![]() With all this weirdness I realized it was time to revamp Platypus. He would show up between tours to work with us and add his beautifully low-fi input (i.e The Bends). Mike was really into Joe Meek, the Peter Thomas soundtrack to Raumpatrouille, Kagel and the tangos of Troilo. I remember him going to raves a lot back then. Trey was listening to his own collection of weird stuff as well-exotica, electro-acoustic, noise, middle eastern, techno. My girlfriend lived in Florida so I had a lot of time to sit around and write "rock songs" (Phelgmatics) based on a twelve-tone row. Carry Stress in the Jaw, for instance includes a section that is directly inspired by Tim Berne. I started bringing my upright bass to rehearsals and some of the stuff I wrote on this record is clearly steeped in some kind of jazz. That said, we all ended up on the same page in terms of making a really weird, somewhat conceptual album. Mike was on tour a lot, I was playing "jazz" in "restaurants", Bar was driving a shrimp truck, and god knows what the other guys were doing. We never heard anything from WB and by the time we were ready to record again the entire staff had changed anyway so nobody knew us. The point was, we'd all randomly play three notes in sequence, but we couldn't go home until all three of us landed on the same last note. We came up with this stupid game called Three Notes. Then we'd stay in the studio all night wasting time to the point of delirium. "Rehearsals" usually started with a trip to the taqueria. We had a little makeshift ADAT recording studio set-up and there are hours upon hours of documented experimental pieces, improvs, half-baked ideas and crank phone calls. Mike was busy with FNM but he was kind enough to let us use his house for rehearsing. It was the first time in our lives we actually HAD to start thinking about writing a record. The first time we got together after that tour we just sat around with our instruments staring blankly at each other, somewhat embarrassed, not knowing what to do. A good six months went by before Trey, Danny and I played music together. ![]() ![]() We came home with a little bit of money but also a bill for $5,000 in damages. I remember complaining a lot and worrying about getting enough sleep. We had done some small week-long stints on the West and East Coasts but the tour of '92 was our first real tour and it was basically us kids in charge, let loose on the US. About a year after recording the first disc we finally toured.
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