Week 9 - Tuesday 5/7/1991

Recording "Ali Akbar" and "You Don't Know Me". Urbano's feelings are hurt again.

Wallace spent the morning constructing an organ track out of the many tracks recorded the previous day. Gates left for his vocal coaching session at 11:00 a.m.

Berg tried adding Emax II sax parts to the song, but the sound wasn't right. Winegar suggested using a horn patch. Everyone in the control room cringed when they heard the cheesiness of the sound. Suddenly, Winegar let out a surprisingly loud fart. Puig turned to him and asked, "How can you fart like that in front of everyone?" Winegar replied, "It sounds more like horns than the Emax did."

Wallace asked Berg to play Emax Arco Strings instead. After this was completed, I overdubbed Mellotron strings on the pre-chorus sections and Winegar added Mellotron flutes and strings to the bridge and verse sections. Finally, Berg recorded the Emax horn parts for the outro section.

Gates returned to the studio around 1:45 p.m. He and Winegar sang harmony vocals until 5:00 p.m. Every band member other than Urbano attempted to sing the outro melody parts as a group, but the results were less than satisfactory. We decided to try again the following day.

Wallace decided to work on You Don't Know Me, so Peter loaded the tape and Puig created a quick monitor mix. I recorded a fresh bass track with the improved Vox/Hiwatt combo setup. Mio dropped by to listen and approved the changes. He even patted me on the back. "Good call," he remarked. "The track is in the pocket." Despite his assurances, I was unhappy with the overall feel of the track. Winegar wandered into the control room, listened to the playback for a moment and said, "It makes my skin crawl." Mio went home wearing a big smile.

After Winegar and Gates left the studio, I asked Wallace to delay the bass track to improve the feel, but Wallace opted to set the snare drum hits ahead by a few milliseconds instead. I told him that Urbano was going to be upset by this, but Wallace urged me not to worry.

Urbano entered the control room just as Wallace was finishing up his work and found out about the snare drum track. He looked Wallace squarely in the face and said without emotion, "I hate it." Wallace pointed out that the snare had been moved forward only by a few milliseconds, but Urbano was still unhappy about the studio trickery being applied to his performance. "Yeah, really organic," he sneered. Wallace kept his cool. He explained that Urbano's carefully placed backbeats didn't work on every song - and that Urbano should consider this to be an educational experience to help him grow as a musician and as a person. Puig interjected that the track had been made in a "vacuum", without any accompaniment. "Cut yourself some slack," urged Puig. Urbano agreed to give the matter some more thought. We left the studio at 10:00 p.m.