4.75 Inches of the Andy Fossett Rock Supreme

Cover art for the first edition of 100 copies

Back in early 2003, I got this idea that I should record a rock album.

At the time, I had been doing a lot of jamming, especially with a couple of drummers, and playing a kind of punk/dance/jazz hybrid that people seemed to enjoy, but we never got our act together well enough to put a band together.

Maybe it was all a reaction to playing bass four or five hours a day for the preceding year, but I suddenly began getting the urge to shred and and play guitar solos and stuff. It probably also had a lot to do with having finally gotten my Klein Electric (a guitar I had dreamed about owning for years) a few months earlier. In any event, most of my creativity was being channeled into bass playing, so I ended up relearning all my old songs on the guitar.

So I figured I might as well record them.

All together, I sold and gave away about 150 copies of the actual disc. Since then, I’ve made the music available for download from iTunes, and you can listen to previews and get the tracks from there.

Here’s what I wrote in the original liner notes:

So. Here we are. Now what? I guess I should use this space to tell you a little bit about the compact disc you are probably either holding or listening to right now.

I want to say starting off that this isn’t really indicative of the kind of music I usually make. Nor is it my best effort at recording my music. Sorry.

The thing is, somewhere around spring of 2003, I just had this feeling that I wanted to make a rock album. At that point I hadn’t played music that could be called “rock” in a couple of years or more, so it was a strange thing to be using distortion boxes and playing guitar solos again. I think I just needed to get some musical closure on my college years before moving to Japan and becoming a teacher. So I took a bunch of old songs I had written through high school and college and started working out new arrangements and finishing lyrics. after a couple of weeks, I had narrowed eight years of writing down to these twelve songs.

Then it came time to record. in the general spirit of nostalgia for my teen years, I rebuilt the the studio in which I learned to record using all the old gear my father had bought when I was a child. The main recording gear consisted of a Musimatic 2200 console and a Fostex A-8 reel-to-reel machine dating from the early 80s. Two tracks of the recorder wouldn’t track properly, so I ended up with six useable tracks for recording. Almost everything on this disc was processed through Hafler and ART guitar preamps before hitting the desk. I mixed everything down to stereo cassette on an old Magnavox deck and ran it into my PC for final sequencing and burning to disc. it was a really labor-intensive way to record compared to the system I use now, but it felt appropriate to the nature of the project.

I should mention that I feel really strongly about using my Klein electric guitar, Analogman stomp boxes, and Kendrick amplification. These excellent instruments are made by excellent people. I haven’t been quite so lucky with finding the magic bass gear yet.

The performance: I did all the vocals (i’m really, truly sorry for that, by the way) and played all of the instruments, with the exception of drums which were handled by Craig Webster. Craig is a great drummer, and I feel awful that I couldn’t do his performance justice in the recording and mixing aspects of this disc. We did all of the drums in about a day and a half, and all Craig had to base his parts on was a click and some rough guitar sketches. After that I overdubbed the rest of the parts, sticking to first and second takes only. I think the mixing took more time than the recording overall.

The songs:

1. I Like Girls - I’ve always been about honesty and simplicity in song-writing, and I think this is a good example. I wrote the basic ideas for this song in a cafe in Yokohama and filled out the details based on my experiences with various girlfriends and trying to figure out just exactly what the hell I am looking for.
2. I Would Sell My Lungs - I wrote this song for Melo after her 21st birthday. What a disaster.
3. I’m Totally Stupid - I once had a crush on a girl who worked at a Japanese restaurant. the time came when I had no choice but to just come out with it, and all I could think to tell her was that I was totally stupid for her. it wasn’t my best approach, and she was seeing someone, but a few months later, I got a date with her anyway.
4. Very Nice Hat - A girl I used to know once knitted a hat for me, and it was very nice. This song is not about her, but it is about giving and sharing and other good stuff like that.
5. I Like Watching Chicks Play Tennis - Back to the honesty theme. I was at a bar one afternoon, and they were showing the Australian Open on the TV. I don’t usually watch TV, but I was powerless to avert my gaze. I can’t remember the names of the players who had me so fixated, but at that particular point in time, they were the two hottest women to ever live.
6. Bug - I wrote this in high school when I was learning about metafiction and post-structuralism.
7. Language Lessons - This song is just for Shiloh, ‘cause she asked for it.
8. Here Goes, and Anyway… - I have some great friends. They know who they are. (I just listened back to this song again, and the vocals absolutely suck. I’m really sorry about that - I guess I should have done one more take…)
9. Types of Inertia - As a physics student, I realized one day that the only thing keeping me with my girlfriend of the time was inertia. The result was my best effort attempt at a straightforward rock song.
10. The Particles of a Party Girl - When Craig was over tracking drums, there was a little bit of leftover tape at the end of the second day. What you hear is pretty much straight improv with a guitar overdub.
11. Susan is Nanking -Michael and I wrote this for Susan’s 21st birthday. Nanking was a code for certain girls we knew back then.
12. The End - This one is pretty self-explanatory, I guess.

So that’s it. That’s all there is. I hope you enjoy at least some small part of the music that found its way onto this disc. If not, you can always use it as a coaster or something. If you do enjoy it, make copies for all your friends. I promise not to sue.

Anyway, it was fun to record, and I still enjoy listening to the songs from time to time. None of them are great by any standards, but that was never the point.