The next logical step with the band was to record. Mike from Beer City had showed up at a Milwaukee show we played and said he was starting a record label division of Beer City Skateboards and that he wanted us to be Beer City Records number one! We were super amped and decided to get on it. Mike wanted to do a four song seven inch with the first hundred on clear vinyl, and he said he'd even pay for the recording time. Chuck Uchida from NO EMPATHY had a new studio he was doing stuff at that was called Attica-because it was in an attic. We didn't know anyone else in town who did recording and he had the date we needed available, so Chuck became our producer-even if only by default.
Working with Chuck was a great experience for us. He was the real thing, man! He knew what all the little knobs on your amp did and how to tune drums (you can TUNE drums! Who knew??), politely correcting our musical foibles as fast as we could make them.
Johnny did an amazing drawing for the back cover and I found a great photo of this little girl smoking a giant cigar for the front cover from this great, warped, photography book I like called Children
Of Many Lands. We decided to title it Polly Wolly Crappy and decided on Inspiration Point, Candy, Truth, and Sausage Party as the four songs and headed off to the studio.
The recording went way better than we thought it would. We had been practicing the four songs like madmen and nailed all the instrumental tracks pretty quick. I went in and did my vocals pretty quick as well. We'd been doing these songs for some time and I'd sung them a thousand times each, so I knew where I was going. This would be a far cry from a couple incidents later where I'd be sitting in one room writing lyrics while the guys were in the other laying down the tracks.
Actually, the only real difficulty we ran into was trying to get a good sound out of the bong we'd brought to put on the beginning of Sausage Party (because nothing says 'Wildwood dirtballs' like bongs and sausage parties). That song kind of embarrasses me now and even then it got old pretty quick, but it worked. People liked it and seemed to know the words, and it had kinda become the unofficial Wildwood party anthem.
But-recording a bong is hard. Chuck stared at us like we were special needs children as we bickered back and forth about the best way to get good bong tone. We tried different amounts of water, different lengths of draw, with weed, without weed-finally after about thirty takes it sounded right and Chuck's head drooped in relief.
That day I learned of something called a "mixdown". A "mixdown" is the excruciating process of listening to every song, in ten second increments, with minute knob turning, over and over and over, for about eight hours. It's the musical version of the Bataan Death March. By the time we walked outta there that evening, I wanted to sleep for a week.
Mike came down from Milwaukee towards the end and was stoked on the final project, even joining Arnold, Tom, Rob and some other friends for the gang backing vocals on Inspiration Point. We lingered outside for a while as we loaded out of the studio that night, basking in the crisp air and sense of accomplishment. Our first record. It was a heady feeling, man-that something tangible was about to come out of all this insanity. Mike took the master tapes and the artwork and headed back to Milwaukee, Beer City Records number one was in the can. We went home to wait...
