Anchormen, Aweigh! VII
Three-fourths of the Anchormen gathered at Scan's apartment in Jamaica Plain last night to continue work on the forthcoming compact disc recording. We've worked out all of the technical difficulties with Scan's home studio, he's already done some punchy and Mike Ness-like guitar overdubs, and the vocal overdubs now have momentum and some accomplishment behind them.

We knocked off two songs last night, "Indecision" and "Celebrate Democracy." I'm still surprised how much I hate doing overdubs. I miss having the band around me. I miss all of the visual cues I usually receive when we're playing live -- bandmates jumping around, Jef's drumming, people in the audience reacting to us. And I'm thrown by how unreal listening to the rest of the band in earphones while I'm singing feels. So I wasn't too pleased with how I was doing last night. My voice felt thin. I didn't have my customary growl and intensity. Energy was low given the fact that I hadn't eaten dinner.

When we listened to the resulting tracks at the end of the night, though, they were pretty good! I left with a stronger sense of hope and confidence that what we're doing is going to turn out OK. I still need to get over the change of setting -- and my low solo energy -- but this record's going to be pretty darn cool. We resume Sunday. That'll be a fun day.