Sounds Tied To Memory – A Story of Love Ska and Fuzz

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My guitar solo here stirs memories of both joy and pain. I hear myself falling in love with fuzz pedal magic and just playing and being young but still half dead and I still don’t know how to play a fkn guitar to this day and I love it. Whew! 

This may ramble a bit so I do beg your pardon in advance.

We did the basic track. Then you can hear me doing some overdub type stuff with a crybaby wah pedal which was a no no for ska but we were weird so I was able to sneak it in here and there. I’m thinking it must have been an overdub because I don’t think I would do shit like that on a basic take. It’s way too risky. Then you have an 11 piece band looking at you like it’s Saving Private Ryan : “FNG with the wah-wah just blew take number 12 for us!” So I did the wah overdub and then I left the studio. I think horns were going to be doing overdubs and fixes and shit and they loved to argue and bicker while they worked. It would appear that this warfare is a part of the creative process for horn sections. I don’t know. With our band it definitely was. I had a beer bottle thrown right at my head in the studio during the previous album’s recording sessions. You guessed it : Sax player. Watch those guys I’m telling ya! Those those 24 track analog masters live in my basement now and they need to be baked and preserved. When I see them I feel a certain sense of melancholy…. 

Another time I had a guy in a choke hold in the rehearsal studio. Yup, sax guy again. The bass player hit me with an insane Mortal Combat style elbow to the back of the head to try to get me to let off of him. He was really trying to take somebody out. To be fair I was too, so he possibly saved a life that night. I had the Les Paul strapped on and Sax guy had the sax on. So when we locked up and I ran him back up against the speaker columns with my hands around his throat the sax valves gouged the shit out of the front my Les Paul. Today I still have that guitar with battle scars and nothing but love, admiration, and resect for the gentleman I was choking out. He has aged into a truly remarkable human being with a beautiful family. More true stories to tell on that later. 

Anyway,  It could get nuts so I knew it was gonna be a minute. That was perfect timing for me. I went downtown to to the projects on Avenue D / L.E.S. It was maybe 6 or 7 blocks south then east. I think the studio was in the West Village somewhere in the teens. It was called Baby Monster Studios. And now that I think of it, who the heck block books a Manhattan studio for a WEEK to record a punky loose ass trad ska band?! How much did THAT cost? We should have been recording in a garage or basement – that was the band’s natural sound but lo-fi wasn’t really a thing yet. People still wanted to spend insane money on recordings. 

I always went to these projects on Avenue D between about 5th and 7th and I usually stopped and hit the 7A bathroom on the way back. Do you remember that place 7A my NYC family? I may have walked the rest of the way bc feeling good and medicated, but I got back to the studio just as horns were wrapping. 

“Oh here’s Preddy. Pretty you’re up! Solos!” Someone yelled from the control room. It was Greg Robinson from one of our “brother bands” Mephiskapheles. He was working on the album with us. I picked up the Telecaster in the live room and plugged in the Fuzzrite. I had been waiting for the chance to use this mythical fuzz pedal ever since spying it laying in a dusty pile in the studio’s gear closet. It was like Disneyland for vintage gear nerds in there. They had tons of tube tape echoes stacked up and lot’s of cool shit in there you could use but since it was ska, there was really no need for bells and whistles. Dang. I did get to use a tube Echoplex on the clean solo at the end of the track though. The Fuzzrite was rusty and it went “zoo zoo zoo” when you played a certain way like the coolest fuzzes always do. I fell in love with it. I don’t know why but that’s probably why I still remember all of the details about this little overdub and surrounding events. It’s because I fell in love. It’s strange that particular sound is so strongly tied to what would otherwise be a distant memory. I probably wouldn’t remember anything about it at all.

I have a Fuzzrite to this day and I am still in love.

If you are interested and a guitar player (or love one) they still make a version of this pedal. 

You can get one here: 

https://amzn.to/2zAD7PG

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