Tomorrow we go in for our first day of mixing on the album (cue "The Final Countdown"). I think we're all pretty excited about this. The three of us have listened to the album (as it currently exists) a couple times together and conversed about what we thought should happen with these mixes making sure we're more or less all on the same page, which, let me tell you, is very important for a stress free and productive mixing session. As it stands now I think we're all pretty happy with things, but maybe I'm just transferring my satisfaction with how things are going onto the other two. haha.

Since I last wrote our friends Ben and Lindsay have been married (we were all there for the whole ordeal) which is pretty awesome. We played a show at Rickshaw Stop with some very dramatic bands (offstage) of the hip hop ilk. A ton of people came though and people got into the music, so it was a good time. I happened to spy Jerry Harrison (keyboardist and guitarist or both The Modern Lovers and Talking Heads) enter the club which prompted me to jump over the merch table and say hi and how I was a huge fan. It was a pretty boring meeting and extremely quick, but the impact of the music that Talking Heads have made on me is insane. Turns out he had produced a few songs for one of the other bands that played that night. If you haven't seen the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, I recommend you do it very soon. It literally changed my life.

That's basically it for interesting band news. Here is a song that we put down as reference for certain elements of the mix for our album. Pretty great vibe, hope we can channel some of that. Hope you enjoy

Blister in the Sun

Rob and I (Pete) just returned back from our good friend Ben Deters' bachelor party, which was pretty awesome. Lot's of reveling in our manhood and that kind of thing, haha. Rob, myself, and our good friend Chris (who was in a band with the 3 of us before we became The Buttercream Gang) played a little mostly acoustic mini-show for everyone, which was pretty fun. we got to bust out a few jams we used to play back in the day as well as some new sing-a-longs. All in all it was a really nice time.

Our band has a number of shows lined up this summer. They mostly came together this last week, which is nice because we can now have a slight feeling of productivity (aside from the productivity associated with the album, which should be done by the end of the month) and forward movement.

Not too much new to report other than that you should go check out the shows on our myspace page, download the free mix that I have posted below, and watch the video for this song by The Specials that I stumbled across yesterday. It's pretty haunting for a reggae/ska song, much better than most modern ska that I hear.

BCG MIX 14 (click on link to download)

1. Kunta Kinte Version One - The Revolutionaries

2. Sunny Ti De Ariya - King Sunny Ade & His African Beats

3. Grenada: Shango - Norris Welsh

4. The Book of Love - The Magnetic Fields

5. Freaky In the Club - R. Kelly

6. Lovesick - Lindstrøm & Christabelle

7. Radiance - Oppenheimer Analysis

8. I Feel Good Put Our Pants On - JT

9. Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones

Horse Man

Good news for us in the band and those of you who care: WE"VE FINISHED RECORDING THE ALBUM!!! Don't get too excited though, we still need to mix the album, which we'll be doing during 7 days at the end of June. Then it will truly be finished in the musical sense. Album art, distribution, and all that will hopefully quickly follow. The last thing that we recorded was rob playing bongo and floor tom, while I played the concrete floor simultaneously, hahaha. An interesting way to end it all (Oh and Rob racking his brain figuring out what to title a video he shot and edited about a horse trainer for his job). Pretty exciting (if not pocket book draining) times to come when we really craft these sounds in to something compelling and just simply enjoyable in the broad sense of things. To commemorate this affair I bellow have the first thing I listened to as I drove away from the studio. hahaha. Thank you Tom Tom Club for making a beat that was soo astoundingly great that Mariah Carey (or Tommy Mottola) found it worth jacking and laying those sweet shrieks over.

Killer Horns, Man!!!

Just reading up on the great Herbie Hancock in the studio, studying the contours of his amazing fro. No big deal.
A view of the gents from my perch
A little band photo action in front of the house of Slack's Ranch

So what have we been up to since last post? Well there have been a few journey's into the studio, the album is so close to being recorded in it's entirety that it hurts a little; but as they say, you can't start once you've started, it stings, so with that in mind we will finish this thing up pretty soon. That's not the end though, as many of you know, there is still mixing to be done, which will take at least a week to get done. The dates I predict are always wrong, but with that disclaimer, I'm going to say mid to late June for this puppy being in the bag, musically speaking. Art and distribution is quite another thing. That will most likely take another 7 years.

So while recording is almost wrapped up (studio activities pictured) there are other activities in our life. Some upcoming show, one being a fairly large one at Rickshaw Stop which should be a lot of fun. Hopefully I won't be incredibly sick this time around. One of the coolest venues we've played, so keep an eye out for posted details.

This last Friday we played at Slack's Ranch, which was great on so many levels. 1) Paul Slack is a badass for letting so many bands use his property for shows featuring such a diversity of musical styles. Cutting's Wharf may be one of the very few places you could get away with activities of such volume without a bunch of complaints (and subsequent shutting down from the police). The looks of the place are deceiving, and that is a glorious thing. 2) The turn out exceeded my expectations, having seen a good amount of sparsely attended local music events. Maybe I just haven't gone to the right shows. Thank you Napans/strangers/friends for coming and moving and sweating and singing and just being loose. 3) spontaneity is a glorious thing that can only be compared in this case to a tiny, unexpected miracle. The addition of horns at the last minute to a few of our songs was amazing and gave me the feeling of being part of something much bigger than 3 guys playing music together (both literally and "spiritually"). 4) it gave us reason to play Napa more often in the future.

Stay tuned for more album III (aka Tropical Goofballs) news, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check out the mix I've compiled below and let me know what you think so that I can find reason to keep compulsively making these mixes and posting them. Adios till next time

BCG MIX #13

http://www.zshare.net/audio/75905367b4ca8611/

1. Clapping Music (1972) - Steve Reich & Russ Hartenberger

2. New York Is Killing Me (featuring Nas) - Gil Scott-Heron

3. Bra - Cymande

4. Walking On Sunshine - Eddy Grant

5. Darkroom - Paul McCartney

6. Don't Bring Me Down - Eric Burdon & The Animals

7. You Are Here - John Lennon

8. Carmensita - Devendra Banhart

9. Death Cream - Sonny & the Sunsets

10. No Place Like the West Indies - Lord Invader

Guerilla Recording & BCG Mix #12

The long delayed BCG Mix #12, here it is for your listening pleasures:

BCG MIX #12

http://www.zshare.net/audio/74868928b89d8eab/

1. Love Like A Sunset (Animal Collective Remix) - Phoenix

2. Overpowered By Funk - The Clash

3. Immune to Emotion - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

4. Up In This Club - Lil Wayne ft. Swizz Beatz

5. Breaker - Low

6. Medley: Nega Maluca / Billie Jean / Elearnor Rigby - Caetano Veloso

7. My Chrome f. Big Boi - Killer Mike

8. Good Feeling - Violent Femmes

We recorded today at our good friend Lucas Farmers house. Lucas, Rob and I (Pete) used to be in a band in high school and early on in college. Our name was Pirate Underground. Needles to say, our musical journeys', so to speak, go back quite a ways. Lucas has some nice equipment that we don't, so he was kind enough to let us bang out some repetitive percussion parts (made even more so when outside listeners are only hearing what we're playing and not the tracks that we're recording to) that even began to drive some of us band members crazy by the end. Lucas's roomate also made some homemade veggie pizza that was pretty bomb, so props to her for, instead of asking for compensation for the hell we put her through, decided to make food and share it with us.

We started things off by recording some scratch vocals (vocals that will given greater focus and attention later when re-recorded, but are laid down for reference) and then went on to percussion for the rest of the day. We put parts down on a bunch of tracks. Everything from tambourine to wine bottles was utilized. It's amazing how much life a lot of these songs received after we were finished today. It's at this point when you get really excited about the songs and they start to resemble what you have going on in your head. The days and weeks before this state can be a bit lame. Each time you listen to an unfinished track it's almost as if it's taunting you to write or record the missing parts.

Things went well though and in a couple weeks we'll be back with Jonah in Oakland to do a 4 day marathon stint in at Shipwreck Studios.

Finally, if you're not doing anything this sunday the 18th, we're playing at Tradewinds Bar in Cotati at 9pm. It's FREE I believe and it should be a pretty great time.

More pictures from the studio coming soon.

Exploring The Tropics @ Shipwreck Studios

Yesterday we finished up another two day stint at the wonderfully spacious shipwreck studios, with it's cornicopia of wonderful vintage keyboards.......and we didn't use a single one of them. The first day was just our engineer Jonah and I working on recording the lead vocals for a number of songs. Recording vocals can be one of the most frustrating processes because it seems like it could always be better, but we got it done and I'm pretty content with what I did. We also picked from a number of drums, a kit to use for the following day that fit the sound we were going for. Rob joined me on Saturday (that next day i just mentioned) and after a long long time getting everything set up and ready to go, we spent a couple hours recording the rest of the drums that will be on our album. Two songs with Rob behind the kit and two for myself. It was very clear who was the qualified drummer out of the two of us, but we both got the job done, even if I did it in a much messier fashion. With so much down time in the studio I stumbled upon this great video of the Brazilian goliath, Caetano Veloso doing a live cover of Billie Jean and Eleanor Rigby which was pretty awesome (check it out bellow). I've just started reading a book written by him about the Tropicalia art and music movement in Brazil in the late 60s called Tropical Truth: A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil. It's pretty interesting to read a perspective on modern pop and rock music (among other things) that isn't based out of the US or the UK. His self titled album from 1968 is worth checking out for anyone who is interested. Now we'll be working for a while on recording extra parts outside of the studio until our return in late March. Stay tuned for the progress report. Thanks to everyone that has been supportive of what we've been doing lately.

Charity Event Worth Going To

Did I mention that we're playing?

Napa High seniors throw a benefit at Lincoln Theater

Come check it out this saturday if you can.