New Monday #99

Happy Monday!

And Happy New Year! Here we are: Episode 99. Five weeks away from two years of this? Could it be? Hitherto writing New Monday, the only thing I’ve managed to do this consistently is age. And annoy people.

This one might be short. Methinks there’s a new plug-in coming out this afternoon or this evening. Even as I type this, we’re working on it. I have been dropping hints the last few episodes like a toddler before Christmas. Any of you figured it out? Write me if you have a guess.

Speaking of guesses, what will the New Year have in store for us??? If you’re a pessimist, probably more AI and the death of the music business as we know it. Heck, it might already be dead. The major labels have been cursed with a long-term shortsightedness since the first royalty agreement was hammered out. I read somewhere that the majors are buoyed up by their back catalogs—only 3% to 6% of revenue is from new stuff was the statistic? Whether or not that is accurate, someone is buying up all of Bowie, all of Kiss, all of blah blah blah. Meanwhile, Spotify pays $0.003 per stream and invests the rest in the “Let’s make Terminator a real thing."

My Instagram feed is full of bands and artists pointing me to Spotify to hear their stuff. I understand convenience, but if you sell downloads for $5 on your website or Bandcamp, that's the same as 1500 streams roughly. With 3,000 followers, does the math favor sending them to your website or sending them to Spotify and imprisoning all of us in pods à la The Matrix?

Maybe it depends on the music they're playing into the pod?

GEESE

There's a big buzz on Brooklyn's Geese. You might not have heard them yet, but all the younger musicians I know are talking about Geese. Here's their latest single:

Au Pays du Cocaine - https://youtu.be/kjxsaFB5svA?si=M2Kjf_JFiq_wf9iz

First of all, FINALLY a different snare sound! FINALLY not processed to hell drums! FINALLY not WAY TOO COMPRESSED with a sample tossed in so it sounds like every other record made since 2000.

I'm listening and thinking, "What a shitty drum sound! I love it!"

It's also an untuned vocal. Heck, it's almost an unsung vocal! The lead singer, Cameron Winter, is barely opening his mouth. I love this, too!

What's going on in the background...? I hear maybe background singers off to the left doing "oooohs." Some sort of distorted piano mixed with a synth? In the second half off to the right—at 1:32, someone overdubbed what sounds like a metal bucket getting kicked in a bathroom. I love this, too!

Someone is making goose sounding screaming noises off to the right on the vamp. Someone else is banging the piano. The drummer goes nuts on the snare and it still sounds like shit. It ends with a fuzzy guitar chord.

What is he singing about? I don't know. Something about being a sailor and a girl coming over and she can change and still choose him. Kinda like a more fluid Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave thing... not quite sure what it means but perhaps I might cry now because that seems to be the thing to do. Winter sings like if Van Morrison was beaten up more as a child by the other kids in school. I have to say, I kinda dig it.

Geese met as kids in school, writing songs when they were 11. Now they're on Jimmy Kimmel and they're touring Australia next month. The latest album, Getting Killed, was tracked by DJ/Engineer/Producer Kenny Beats during the LA wildfires, across about 10 days in his home studio, Putnam Hill. He's got boatloads of vintage gear. Small console—perhaps a customized Universal Audio 610 but with Langevin faders instead of big dumb knobs?

The entire record is fun, with some interesting, loose, noisy recording. On earlier albums, like 2023s 3D Country, there's a small choir of female singers channeling something from Humble Pie, and the songs definitely have more of a 70s boogie thing, but Winter is a distinctive singer even if the songs are wandering around a bit. Heck, some of you might like it even better if you're into, I dunno... if Little Feat took a lot more drugs? More chords? Less structure? Whatever, it's got that Americana thing. Their debut album sounds more English guitar stuff. Kind of.

Ya know what? There's growth from album to album.

I can see why kids like these guys. It sounds like they're all together in the studio, working things out, throwing around ideas. There’s an authenticity about it, even though I have no idea what authenticity is. Not perfectionism? For me, there’s not a lot of fussy wussy recording going on. It has that John Lennon “Let’s try this and even if we hate it, we’ll still use it” vibe. It sounds like a band that doesn’t want to sound like everyone else. And how can you not love knocking an album out in 10 days?

The Wind Cries Mary

I was looking around for something old with a terrible drum sound, or something done in a very short period of time, and then I remembered this.

The Wind Cries Mary - https://youtu.be/Z7K5VCCdOEM?si=P0e3cV5PD64jwmOo

There was 20 minutes left on the session, producer Chaz Chandler hated wasting time and money. Jimi Hendrix had an idea he was noodling around with. Into the studio with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell... 20 minutes later and a couple of overdubs, these guys nailed down one of the best songs in Hendrix's considerable catalog.

20 freekin' minutes. One writer. Three players. One producer. One engineer. Four tracks. Great lyrics.

Are You Experienced, the debut album from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, was recorded in London, bouncing between Olympic, CBS and De Lane Lea, because the band and the producer were short of money.

The Wind Cries Mary was tracked at De Lane Lea in one take. The engineer wasn't Eddie Kramer—he wasn't involved with the project until months later when recording moved over to Olympic Studios. Video on it here.

Well, here we are at the end of NM 99. Happy New Year again. Keep your eyes open for an email announcing the new plug-in!

Warm regards,

Luke