Mel Shacher Mel Schacher Mel Schacher

Now anybody who does a search on Mel Schacher will get an eyeful of some little naked guy rockin' the bongos with his little button mushroom dork flapping around.

Mel Schacher Mel Schacher mel schacher.

Grand Funk.

New Recording Alert: "An Easy Winter" by Bobby Lightfoot

Yeah, chaval- that's Helsinki right there.

City of my birth, in fact. Born as the endless night of a Finnish winter descended. The friddget winter of '64-'65. While The Beatles posed in Central Park, man.

I know a thing or two about winter.

I wrote and recorded a version of this song a year ago February. I really dug "An Easy Winter" and wanted to hear it so I demoed it up pretty quick, using a cut 'n' paste of drums from other sessions and guitars through boxes.

I never stopped wanting to hear "An Easy Winter" in Cinemascope and decamped to the studios of gentleman farmer Greg Aldritch in Amherst MA a couple of weeks ago to record basics using lots of real, one-performance drums and some nice, big, ringing Marshall amps. I wrung myself out getting a solid, Moonish drum track and lots of tube-soaked, chubby bass and guitar tracks.

When I brought the rhythm track back to my studio I spent a good week recording the labyrinthine cascade of vocals and separate four-part call and answer passages. The earlier recording of this had been sort of clogged with admittedly pretty harmonies and I really wanted to still incorporate them so I worked long and hard to get everything to fit without getting insanely busy.

I used some interesting processing on the vocals in this mix. I wanted to have the lead vocal really jump out which is a challenge because it's competing with all these doubled three-and four part harmonies. Instead of doubling it all over the place and just filling more space I did a couple of odd things. First, I looped out the lead vocal into reverb and a stereo delay but compressed the send really hard. This results in the reverb and especially the delay "growing out" from the lead vocal on the verses giving an impression of hugeness without gumming up the vocal. It's like a predelayed reverb that fades up.

I also did an old Motown trick of tracking the lead vocal to another track and accentuating the upper midrange and sending this through a frequency-specific compressor so the enunciation, especially of consonants, would be hyped. Then I mixed this back in with the lead vocal. In the chorus I did double track several key phrases so the lead vocal wouldn't collapse against all the supports.

Everything else in the recording and mixing was pretty basic, the nature of the song being what it is. It was an obvious candidate for the energy-over-gadgetry approach.

"An Easy Winter"

cHILDREN'S letTERS TO GOD.

Woah! It's like Children's Letters To God! Heh!

Look at the adorable li'l white child and his equally devout dog! Kid's praying for a cell phone! The dog's like a politician with a MBA- he knows that every now and then you gotta walk th' walk if you want a biskit and a warm, corduroy-clad leg to frot upside of. of

Look at that future erupting Federal Building in th' thought bubble above that little kid's face. You can almost read the fuckin' street number. Little terrorist bastard. I say waterboard the little fuck NOW. WATERBOARD HIM. And TAKE OUT HIS FUCKIN' VILLAGE. Maybe it's not too late for the dog to save him.

Jesus told me once that he hates that shit. He can see right through it. All that innocent people dying war stuff. What did he say about it? He had some phrase he kept using. And if I told th' fucking guy once I told him SIX TIMES that I don't like it when he grabs th' back of my head. Because then I can't see God tumblin' his nuts. Did I say that.

Jesus has this fuckin' terrier Max and the fuckin' dog is ALWAYS fucking with shit and it bugs me and once Max knocked Jesus over and it's a good thing I was there because he would have hung himself. Explain THAT shit as a suicide. With Rush spilled all over the place. Fuck! And six busted poppers right on the little dead slave boy's back.

Ah, it's just the price one pays for being the Hoovervac in th' Holy Trinity Sandwich, I suppose.

Yeah. You know, me and Jesus and God went out and smoked a little rock one night and we wound up at this night club where they had one of those hypnotist dudes and we volunteered and the guy hypnotized God to where he thought he was Catherine Zeta Jones and he's all making out with Jesus but you KNOW IT'S A FRONT BECAUSE DUDE IT'S FUCKIN' GOD AND HE'S OMNIPOTENT SO YOU TOTALLY KNOW IT'S JUST AN EXCUSE TO SUCK FACE WITH WHATSISNAME.

It just cracks me up because God's supposed to be this fuckin' hardass and he's like Downlowin' it with this black janitor at th' mall. Sneaking around. Makes me sick.

Anyway, so I'm out driving with God and he's driving his black fuckin' Escalade and we see a deer and he actually swerves to hit it. Like a total cock. Bad timing too because fuckin' Ronald Reagan almost bites his schwerma off. And what's worse is God grabs his machine pistol from th' glovebox and he squeezes off rounds into the deer's legs and shit before he finishes it. He's a complete sadist. And Reagan's laughing his head off. Sometimes I can't believe I hang out with these guys. God's always doing shit like making people drive forks into their eyes and tongue-kiss their children just to fuck with them. You'd think he would've gotten sick of it after however many billions of years but he's such a fuckin' little JAP. And when Ron and Jesus are around it's like this total oneupsmanship thing. Bunch of heartless little JAPs running around some lousy mall in Encino with mouthfuls of Raisinets and braces and cum. Gum. Gum.

Public Service Announcement

Hey to th' dude who hit me with a Google search on "bloody stool lump in testicle"- it's doctor time, man. We all know how we like to search our symptoms. It's human nature. I mean, I'm one of those idiots who never got his wisdom teeth out so I'm always doing searches for "swollen lymph node" and "fucked up gland" and shit.

but homes anything involving nutlumps and blood is probably worth looking into.

I'm guessing since you came and read my blog for a half hour there's probably still time left for you. Shit was funny, right? Bitter, bitter laughter is th' best medicine.

All th' rest of you Mel Schacher freaks can smoke pole.