SATURDAY NIGHT…

You sang the Bay City Rollers in your head, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?! 🙂

Yes, it’s Saturday November 8th, and you’d think I’d be gigging, or at least seeing a band. Nope. I don’t have a gig until Friday November 14th with Supernova. And since I will be out until all hours next Friday, the trade-off is that I stay home.

Aren’t I sweet?

So what am I doing while others are most likely galivanting around various towns? I’m working on guitar melodies for the new songs, also coming up with album cover ideas and listening to Loudness’ 1992 album.

I can’t do anything normal.

Let’s start with the guitar stuff. Today was a good day to iron out some ideas, and while I won’t get myself too attached to the melodies, they are coming out nicely. I always start with random notes, jumble them up and see where they land. I also play them dry, no amp or effects. And then when I work on them in the studio, I play with sounds. Maybe wah works best on one, a flanger on another. That’s the beauty of my music: it can go anywhere (or nowhere…yikes!) One thing is certain: the riffs and chord progressions are so strong, that the melodies might be more like soundscapes than actual “singing” type lines. Whatever gets the job done, right?

Album cover ideas…ah I had one, then threw it away. Well not really. I saved it for another day. But while I had a clear vision of a cover, things can change in a nanosecond. I played with visuals, lettering, colors; felt like I was back in art class from my high school days. One exception: I am not being told “Mr. Bello, you can’t do that!” (The arts in general love the words “no” and “you can’t” for some reason…) Right now I have something that could be really cool, definitely 80s-inspired but also in the present. After all, people want familiarity so why not split the difference between what I want and what the public wants?

I still don’t believe in total compromise though!

As for this Loudness album I mentioned…my friend Ko would burn me cds and when time would allow, I would listen to them. He and I are both Loudness fans, and we both vibe to the amazing guitar work of Akira Takasaki! One cd really surprised me years ago, which is their self-titled that came out in 1992. After trying to appease the Western market with more commercial-sounding vocal melodies and even hiring an American singer in Michael Vescera, they took back their dignity and released this SUPER HEAVY album that sounds like Pantera meets hints of early Metallica/Anthrax.

Oh the band is from Japan, if you couldn’t tell.

It’s funny: the whole point of being a musician is to express yourself, whether it’s through heavy metal, jazz, folk, whatever. But when the suits get involved, they try to mold you to what THEY want, which means it’s all about the bottom line. I wanted to be signed like everyone else back in the day. Looking back, it would have been the worst thing for me. I hate being told what to do, can take direction but never dictation. Watching bands like Loudness who were doing their own trip get molded into sounding like Poison or whatever…no dice. Just didn’t work at all. So when Loudness lost their American deal, they replaced the singer and bassist with the vocalist from EZO and bassist from X-Japan. Let me tell you, this 1992 album SMOKES!!!!

Which leads me to my new album: some parts of it will be super-melodic, but overall I think it will be quite heavy. That might turn some people off but whatever. I have to do what’s right. The last cd was heavy but fell flat in a lot of ways. This time, I had two years of depression to deal with, as well as coming up with material that would make my arm hairs stand up over and over. If I listened to a rough demo more than four times, it was a keeper. The rest were shown the door.

I will mention this: one song was re-written about four times since 2023. I loved the song title (and no I won’t say it here), and the chord changes but I was puzzled about something. What is it missing? Or do I need to totally throw the song out and start over? Thankfully, no. I re-wrote the song with the same chords but did one stupid human trick: put it in 5/8 time. And here’s the kicker…shh…no distortion at all. As Roger Glover of Deep Purple once said, “Heavy isn’t about volume, it’s about attitude.” I can write clean stuff that packs a punch too.

Watch me.