Peeping at my website traffic, I see the entire country of China has been visiting my website. Either they’re trying to hack the Hiss or they can’t get enough of my spider pictures and recording studio updates. Eyes takes them both.
NOTES FROM THE RECORDING STUDIO, TUBA
A night in September, after spending a *poppyseed afternoon in recording studio, Studio 69, with tuba player Johanna Klapstein my mind felt like goo being squeezed out of a makeup tube. The session was longer than I anticipated—an hours-long affair. Johanna is a perfectionist and wants everything to sound perfect. I'm a freak and want everything to sound maniacal. We spent time recording things with metronome, without metronome, with articulation, with valves, without valves, with mutes the size of a stout pig. The result was something we could brag about and stick a fork in and eat one day. Exhausted, I came home, collapsed on the floor and thought to myself: Why do I do this? Why do I spend time and money recording circus music? Why are my ears ringing like an old telephone? Later that night while watching the moon rise I wanted to hear the accordion. I put on Rob Reich’s pandemic album “Cloisters” and as the first notes sounded on my speaker I remembered why I do this. RIP old friend. I miss you.
*No one could stay awake except for the spider.
NOTES FROM THE RECORDING STUDIO 🎷
Outside of a haunted house there's no other place I'd rather be in October than in the recording studio. Last week was a nightmare for the opera singers (I had to cancel the session because the studio crashed) but this week was a rising moon with the saxophone. Breakfast showed up on time, as in the musician not the waffles, and the studio was up and humming. Hot sax was on the menu. After telling us about Mexico with his brass band Mission Delirium, Breakfast singed us with insane reed work. He shot off Brain Melt and Knife Throwing Expo like sparks. During Big Death Dance he improvised a spaced out solo. Machines hit the robotic button over and over. I didn't know the saxophone could sound like a printing press. And we ended with the arrangement of Hallway Twister for saxophone and tuba. Breakfast is basically the fried tarantula of the alto saxophone.
After we finished recording, Breakfast asked about the inspiration behind Carnival of Psychos and then told us a story. He grew up in Danville, Pennsylvania where his high school was right next to a state mental hospital, and his father worked there. His band in high school was asked to perform at the mental hospital. After the show a woman he'd never met came up to him and congratulated him on the performance. She said, “Tell your father Charlotte says hi. But don't tell your mother. She wouldn't like that.” He went home and asked his mother about the woman at the mental hospital and his mom told him who she was. Charlotte was once their caregiver, she was also schizophrenic. She was in a support group and stable, but one day she went off her meds and when she was working at the house she got into an argument with his mother. She threatened to kill the children, and she lunged at them. His mother freaked out, grabbed the children and ran for the car. Charlotte barricaded herself inside, but the police showed up and hauled her off. Later for good behavior Charlotte was given short leaves of the mental hospital and Breakfast remembers seeing her. She came to his graduation and his sibling's weddings. She would sneak in the back and when it was over, sneak out. And this is why Breakfast plays an insane saxophone.
-Samson
Image: Rita Deiola
