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(c) 1993 by Lewis D'Aubin PREV TRACK |
By spring 1993, 'Barney' fever had gripped pre-school America, and I was sitting around in The Cove, a pub at U.N.O., drinking beer with some friends at lunch. We were talking about things that irritated us, and Barney was near the top of many of our lists. Spontaneously, I began writing these lyrics! I had never written anything like this just by myself before, but since Kirk wasn't due back from UT of Austin for months, I decided to take a stab at it. At the time, I had switched from trying to sequence everything on the ESQ-1's 8 track scratchpad to using an Atari ST running Edittrack Pro. Edittrack was a weird but really powerful midi sequencer. It's a good thing I was using it too because of the cut-time parts I ended up having to piece together. Like I used to with the Ensoniq, I wrote this song as a series of small sequences and then started experimenting with piecing them together and getting the computer to chase the tape via midi timecode (I had been using a JL Cooper PPS/2 for a couple years by this point for my 'serious' recordings of other bands.) At this time, I had nobody to turn to for bass parts, and Keith's friend Brad was unavailable, so I called on my old friend George Schleh. George had recently moved back in town and was spending a lot of time at his parents' house, just two houses down from my parents' house. George still had the Hohner bass he had bought while stationed in Japan, and the FX pedal board he had built while playing in his punk band 'Operation Destroy Moose and Squirrel'. George came in and tried his best to learn the song. Unfortunately, he could never quite master the transistions between the verse and the chorus and I had to compensate eventually by inserting a cut time part near the beginning. That's why it sounds so off-kilter. Meanwhile, Keith Casebonne, a guy who was in my sound crew (this was the third year I was working for Campus Activities as a sound man) knew how to play guitar and was actually in a band called 'Whore Culture.' I got Keith, his guitar, and his Digitech over to the house next, and had him come up with some metal sounding riffs. Keith did his best, and in fact devised a double-tracked solo that I still like. I finally put on the final vocals, replacing the guide vocals I had initially laid down. Final vocals were sung through a harmonizer patch on the ART Multiverb III, tuned down by a 3rd. This made for a really otherworldly delivery. Outdoor sounds in the end sketch were achieved by putting some PZM mics outside and just recording the natural summer ambience. For the 'Die Barney Childrens' Choir', I hauled the whole multitrack machine and a couple PZM mics to U.N.O. and made a few recordings of me and my friends yelling at a birthday poster of Barney. The "I loathe you" beginning bit was last, tacked on with a synth part performed on a Juno synth that had been left at my place. Everybody LOVED Die Barney Die as much as they hated Barney. In two years I would put together the first incarnation of C.O.G. as a stage band from the lineup from this very recording! And naturally this song always went over well at live shows. Even though I was the first of MANY to parody Barney, I was skittish about bringing too much attention to the song, having heard of people actually being SUED for trying to sell Barney parodies, and eventually came to regret basing a song on 'somebody else's property'. I vowed at this point never to do it again. In spite of us purposefully neglecting to perform this for YEARS, long time C.O.G. fans never stopped requesting this song, and so we revived it in time for our 10th Anniversary. The new version of the song was quite satisfyingly HEAVY, and so we re-recorded it in 2006 for the '10th Anniversary Compilation.' 1993 Credits Drums...........Lewis D'Aubin Guitars.........Keith Casebonne Bass............George Schleh Synthesizer.....Lewis D'Aubin Lead vocal......Lewis D'Aubin Backing vocals..Lewis, Paul, Jeannine, Jason Recorded and mixed 1993 at Lewis's parents' living room 2006 Credits Drums...........Lewis D'Aubin Guitars.........Ed Merilh Bass............Jim Fairchild Synthesizer.....Lewis D'Aubin Lead vocal......Lewis D'Aubin Backing vocals..Lewis, Paul, Jeannine, Jason Recorded and mixed 2006 at C.O.G. Secret Lab, Harahan LA |