took longer than I expected. I just wanted to wrap the song and get working on the video, which we never got around to making.
 |
| Watch the Behind the Scenes video on YouTube |
We put together a Behind the Scenes video on YouTube after we recorded the song. We took some video on Bubba's iPhone and strung the scenes together. It didn't take too long to do. I like the video because you can watch Chad improvise the lyrics and make it his own.
Bubba and I did have a rough draft of the original lyrics. We wrote it down the day before we brought the idea to Chad. It wasn't in finished form by any means and we wanted Chad to put his own signature on it so we intentionally left a lot of room to be covered. I love his vocal track on the song. He sounds like Bon Scott and it's funny!
When we were recording Chad's vocals, he wanted to keep doing more takes. After eight or nine takes, Bubba said, "I think we got enough." Then he mixed it and viola, the song was done!
I also love the intro for that song too! Chad come up with it because there wasn't much to the main riff (it was kind of repetitive). He played the intro for us one day and we recorded it. We didn't practice the song much as a band. We learned our parts, said 'Good enough for government work' and recorded it. Both Chad and TJ did their guitar solos on the song in a few takes and Bubba was able to put it all together seamlessly.
We did plan a video for "She's Got the Herp". Chad wanted to go to Portland and film regular people singing the chorus line.
"Who's going to ask the people to sing?" asked Bubba. "I'm not doing it."
"I'll do it!" said Chad. "I'll just explain to them it's for a music video. Hopefully we can get some hotties in bikinis down in the Old Port."
"Imagine some old people singing it," said TJ. "That would be funny."
"Maybe we could get a retard to do it," suggested Bubba.
"I think that's going a little too far," said Chad.
"We gotta get a hot chick for this video," said TJ.
"I've talked to a couple of chicks about it but they all say they don't want to be the chick with herpes," said Chad.
"But that's kind of the point," said TJ.
This would become a reoccurring discussion topic whenever we talk about filming a video. There always has to be a hot chick! Whether or not we can convince a hot chick to do a video with us is another whole story!
One idea that Chad had for the video I really thought was cool was to set up a kissing booth with a girl with herpes. He wanted to put make-up on her to make it look she had the herp on her lips. It was a good idea but it was summertime and it was hard for all of us to get together to film the video so we never filmed it. Maybe someday!
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Like us on FaceBook
No comments:
Post a Comment