StickNick dot Com - Music

Dave only played with us a few times after the Metallica concert. Be that as it may, I owe him quite a bit. He managed to get me interested in a new aspect of playing: effect pedals.

Up until that point I got my distortion from a gain switch on my amp. It was constantly set to overdrive. Pretty basic stuff. There was no need for a clean sound as Die-Oxide was anything but.

Besides his guitar and amp, Dave brought an Overdrive, a Flanger, and a Boss Digital Delay (and I still use Boss Digital Delays to this day). He set up, plugged in and wanted to get going. I was a little perplexed at the chain of pedals he had set up but it all made sense after the first few minutes of playing.

Doug, Geoff, and myself busted into "Across The Waters...". Dave sat there for a second or two, taking it in, then started playing. He picked up the rffs pretty quickly and the sound of two guitars blaring the crunch together was amazing. The band whipped through the intro, pre-verse, and verse. We then paused for the beginning of the first bridge, which was a two bar guitar bit that I played. Then, when Doug and Geoff came in, out of nowhere came this swoosh of grating, echo fading in and out of the crunch of the bridge. I looked over and Dave was scraping his pick up and down the strings. His fingers flew in a strange pattern of hammer-ons that were echoing and swooping in and out.

I stopped playing and stared at him. Dave stared right back. It was as if the idea that no one had heard of effect pedals before was crazy. I mean, what guitarist out there has not heard of them.

Needless to say Dave spent about half an hour showing me the effects and how they worked and how the could be applied to riffs and leads.

With that out of the way, we went back to working on "Across The Waters...". By now we pretty much had a finished song that ran about four and a half minutes in length. It bobbed and weaved all over the place; there was a lot of start/stop/new riff/start/stop. Thinking back, this was because a lot of the big Metal bands (as well as the up and comers) were taking this approach to songwriting. You just had to stuff as many riffs into a song as possible. It was the second time in my life I was extremely happy with music I had helped create. The first was Twilight Zone two years prior.

I wasn't the only one who was excited. The rest of the band was pretty stoked as well. We farted around some more and the beginnings of another were born. Shitty though, it was nearing two in the afternoon and we knew that my folks would be back soon so we packed it up for the day.

Dave took his guitar, but left the pedals so I could fuck around with them and for the rest of the week I did just that.

The Flanger was cool but not my cup of tea. I couldn't get much more than feedback out of the Overdrive so I put that aside. The Digital Delay, on the other hand, I fell in love with. It would take me another five or six years to really pump a DD for all it was worth but right then and there, I knew there was cool shit could be done with this small, light grey stomp box...

... especially the next weekend when Dave suggested I plug the DD and Flanger into the mic instead of the guitar.

There was a middle part to "Across The Waters..." where I didn't really scream/sing. Rather I talked it. And when we hit that part and I kicked in the effects it sounded like the voice of Satan was speaking over top of our immature Metal riffs.

Awesome.

One Saturday afternoon the four of us were bashing through the songs at full fucking volume. We were tearing it up old school style. All of a sudden Doug, Geoff, and Dave stopped dead in their tracks. Me? I kept going for nearly a full verse before I realized I was playing solo.

The three of them had weird looks of dread combined with mild amusement on their faces. I stopped playing and screaming and looked at them: "What the fuck?"

I turned around an my dad was standing at the bottom of the basement stairs glaring at me. After a second, he went off on a full tangent: "What the hell do you think you're doing? I can hear that noise all the way up at the top of the street! This is disgusting!"

And on and on. The three guys sheepishly packed up their stuff and left while I sat there and listened to dad, and then mum, go off on me about the "shit in the basement".

This didn't stop us from playing on Saturdays anymore, but Dave never showed up to play again. Die-Oxide was a three piece band once more. Shitty as that was - the sound of the second guitar was missed - we plugged on and completed the second song (fuck, I wish I could remember the name of it!). So all was ok, I guess, even though I had to listen to mum and dad periodically go off about the "noise in the basement".

Shortly after Dave had left the band, we had decided to record our two songs. Doug (or was it Geoff?) knew this guy who had a mini studio in his basement and had told us that he could record us for next to no money. Knowing what I know now about recording, we should have skipped this offer, but we were still naive teenagers in a band who wanted to record and maybe even play a show sometime.

I can't remember the guys name, nor the actual street he lived on, but he had requested that we all bring headphones - not to wear while recording, but rather to record with - as in use as microphones. He told us that this was pretty standard stuff so we all brought a couple of pairs of our Walkman headphones (and for those of you who remember the low end headphones of the late 90's). packed up our crap (guitars, amps and our one mic - the guy had a drum set there) and bussed it out to this guys place.

It took us a fucking hour and a half to find the house and when we did we were hot, cranky, and thirsty. The guy himself made Geoff look as skinny as Doug and I, and man was he an arrogant prick. He had this nice little rehearsal room set up in the basement of what was, we found out, his parents house. There was a drum set right where you walked in, followed by a table that was set up with a tried and true Fostex four track, and then an empty space where we set up our meager little amps and mic stand...

... side note: The mic stand was one I had made in shop class. It consisted of four, steel feet that I had arc welded together which were attached to a steel tube. I had inserted a steel piece at the top which I had lathed to be the size of my mic clip, and then bent it at the height I wanted it: low ... a la James Hetfield style. The whole thing was painted shiny black and it was my pride and joy.

We set up, the fat guy took all our headphones and plugged them into a mixing board, which was attached to the four track, then told us to start playing.

We busted into "Across The Waters..." and we no more than a minute and a half in when the guy told us to stop.

"What the FUCK was that?" he yelled. "Holy shit, you can't play that loud! The headphones can't handle it!"

We laughed. I mean fuck, we were a Metal band. We told him there was no turning down. He said he could record us, he was going to record us so we busted into the song again. He looked so confused and out of his element. We'd found out later on that he was used to recording people with acoustic guitars and rock and country bands. He had never experienced anything like Die-Oxide (or it's influences).

After about an hour, we gave up. He gave up. Fuck that. We packed up our shit and left. It was no use fighting. We realized that this was not the guy to record our shit. So we settled on the obvious choice:

We'd do it ourselves, in my folks basement, on a ghetto blaster... just like every other new band did in the 80's. There was no GarageBand. There were no inexpensive ways record great sounding music. You went out and spent ten bucks on a high end, Sony chromium dioxide blank tape, plugged it into the 'blaster, hit record, and fucking had at it.

This is what we did. In One afternoon we had recorded our two song demo by playing/recording - stopping/listening - rinse/repeat. In the end we were all rather pleased with ourselves. The recordings were pretty clear and the songs were the best we'd ever played them.

Later that afternoon tried to get mum and dad to listen to it and appreciate it. They listened, but they sure as hell didn't appreciate it. It didn't matter how proud I was of it, to them it was "Noise". Nothing more, nothing less. There was no convincing them otherwise. So I holed myself up in my room, listened to our demo and worked on creating a cover for it.

I no longer have a copy. I know I did hand it out to a large pile of people, all of whom said that they enjoyed it (and I'm sure a few of them meant it). I really wish I still had a copy. As mentioned, I was super proud of what our 16 year old asses had written, performed, and recorded. For three kids who had simply picked up instruments and decided to form a band, it was good. Had we had some sort of backing (by people who had an idea of how the business aspect of music worked) and some more support (I say glaring at my folks) then maybe Die-Oxide could have been something special in the Ottawa scene.

As much as I love the band I am in now, and as much as I still am in awe of our progression over the past couple of years, nothing stands out in my mind like the sheer rawness and innocence that was Die-Oxide in 1989.

Myself, Doug, and Geoff: Die-Oxide 1989.

But no matter. That iteration of Die-Oxide was one of the most important parts of my early musical life and I enjoyed every second of it; right up until Doug decided to become a hardcore, crust punk. Within a month, he had moved his drum set out of my folks basement and vanished again. Geoff and I were back to playing at his place.

This worked out though. In the six or so months that Doug was AWOL, Geoff and I wrote a pile of songs that defied convention. Eventually Doug re-appeared wanting to play drums again...

... and he informed us that he had gotten us a show.

... to be continued.