Skip to main content

WERE I TOM ARAYA



This mixdown album....4-Track Fallout 96-97 was my last 4-track cassette action ever. After my Porta 05 studio locked up at Berklee in fall 1992, I didn't replace it right away. Eventually I upgraded to the Tascam 488 cassette 8-track and never looked back. In 1996 & 97 we were recording the Irreligion stuff & I guess my 8-track migrated over to Ray so he could do the vocals. & his Porta 05 came my way. Fascinating, no?


Star*Pillow "Were I Tom Araya"
MP3

I love the everything-in-mono smallness of this recording. The drums & keyboard were done with the trusty SK-5 sampler. I sampled my snare & kick drums, apparently. And the keyboard sound is probably a sample of a guitar harmonic. Or was it a flute sample from the first Cathedral album? I forget now. The bass is one of the first appearances of my Fender Bass VI, which I acquired from elderly instruments for $750, a total steal. Sure, the Bass VI was just a reissue, but it was still a prized possession for many years. Guitarwise, it's clean Jaguar all the way.

I think this was the pinnacle of the Star*Pillow experience. You can see on the other side of this mixdown tape, the two songs I recorded for the Cathy Dennis album I was intending to cover. That's right, Star*Pillow wuz gonna rock out on Cathy's entire first album. I got as far as the second song & realized that her songs were too f'ing complicated & it wuz gonna take me forever to perfect all the parts. ie, I lost interest very quickly. Go figure! How unlike me!!!!!!!!!!! My version of "Just Another Dream" features drum loops from Jane's Addiction and Black Sabbath but I didn't bother with the vocals. "All Night Long (Touch Me)" has a Motorhead drum loop & does feature vocals but they suck, so here's "Were I Tom Araya" for the fifteenth time. I don't know, maybe some peeps out there have never heard this. I kind of doubt it.

(Tom Araya is the singer/bassist in Slayer. "Die By the Sword" is one of their classic jamzzzz & he used to introduce it onstage by saying 'some say the pen! is mightier! than the sword! I say fuck the pen! 'cuz you can dieeee by the sworrrrdaaah!')



I'd never have to lie again
I could just scream and make threats
kick out dave lombardo
and never never have regrets

were I tom araya
your head would be mine
bitch

some say the pen is mightier than the sword
I say fuck the pen 'cause you can you can
die by the sword!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Unknown Samarkand track circa 1999-2000

Judging by the drum & bass loop I'd say this recording predates any PC multitracking attempts. I was definitely in the zone with the guitar, though. It sounds like an old Cure riff that was abandoned at birth. Maybe it was, who knows. Ian C Stewart - 1999-2000 Unknown Samarkand Track MP3 The other side of the cassette is labeled CLUB AUTO NARRATION SOURCE. My Tokai and BC Rich guitars, circa summer 1987. Posed seductively on my bedroom floor.... in the basement.... Speaking of basements, anyone who came over to my house to jam from 1989 onwards would've had this low-hanging ceiling light to contend with. By contend with I mean leave skin and hair cells upon. The number of times I and everyone else smashed our heads on that thing was quite funny, thinking back.

THESE CHORDS ARE LIKE FAMILY TO ME

Ian C Stewart "These Chords are like Family to Me" MP3 From the 2003 made-to-be-made-not-made-to-be-heard album I Don't Know Why You Think I Won't Kill You .... this is the last song. This was the beginning of my dabbling with intentional randomness in songwriting. The lyrics for the whole album were compiled from albums by other artists that I enjoyed a lot, such as Adrian Belew's Twang Bar King , The Cure's Pornography , Voivod Nothingface , Mercyful Fate Melissa etc. I wrote out entire lines of their phrases and chopped them together. I think at the time I described it as 'sad psychedelic love songs about satan' overall, which is really being too generous. The music was also randomly chosen from tablature found on t'interwebs for favorite songs of mine. In general I played the chords in reverse order to the original songs but I can still kind of tell in a couple of places what the songs were. The titles were my own, obviously. Although I did cho...

EXGIRLFRIEND

SAMARKAND FRENZY WEEK, DAY THREE Samarkand "Exgirlfriend" MP3 This song is from the limited release cassette Sensitive , which was issued in a handpainted edition of 10 in January 1993. Naturally. Sensitive was 60 minutes of almost entirely brand new material, only one or two songs were recycled. It was recorded during what I thought would be my winter break from Berklee in 1992. Of course that turned out to be my permanent break from Berklee in 1992 since the cash had completely run out for my tuition. All the songs were recorded on a borrowed 4-track, possibly Ray's Porta 05. I also had my uncle's massive Carvin PA, Sennheiser mics & Ludwig drums in my basement. All of which feature prominently on this here release, along with the brand new Zoom 9002 effects. Which was an amazing combination at the time, I really felt like the boundaries were down on the equipment end of things for the first time. "Exgirlfriend" is a riff recycled from Domestik Quarrel...