The Disney Corporation, Weird Al, Pearl Jam, and Mississippi John Hurt

Last friday we gathered together a group of people much like the days of yore when people gathered together to design new rides at Disneyworld's EPCOT Center. Only the group that gathered together was not a team of engineers employed by the Disney Corporation, it was a team of non musicians making music. Or so they said. It was RMac, the old second half of Egg & Dart, wearing a Weird Al tshirt that I was fondly jealous of. I told him that I had been listening to the album "Even Worse" late the night before, thinking in my mind that there couldn't be a better band to emulate in terms of the album we were trying to brainstorm about.

And there was Cameron, that not quite as tall dude who I asked to come play bass and guitar with us. And of course there was Brent, who mocked RMac when Brent asked him to lay down a guitar lick for Turnin' Red by saying, "Yeah, except professional musicians don't go into the studio like a goofballs saying, "Huh huh! I'm gonna be a professional musician! Neato!"", all while doing a pretty bad Goofy the Disney character guffaw. I added to the mockery by saying, "Yeah RMac! Cool! A professional musician just like Mississippi John Hurt!" This was of course after we listened to the "Brentisized" version of Turnin' Red, and RMac asked the group, "This reminds me of something...." to which Brent replied, "Smashing Pumpkins?". RMac enthusiastically agreed and we were also able to realize it sounded a lot like a Pearl Jam song as well.

So after RMac laid down his old noodling for Turnin' Red, Brent thought it would be a good idea to have RMac, myself, and Cameron go into the tracking room and just jam of the albums songs out. I wanted to work on Laser Tag Lovers, mostly because RMac used to play a pretty cool Interpol ripoff riff, which during playback, Brent quickly picked it out as exactly that, a poor excuse for a Daniel Kessler run down the neck.

We continued to jam out some stuff, interjecting a less than stellar cover of Beck's "Golden Age", which, unfortunately, we only made about halfway through before going into an awkward version of Ain't Nothin' But Trouble, which featured Cam on lead guitar, RMac on drums, and Brent on tamborine.

All in all it made me remember way I like these people, because they all know how to laugh, they all love music, and at least one of them spent a buttload of money on a recording studio in their basement.