The Warm-Up Song

This track started as a little experiment with the internal sequencer on my M1, and when I eventually transferred it to my other sequencer, I called it "Albino" for no apparent reason. I actually spent some time trying to write some lyrics about anything albino, and failed miserably. Thank God.

When Greg and Bob and I began to rehearse weekly, this is the song we would always start with, because it really helped us get into the musical groove and in mental sync. We started referring to it jokingly as the "warming up" song, and after about six months, I started thinking more seriously about it. Deciding it would be much easier to write words about a band warming up for a performance than some albino fellow, I gave it a shot. And it worked.

Doing this one in the studio was a mixed bag. One the one hand, Alan's guitar work really brought the whole thing together, especially in the extended solo at the end. But Mark Murray wasn't happy with Greg's bass line and Bob's kick drum pattern, and we spent several hours recutting and recutting the basic drum tracks until I suggested it might be easier to try to doctor the bass line to match the drum pattern than the other way around. Then we spent another few hours getting the right bass line, not to mention the right bass. Finally, Greg and Mark worked out the bass line you hear in the song.

A note about the correct bass: Greg came into the studio with the bass he'd been using for a couple of years. Very quickly, it was evident that the bass was, in fact, a "polarity guitar." The single-coil pickup system in the bass acted as a receiver for the magnetic interference in the studio and generated a "buzz" in the line when held a certain way. Greg quickly learned that he could play facing east or west with the bass, without hearing the buzz. Now, this didn't have any bearing on the reworking of "Warm Up," but it does make a nice story. The issue on "Warm Up" was that Greg couldn't pop the strings on his bass the way Mark wanted him to, and not because of Greg's technique. So we went hunting through the studio to see if Lloyd Maines had left one of his basses in his office. Fortunately, the bass was there, so Mark and Greg were able to get the sound that both wanted. And Lloyd, that nick in the body really *was* there when we got it. Honest!