A U G U S T 0 2
Okay Samurai records its final song, Mosquito, with the help of Eric Espiritu.
yeeeeeeeehawww!!! BARBEQUE!
the mix sounds great eric...don't know when it's going to happen, but I have given dj foss the go ahead to mix mosquito up and give it the dj foss feel to it. You might remember mixes from him back in the day, the most prominent "Welcome to the G-spot", played religiously at our parties. Be sure to tune in here for updates on the remix...
Tuesday, August 13 at 10:56 AM
http://okay.iuma.com
"Mosquito (Espiritu Sessions 2002)"
Saturday, August 10 at 10:19 PM
greetings...
i'm eric, and i just finished mixing the new "mosquito". if you're wondering who i am, i'm an old friend of the band's, and the guy who produced and mixed the new version of mosquito. i'm pretty satisfied with the final product, and it was definitely a fun experience getting together with the guys again and rocking out (even though i wasn't playing guitar this time around).
anyway, i know how much all of you are just dying to hear it (j/k!), but i've tried twice to upload it to okay.iuma.com..and unfortunately my crappy 26.4 connection (through a 56k modem, might i add) can't handle it. oh well...i'll get it up there eventually.
until then..."mosquito" will have it's debut @ don's house tonite...
thanks to dave for allowing me to "blogg it" w/ okay samurai. word.
more info on the final version of mosquito as they develop..
at 2:18 PM
just got a burned copy of busted stuff, the latest dave matthews band offering. i have to say that i've sorta slacked off in the dave department lately, my acoustic rock love mostly being replaced by john mayer. being one of the few people in the world who actually liked the last dmb album, everyday, busted stuff is a return to the old-school, a return to the simplistic. 9 songs from the infamous "lillywhite sessions" (apparently now called "the summer so far" by quote-in-quote true fans) are redone here with two new ones.
the songs seem extremely scaled back, with not many extra keyboards or guitars, which is good and bad. songs like "digging a ditch" or "grace is gone" would have been pretty much ruined by anything trying to fill in their spaces. but i miss the electric guitars that filled in crash, which still remains my favorite from these guys. this is a much slower, more somber album. "grey street" picks up the pace and "kit kat jam" is an instrumental showcasing carter, but none of these songs rocked me like a "so much to say" or "what would you say". for what it is, it's good; "grace is gone" is every bit as good a slow ballad as "crash into me" was. it doesn't seem like the logical progression, more like an apology for the supposedly commercialized everyday. here you go, old dave again, no complaining? there's something missing to me. i thought they should have made everyday into a double cd with the lillywhite songs on one disc and the ballard ones on the other, a mix of happy and sad. i'm not sure how much of an improvement there was from when most of these songs were recorded last year, but it's nice to have a finished product of them. [grade: B]
ew.com review :: rolling stone review
on the okay samurai side of things, don and jeff's friend phil has asked to use eric's current tracks from mosquito to make a remix. no finished product and the remix already on the way?...i love it! very exciting. thanks to the mp3 of the song i sent to jeff and andrew, the unmixed version of the song is floating out there somewhere around jmu and the aol offices. just don't get too used to it, since eric promised me that the final verison will be nothing short of multiple-pair-of-pants rockage. actually he didn't say that, but he did say he was going to replace all our guitar tracks with his own searing behind-the-back solos played with his teeth (bicuspids, to be exact). actually he didn't say that, but the final (free) product will be great.
the next time i write on this will probably be from baltimore once we get internet, phone lines, cable, rent and capri suns figured out. my third floor room is at least 3 times as big as the wertland one i was in last year and (potential robbers, take note) has a door leading directly to our rooftop deck. there's talk of one of my roommates storing a drumset in my room, which would make the designated "music corner" pretty near complete. again, you (yes you, random person who came across this site because "awesome samurai swords" on the search engine led you here) have to come visit sometime.
Friday, August 9 at 8:41 PM
christina voted off american idol? da heck? tuesday night was the first time i watched the show all the way through, and it was pretty entertaining. how christina lost to rj or nikki is beyond me (hello conspiracy theories about ratings). jeff?
i moved into my new house yesterday in baltimore...freakin' awesome. come visit.
Thursday, August 8 at 3:32 PM
recipe for awesome: just add eric espiritu.
yesterday afternoon we finished recording the new version of mosquito and it's unbelievable. not having ever done a high-quality studio recording as okay samurai, we were all extremely excited. more keyboard and vocals have added an entire new dimension to the song, giving it a much fuller and live-party feel. eric is in the process of mixing it now, which could take anywhere from this weekend to christmas. jeff and i have rough copies of the song on CD and mp3; i listened to it no less than 50 times last night driving back and forth from maryland. the final version will be put online as a free mp3 as soon as it's done.
yeah, mosquito is all about stealing. it mainly centers around the one infamous night in highschool that don, eugene and i were bored and decided to just go around the neighborhood and steal things. where do you think we got that fire extinguisher that you hear in the beginning of the song (and see at our live concerts)? actually, a high school assembly, but that's another story...
we've had an interesting run of recordings in this band. here's a short history:
The Basement of Doom Tapes, 1994-96: using a boombox tape recorder, don, andrew and i recorded over 20 songs in our basement. contained in these horrible-quality tapes are the only known recordings of such hits/cacophonies as grasshopper suicide, neither has root beers, ballad of the strange man, don't splash water on billy and my personal favorite, bird hats. i might put one or two of these online someday just for fun, but don't tell me you weren't warned...
Grasscatcher, 1996: recorded at or uncle's studio in linden, virginia. it was our first time in the studio (now with eugene), we paid our uncle in heinekens (seriously). 10 songs, recorded over a weekend, tapes manufactured at Lion Recording (which had hundreds of dave matthews' remember two things albums lying around). much better quality, but timing and tuning weren't quite there yet. still fun to listen to.
Find Your Own Way Home, 1998: our first studio recording. there are some rough spots here and there, but overall it was and still is pretty impressive coming from a high school band. finding the name from a flyer we saw in the twinbrook music and arts store, we recorded at rolling hills in damascus, maryland. run by two brothers, greg and don snider, we spent about a week recording and mixing songs (while all eugene did was play redneck rampage all day long). it was manufactured at discmakers.
Online Albums, 1999-2002: recording using a hacked computer program in our basement. although the quality wasn't that good, we recorded a lot of songs that fans became familiar with and could sing along to in concerts. mosquito was followed by south of the border, makesure and bottlerocket superstar. we called our online albums "codes to the zion mainframe" and "find them and destroy them." although we finished most of the recordings to disregard the trip on that, fake tobey maguire and good friend ronjomp, they were never mixed or released.
The Espiritu Sessions, 2002: over about 4 days of recording, OKS churned out one final version of mosquito with their high school friend eric espiritu behind the mixing board. with the band's uncertain future, this could be the last full band song recorded or the beginning of something entirely new...
Monday, August 5 at 11:49 AM
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