The Bad: Part III

Prologue

There are too many stories to tell.  As my business mentors used to call it, I keep going off to Abilene when I try and write about the band.  One story leads to another, which leads to another.  Before you know it, you’re in Abilene.  Shit!  We were supposed to go to Albuquerque.

The Bad, Part 3

Two albums.  Both were professional and both were uniquely ours.  Steve and I were both coming into our comfort zones with producing music versus being produced.  Since we lived so far away from each other, we were limited to weekends we could schedule in order to keep working on making new music.  In the meantime, we both had recording equipment at hand and were amped up at the opportunity to produce music.  It didn’t take too long before Steve and I began working with other musicians.

There were a few characters in Wondertucky that I spent time with.  There was a feller everyone called Topper.  He was an incredibly talented drummer, but we were never really able to get anything together.  There was another feller named Randy.  He had a beautiful song idea and I had a recording studio in my basement.  We made, “Awoke From A Dream” nearly seamlessly.  There was what we fondly refer to as, “The Mysterious Three”.  One of The Three is the younger brother of my dear friend Jason.  These young and talented musicians ended up in my basement, and I had the honor of recording two of their songs.  As their songs didn’t have lyrics, The Bad filled in the blanks.

While I was recording with artists local to where I lived, Steve was working with artists local to him.  When we were recording our first album, we utilized a track that Steve and Dylan had made years before The Bad.  The song, “That’s Not What Life’s About” features Steve as the lead singer.  I laid in background harmony.  I remember thinking to myself at the time that I was about to be fired as lead singer - it is still one of my favorite tracks.  Of course, those fears were unfounded, but years later they began to surface again.

I had been doing spot recordings, but Steve had become the member of another band – and I thought that might be it for my music career. Steve:

“Patrick was a natural born drummer. Not many people with this particular condition can go long without playing their instrument. He recently picked up a digital drum set and was jamming with a couple of friends. He wanted me to come over with my guitar (Frankenstein) and see how my style fit in with the guys. There was a lead singer, Scotty B and a Rhythm guitarist, Ryan S (whose parents owned the basement we were jamming in). They also had a bass player, who was just learning how to play. We played through a couple songs, but there wasn’t really any magic. The guy playing bass needed to take off and I asked them if I could jam some bass while they played. 

Something just clicked when I played bass in this band. We were like 4 totally different people who created songs with such originality that I was hooked. Now that I lived on my own, and had a band who all lived locally, we could practice every day if we wanted to. We started hanging out all the time and pretty soon we had a huge entourage. We started filming ourselves at every practice just to try and find ways to get better. Scotty B was meant to be a star and I thought, finally I have a band that I can put together a live show with. 

In the meantime, Tim and I were still committed to keep recording together as The Bad. However, due to the fact that he had a recording studio in his basement, he started branching off as well. He started producing a local guitarist/town drunk named Randy and another young band. He also started performing way more due to the popularity of Karaoke. Getting up in front of people and singing is what Tim was born to do, but now he could sing, play multiple instruments & produce. 

Things with my band, unofficially titled “Unexpected Jam” had reached a zenith. We had planned a huge party, where we were going to make our first big show. Pat and I rented the equipment we needed for the sound stage and we got to setting everything up. It’s not easy for first timers to wire together everything needed for a great live show, but we did our best and we started doing some sound checks. Not five minutes go by and the cops are already there. Ryan’s dad was a retired police officer, so we didn’t get a ticket or anything, but we started to think, how are we going to pull off this live show, if we can’t even get through one song without the pigs showing up. 

The day of the party was a complete wash. I mean it rained buckets on our dreams. This singular event completely took the wind out of our sails. The band didn’t completely fall apart, but we stopped practicing at Ryan’s and soon hanging out together became more about anything other than the music we were going to make. Fortunately I still had “The Bad.”

Fortunately for me, I still had “The Bad” too.  Steve and I both ended up in the same place via different roads.  I was doing production work, but wasn’t participating much as a musician.  Steve was meshing with a live band, but the drama involved with bands caused the usual break-up of so many great bands.

When the dust settled, we all ended up back with each other.

Come Together

Steve:

“Much of the productions on this album where done by each of the members of The Bad separately. This was a type of fracturing of the band, but it also created some amazing results. Tim with 3 recordings done in his studio. Me with 3 recordings that I did at the apartment with Pat. And Dylan with Manhiki Island. We could hardly call ourselves much of a band, but then as things were going from bad to worse with my band/living situation, Dylan pulled a diamond out of his ass.

 Pat and I had set up a small walk-in closet as a micro studio. This was problematic in many ways, but surprisingly we ended up recording a lot more stuff that ever before. Scotty B’s problems had basically forced him to leave. We were determined to wait it out to see if maybe when he came back, the magic would still be there. There was definitely magic, but it came from a riff that Ryan had been jamming at practices on and off for the last couple months. We had always intended to develop some lyrics for Scotty on the song, but when we ended up recording it, Scotty was already gone.

 One night when we were all hanging out at our apartment, Dylan showed up. Instead of letting him socialize, I tossed him right in the closet. I wanted to see if he could contribute a track to our song, which now had a rhythm track, lead guitar, bass guitar and a tribal drum that Patrick played. Dylan set the keyboard on “Pan Flute” and rocked the joint. His playing took that song and brought it to a level that our previous music couldn’t even touch. It was magic and since it gave our band new hope, we called it, “New Life”.

 I did “New Life”, the music for “The Last Among Us”, “Never Pure”, “When the Soldiers Come”, and the music for “Tribal Dance” in that closet and despite its small size, I really have some fond memories of recording there. This basically ends the story of “Unexpected Jam” after Scotty decided that he was going to be staying in Florida. Ryan had been scheming to leave also, but never told us about it. He packed up and boom, he was gone too. I have lost my band and Pat and I just couldn’t hold it together.

 I moved back in with my parents and Pat moved to Virginia. This is when Tim and I started finishing off some more tracks together. We put the finishing touches on “The Last Among Us” and “Tribal Dance”. We also recorded another track arranged by Rob called, “The Great Boat in the Sky” (based on the directions to get to Tim’s house from mine). We started to think about putting all these various tracks that we had all done separately on one new album for The Bad. If people thought the last album was a little overly diverse, than this one was going to kick them in 4th grader.”

I love the way Steve puts things.  By distance and circumstances The Bad splintered apart, yet somehow managed to come back together and reform.  Well, not “reform”…

“Tribal Dance” is unique.  It features many different influences and styles.  Yet, when I listen to it, I hear a common thread within the range of songs.  I hear The Bad in the songs I made.  I hear The Bad in the songs Steve made.  I hear The Bad in the songs Dylan made.  Still, the songs I love most are the ones we all made together.

The Bad: Part II

Prologue

Lately, I’ve found it difficult to write about politics as I have done with this site for more than eight years.  While passionate about it, I find myself lacking a voice in the arena.  This particular series offers me the opportunity to tell a story that you’ve not heard from anyone else.

I’ve been personally writing about The Bad over the course of a great many years.  Not too terribly long ago, I asked Steve and Dylan to send me their memories of our adventures.  Thankfully, they obliged my request thereby allowing me to honor them properly.

The Bad, Part 2

Gathering of the Three

Being the lead singer of The Bad redefined me fundamentally.  Strangely, I had no idea I would be so changed when it was happening.  This is something I had dreamed about for the majority of my life.  When we started recording, I was nearly numb with excitement.  Yet, the idea of an actual album still seemed incomprehensible.  We only had a couple songs written, and I was a newborn baby as compared to the guys I was working with.

When it came down to it, it took each of us to step up when we were needed, and I think we all did so in fine order.  So, all of the sudden: we have an album.  Now what?

We made our efforts to get people listening to our music.  I was selling CDs to every friend, coworker, neighbor and stranger alike.  Dylan was able to utilize some of our tracks for independent films he was scoring.  Because of this, my name is listed in the scrolling end credits of “The World's First B+ Movie!”  We also managed to get played on the radio, and I even convinced the local bar owner to put a copy in his jukebox.  None of it really mattered because an independent album with no distribution channel had no chance for traction.

Since it was obvious that there was to be no profit in this endeavor, Steve and I had to decide whether we were going to keep making music regardless.  It was a pretty easy choice to make: we were having a lot of fun writing music together and were now going to throw ourselves into the arena of trying to record it ourselves while maintaining the quality level Dylan’s production savvy brought us on the first album.

Steve:

“This left me with one choice. I had to learn how to produce music myself. The only problem was I needed some fucking money if I was going to get the equipment necessary to put together a decent sounding recording. Our first album lost so much money (mostly failed marketing costs) that I was already in hock, but thanks to the magic of credit cards and eBay I was able to slowly put together a used Fostex 8-track (reel to reel) and mixing board. I had a couple of cheap effects processors and a kick ass compressor that I never really understood how to use.

Tim and I wanted to make a blues rock album and the first song we did was “Always Bet on Black”. I got the whole thing programmed into the sequencer (keyboard drums, bass, and guitar) and I even got Dylan to play some blues piano. The problem was, I had a room at my parent’s house that was literally becoming crammed full with equipment. It was becoming clear that we weren’t going to be able to record the vocals there. So we packaged up the reel-to-reel in the back of Dylan’s car and headed off to the basement once again. Having an isolation booth for singers is more important that just getting a clean sound. It lets you get into character, without feeling like your being stared at like a circus freak.

We ended up doing three recordings like that, including “Buzz on Blues” and “Out of Sight”. They were satisfactory in the sense that they were all blues rock songs that sounded like they belonged together on an album, but I still hadn’t achieved my goal of being independent of Dylan and his (much nicer) studio. His interests had shifted radically and my little bedroom was no place to record an album. Besides, we couldn’t drink or smoke in my parent’s house. Things seemed to stall for a while and that’s when Tim pulled off a minor miracle.

Yes, JP and I wrote the lyrics on bar tabs

The song “Rollin’” was written by a work friend of Tim’s named JP - a nice guy who I had met at several parties, but never imagined him a poet. Tim put together an arrangement for this song with a percussive guitar element and it was just magic. It was perfect for my style of guitar and we recorded a version of it on Tim’s 4-track that was really good. I decided to bring the studio equipment up to Tim’s house because he lived in a house with a basement and there we were free to work in an environment that we were comfortable in.

Partially inspired by the pseudo live sound of “That’s Not What Life’s About” we recorded “Rollin’” and it was the first time we had put down anything totally by ourselves that had the magic of our earlier recordings. It was like the wall opened and Tim totally revamped his basement to make it into a studio where we could record. We went on to do “Another Day Passes” (with a stellar loop arrangement by the very gay Rob Willson), “Land of Freedom”, “Here to Me”, and “Halloween ’79”.

At work, my boss/friend Steve had left to pursue other interests (as well as my sister), so I was handling all the network administration, PC maintenance, Internet development, catalog design, and ad materials. This left me in a pretty good position financially (along with a booming Cartooniverse.com). I decided to invest in a digital 16-Track that would basically allow me to bring a recording studio where ever I wanted. So Tim had the 8-track analog studio at his house and I had the 16 track at mine. In order to test everything out I recorded two songs by myself “The Skies of Mars are Red” and “Fortunes Only Son”.

Dylan was doing a bit of dance music around this time and one night we got slaughtered over at his house and he recorded a tripped out industrial song called “Give in to You”. This was nothing like anything on our album, but the song was strangely compelling, so I asked him if I could put it on the album. He agreed and a short time after that, the whole band was together and we recorded the equally strange “You’ll Never Have it Again”. These two songs didn’t really belong on this album, but it was the beginning of our desire to experiment with our music beyond what was commercially identifiable.

A second album is born

The idea behind the two dice on the cover was that they would be two 4s since this album was recorded on an 8-track. But that was not really that important, we just wanted Rob to model the dice (that’s right, he’s also a 3D savant) and we would put together the layout for the album, which was going to be titled “Rollin’”. We were ready to get this project completed and Dylan came through with a great bid for the CDs. He worked at printing company now and knew how shave pennies. Now we just had to wait.

I’m not sure what happened, but for some reason the CDs took forever to get to us. It was like weeks (maybe even a month) we waited for the albums to come back. There was always some excuse for why they weren’t ready and I could feel my blood squirting angrily through my chest pump. But then just like that they were finished and the album was great. If Tim and I were like Lennon & McCartney, Dylan and I were quickly becoming Mozart and Salieri.

At the time people speculated about which album they liked better. The common consensus seemed to be that the first album was produced better and sounded more like a cohesive whole. But there were some songs on this album that people seemed to like more than anything we’d done before. Since “The Bad” and “Rollin’” were our only two real albums (meaning, we sent them out to get replicated commercially and tried to promote ourselves) my thoughts looking back is that the two albums are apples and oranges. The first one is a slick ride in a limo, and “Rollin’” is like bouncing around the beach in dune buggy.

Tim and I had produced an album. It couldn’t have been done without the help and guidance of Dylan, and it wouldn’t have been the same without the lyrics of Rob Willson and Jim Parr. We weren’t sure what marketing would work for this album, so we just started giving them away almost like business cards.”

Stylistically, “Rollin’” was much more eclectic than its predecessor, but it was an incredibly important step in our development as writers, performers and producers.  We were evolving our sound from a very technically produced and structured one to a looser, more acoustic and more organic sound.  Steve and I were expanding our abilities to play new instruments we thought were key to a specific sound we wanted.

One thing was for absolute certain: I was having the time of my life.  Setting up the 8-track studio in my basement and learning how to properly record with it was lots of work, and I loved every moment of it.  Writing and recording original music can be long and tedious work, and I loved every moment of it.  I was no longer dreaming of being a recording artist.  I was doing it.

The Bad: Part I

Prologue

“My son calls me Daddy, my wife calls me Sweetie.  You can feel free to call me anything you like.”

Mr. and Mrs. The Bad

An older brother recently indicated a need to disclose his feelings publicly.  I encourage him to take the initiative of setting up his own free blog site and venting his hatred there.  Here, I now intend to tell the story of how my entire existence was redefined by music, and again by love.

The Bad, Part 1

Understand from the start that this story would read significantly differently if another were to tell it.  I am fortunate enough to have the written word of others involved, and I hope that they will read this piece and know how much they meant to me at the time, as well as how much they mean to me now.

Bad Boys

Suffice it to say that I was never the popular kid in school.  Typically, when someone is known yet not popular, the definition of “notorious” or “infamous” is assigned.  I’m not entirely convinced that I was either of those, but I was most certainly known and usually avoided.  I was the unstable one.  I had been institutionalized.  After that, people were less inclined to shit all over me.

When I went away to my first year of college, I realized that I had no notoriety on campus.  I had finally shed twelve years of reputation and could literally be anyone I wanted to be.  I did so, and for the first time in my life I felt as though I was in control of my own image and destiny.  I explored my love for writing in ways I never dared to attempt before.  I responded to critics without reserve, and feared no reprisals.  In a nutshell, I came out of my nutshell.

Being new to standing up for myself, I alienated as many as I befriended, and found myself again on an island of sorts.  For the sake of change, I left the university for one much smaller and in a different region of the country.  In retrospect, leaving a state university for a small, private and religious university was probably not the best idea in the world.  Regardless, I ventured on to campus more grizzled than one year before and more confident in myself to be by myself.

Then, I met a girl.

I went into my second year of college at a new school with a new way of presenting myself in another blank-canvass setting.  The Thoughtful Loner would slowly walk the grounds of the small Midwestern campus, and usually could be spotted sitting beneath a tree in the Common Area jotting down oddities in his notebook.  At this point, I had figured that I was best suited to keep to myself if I was to accomplish anything.  Then, a shadow fell upon me below the big oak tree.

Robyn, a girl I had noticed on campus, had decided to favor me with her attention.  She was curious about what I was writing and I was curious why such a pretty girl would even notice me sitting there.  Romance ensued.  With the confidence gained from my new-found love interest, I began writing an editorial column for the school newspaper.  I also was allowed to host a program on the school’s radio station, regardless of the fact that I was not attending any broadcasting courses.  I called it “Floyd’s Groovydom Palace”, and would haul my collection of compact discs to the broadcast booth so I could play the music that moved me most.  This is why I publish under the copyright of “F.G.P. Entertainment”.

In High School, inspired by the “None Of The Above” concept from the movie “Brewster’s Millions”, I attempted a similar campaign for student council.  It didn't work.  In my second year of college, I tried it again.  The residence hall in which I lived had an election for Hall President.  This was a position for the Popularist Elitistata.  I ran an unfunded and unendorsed campaign for the position from my dorm room.  Few knew me directly, but everyone knew my words from the school paper and the radio show, as well as the campaign flyers I made sure were everywhere you looked when you were on campus.  I never expected to win the campaign, so I was a bit taken back when I found out I would be the new Hall President.  This was my first popularity contest I had ever won, and I had done so without actually being popular.

With an “etcetera, etcetera”, I will dispense with the nuts and bolts of why I only remained on campus for one semester.  Put simply, I was more interested in my passionate love interest, my political position, my radio show, and my editorial column than I was in my course load.  As such, I left my college career at one-point-five years.

Robyn and I kept the flame burning, so while I began working menial sales jobs back home, she completed the second semester of the school year.  She then transferred to a well-known university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I moved there to be with her.  When I left home, I literally had nothing more than my car, wardrobe and bed.  I rented a room with the only money I had, and dived into the job market.

More “etcetera, etcetera”.  I had been making decent money in a job as a professional fundraiser for a little over a year when shit fell apart.  Robyn chose to leave me, and moved out while I was at work.  I ceased to function for a couple weeks after that.  I made a try at school again, and did a pretty decent job at a Milwaukee area technical college.  Just the same, I was drowning in loneliness and regret from Robyn’s sudden, yet understandable departure from my life.

I upended.  I swallowed all of my pride and asked my parents if I could come home.  Of course, they accommodated without question.  Before I knew it, I was back in my hometown and seeing old friends with whom I had only contacted in a tertiary sense of my daily life.  Homecoming felt surprisingly good, and I was enrolled in a new technical school that presented more options to my evolving sales sensibilities.

Then, I met a girl.

After the collapse of my life and love in Wisconsin, I sought and found refuge with friends and acquaintances of old.  In truth, the use of the plural in the word “friends” is an overstatement.  My one tried and true friend, Jim, opened his door and his heart to my sorrows and offered his support and solace as only a true friend can.  I was welcomed at Jim’s place any time I needed, and I needed it frequently.

Tammy was an unexpected circumstance.  She was friends with both Jim and his older brother for quite some time.  She was also friends with Steve and Dylan, two musicians who had been recording music during and since High School, and whom I had occasion to acquaint.  Over the course of years, the paths of our lives had intersected, culminating in a, “holy cow, you know all the people I know” sort of meeting the woman I would first marry.

This new relationship with Tammy brought about wider exposure to Steve and Dylan, and the wonderful music they already knew how to make.  We were already friendly and I had a burning desire to be part of making music.  It didn't take too long before I was working myself on a daily basis to play the guitar.  I had already found musical accolade from the new media of the time known as Karaoke.  I knew that if I could pair playing an instrument with my ability and desire to sing, I could find myself performing as I always had fantasized.

Yes, Dylan's holding a golf club

Steve:

“When I was getting out of college in 1998, I was working a good job and the internet bubble was growing like Mt. St. Helens.  My job as a web page designer put me right at the forefront of a new and huge business, and I even had my own web portal, “Cartooniverse”.  Things were going great professionally and my side music project was just about to be taken to the next level.

 During the last couple of years I had been jamming on and off with my buddy Tim. He lived in a tiny little apartment, which was referred to as “The Perch”. We’d been jamming on and off for the past couple years and had written a handful of songs. Although I had given up on recording music for a living years earlier, having Tim’s fresh enthusiasm for playing reignited the fire in my heart. In the past I've had a musical relationship with my buddy Dylan, who before he joined the dark side, was actually an up and coming music producer. One night while we were talking/drinking we started discussing the possibility of him producing an album for Tim and I, based on the music that we were writing. Dylan and Tim were old friends, so we called up Tim (who had moved all the way up north to Wonder Lake) and pitched the idea of putting together a real rock album. Tim was sold and we agreed to record an album that night. We also agreed to not party while recording, so that things wouldn't get too messy. However, we all learned that production is always messy.

The first few songs were finished in pretty straight order. “Don’t Take a chance, Sometimes You Win, People will Say…”, but we finally hit a road block when we recorded a piano ballad that Dylan wrote called “If Only I Could”. A great song and idea, but it wasn't the same type of song that Tim and I had wrote for the album, so it was our biggest challenge because it had to be produced differently than the rest of our songs.

Bad Brothers

The session for our last recording, “New Day” was at hand and I showed up at Dylan’s with Tim and there was no Dylan. So we waited until he came speeding up the road like a pickled psycho. His shirt was torn off and our music was blasting out of his car speakers. We hit the basement and we broke our rule. Drinking like pigs like only the three of us could.

We ARE the party, honey!

Anyways, with the songs nearly finished, I still needed to record my guitar solo. I’ve been informed that the limo is waiting upstairs and we need this one finished so we can go out and celebrate our album being completed. With standards and practices being thrown out the window, I winged a blues solo together. Although I can’t remember what happened that night, I’ll always remember the great joy we had at completing this huge project. Too bad the worst wasn't over yet.

Getting an album recorded is an insane endeavor, but getting an album into CD format wasn’t something you could just click a mouse and have done. There are rounds of mastering, CD jacket design, UPC codes and an enormous amount of goblin shit that musicians today have built into a template wizard on their PC.

Either way, as the executive producer of this project I was going to have to find a way to pay for it all and when I sent the project out with Dylan he informed me that the costs were going to be about twice what we he quoted me. This was a straw that snapped between us and it crippled the project because I knew I didn't have the resources. I called Tim freaking out and decided to abandon doing the CD.”

So here I was: we had completed all recording sessions.  We had completed all mixing.  We had completed all of the album art.  All of our work had been completed, and all that needed to be done was to produce the physical product.  That’s when Steve called me freaking out.  I insisted that all production material be sent to me and I would find a means of publication.  This was my fucking dream, and I wasn't about to let it die on the vine.

Steve:

“Fortunately, Tim responded by getting the chips aligned in the production to get the project brought in on budget. If it hadn't have been for this, I don’t know if we would have actually released the record.  In a way it was fitting that we all had such an important role to play because it really was a labor of love. With the conflict behind us we finished up the deal. Dylan and I fight like tigers, but we are also quick to forgive and when the records got delivered we truly knew we had something special. This was our contribution to the musical universe of Rock & Roll and the results were joyous.”

Still got it

The self-titled album, “The Bad” made no money.  None of the artists were discovered for their talents.  To this day, people tell me that they enjoy a specific song from this album, and the song is always different.  My dear friends and I recorded an album of music that spoke to everyone.  Even now, when I listen to it, I can hardly believe it was really me.

This was no accident.  The music had heart because we were more than friends.  We were brothers.  I have lots of brothers: some related by family, others related by blood, but none could ever come close to the brotherhood I feel for my Brothers In Arms:

Photo from the only live performance of The Bad