Walk the line frank iero

My Chemical Romance- Sister To Sleep Los Ángeles Night 5

Gerard Way – I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone (Sleater-Kinney cover)

death of the lionheart

LEATHERMOUTH - Whats A Pulse Got Ta Do With It (Pulse)

16 We Don't Need Another Song About

This is one of maybe five tracks of me messing around with this Crate amp I got off of Reverb for cheap. It has a mysterious stain on the front that looks like someone had put a candle on top of the amp and the wax just dripped down the front. In the listing, the stain was described as “a stain that mostly comes off”. One of the things Doug and I were experimenting with for the last three months was how bad we could get stuff to sound. That’s not me trying to diss on Crate amps, as the very first amp I had— the one I wrote Skylines and Turnstiles with— was a Crate amp with built in distortion. But they do not have a reputation for being high quality amps, at least in the musical circles I was in. A lot of people get kind of snobby about them. But I think a lot of metal or thrash metal musicians swear by them. They are very crunchy, so I think that is why, since some metal has a lot of crunchy distortion. But we would turn the amp distortion on, and then run a distortion pedal through it, to see how fucked up we could get it. I’ll probably put the rest of the jam tracks up, but I think it’s a lot of the same riff over and over, since I didn’t know when Doug was in record-mode and I wanted to make sure I got the two or three parts down once I discovered them. This is just me playing guitar meandering through ideas, sloppily. Maybe some of these riffs will become songs.

Crate Amp With Mysterious Stain Jams

Crate Amp_02

Back before Hesitant Alien was a thing, and before I wanted to pursue a solo career, I wanted to start a band and just sing and play guitar, after my chem broke up. The name of the band was going to be Baby Animal Hospital (the record label hated the name, especially since it included both the words ‘baby’ and ‘hospital’ in the same phrase), and I did a bunch of rough graphic design for it, but in the end, it really felt like a solo thing, so that’s what it became. But when it was Baby Animal Hospital (I wanted something that sounded warm and fuzzy and loud, like the tones) I recorded this track with Doug for the opening of the record. The lyrics/sounds are just the word BAH over and over again, which where the first letters of each word of the band name, but that wasn’t intentional, I just liked the sound. And this was us really messing with auto-tune to try and make it sound like an instrument. It was supposed to be this track as track one and go right into Action Cat. Later on, I figured I would just make a zine with the name Baby Animal Hospital, but I didn’t get very far with it. Still like the name, and may do something with it in the future. Maybe one day I’ll share all the graphic design I did for it when it was a band, a lot of which was cut and paste by hand.

Success!

This was something Doug and I threw together for the release of Umbrella Academy Volume Three: Hotel Oblivion. Just something short for an instagram video. We did this really quick, didn’t give it much thought other than trying to make something that sounded a little like The Stooges. A few months later, I actually wrote a verse and some new lyrics and a new vocal melody for the verse, and then I kind of wanted to finish the song. Someday. Like most of this stuff, it’s me playing guitar, bass if there is bass, doing the vocals, and Doug programming the drums.

Distraction Or Despair

Welcome to the Hotel

This is the start of the Crate amp jam. Like I mentioned in the other post about the Crate amp jams, I wasn’t sure when Doug was in record-mode, because I was in the live room with the amp, so I just started playing. I feel like doing more of these Crate amp jams. I think we can get it to sound even more messed up. At one point, I think in a later track, Doug tried to do this thing where he put a glass bottle over one of the mics, to make it sound more messed up and kind of underwater. Oh and when I bought this amp, I also bought an old Peavy, which is another kind of amp that is cheap and you saw a lot of metal bands using in the 80’s. That one sounds pretty messed up too, and I think it also has built in distortion. The amps sound pretty different from each other though. I can’t remember which guitar I was playing for certain, but I am pretty sure it was the BC Rich Mockingbird Lindsey got me for Christmas, which I love. BC Rich is another one of these companies gear heads get snobby about, and the 80’s saw a lot of metal bands, all kinds of metal bands, use them. Thrash, hair metal, just all kinds of metal. The Warlock was everywhere. Years ago I heard about this successful musician buying up a ton of a certain kind of guitar, to corner the market on them, so I thought I would do what he was doing, but in the complete opposite direction, and buy up a ton of guitars no one really wanted and that wouldn’t really increase in value. Just to be a clown. I ended up not doing that, as that would have been a gross misuse of funds simply to make a joke, but I did eventually get one. I like the shape a lot. It sounds metal af.

Crate Amp With Mysterious Stain James 

Crate Amp_01

This one was recorded at the tail end of the Hesitant Alien demo sessions, just Doug and I. I liked it well enough at the time, felt kind of 90’s, didn’t end up putting any vocals on it though. I like the bridge a lot. Looking back at the whole thing, I like it, but not sure if I’m going to finish it. Guitar, bass by me. Programmed drums by Doug.

Crate Amp_02

GerardWay