A Law Unto Laverne and Shirley...

So, in the wake of the unseasonal heatwave three of our indie balladeers headed back to the big city for another weekend with Dave. The plan is to supposedly do the odd tweak, add the required guitar tracks and chant the obvious lyrical re-writes into the vocal mic. Steve stayed at home in Horwich to re-decorate the back bedroom, while I was cleaning the grout on the bathroom tiles.

At this stage it is pretty much a case of all the parts being done and just waiting to be put together in the right order. The Decoration jigsaw is a 1000 piece puzzle and nobody knows exactly what the picture should look like, it’s still living and breathing, growing and mutating with every listen. The weekend is a catalogue of listening, pondering, revising, re-writing and recording. The first Apple Mac expires late on Friday, a replacement is dug out and the process continues.

Stuart’s notebook is by now bulging, the album has been a long time in the making, and even though some of the tunes are relatively new lyrical ideas, couplets and puns are all in existence if not yet in place. Stick brings in new guitar parts, worked on since the last session and Sam is the authority on what sounds good and what doesn’t.

Saturday afternoon and the replacement Mac packs up - whatever happened to the good old world of analogue recording? Wires are pulled and chased and eventually things get going again, it’s as though the gods aren’t happy, but the ship sails on.

From here on there will doubtless be further tweaks and changes, but Dave has what he needs to start mixing and he’ll be on with that as we speak. Things are taking shape, I can see the end of the pier form here.