Selfish video

I've always regretted not getting much of a visual document of myself playing the music on my recordings. So when I do this bass line, I'm going to set up a camera.

I don't generally insist on making everything I do "real" ... for the most part, it's low on my list of priorities. The definition of "real" in art is constantly shifting anyway. But for this, I want it to be real. I want to have actual footage of me playing the actual take that makes it into the final mix. I'm going to try to get one complete take that's as perfect as possible without requiring me to patch anything up afterwards, so I can watch it and say "there, that's me playing the bass part that's in the final mix" without (m)any disclaimers.

I'll be in front of the large living room window, shot framed such that I could just as well be outdoors. I hope a bird or a squirrel or something comes into the shot when I'm doing the winning take.

Last time I videotaped myself playing a song was Lice Blue Hue, and that was just guitar and voice, no overdubs. I think I did over a dozen takes before I got one I liked. I refused to edit, punch anything in, whatever, because I wanted for once to capture an actual performance. This will be kind of like that except that it is an overdub, and it will just be the bass part. The video recording of this obviously won't be the official film for the song, though I may drop bits of it in here and there. I will, however, preserve it in full just to have it.

One big problem in the past, not only with Slab, but with anything else on the rock opera, is that I haven't injected much of my real life into it. I think my recordings got more interesting when I started doing that. I would have never thought to "perform" Slab ... it's always been a thing of, oh, that song can't actually be performed, it's not that kind of song, it has to be surreal in order to work, blah blah blah. I think seeing myself play the bass part, as a human being with a face, will force me to change the way I feel about it.

I don't even know how I'd classify the song. If you ignore the chord progression and just focus on the style, what is it? Sort of, uh, '80s synth rock meets circus music?