Even after all these years.

Had a vivid nightmare this morning just before I woke up. In the dream, Capitol Records had used Splashdown’s own money to commission generic, middle-of-the-road, milquetoast remixes of our songs, because they were afraid our real sound was too weird for radio. (That really happened, by the way.) I was shouting at everyone, asking why the hell they signed us in the first place, and yelling that I was going to burn the Capitol Records tower down.

And that was the phrase clanging in my head as I woke up: “I’M GONNA BURN THIS PLACE DOWN!!!!”

Whew… I need to chill.

“Don’t Breathe A Word”

Holly’s second book is out, and again we are happy to provide a little Splashdown music to go along with it:

Splashdown boots

It has been brought to my attention that the only version of the Blueshift bootleg available on the net has been ripped at awful 128 Kbps audio quality. Considering how hard everyone involved worked to make the album sound good, I find this unacceptable. So if anyone is interested in higher fidelity, please contact me for information.

For those wondering: our contract with Capitol stipulated that Stars & Garters and Halfworld remained the property of the band. Blueshift, however, we don’t have the rights to, and the label won’t even sell us back the ownership (but fortunately, somebody leaked it to the world!). So if you want to buy the remastered editions of our earlier stuff on iTunes, we surely wouldn’t mind. But Blueshift now belongs to the Internet.

UPDATE: Jan, 15, 2012

Here’s Blueshift with better quality. But I’d ignore the Redshift since it’s still at 128, and the Asia At Odd Hours AllieCat mix — we didn’t make that. And the woofy live recording of Nomadic… sheesh…

http://www.sadena.com/Music-MP3s/Splashdown/

Los Angeles

In L.A. today, and I hung out with Melissa for the first time in eleven years.

I heard a preview of an upcoming song that was just beautiful. Onward she goes…

Capitol’s $30,000 (recoupable) photoshoot

Found this while going through some boxes this weekend. Hope Splashdown fans get a kick out of it.

This promo photo was intended to accompany the Blueshift album as it made its way out into the world.

It was quite an experience to go through the “LA glamour machine”, with stylists, photographers, and A&R people all piling on (and getting crazy paid from money the band hadn’t even earned yet).

How to play “Elvis Sunday”

As threatened, here I am hacking my way through it, having not played it for a decade. For those who’ve asked for tabs of the song, I hope this is useful; all the left-hand fingering should be pretty visible.

“Ironspy” in book trailer

Pardon me as I plug Holly’s book, since she and Shiraz were so kind and enthusiastic in their request to use “Ironspy”. They sped it up a bit to fit the time, but it still works.

The trailer looks crazy good, doesn’t it?

That freaky sound underneath Melissa during the first minute of Ironspy is my guitar, tuned down a full octave(!) and feeding back like crazy in front of an amp. The resulting vibration was so strong I didn’t need to pick the strings, only move my fingers along the frets. If only all of my experiments were that successful!

Splashing Down In Russia

Alice just sent me this link to a fellow in Russia doing an “unboxing” video of his acquisition of the very first Splashdown release, a blue-vinyl 7″ of Pandora/Deserter. Hardcore! I haven’t seen one of those for well over a decade.

A couple thoughts on that record:
* The mastering on the 7″ version of those two songs is slightly different than what wound up on the CD. It was adjusted to fit the sonic range of vinyl. A bit more high-end in the EQ if I recall correctly.
* “Deserter” was the first Splashdown song. I’d had a long day at work, and I had yet to ever meet Melissa, but she was coming over later that night to try some writing with me (Cynthia had arranged the meeting). I remember sitting on the bed just before she arrived, holding the guitar, barely awake, thinking, “gotta write some music… gotta write some music…” And that’s where the chords for “Deserter” came from.

“Pandora” gets chopped & skrewed

What a great cover of Pandora. He really captures the sensuality of the song.