We are now at the BBC studios in London, setting up equipment for our Peel Session! The studio we are in is pretty nice; definitely not the nicest we’ve ever been in. There is some kind of BBC orchestra practicing down the hall from us! There is an engineer here and basically we have the whole day to record about 4 songs. We are probably one of the smallest bands who has ever done a Peel session. This is a great honor for us. The show with us will be broadcast in 3 weeks I guess. We will get ONE cassette from this; not even a DAT. We are told NOT TO LOSE the cassette.
We finally broke down and ate McDonald’s today. And I finally had to try a Pepsi MAX – do you know what it is? “Pepsi – with MAXIMUM TASTE and NO SUGAR” — ICK!!!!!!
later…
So we’re somewhere in the middle of our recording session. I have the computer underneath my keyboard so I can play with it while people are screwing with their equipment. I keep feeling weird recording in a real studio with this band, keyboards and all. I feel like a novice at playing but like somewhere in a past life I was a recording musician. We have to record 4 songs; we’re recording everything all together in the same room. We have done about 3 or 4 tries on each song, so it’s not taking us too long. We’re recording 20 minutes of material and it’s going to take us 12 hours; 2 hours to set up, about 5 hours to record, and 5 hours to mix it down. Then we get our cassette tape. I tried to tell them we didn’t have a cassette player; that all we had were DAT players, but they wouldn’t fall for it.
About accents
Around my 3rd day in London I noticed that I had to make a concious effort to say things “American.” It’s really weird; you feel stupid saying certain things in your own accent, just subliminally stupid. So you start talking quieter and a using phrases like “as well” instead of “also” and “sorry” instead of “excuse me.” And then you start worrying that you’re speaking with a poseur British accent so you start talking with a southern drawl just to compensate. And then you really feel dumb!
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