DIMINISHING RETURNS

From the archives

From my record label website, 1/22/01. This was an experiment in comic overuse of the passive voice. I don’t actually advocate writing like this.

Men’s Recovery Project convened on Thursday for the first time since last summer’s catastrophic U.S. tour. A portion of the recording budget for their new LP (Night Pirate, due later this year on Kill Rock Stars) was used to fly singer S. McPheeters from California to Rhode Island’s T.F. Green International Airport. Drummer G. Mudge of Virginia caught the flight up from Baltimore. Guitarist N. Burke crammed everyone and their luggage into his ‘82 Toyota Tercel and the band drove three hours north to Lund Recording Studio in York County, Maine. Also crammed into the Toyota were: a Mackie 1604 mixing console; an ART tube compressor; a Boss GE7 EQ; a Korg G5 synth bass; which Burke insisted was “rare;” a Roland R8 Human Rhythm composer; a Zoom 505 effects processor; a Zoom ST-224 sampler; the beloved Juno 106 keyboard with its keys still faintly marked in the four-note configurations McPheeters struggled to perform live (but NOT the more impressive Korg Poly-6 keyboard which took a bad fall in Delaware three years ago and which was vomited on last spring); a Digitech PDS1550 Programmable distortion; the Korg EA1 synthesizer; a Digitech PDS 800 Echo Plus; a Roland SPD-20 Total Percussion Pad; the Roland KD-7 kick drum, including a long piece of wood for carpet use; a Good Stuff ‘Finger Beatz’ unit; two Radio Shack studio monitors that Burke insisted were “top notch;” a Carven DC200 electric guitar; a G&L SB1 electric bass; the Toshiba Satellite 2595CDS laptop, which was set up strictly for show; a Shure SM 57 microphone; an Atlas Sound mic stand with weighted base; the TR606 drum machine, repeatedly referred to as a ‘classic’ and for which Burke made the coveted ‘young people rubbing themselves’ gesture; and the Midi Man USB sport 2x2 Midi interface box that, according to Mudge, “sucked.”