33 Revolutions

This song was a last minute decision when I was recording my new album "Passing Through Time". I had realized that it was (roughly) 33 1/13 years since the first Wilfred N & the Grown Men album, "Riding Double" in 1984. And I wanted to have a long-ish instrumental on the album, especially if I was able to get the album pressed on vinyl as well. It turned out that I wasn't able to afford doing vinyl in addition to the cd albums. Maybe later. As for the song, I got down to business one night and worked out the whole idea and recorded the basic bed in my home ProTools studio. I played the synths and programmed basic drums and then added a few of the guitar parts. The song really came alive when I brought in Jamie Philp the following day to play his heavy rhythm guitar parts. I also asked him if he still had his old electric sitar. He did . . . and he brought it along. Jamie played all the right stuff that day with great sensitivity to . . . rocking out in the heavy parts while keeping it simple and creating some space as a relief to all the busy-ness. A few notes here, a few notes there. Beautiful. A bit of tremolo is always good. Later, I was working on the song with my mic on and just had an impulse to sing what you hear on the final mix. I have always been fond of unison singing – I used to listen to a lot of Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 music. So I was kinda emulating that sound on "33 Revolutions" by doubling the vocals and singing the Ah-oh-Wah's!! I guess it still qualifies as an instrumental song because I don't actually sing any words. A week or so later, I had Clint Frazier coming in to play some drums on a few of the other tunes for "Passing Through Time". Clint didn't know he would be playing on "33 Revolutions". I sprung it on him!! I just asked him to listen to the song once and then 'react to it'. That's what he did, and that's what I got down on his drum track. Bango bango! And that's the way we did it! This is track #7 on the 8-song album "Passing Through Time".