As most of you know by now, MOIST have something of a love/hate relationship with the whole do it yourself thing. On the one hand, we like to be in control of our own destinies so that if something does go wrong and we're responsible, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. On the other hand we're also quite fond of the feelings of solidarity and joy that heaping huge amounts of blame and derision on another person when they screw up tend to provoke in us.
"Is this leading somewhere?", you ask.
Oh yes. You betcha.
During what can only be described as the finest two weeks this past summer had to offer, Moist hole up in mark's apartment, gather around his computer and record the first round of demos for their next album. The whole idea of this process is to record basic versions of as any new songs as possible in an effort to provide something for management and the record company to listen to in order to prove that the band are A) busy writing instead of simply loafing about Mount Royal playing tennis and soaking in the sun, and B) still sane and not determined to create a concept album entitled "Moist III, Metal Polka Delight - the life and poetry of Bruce Dickinson." Needless to say, Moist are united in their decision to embrace self production for the purposes of the demo, and firmly commited in their igid adherence to the lofty principles of the do it yourself method.
"Good,"you say, "five minds are better than one." Possibly, but only if all five have something more useful to offer than the occasional 'Goddamit, what now', 'I don't know' and 'hu' when things go horribly awry. In our case the only minds that seem to have the patience and capacility to sort out how to make all the gear we've crammed into Mark's living room actually work are Mark's and Jeff's. Kevin, Paul and David are nearly as collectively useful as three extremely slow minded chimpanzees, whose only means of communication is rudimentary sign language and who have been given the somewhat dubious task of mediating and translating in a rather delicate trade negotiation between Uzbekistan and Norway.
To our thinking, recording nine songs, acoustically, over a couple of weeks should be simplicity itself. After all, nearly six years ago we recorded nice songs in 48 hours, and many of those made it on to our first album. Surely with the walth of experience we've gained in the meantime this should be no problem whatsoever. What could possibly go wrong?
The answeris, of course, pretty much everything; ranging from machines that refuse to commmunicate with each other for no godd reason at all, to losing an entire recording completely, representing two days of work, to an inexplicably corrupted disk.
Interesingly enough the disk in question was sent off to the magicians at a local computer store in the hopes that they might be able to help us out. They did. They busied themselves by putting a rush on the work order and wore that for good or ill the disk would be back in our possession within 24 hours. Apparently what this actually means is that for the first 48 hours they answer any and all inquiries from the customer with the words 'Yes, someone is working on that as we speak. You'll have it by the end of the day for certain.' While in fact, they studiously ignore the work order until five to five on teh Friday afternoon immedidately preceding a holiday weekend and get all snarly when you point out that most peple consider 24 hour service to imply that the work will be done sometime the following day and not a full five days later, Tuesday next week. For this and other reasons (specifically, fixing Paul's computer by completely erasing his hard drive without telling him) certain computer service technicians will be the first (aside from politicians, lawyers and TV evangelists) under the axe whenthe revolution comes. Nevertheless, we persevere, attacking each problem with varying degrees of frustration and surmouthing them all in time. Actually, a bit more time than we intended to use, or indeed really have. Did I mention we had rather unforgiving time constraints? Would we have any other type of time constraints? No. How long have you know us? And how often have we approached something from its logical starting point instead of from the side that ways, "Warning - Ass Backwards and Butt Stupid. Do not begin here?" - Exactly.
Edgefest and points west department.
After Clagary, Moist take off in different directions to embark on summer holidays during which Mark gets married and everyone forgets how to play their instruments. This holiday was unique in its being the most time the band have spent apart from each other in six years, a fact that is painfully obvious during their first show back at WolfFest show on August 9th in Regina, otherwise known as ... 'The Scottish Play - Part 2'. (OK. As I write this I can feel the looks of confusion that will shortly fall on this page when you get your hands on it. I can almost hear a few of you saying 'What the hell is he talking about now? Well... I'm not gonna tell you. For an explanation, check out Rowan Atkinson's "Balck Adder Part II." Watch all of the episodes, you'll know what I'm talking about when you get to it.) Graeme MacDonald (making a special road managing gues appearance for the show) does what he can with a pile of barely operable gear and a band who have sadly forgotten what they do for a living and how they did it only one bare month before. All in all a very competent performance by our crew.
Before we get into the details of the rest of Summersault we'd like to answer a question that is often posed to us when unsuspecting souls happen upon us at our most petulant...
Q:Why do you guys whine so much about flying? Wouldn't you rather spend five hours in a chair that is ony marginally more comfortable than the average fast food joint's and eating minuscule portions of "I can't believe it's not cardboard" in order to drastically shorten your journey, than be stuck in a bus for three days straight?
A:Well ... no. In fact, our adventures over the next few days illustrate once and for all why a tour bus is dramatically superior to enduring multiple flights during hurricane season on any ocntinental tour regardless of how far the drives are, how much it costs, and how unusual the band and crew smell after 48 straight hours on a bus.
Factor this:
If a bus ... Sometime in between August 29th and September 1st around midnight we board the bus and spend an awfully long time commuting to St John's, NFLD. Shortly after our show there we once again board the bus and spend an awfully long time commuting to Moncton, New Brunswick after which we board that bus again and spend a significantly shorter time driving back to Montreal. It's important to note that the lion's share of this time is spent blissfully uncouscious and the rest of it either eating, watching movies, playing Nintendo, or at our most energetic, engaging in a extremely long, utterly pointless, yet exceedingly pleasant, circular conversation on one of the following topics: cell phones, computers and laser pointers and who got the best deal on theirs; conspiracy theory vs. music theory; which makes more sense: and of course the most effective method for getting the most out of your basic hotel restaurant's buffet brunch. In other words; RV camping at its most decadent. Sadly, this is not to be.
If an airplane (or in this case a great many airplanes)... We arrive at Dorval Airport at the unusually civilized hour of 1 PM for scheduled two twenty flight to Halifax. With some time to spare band and crew take up residence in cheesy airport bar and wait for final boarding call. First beverage service. Twenty miutes later band an d crew rise, trundle off to assigned gate and find flight delayed by roughly half and hour. Back to the bar and second beverage service. Twenty additional minutes later we again rise and trundle off to designated gate. Flight delayed several hours. Back to bar; beverage services 3 through 7. Finally, roughly four full hours after arriving at the airport we board our plane to Halifax. Nasty weather, bumby ride and fear.
Later ... We arrive in Halifax and due to the Air Canada strike and Canadian Airlines' noble efforts to accommodate stranded passengers, our scheduled flight to St. John's is delayed. Beverage services 8 and 9. Flight to St. John's canceled due to broken plane; band and crew spend night in airport hotel. Sometime during the night Swiss Air Flight 111 goes down. Band and crew watch news the entire night and try not to think about 7 AM flight to NFLD.
7 AM: Small plane, everyone reading front page air disaster headlines and being really, really, quite frightened indeed. Dry pretzel and faux barbecue sauce snack does little to offset dry mouth and queasy feelings. The Pretzel in question is introduced to unwary passengers as 'a warm pretzel snack'. A more accurate description might be 'a cleverly designed lump of cold dough, coated with something not unlike boiling floor wax, dipped in rancid tomatoes, congealed rat feces and red dye.' Mmmmm. I'd rather eat wet exterior insulation.
That evening following the show Moist once again visit the friendly folk at Junctions with predictable results. For those of you who have been with us for a while you may well recall our previous adventures on the rock. For the rest of you. To make a long story short all those in attendance who have not previously been 'screeched in' undergo the ritual with varying degrees of reluctance. Sadly keyboardist Kevin Young is not allowed to make his usual apperance a guest bartender, most likely due to the fact that he is surrounded by a pack of extremely thirsty friends and has a rather adorable if overly expensive tendency to misinterpret the ratio 2:1 in overwhelming favour of the latter. Other activities include Jeff and Kevin braving gale force winds and very nearly being swept into the sea near Signal Hill for their trouble before taking an ill advised shortcut through a whole mess of some of the most mean spirited shrubberies on the face of the earth.
Author's note: said shortcut, while uncomfortable and not terribly short at all at best, was still a better choice than Jeff 'I ve got a death wish and I'm taking you with me' Pearce's planned route. Everyone we met along the way (admittedly not very many; apparently very few people are foolish enough to go wandering around the coastline on such an evil day) warned us not to take the North Head trail. Responses to our questions about this route varied from the odd sadistic chuckle to 'I wouldn't do that if I were you' to 'Y'know, some of that trail gets pretty close to the water, if a wave comes a bit too close and you loose your footing that's it'. IT means we got tumbling into the frothing ocean, get smashed against the rocks, then what's left of you gets wisked out to sea and than smashed against the rocks again just in case the first pulberizing doesn't do the job. This sequence is then repeated until all that remains is some very widely dispersed human Jell-O.
The next day we fly again, arriving in Moncton for a show the next day in Shediac, New Brunswick.
Aside from the pretzels and daily doses of abject terror in the air, as always we had a great time on the east coast. Many thanks to all those of you who came out ot Summer sault, to Our ady Peace for having us, and I Mother Earth for joining us onstage in New Brunswick for a rousing rendition of 'Jesus Was My Girl'. Special thanks to IME drummer Christian Tanna for keeping his pants on (for the most part) this time.
We hope to finish the record sometime in the early new year and look forward to getting back on the road shortly thereafter. See you then. Nauselbaum, Moist