WHAT A TEMPER!: FROM THE STUDIO TO SYDNEY

Short work week due to the holiday weekend. With a three day weekend before me, I have grand visions of getting much accomplished on the house, bringing me closer to being done by mid July. However, this Thursday night brings rain, cutting down the time I can get a head start on the days ahead.

Thursday night becomes my Friday night, a night to party in celebration of the American Independence! Yeah, right. Drove out to the spot on the prairie where I can rely on the truck stereo to provide the sound. It was a nice change from the headphone routine I was doing these last few weekends.

I was originally was going to play Nirvana but switched to the punk rock band Green Day at the last minute. And instead of a bootleg concert, I went for their fifth studio album, Nimrod, which was released on October 14, 1997. One of my favorite albums of theirs with some classic songs that continue to get played in their more recent appearances on stage.

According to Wikipedia: Nimrod was "an experimental deviation from the band's standard pop-punk brand of music. It provided a variety of music, from pop-punk, surf rock, and ska, to an acoustic ballad. Nimrod entered the charts at number 10. The success of "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" won the band an MTV Video Award for Best Alternative Video for the song's video, which depicted people undergoing major changes in their lives while Billie Joe Armstrong strummed his acoustic guitar.

Billie Joe in an interview in Guitar Legends magazine, May 2005:

"At the time I wrote Good Riddance, I was breaking up with a girl that was moving to Ecuador, and I was trying to be as understanding about it as I could. I wrote the song as kind of a bon voyage. I was trying not to be bitter, but I think it came out a little bit bitter anyway... I thought that calling the song "Time of Your Life" was just a little too level-headed for me, so I had to come up with something different"

Stars hid by dark clouds

Face and scalp feel the cool wet

Steady rain falling

Fast cars rushing by

Live our solitary lives

Hides in the darkness

So rare and precious

Alone with its sudden loss

Heart that's been stolen

Next up was Echo & The Bunnymen, their live show on November 11, 1981 in Sydney, Australia. The original version I had did not sound that good, Ian's voice being very distant and the overall mix being very muddy. I remixed it to pull Ian forward and lend some clarity to the entire show, the result being that much of the bass end being lost. Hence the need for the truck with the ability to bring back some of that lost sound.

This particular show happened a half year after the release of their second album, Heaven Up Here. Chris Adams writes:

"1981 burdened the Bunnymen with the toughest touring schedule of their career. Over the course of 169 days, the band played 113 shows. By the end of the year, they had slogged through two major UK and US tours, one European jaunt, and a stop-off in Australia and New Zealand. This breakneck pace gelled the band as a live unit."

Feeling aches and pains