The bass was far too dense.
I’d recorded that same bloody bass line twenty nine times. Twenty nine takes and every single one was getting tossed. It just didn’t feel right when I played it, it didn’t sound right when I listened to it. But every time I tried to play it, no matter what I did, it was as if this one fucking bass line was stuck in some suspended time warp and I couldn’t get out of it.
I suppose I could use some fancy ass pro-tools, fix it to absolute perfection, but anyone could do that, couldn’t they? A nice glossy finish wasn’t what I intended for this album, and I wasn’t about to stoop down to pro-tools and cause exactly that. It was an angry album, it was supposed to be rough around the edges and not exactly easy to digest, it had every emotion I’d felt since the day our first album was shelved poured into it.
Yet I still couldn’t to get this fucking bass track down.
There was a headache throbbing behind my temples as I stared down at the board. I was looking at it as if it held all the answers even though I knew very well that I wasn’t going to get anything from there. If I was going to the bass out it would come from the song or the instrument.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I used my free hand to press my fingers against my temples, attempting to relieve the pain there, if only for a moment.
And it only worked for that short moment, but that was alright, it was enough.
What could one expect from a hangover? There was only relief after sleeping for twenty four hours or beginning to drink again, and only one of those options particularly appealed to me. It wasn’t anything new and it definitely wasn’t something I couldn’t handle.
So I ignored the pounding behind my eyes and took a long gulp from the coffee cup I held in hand.
My staring at the board was interrupted when the door slammed open.
I couldn’t stop myself from wincing as the door crashed against the wall with enough force to have it swinging back closed once again. That wasn’t going to help anyone’s hangover. Maybe it was time to start drinking, after all, that was the most sure fire hangover cure known to man. Maureen had taken my bottle of whiskey, and that left me shit out of luck.
She should know better than to do that to any musician, it wasn’t as if this was the first time she’d worked with self obsessed and self loathing musicians, we were as common as pennies. What happened to those record label owners that liked do nothing more than ply their musicians with drugs and alcohol so they couldn’t figure out which way was up let alone where the money was going? And here I was with the one fucking suit in the business world that wasn’t willing to just that.
Half of those musicians would have stormed out by now with their favourite poison taken away, and it had crossed my mind as well.
I suppose the question was which addiction was stronger?
“Hey dickhead,” called the person who had just slammed through the doorway. Unless I was being particularly suspicious, I was sure they’d spoken with that added shrill to their voice on purpose.
There was no chance to respond before I was quite unceremoniously smacked in the side of the head.
Not bothering to lower my voice – it was a sound proof room – I cursed loudly, taking the time to shoot Marco the nastiest glare I could make. And with my current mood, it wasn’t that hard. If it had been anyone else they would have been scuttling away, but he’d become immune to looks such as these focused on him over the years.
In fact he looked nothing short of amused as he grinned brightly at me. Maybe it was the lighting combined with his enthusiasm and my hangover, but at the moment I couldn’t help but think he looked like the fucking Pied Piper, just less colourful. And it was especially the look of when he was stealing the town’s children.
