Chapter 5: WHITELINEOVERRIDE

One of our “producers” thought we should wait and get a record deal before recording more. But we couldn’t sit around, we had spent so much time and our own money on these songs, so instead of waiting for a label to pony up the cash for us to record, we (for better or for worse) decided to produce and finish the album ourselves and sell it to a label so we could have more ownership. We couldn’t afford to keep going back to Chicago, but our trips there gave us the confidence (perhaps misguided) to produce the rest of the record ourselves in New York. We all lived in close proximity to one another, were either in college (them) or just out and unemployed (me), and we could spend tons of time on the band.

Now all we needed was a place to record it. Tom or Mark or both found Tiki studios out on Long Island, and it was a pretty sweet place. No home recording then, kids. You spent your hard earned or scammed money on the studio and bitch you are on the clock (Brandt would be in the poor house by now) and you worked. And worked we did. One of the reasons we decided to work there was the guys had me an engineer there named Kieran, who was into the kind of music we were doing and understood what we were going for. This was important as we wanted to be in control and not have to spend hours explaining to an engineer what we wanted to do. Nor did we want a “producer” telling us what labels wanted to hear or what was going to “sell”. We were making music for us and us alone.

The newer songs, like GEMINI SKY, COCKDIESEL and AIRLY, were solid and diverse tunes that we were excited to record. The studio was occasionally tedious as we were laying every sound to ADAT. But it was fun and exciting, and having Kieran there made things a lot easier than it might have been anywhere else. The Acumen boys came down and did some parts. People who were hearing it liked the newer stuff more than the material we had done in Chicago. We were cocky. We were meeting bands, playing gigs and making compilation appearances around the world. The album at that time was going to be called ICON 00. I’m not sure how I came up with that title, but it didn’t last and the album would eventually be called WHITELINEOVERRIDE. Of course you would think it was a drug reference, but let me tell you the true story. Ministry had done a mix of JESUS BUILT MY HOTROD,called the “Redline/Whiteline” mix. I loved the idea of sound overloading into white noise. And thus, Whitelineoverride meant we were taking (in my mind) one step further. Sorry Mark. No drugs.