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You were left on the edge of your seat, I'm sure, at the end of the last blog post, when Know Eye Inn Teem was experiencing technical difficulties that threatened to bring us to our knees. Rest easy, they have been resolved. I was still at a loss when Mic arrived on Thursday to tackle Stevie Wonder, but after a little fuss, we realized that the problem was that there were hidden files on the memory card. Damn the hidden files! When we got rid of them, we could use the recorder again. We are back in business.

We recorded the bass keyboard track on "I Just Called To Say I Love You." It was another one of those semi-painful rehearsals when Mic feels his way through a song while I sit uselessly next to him, hitting START and STOP on the recorder. Sometimes I interject comments, like "that sounds right" or "mmmm, sure," designed to give the misleading impression that I have some idea what he is talking about, which I usually don't. To give you a sense of how tedious this process is, I secretly recorded a portion of the proceedings. Here is a near-verbatim excerpt of Mic thinking out loud:

And then the E, that’s A-C-E, what’s above E, that’s an F and that’s an F sharp [plays notes] so yeah well f**in’ whatever, that’s an F sharp, I’m just going to pretend I don’t see those, that’s an F sharp so it’s [plays notes] this just goes [plays notes] no this goes [plays notes] and then that goes in B [plays notes] and that’s A, E, that’s an [plays notes, hums note, plays notes]. That’s a f**kin’ bastard of a little bit there! But that’s repetitive. So that is an A. So at this stage we’re in B, are we? [sound of pen clicking] So that’s saying, hold on, so that’s A, F, [plays notes] that’s D [plays notes]. That’s just trad-style D-D-A-A then [plays notes]. And that’s A, E [plays notes]. Doesn’t matter if it sounds weird, does it? Okay, so I’m going to try this, I’m just going to try, let me see, no, I need this page as well [sound of pages rustling]. Okay, “I just,” “I just,” “I just…” [plays notes]. F**k it! [plays notes] So it’s two Fs. F**k it, how the f**k am I going to be able to do this? I’ll just have to practice it over and over and over again [plays notes]. So it’s how many, two? And then the end. Okay. Let me just try it one time here. I just need to go [plays notes]. Okay, I need to switch over that E bit. E-E-E, so you see I’m looking at one bit here, [plays notes] hold on it goes [plays notes] I’m almost better off not looking at the notes and just memorizing it, I think, in this case here [plays notes]. What’s the tune? No no no it doesn’t [plays notes]. You see it’s not, that note is held, that’s why he’s changing the timing of it here [plays notes].

Hi, are you still awake? Oh, good. Hang in there. Recording the Aluminum Album does feature its fair share of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll (or at least rock-n-roll), but Thursday night was a real sleeper. Still, this background work is critically important to building our album.

The band had Friday off, and the only progress today was me ineptly piecing tracks together on the software. We'll be back in the swing of things tomorrow, however, with "Brighter Than Sunshine."