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PART 3 – A historic insight on the Ill At Ease Recording Sessions

If you missed Part 1 you can find it here, or Part 2 is here. Now let’s get into Part 3…

Remember Me

I was playing bass in an Adelaide band called “Grunter” with Kelly Hewson who is the brother of Aaron (our drummer then). I had the riff for this song and took it along to rehearsal and Grunter had the first version of this song. I liked the idea of “Remember Me” and since it was my riff TMOC used it but had different aspects of it than the Grunter version. Kelly and I split the difference so he is a co-writer on it. Be good to hear both versions together actually.

Lyrics all taken from my big split up…All about loss, argument, and separation, with this whole Remember Me part to it, we rarely play it live nowadays – we played it a lot in earlier days in the 90’s. As we got more songs, some songs move further down the list. This was one of them.

Walk Away

We don’t play this much but I really like this one. It harks back to the sort of riffs and rhythm we used to do in the early days when Julian (John) Rickert played drums for us. I also like the riff that sort of ‘dances’ around as the bass chugs along in that staccato feel that we often go for. All in E of course. I wrote this in Israel on a Fostex four track. “Gotta get away, from this town”, could mean Tel Aviv or Adelaide, your choice.

Recording it was straight forward – usual bass and drums then layer the guitar later plus vocals. I reckon I was listening to some Ministry too which might explain the move up to F then back to E again that happens at times. Henry always plays this one on his show “Harmony in my Head”. Loves the guitar riff in it.

And this has the bombastic intro to it – a joke we take from a Big Black song  – but it does have this ridiculous intro to it, good though (in my humble opinion) and then it has the guitar riff, that is reminiscent of Joy Division sort of guitar notes, which is why I like it. I just listened to it then, makes me think we should definitely get that one back in the set. Has a bit of everything.

John Scott

PART 2 – A historic insight on the Ill At Ease Recording Sessions

If you missed Part 1 you can find it here, now on to Part 2…

First Time

This was written around the same time in the same rehearsal space – I wanted something that was a grinding bass line – that sort of tank moving forward sort of thing – I can remember writing the lyrics – this was right during split up. I remember seeing a Bird of Paradise growing in the front garden of our house while it was being prepped to sell, and it sort of filled me with sadness, and I wrote something later called Bird of Paradise, in my notebook, lyric ideas – anyway some lines/poem which was about letting things go – and I wrote about “..for the first time in my life it seems I’ve withdrawn from the perfect image, and when I did, when it was done, I didn’t even want to know her name..” Something like that. I was trying to express all the stuff about, separation, moving on, removal from ideas of a projected life in some manner that is comfortable, and just saying fuck all this – I don’t need it – I’m moving forward.

I needed to be strong at the time, and so I wrote something that tried to reflect that. It was a version of “drive on, don’t mean a thing” mantra meaning “I will process this all later”. I didn’t need to have an emotional breakdown then and there – I could do that later!  It was a hard, hard time – but everyone goes through these things – life is never all roses, it always has the ability to just rise up and smack you in the head like a sucker punch to an unsuspecting victim.

Wrote that at our band room in Coglin Street Brompton though. I don’t recall how we came up with all the riff-a-rama and weird timings – probably just made sense at the time – whatever felt right and then work it out and repeat over and over until everyone got it. We definitely wrote that at the band room at my house. The one that was sold later when the marriage split occured – that drove the lyrics for that.

Now we must have recorded that as a demo? Because somehow I had a tape of that – what I seem to recall was a demo version of that existed. We were also rehearsing at a place off Richmond road as well – lots of places after there wasn’t a band practice room at my place. I think I was moved back at my parents too, when I listened to First Time, played it on a Fostex four track, and I just had the drums on in headphones and then I used those same drums to write Point Man – which is why many of the same odd counts and timing in First Time end up in Point Man.

The recording was straight forward – we were at a studio in a guy’s house – Tony Nesci. Henry came to Adelaide and we did the recording and mix while he was over. The Engineer Tony Nesci got dressed in a suit for some unknown reason, just before Henry arrived, I think he thought he was meeting royalty. He introduced himself to Henry, then rushed away, only to come back minute slater dressed in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and he said, ”Henry, you’ll just have to take me as I am, this is me, this is how I dress”, as if somehow Henry had forced this suit arrangement on him and now he just had reveal that he wasn’t really a suit wearing sort of guy.

At that point I think we all knew there was an inherent instability to some extent involved in Tony’s life. Tony also tried to forbade Kim and I from wearing ripples in his house, because it made grooves in his carpet. Our relationship with Tony was actually fine – although we walked out on the very first session we ever did with him. We’d been offered to record a track for a compilation album of Adelaide bands, and we arrived, started setting up – it was the first time we’d met the infamous Tony Nesci. He was known for making statement to bands like “Remember you’re just the paint, I’m the artist”…

Anyway, we starting setting up, and we asked Tony to make sure he included, a Direct Input (or DI) for Bass as well as a mic’d version for recording the Bass. He refused. We explained that we had found it was a good policy and it offered us some latitude during the mix. He said he would not do it, that he was the engineer and that was that. SO, we said, OK, see you later and we started packing up all our instruments, preparing to go – we didn’t care if we did the compilation or not.

Tony came running out of the control room, “bboys, boys what are you doing”. We said we weren’t going to record, see you later. He seemed terrified we were going to leave “Surely we can work this out”. We explained it was easy to work out, just include a DI and a Mic and we would be fine. He then suddenly consented. I don’t think he’d ever worked with band with our sort of attitude before. Most bands would leap at the chance to record and would do anything they were told to if it meant getting on a record. We once worked with Kim Horne who had mixed the Exploding White Mice’s album, a Nest of Vipers. He was a really difficult person to work with. After our experience with him we vowed to never have an outsider tell us what was ok or not ok within the studio. Ie We are paying you, so you work for us, understand that and we’ll get on fine….

Tony also had to load this special program into his recording equipment each morning, it was password protected and no-one could watch him do it – this was his “Nesci-Sound” He would joke the only way anyone could get it would be to cut off his head and extract it somehow – We might have actually thought about it a couple of times, but just not the extraction part…(just kidding!)

None of the mixes were automated. It was all hands on deck, Henry riding some faders, Nesci riding some faders, Kim and I as well – release some reverb at a certain time etc. Make a mistake and you did it all over again. One day Tony got frustrated at a part in the mix of one of the songs, and he was supposed to trip a delay at a certain point in the vocals. He kept missing it – then blamed me because “If you could just learn to sing…” I knew I didn’t need to reply because Henry was already unloading on Tony – Henry told him to stop being a bitch and get it right. Somehow we all still managed to be friends, Tony really cared strongly about getting things right and there’s nothing wrong with having that sort of work ethic. Most of the time it was laid back, and almost a private Rollins spoken word show. Always great topics being discussed, creepy crawls, how Rollins and Joe met, current girlfriends, stories about DC, police harassment of Black Flag.

So, First Time was lots of G ad A as per usual. Really enjoy that song too.

John Scott

A historic insight on the Ill At Ease Recording Sessions

Greetings, to celebrate the new TMOC website I said I’d write some notes on how some of the songs were developed and then recorded during the Ill at Ease sessions and it’s a long time ago but I will try.

Interloper

I do recall writing this and it was when we were practicing at a rehearsal room down at Port Adelaide, maybe 93/94? It was a basement arrangement, roomy but beneath the street. There were some rehearsals that was just me and Aaron working on riffs I had, as I think Kim was either interstate a lot or working or both.  As part of it I would also play the bass, and we’d just “jam” on riffs. I have no idea how the opening riff for Interloper emerged on bass, I do recall running the third fret to second fret staccato on the high G and Aaron doing a bap de bap de bap, bap de bap bap – drums to it – already sounds familiar doesn’t it…but the main thing I recall was coming up with the hangs that occur in the beginning. When Kim was at next practice we just ran the riff over and over and built up the beginning, and then the G and A riff just seemed natural as the vocal part.

I also had the opening guitar riff, A-sharp back to A on the third and second fret of the G string – a twangy western sort of sound, which leads me to the next bit…

I am really fond of Westerns. John Ford (Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Sam Peckinpah (Ride the High Country), Henry Hathaway (True Grit, How the West was Won), George Stevens (Shane, Giant). I’m still a sucker for them – anyway – one of the main descriptions you’d often read in Western movie summaries was “ An interloper rides into town…” so I often had this “who made you the interloper” thing in my head – like, who the fuck are you to get involved in my business, stay the fuck away! Ironically the anti-hero was often the interloper, so I’m echoing the town villain sentiments to some extent here…so maybe sometimes I wear the black hat…

So, it was all a bit organic to be honest and came together quickly once I had Kim playing the bass line and then it devolved to a G to A riff.  That opens into the guitar just playing E over that bass line with “You ought to know what a liar I am, I laid my cards on the table” which explores the idea that I thought you accepted me faults and all, and of course that includes lying, so why are you complaining now and getting in my space! By the way, it’s not about me ok!?

I like the fact we stop after first verse and chorus and it sort of tries to start as if getting a stuttering engine to turn-over, and then it begins again.

Story about this rehearsal space – One afternoon we were practicing at this place, and Aaron has some crackers he smuggled in from who knows where – not having seen them for many years as Fireworks Night was banned during our youth due to so many fuckwits blowing their fingers and hands off, and sticking crackers up cats arses, that it was ruined for all of us. I loved Fireworks night. Anyway, we lit the crackers, little Tom Thumbs which you pretty well can hold between your fingers to show you are a tough hombre – anyway, I think either I threw one at Aaron, or he threw one at me (you can see why they were banned), and when the cracker exploded it set some weird straw shit that was part of the door insulation on fire and it went up pretty quick, next thing the rehearsal studio was on fire.

Luckily Kim drove a VW Wagon, and since VW’s are well known for bursting into flames if they roll, and you know, well, it was Kim right? – So he had a fire extinguisher on hand of course. He raced up the stairs, grabbed the extinguisher, ran down and put out the flames. Of course now the entire basement reeked of smoke and was full of that white powdery crap the extinguisher put everywhere. We managed to extract the burnt pieces of straw insulation material, whatever it was from the door and wall, so you couldn’t see the burnt versions, and then cleaned up. The owner came by to lock up and instantly was like “what’s that burning smell” so we were caught. Minimising the whole thing by utilising shrugs and mutterings like “er small fire, it’s out”, we seemed to get away with it. Maybe it was being surrounded by 6 foot guys saying “forget about it” was enough for him to…forget about it.

Did we demo this song? I’m sure we did – I need to find out from someone. When we recorded it with Tony Nesci and Rollins in ‘95 it was already a staple part of the live show so it went down easy. Not much to tell – we did drums and bass beds first, with guide guitar and vocals, then went back and did guitar and vocals later. Mixed it with Rollins and Tony.

The end of the song were it stops a second and the guitar re-introduces things I always really liked – I wanted it to sound like a freight train on its way to deliver you unto God…something like that, then it goes into a half time drum beat with the guitar and bass echoing that G and A and the long “Interloperrrrrrrrr” to the end.

Still really like playing this song.

John Scott