Unhappy 'Burgers

I was dicking around with the acoustic guitar Monday night and found a riff that I liked. Since I wasn't getting anywhere with Guiding Light, I decided to record it. Spent a good couple of hours laying down guitar and bass tracks before going to sleep.

Had yesterday off, slept long. After finishing with cleaning up the appartment, we went to a Swiss restaurant in Kopstal (Koplescht), called Edelwyss, and filled up on fondue. There was a waitress there who seemed frustrated that we didn't speak Luxembourgish. When I ordered "fondue genevoise", she looked back at me as if I was speaking gibberish. "Ah, genfer Fondue!", she said. You get a lot of that here, especially up North. I once asked a policeman in Vianden for directions in French and got my reply in English. Not that it matters any to me, not being French, but his intention was clearly to insult me. I guess it's hard for them to stomach the fact that they're fast becoming a minority in their own country, but this is a really stupid way of venting it. Especially if you're working in a restaurant where the manager is French-speaking Swiss. Anyway, the food was great, and that's what matters.

After getting home from Kopstal, I had to run to make it to my band's rehearsal. We worked on a song written by our keyboard player, Mark. It's a joy to play, a kind of post-punk number. But Mat, our bassist, was bitching again. He didn't take it well that his rolling bassline didn't work at all during the verses, and then he was complaining that you can't hear the vocals. We had kind of a run-in earlier about a proposed gig, where we would back our vocalist's choir and then do a couple of numbers of our own. The choir chose songs that simply didn't work for us, I mean we sounded like a really lousy cover band playing them. We proposed that the choir learn three simpler songs and to go from there, but they rejected it and postponed the event until October. Mat then wrote an e-mail, which disgusted me, laying all the blame on me and Mel, the drummer. It kind of ruined last week's "repetition" for me. Anyway, I'm glad at least that I don't have to do a humiliating gig.

After recording a version of Mark's song, he asked us if anyone had an idea for another song, "Atmosphere" (we're working on a kind of concept show based on Mark's lyrics that were inspired by Andy Warhol's autobiographical book). I pitched the riff I recorded Monday night, and we actually found a way to make it work with the words. This version only uses the verse and chorus parts (slightly altered) of the song I recorded, but it seems okay. We had our usual glass of beer after rehearsal and I was on my way back home.

I spent the rest of the night building a drum track for the Monday recording. You can check out the finished product here, it's the one called "Rise". It could use some lyrics of its own. I put up a picture showing gas prices to go with the song.