How To Survive Recording 101

Well, it's the summertime and that means a lot of things. Vans Warped Tour is out going which means you can head out for a whole day of sweltering, blistering heat while possibly catching a few good bands and a shitload of bad ones.

Summer also brings some pretty sweet thunderstorms, beach vacations, and unfortunately for those involved in the bbq industry, like myself, the 4th of July.

Fortunately, I had recording to look forward to, and while I could go into the day to day synopsis of recording, I'll get into the basic essentials you will need while going to record at a studio that is out of town and when you will be gone for more than 2 days.

1) Cell phone: Of course, it's our link to the outside world. From here you can call family, friends, late engineers (love ya Lee!), or generally spend the entire day texting.

Now, while spending the entire day texting people (primarily girls) may SEEM fun, it leads to a constant downfall.

Note: You are 4 hours away from home. So any game you are spitting at some fine honey trying to get some p in the v (or p in the b, p in the t's, p on the t, p in the e, etc.), it ain't happenin. No, she will not drive 4 hours to come see you on the SMAAAAAAAAAAALLLL chance that you may get 30 minutes to yourself.

Note: It'd probably be a bad idea to have a girl with you during recording anyways (see previous blog).

Now you can throw away your inhibitions and step up your game and start exchanging nudey pics with these fine females, but generally what you'll get from your phone is 'miss you!' or 'ilu!' (is it that hard to type out?) text messages.

Unless your phone's ringtone is 'Tequila', in which the entire room breaks into a giant sing along and dance, I'd keep the phone on silent.

Necessity Scale: 10/10

2)Laptop: Now HERE is the godsend of being in the studio. From here, you can do almost anything, from spend 4 days downloading 3kb of the blink182 discography that you've been downloading for the past three weeks (me), to watching a girl smoke a cigar in her vagina (BRAD AND GADGET...and me and Lee).

Unfortunately, just as with cell phones, there is a pitfall to having a laptop. That being the urge to masturbate.

Usually you can just pull up something on Youporn or something and just whack away at home, but at the studio it's different. There's no feasable way to jack off while 4-6 other dudes are there (not to mention some coffee lady who just walks in out of nowhere to deliver Lee's 'usual').

Which, it'd be weird jackin it in a studio anyways, so you definitely figure that you can jack it at the hotel room. Right? Right?

WRONG.

And, please tell me if you can think of ANY discreet way to carry a laptop in the bathroom with you.

Now the worst part of not being able to masturbate at my own pleasure is definitely the morningwood. However with four guys all up and going to the bathroom at all different times and my need to feel to hide my boner from my best friends to avoid being ridiculed, I usually can't make it in the morning to have a good whacking before it starts acting like it's a chilly day in Michigan.

Fuck.

Necessity scale: 9/10

3) DVDs: Now here is something that really is a good thing to have (so long as you have a tv to watch it on, which luckily we did).

When you get to dvds, you have a total array of things to choose from to bring and watch, from a great Ahhhhnald action flick (Who is your daddy and what does he do?), to a comedic Jim Carrey movie (We're going downtown!).

And then there's porn.

We got to Earthsound Studios and immediately became excited at the site of a porn case sitting on top of the entertainment center.

Which got stifled immediately when we opened it and realized that SOME CUNT stole the dvd from Lee.

Now this completely crosses a line. There are very few 'guy rules' that we are set to follow, but one of them is definitely Thou shalt not covet or steal another man's porn.

Luckily we (and by we, I mean Allen and Brad) had a season of the Batman Animated Series to watch, and they did...in a day.

So don't just bring A dvd, make sure to bring more.

Necessity Scale: 7/10

4) Video Games: Unfortunately we (Allen) didn't discover the greatness of video games at the studio until the last day or so, but once he did he was hooked like these sluts we saw on latenight HBO were to dicks.

And once we got on our laptops and discovered cheat codes for these games, it became even more fun watching Allen use a health code right before some cocksucking gangbangers smoked his bitch ass so he could fuck them up, or it was pretty good watching him skate around as random ass characters in the Tony Hawk games (I still don't know where Spiderman or Jango Fett came from).

Necessity scale: 7/10

I'll be on later to unveil more necessary things for the studio, but my band is telling me I'm committing faggotry for sitting in the corner writing a blog.

Later - Jay

Stay single, for the sake of the band

It's Jay, and I've been up late again. I've been thinking alot lately, mainly about the importance of NOT having a girlfriend while being in a struggling, underground band trying to tour and "make it" (I use quotes because while some have an idea of making it, others have their own ideas which the first group thinks is stupid and so forth). There are a couple reasons that not having a ball and chain is good.

1) Trying to tour. God only knows how much nagging a natural born man can go through before finally pistol whippin his bitch into submission over the subject of tour.

How long will you be gone?

How long til you get back?

Will you call me?

DON'T talk to girls.

I don't care, I don't want you talking to anything with an crevice in their body resembling a vagina.

Ok, ladies, let's face it, you aren't the only female that actually enjoy listening to music. In fact, you're probably not the only one who will enjoy the band I'm in. Actually, the girls who I talk to on tour will usually, ACTUALLY enjoy the music I make, rather than just acting like it because it's my band and you just love me so damn much!!!! Talking to any people at shows is something that HAS to happen if we give two damns about making it to the next show, because, let's face it, gas isn't getting any cheaper.

Not only this, but as if the nagging about mistrust isn't enough, you have to deal with more than the normal amount of nagging about how much time you talk to them. Being on the road isn't some sort of vacation. In some ways, it is. No work, travel around playing music. But there's loading in, driving through hellacious rain and snow storms, trying to find the venue, loading out, making rounds talking to people to make sure they won't leave, setting up, playing, breaking down, giving thanks to everyone who came and casually steering them to the merch table, loading in, finding a place to stay, etc, etc, etc. You can shoot the occasional 'ilu' text, but asking a guy who's in a band to be on the phone with you 24/7 while on tour is like asking them to turn down any chance of money.

Don't get me wrong.

It's NOT about the money.

But making it to the next show on your tour definitely helps when you...tour.

2) Show trades. The GLORIOUS act of giving a band a show in your hometown in exchange for a show in their hometown. Which is godsend.

Why is being single important to show trades? Because the absolute last thing you want to do is not be able to hang out with or put up bands that you hold a show for because of the old lady. Does everyone in the band have to hang? Hell no. But there has to be atleast one, preferrably two, people in the band with no hangups ready to hang at all times.

This. Is. Key.

If everyone in the band had their phone to their ear on tour, the band would just look like a bunch of snobs. If everyone in the band dipped after the show and didn't help out the band, you'd look like a bunch of snobs.

3)The excitement you get from being in your band is something that is unparalleled by anything. It's intoxicating, and soon overtakes everything you want to and do talk about. Whether it's the new tour or a new idea for a song, the worst thing that could possibly happen is just a blunt, "I don't want to talk about it."

Bitch!

You're supposed to be as excited about this as I am! Be happy for me! But instead of joining in with my excitement, you want to stifle my joy.

That's great.

Now don't get me wrong. Having a girlfriend and being in a band can be a beautiful thing. There's ALWAYS a definite merch girl. And she'll always bring friends to show (who hopefully are hotties). And if you happen to stumble upon a girl who isn't a naggy, untrusting BITCH, then awesome.

But, just as a warning. Tour is probably the greatest test for a relationship. So think twice. About dating the girl, I mean.

Because you never have to think twice about tour.

The fucking joke's on you.

hey guys, it's gadget. we are currently at t-minus a day and some odd hours til we leave for valdosta to lay down the jams for lazarus, so i figured i'd drop in and express my excitement as well.

SHIT GODDAMN.

excitement expressed.

This is my hat.

Sup guys, this is Jay. I'm up late watching Cellular, which is a horrible, horrible movie (which explains why it's been chosen for syndication on TBS at 2 o'clock in the morning). Just here to provide an update.

We've finished writing up the new EP, it will be titled Lazarus, and I would love to explain the meaning behind the name, but unfortunately due to copyright laws (that's bs) and (mainly) our general 'fuck you' attitude, I'm not.

Our summer is turning out to be more exciting than expected, we've got some sweet shows lined up in July and August, and in less than two weeks we go to Lee Dyess at Earthsound Studios to capture our live fury on cd. After that we send it off to Ryan Patterson of Auxilary Design (as well as being a member of several bands we collectively jack our dicks to) for the art.

Then, another tour! So, like I said, a very exciting couple of months in store for us.

So keep a lookout, keep checking this damn thing and our MySpace to see what's up.

First Blog.

Hey everyone, Gadget here. I got bored and decided to make us one of these things to give us a better place than myspace to update you guys about what's going on with us. We'll probably use this place just as much to rant about random shit such as how good the latest issue of Kick-Ass is or how Donald should cut his fucking hair. Jay and I will most likely be the ones posting the most, considering we're the internet junkies. Brad gets online like once a month and I don't think ALLEN EVEN KNOWS HOW TO TURN OFF CAPS LOCK so don't expect much from them.

That being said, after much delay, we're finally going into the studio to record our first actual Manchester Black EP. We'll be recording with Lee Dyess at Earthsound Studios in Valdosta, GA on July 22nd-26th. The EP doesn't have a definite title yet, but we've got some stuff in mind. World Breaker, Mephisto, The Unstoppable Doomsday Machine, The Return of Jason Todd and probably one more song we're still working on are all going to be on the EP. Kingdom will not be re-recorded nor will the current version be included on the EP. Expect us to release this one in September/October.

Speaking of Kingdom, Future Destination Records (myspace.com/futuredestinationrecords) is putting out a compilation titled "The Good Times" and they've put our track on it! We should be getting some copies of it soon, and this will be the only way to get the song from now on since we're out of the $2 demos.

Well, that's it for now. Keep an eye out here for updates and random bullshit from us.

- Gadget