The Taste from Unfinished Business by Flatstick

I REALLY like this song. I'll redo this one for sure.

By this stage of the recording process I had bought my own Yamaha 16 track recorder, and bought the same drum machine, so this shit was done at my house. And because we had the same machines, they could take to each other.. Made life easier. So this is pretty much all me except for Gary's solo. There's 4 rhythm guitar parts, and it was done with my Belman 7 string that I eventually sold to buy the Universe. Still using the Boss GT6 for the guitar tones. I played bass on the fucker, as per usual, and I think towards the end of the song the bass cuts out.

The intro I wanted to do that Korn style of taking the riff and playing it with shit tone on one string.

Gary really liked the keyboard part I came up with. I learned it on guitar first and just programmed it in using keyboard sounds later. I tried to make it Zappa sounding with Meshuggah style rhythms in the background. That was the goal, anyways. He said it had an American movie soundtrack vibe to it. Hell, I'll take it!

Verse was your typical chill out Massive Attack style vibe. Came together pretty quickly.

Actually, Gary wrote the pre chorus part (I'm preaching gospel..). He played me that chord progression and I asked if we could put it in the song, he was happy to go along with it. I know the vocals are a bit Dream Theater-y during that part, that was not intentional, because I'm not a super duper huge fan of those guys at all. That's just what came out. And yes, I am playing bass on this fucker.

Gary also really liked the second verse where the drums don't kick in right away. I think I got that from Portishead or some shit. I'm a huge fan of Massive Attack's Mezzanine and The Orb's Orblivion. Certain albums of that genre. And I do adore Portishead's Portishead.

My vocals were supposed to be distorted during the chorus, we didn't get around to doing that yet.

Obviously the song is about alcohol, something Gary and I were pretty into. He liked Jack Daniels and I liked beer. He had a drink driving accident and I was a binge drinker who pissed a lot of people off. This is us doing an anti drinking song, ha ha, and we were drunk during the vocals! It was Gary's idea to pour the drink during "fuck you's all".. he went to the trouble of getting a proper glass with ice and pouring rum or some other dark elixir into it. There were a few takes of that. And of course, the booze was not wasted.

And did you notice angel and devil on the shoulders during the second verse? Hard left / right pan for that part. The drinker's internal struggle with booze. My idea.

During the confrontation in the middle of the song, we were going to add a pub crowd scene and make it sound as authentic as possible. Didn't get to it. That would have sounded cool. The Orb are good at that. But they use nature sounds and shit.

Gary's solo is GREAT!! He was a little annoyed cuz one note toward the end was out of key, I yelled at him to leave it. I even like my solo, and that don't happen much.

I like the fading outro.

I will redo this song. We also had a song that I can't find the recording to called Crystals and Sand, as well as Batter's Box..Those two are in my head, and they are ass kickers!! I'll record those at some stage.

Flatstick was originally a two man project between Melbourne musicians, John Sanders (AKA: Doug Steele) and Gary McKay (R.I.P.). The sound created by the two is best described as Faith No More meets Strapping Young Lad meets Frank Zappa meets Meshuggah meets Pantera meets Mr. Bungle meets Korn, and a dash of jazz (and a slice of electronic dance).

flatstickkindarocks.com
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