Seattle Years Disclaimer: As I enter the Seattle years in this music blog, the above disclaimer goes double, because so much happened and there are so many details to cover in this 14 year period; so many shows, so many bands, so many friends and so much change in my life. As a result of this and the fact that the four of us who formed Treepeople found ourselves in the midst of a scene which blew up around us and attracted the eyes of the world just 2 years after our arrival, not to mention the 12 years I played music following that, I am bound to, hell, I will forget something.
This means two things: I will be coming back to entries and adding things to them over the months following publication, and, that the part of the above disclaimer where I ask for help from people in keeping me honest and in remembering things is crucial to them. I thank anyone ahead of time who was there, and, those who weren't there who have access to valid info, for helping me to correct errors in dates or chronology. Yes, I have the Internet, but many bands, scenes and things I will cover did not receive the attention I feel that they deserved and thus I will recall them mostly from memory, or rather, memories; mine and those of friends. Also, friends who were in bands which I do not happen to mention, please don't take it personally, just remind me. I have created a monster in undertaking this blog, one which I am determined to ride until the end!
Lastly, as mentioned, this scene gained national attention, and thus, needless to say and as we all know, many bands/people became famous, became rock stars, were/are admired by millions, etc and etc...This makes another part of my original disclaimer even more important. This memoir is intended to tell my story, from my perspective. I have no intention of creating a place where people can seek gossip about famous people, nor is it about 'name-dropping'. I write of my impressions of people, bands, and the Seattle scene from the '90s into the early 2000s. I protect those who are my friends fiercely because a symptom of being known is frequent intrusion into their lives beyond a level that I feel is acceptable. Thank you for indulging me this disclaimer. Onward>>>
Chris Takino, music enthusiast extraordinaire, unofficial manager of Treepeople, and co-founder of UP! Records in Seattle (photo from a Modest Mouse documentary)
Image retrieved from: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/-YfIpJmcBJk/mqdefault.jpg
Chris Takino (first meeting for Rocket mag interview)
We (in Treepeople) met a man who would become a seminal person in the short life of the original line-up of the band, as well as to the success of Doug Martsch's band after Treepeople, Built To Spill, to Modest Mouse, to the Seattle and Olympia music scenes and, it could be said with no hesitation, to modern music history overall. His name was Chris Takino, a recent transplant from Los Angeles (where he grew up). Before moving to Seattle, he worked as an office admin for SST Records, the legendary record label started by Gregg Ginn, guitarist of the punk band Black Flag. SST was home to some of the '80s and '90s best independent bands like Husker Du, Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust, Dinosaur Jr., The Descendents, Screaming Trees, Sonic Youth and many, many more (most of these bands were considerable influences on Treepeople).
At the time of our meeting, Takino was working as a receptionist at The Rocket Magazine, the aforementioned local music magazine in which we had received a bad, then a good review for the same record (see Part 23). As I have mentioned before in this blog, The Rocket was the music mag in Seattle then. Chris also wrote some stories for the mag, thus came his interview with us.
We met up with Takino at Pagliacci Pizza on Broadway on Capitol Hill, found a table and sat. Chris introduced himself, lit up a cigarette (you could still do that indoors then), and put a micro cassette recorder on the table and pressed 'record'. He barely spoke a word. He just let us talk (and talk we did) for almost an hour, about our history, influences, the works. Chris sat, smoked and nodded, cool as a cucumber.
I don't remember how Chris connected with us or why, I asked Doug Martsch and here is what he recalls, "...I definitely remember meeting Chris while I was working at Kinko's. He may have been making fliers for a show, but I think he was just making copies of some old fliers he had--maybe Saccharine Trust or that guy's other band...? I can't remember if I told him I was in Treepeople or if he had already seen us and recognized me. It seems like we talked to each other a few times before he made that connection... He said he liked "In My Head" from our first single. I don't even remember him interviewing us for the Rocket!..."
Little did we know, our fates were entwined from that moment on, and that Chris would, for a short time, act as an unofficial manager for the band, for which we would be eternally grateful. More on Chris Takino later in the tale (I plan on dedicating an entry to him). See below for the interview in The Rocket.
Interview in The Rocket Magazine, 1989 - by Chris Takino
Photo by Todd Hailey
Treepeople's Time Whore EP, and, a general overview of the recording process
Treepeople set to work right away on some new recordings with help from our friend Paula Sen (the aforementioned 'Paula Fallout') who financed the physical production (pressing, covers, etc.) of the record. We had a good experience with Jack Endino at Reciprocal, so we decided that we would return to this set up.
Since we were paying for the actual recording ourselves, we decided that we wanted to cram as many songs into the session as we could...flawed logic. This is not the best approach to recording at all, for many reasons, a few of which are: you won't be able to focus as much on getting the songs right, as you will have less time to retake them (more on this below), you will add a layer of stress to the band and the producer/engineers, and, in the long run, you will end up spending more money (for, in the studio, the cliche', 'time is money' is never more true). But we were fairly naive about this process, and lined up 19 songs to record in one session! In our favor was the fact that we rehearsed 3 times a week at minimum and were very tight as a band, so the chance of getting songs done on the first or second take was very good.
The music recording process
A TASCAM ATR 60 16 track recorder, fairly standard in most studios in the '80s & '90s
Image from: http://tubegeek.breakmyzencart.com/_media/tascam-atr-60-16:atr-60-16_2.jpg
I find myself backing up in this blog and realizing that I may be assuming the reader knows the ins and outs of the kinds of things musicians take for granted, such as recording in a professional studio setting, so I will take some to time to give an overall sense of what it's like, but with a disclaimer that I am describing what it was like to record in a studio in 1990. It is quite a bit different now, with the advent of digital recording and recording software such as Pro-tools.
Practice, practice, practice
Image from: http://www.kungfuology.com/indie_everything/indie/05%20Band-thumb-400x300.jpg
The first step is that the band who is scheduled to record will pick the songs they want to record and practice, practice, practice. The motivation for this, is as I have already mentioned; that generally the band will be paying for the studio time on their own, or it will be paid for by an independent label with a limited budget, and time is literally money, as I also mentioned, in that recording is charged by the hour and is generally not cheap.
As a band, you want to make sure you have those songs down, because when you are tracking them (that is, recording them) and someone messes up, or it doesn't sound quite right for whatever reason (lack of passion, sloppy, etc.) then you have to do it again, thus, more money. This is an immense amount of pressure (especially for the drummer, more on that below) and much of that pressure resides within the individual minds of each musician. You don't want to be the one screwing up! And, added to this pressure is the fact that the more times you do a take of a song, the less vital and passionate it will sound each time.
The goal is to get a first or second take, when the energy level is high. For, when you get around to the fifth take, the self-consciousness of each musician not wanting to screw up mounts and causes everyone to play their parts too carefully, draining out the passion exponentially. If you are the weak link making everyone go down this rabbit hole, resentment and pressure rises and makes for a very tense session! A good producer will have the band move on to a new song and come back to the troubled song later, to keep things fresh and moving forward.
For certain instruments, the pressure is a little less, in that you can do overdubs after you record to fix your screw-ups. This means that if you only mess up a part here or there but the rest of the song you nailed it, you can go back after the basic tracks are done and 'patch in' and play your parts over, then during the mixing process (more on that later) you can simply add those patches in and voila! A stellar performance! This process can be done for everything except drums (with minor exceptions); vocals, guitar, bass, piano, etc.
The bane of drummers
Image from: http://www.altpress.com/images/uploads/videos/LukeHolland-TWA620.jpg
Why not with drums? Because of tempo, mainly. Most drummers don't play the same exact tempo every time (unless they are super skilled pros, like session drummers) so when you try to patch it in, it doesn't fit. There is the option to play to what is called a 'click track', meaning the drummer listens to a ticking sound played at a specific tempo in headphones while they drum, but I have played bass on recordings where the drummer used a click track and it totally kills the natural groove that a good drum track should have. Back in the days we were recording, when we laid tracks down to tape, you could mess with tape speed a bit and change the tempo a little, but it was very tricky, and often, you would spend as much time or more on this process than just recording the whole song again.
Also, unless you are an extremely skilled drummer, it is very difficult to play along with a recording, which is what you do when you patch in; you are playing to what was just recorded, including what you played, in headphones. The engineer will start the tape a little before the patch in point so you get into the groove of the take before they punch you in and then out. This makes it far more seamless to edit into the track later, and it sounds more natural. Nowadays, there is a lot more room for manipulation with digital files.
Patching in smoothly is a valuable skill for a musician who records often. It took me years to become good at it. But for drummers, the pressure is on to get the take right all the way through, every time. That pressure can be immense!
Once all the basic tracks have been recorded, the overdubs can happen, then the vocals and any other extras are added (maybe some keyboards, back-up vocals, ethnic instruments for flavor, bongos, hand-claps, etc.) then the mix begins.
Mixing the sounds together
Image from: http://www.redbull.com/cs/RedBull/RBImages/000/000/442/594/photo610x343a/11.06.03%20Red%20Bull%20Mixtape%20Toddla%20T-09.jpg
The mix involves the producer (someone hired to shape the live tracking session toward a specific sound and then mix it all down, as in balance out all the sounds into what you hear as a finished product) and the band members going through what was laid down and putting it all together into a finished product.
This process is extensive and takes at least half if not more of the studio time. A sound must be dialed in for each track recorded, guitar, bass, vocals, drums. First, the drums are mixed, and this involves getting sounds and balances for all the sounds captured with microphones that were used during live tracking (generally, a mic on the snare, the high hat cymbals, the tom tom drums, the kick drum and an overhead mic). Mixing just the drums can take hours.
As soon as a decent drum sound is established, most producers move on to bass, getting a good sound, and on to guitars, etc. For each instrument, in order to get the right sound, only that track is 'soloed', meaning all other sounds are muted. This can be somewhat painful to hear only your part alone, especially for singers! Many of you have probably heard the tracks going around the Internet & on social media networks of say, David Lee Roth's vocals by themselves. People go off about how bad these things can sound, but pretty much no individual track sounds good on its own, no matter how much of a virtuoso someone is. The beauty of a good song by a band is the collective sound that comes from individual outputs. As I have mentioned in previous entries, when we pulled up Scott and Doug's parts solo, it didn't sound like they would go together at all, but they totally did!
I hope this has been a useful little inserted 'essay'.
Time Whore recording session and release
As I have said over and over in writing this blog, my memory is spotty in some areas. I don't remember the Time Whore recording in detail, but I do remember we were pretty excited to be recording again, especially with a producer (Jack Endino) who had worked with us before and understood our sound and what we were trying to do (a new concept for us then) and, we were excited to have so many songs to record. We managed to blaze through tracking 19 songs fairly quickly, if I remember correctly.
Endino, as I have mentioned, plays the drums (but is known, as a musician anyway, for his stellar guitar work) so drum sounds are very important to him. He spent a good deal of time on the drum set-up and on the set-up of the mics, and also, in shaping a good sound in the mix. It was always great to work with Jack, he is very skilled at what he does, even then he had already had a huge catalog of work which the world was swooning about (most of the Sub Pop releases). We felt privileged to be working with him. At that time, Jack pretty much came with the Reciprocal Studio if you booked a session there (many producers, as Jack is now, are traveling from studio to studio in various locations throughout the country and sometimes the world to produce records).
Of the 19 songs we recorded, we chose the following tunes for a 12 inch EP: Party, Tongues On Thrones, Lives, Radio Man, Size Of A Quarter, Time Whore. Note that you may have these songs on an LP called 'Something Vicious For Tomorrow', but that record is a combination of two EPs, Time Whore, and 'Something Vicious...' (for lack of anything else to call those later songs as a unit) which was recorded after I quit the band. Yes, yes, more on that later. The remaining 12 songs would come out on various 7 inch records in the years following the recording session (all of which are on the original release of the Treepeople album 'Guilt, Regret, Embarassment' (aka 'GRE'), that was on Toxic Shock records).
Not a real drummer: Confidence meets insecurity
Wayne 'Scarecrow' Flower playing drums and trying not to die (people who saw me drum in the late '80s/early '90s will get this joke, and see above Rocket article, where Chris Takino describes what I mean). At Julia Davis Park Bandshell, Boise, Idaho, 1990 (?) - Photo by Brian Bothwell
I had been playing drums for about a year when we recorded 'Time Whore'. I didn't really consider myself a 'real' drummer (actually, for most of my time in Treepeople I felt that way). Listening to this record now, I think my drumming sounds decent, but I was young, and posessing a strange mixture of confidence (I did, after all, go for it and play drums) and insecurity (I was very self-critical). I remember on the song 'Time Whore', there is a pretty rocking breakdown, and I had just come up with this oddly timed bass drum beat that I hadn't gotten down all the way and I was nervous about playing it, but managed to pull it off.
During the mix, Jack Endino pointed out some very odd timing in the stall parts on the song 'Tongues on Thrones'. At first, I thought, 'Oh man, I really fucked up!' In fact, it was a compliment. When I was a better drummer, years later, I listened to that part and understood exactly what he was talking about. It has an extra amount of time, just a hair, in each pause, that is different than how it would traditionally be for a part with the kind of timing it has. I realized in retrospect that it was odd as hell, indeed. And that is the thing about my drumming then. There were particular beats I played because I didn't have any formal training so I just...played stuff. Some of it came out oddly, but worked, as an example, the stalls I mention here are all exactly the same length. But I really wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing technically. It just came out of me. I guess this describes me as an intuitive musician, which I am to this day. I still can't read a lick of music! But I can play stuff by ear.
The Treepeople song 'Tongues on Thrones'. The odd timing I write of can be heard at the 1:55 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTUQwDYbPyc
The sad part of the story of 'Time Whore' (or one of them) is that the Jack Endino master mix tape was lost by the pressing company (a pressing company literally presses the records themselves)! Back then, the mixes existed on tape only, so it was worth it to pay for a back-up copy, but we were broke, so we opted not to do this (oops). We were also too broke (and a bit too naive) to sue the pressing company.
As a result of this fuck up by the pressing company, when Steve Fisk mixed 'Something Vicious...' a couple years later, he had to remix the 'Time Whore' EP! This is unfortunate for many reasons, but to me, the biggest issue with this is the fact that poor Fisk had to take a recording that he had nothing to do with originally, most importantly, nothing to do with getting the sounds Endino got in setting up the mics for tracking, so he was flying a little blind in mixing it. As well, it is always a weird place for a producer to be in to be mixing a peer's work. I know this was weird for Steve, and he did an admirable job in remixing it.
One thing I was a bit bummed about at first when I heard the remixed 'Time Whore' portion of 'Something Vicious...' was that the drum sounds were very different from what Endino had dialed in (in reading the above, you can see why), not taking anything from Steve Fisk, because of what I just described; in not having set up the drum sounds or been there for live tracking, getting it right must have been very difficult for him. It would be like painting a painting in which all the colors, materials and subject had been chosen for you, and you being asked to make it your own. All that said, I am glad that 'Time Whore' is preserved digitally, as there were only a thousand of the first release on vinyl.
The profoundly disturbing cover of the LP (2 combined EPs, really) 'Something Vicious For Tomorrow'. The painted over pornography artwork was done by the amazing Mike Scheer: www.mikescheer.com
Image retrieved from:
http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/treepeople.gif
One other thing to note is that the profoundly disturbing cover of 'Something Vicious...' by the brilliant artist Mike Scheer (more on him later in the tale) was not the original artwork for 'Time Whore'. See the original cover art for 'Time Whore' at the beginning of this section, which came from some color copies someone left at Kinkos, I believe they were photos from an insurance settlement. Doug Martsch worked at Kinkos at the time and grabbed them (I still have the original copies from this). The design was done by Pat Schmaljohn on his Mac computer. I still love the way this cover looks.
Well, this entry is way longer than I intended it to be, mostly because of the recording process section, so I will stop here. As I do the Seattle years entries, I will be winging it subject-wise, so I will not be adding any previews at the end of each entry as I have done in the past. Your guess is as good as mine as to what will be next! I will of course do my best to keep it as chronological as possible.
