"What's Doin' With Diefenbaker?" volume 6 - the rise and fall and rise again of Diefenbaker and the Spiders from Mars

Well, let's get this out of the way first:

NEW AUDIO! Click here to grab the new full-band demo of "Interstate 80" in that hip new mp3 format that all the kids are raving about!

There, now that the important part's out of the way feel free to skip the rest of my nonsensical ramblings.

It's been a very bipolar two weeks for eternally struggling rock n' roll band Diefenbaker. First, if you'll recall from the last "What's Doin'?" (or scroll down if you missed it, shame on you) we were planning on working out and recording a cover of Butch Walker's cover of Wham's holiday chestnut "Last Christmas" just in time for Jesus' made-up birthday. Well that didn't go very well to say the least. More than one band practice was stormed out of by either one or both of us, and it got to the point where I assumed this lighthearted idea to cover every gay man's favorite Christmas song was going to break up the band and I was going to have to go with my fallback plan of forming a Tegan and Sara cover band. Fortunately (for everyone, Tegan and Sara included) it didn't come to that, though the "Last Christmas" cover idea has been disposed of. So I guess we won't be needing that amazing sleeve design I mocked up...

So moving on from that, the goal this weekend was to record another full band demo, this time of the song we've been working on second-longest, "Interstate 80". Shari had spent time coming up with a synth part for it and we'd done it about ten billion times in band practice, so the song was as ready to be layed down on cassette tape as it was ever going to be. I still dreaded it, though, because the "Maybe Michelle" demo (my part, anyway) wasn't very fun to lay down. When you're just playing the song in practice and you f up, no big deal, you just keep going, but when you know that tape is running and you know that the rest of the parts can't be recorded until you do a good take - well, it's a lot of pressure, and I prefer my weekends to be pressure-free. Unless we're talking about the Billy Joel song "Pressure" popping up in an episode of Morning Video Block that I'm watching on VH1 Classic. I rather enjoy that pressure. But I digress.

The recording of the above-posted demo went very well, though, with the guitar and vocal both being layed down in one take. The synth part took a while, but I scarcely cared about that, as by that time I was downstairs watching said Morning Video Block on my DVR and having a few drinkies. The thing was fairly straightforward to mix, too, and the drums sound better (at least to me) because they are now handled by the newest member of Diefenbaker, an Alesis SR-16 drum machine. Slap dash for no cash.

In closing, please enjoy these candid, rather poor-quality photos of, as I like to call it, "where the magic happens". Helpfully tagged with highlights to enhance your appreciation.

Official Diefenbaker Practice Space, Hampden, Baltimore City, MD, USA

Key:
1) My hollowbody Ibanez electric guitar, codename: Lucy.
2) Where I stand when I play, surrounded by pedals. I don't actually use them that much, I just like looking down and seeing them there and pretending that I'm in a shoegaze band.
3) "The P.A.", a Behringer Ultrabass bass guitar amp that we run everything but the guitar through. It actually sounds very good, despite the misappropriation.
4) The Alesis SR-16 drum machine, codename: Cookie.
5) Shari's Alesis Micron synthesizer, codename: Diefenbaker-1.
6) Where Shari sits when she plays. It's from the "as-is" department at Ikea.

Official Diefenbaker Mixing Room, same location as above, just down the hall

Key:
1) Cassette tapes! Fun!
2) Japanese "X-files" comic book. I have no idea why it's here.
3) Tascam Portastudio 424mkII 4-track cassette recorder, codename: The Monstrosity.
4) Mixing notes for "Interstate 80" written on a post-it. You know when they show Butch Vig or Dr. Dre mixing something on TV, and they have those giant programmable mixing boards where the sliders move up and down on their own? Yeah, well, we don't have that, so when I'm mixing something I have to make notes of any level changes in the song so I know when to slide what where.
5) The Diefenbox. It's a New Balance shoebox full of chord sheets, work tapes, and demo tapes.
6) Netbook computer that all the lyrics to Diefenbaker songs are composed on. Also contains the Diefendatabase, where everything Diefenbaker is stored for safekeeping.

So that's all for this week, kids. I know no one is on it anymore aside from sex offenders and people in bands, but check us out on MySpace here. There's a music player there (also accessible without going to creepy MySpace by clicking the amazing graphic at the top right on the main page of the very blog you're reading right now) and links to our excellent friends. Shari updates it because I don't know how and am afraid of it.

As always, keep on rockin' in the free world, Rickies, and don't forget to tip your waitress.

Johnny D.

"What's Doin' With Diefenbaker?" volume 5 - post-Thanksgiving weekend of rockin'

(cover star courtesy of awkwardfamilyphotosdotcom)

Whew, what a weekend. A nice four-day holiday weekend certainly allows for much Diefenbaker activity, don't it? For those of you reading this in Canada that have no idea what I'm talking about: haha, screw you! Anyway, please allow me to share a sure-to-be-incomplete overview of the weekend with you, at least the parts of it that relate to perpetually struggling Baltimore-based rock n' roll band Diefenbaker...

So we doubled up on band practices on Friday and Saturday night, partially to try to make up for some of the skipped ones and attempt to get some of the momentum back and partially because, what the hell, we could run as late as we wanted - post-Thursday we had nowhere to be the next day. Also, we attempted to go more than an hour for each practice. I think we ended up clocking in at just over an hour on Friday night, then probably around an hour and a half Saturday. Yay us.

Mandatory run-throughs of "Maybe Michelle" both nights (still the only song that has a keyboard part done, which frustrates, but it's a minor bitch), and I'm pretty sure we did "Differential Speed" (formerly known as "Speed Doesn't Kill") both nights as well, which was recently added to the repertoire. Of all the originals we've worked on, Shari's changed the melody on "Differential Speed" more than any of the others and the song's certainly benefitted. It's a bit tiring for me to play, especially multiple times in a row, because it's fairly fast and it's all punky, down-strummed chord bashing, but I guess that's how, as I quipped on Friday night, Jasper Future from Art Brut stays so thin. Off-topic: I'm hilarious. Anyway...

We also ran through "Interstate 80" (Saturday night only, I believe) and debuted, from my most recent set of demos, "Deafening"! It premiered Friday night and was worked on further during Saturday's practice, after which a brief, impromptu, "VH1 storytellers" segment broke out where I went into detail about the origins of the song. It fortunately was not recorded, as it layed bare the awfulness of my inspirations as a songwriter. So now I have time to craft a web of half-truths and outright fabrications regarding the song's origin and meaning that will be fit for public consumption, as I've done with virtually all other aspects of Diefenbaker. Good times.

Post the Saturday practice (the more drunken and lively of the two), we immediately adjourned to the former Official Diefenbaker Practice Space (AKA my office) and listened to a series of absolutely atrocious covers of Wham!'s hit holiday single "Last Christmas", which inevitably led to us deciding that we need to cover it as well, though cover specifically the version done by Yuji Oda and Butch Walker for the opening credits of the Japanese soap opera of the same name (now the above image makes sense, doesn't it?). Later, we discussed the need to hire a bass player, which led to one of the best concepts I think we've ever come up with: hiring our good friend Jon Hoffman of Clayton, NJ, (AKA poopbear or, as I like to call him "The Hoff") for the job, and having him stand behind us on stage wearing a red mountie suit, a la Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP, while he played. Off-topic: we're hilarious. Anyway...

Peripherally, I've just about finished another new song (well, the melody's not new, it's been around for a while... but I just whipped the lyrics into shape over the holiday weekend) that I think is very promising. It's called "Mine" - watch this space for more, kids, I think it's gonna be big... either that or it sucks and Shari will completely shoot it down. I can never tell.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go transcribe the lyrics for the Oda/Walker cover of "Last Christmas". Seriously, that's what I'm going to do right after I post this. Livin' the dream!

Johnny D.