biography commentary discography links photos reviews The Tunes Of Double Negative The Highlands: Tom - I had been listening to a lot of Celtic music and wanted to write a tune that reflected my roots. I live on a Mountain in the Blue Ridge of Virginia so the Scottish Highlands seems like the perfect inspiration for the tune. The opening drone was produced with a highly programmed treatment of a single note on the Flute. Once the drone was there the melody just wrote itself. Now... a majority of traditional Scottish songs seem to be about war or lost love so I decided to make the second section a march with further development of the opening drone melodies. I had recently purchased an Alto Clarinet and wanted to use the tried and true "Muffins Electric Bass and Alto Clarinet Unison" sound as an accompaniment to Dave's Organ Solo. I liked the idea of an accompaniment that eventually takes over the solo, so..... the counterplay between the solo and the accompaniment exchange positions during this section. The ending was really fun to write, the organ plays a repeating reel that allows for a very open sounding Soprano Sax and Bass duet full of melody and counter point interplay. Writing Blind: Dave - The title comes from a news report of a Russian sub that sank with its entire crew aboard. The Russian government was severely criticized for not acting quickly enough to save the crew. Apparently, when they recovered the sub and inspected its contents, they found a piece of paper in the captain's pocket. It was a good-bye note written to his wife. At the time that he wrote it, all power had been lost in the sub, which of course meant, the reported stated, that he had been writing blind.The opening piano bit I had originally intended to fade out entirely before the rest of the band kicked in. Tom mixed it as fading, but then brought the band in right at the point where you think it's about to drop out. I thought that idea was the least obvious (and better) of the two, and so we kept it. For Tom's opening sax solo, I asked him to play it like he was screaming into the night. At one point, toward the end of the solo, you can actually hear more of his voice than alto sax. I love Billy's fast-as-heck bass playing there. Those too-many-notes he's playing allows Tom to ignore the rhythm and play above it. I play the following organ melody, but Tom plays it when we perform it live. The timpani and tubular bells at the end of the melody are Tom's idea. Paul hated the “naked-drum-lick" during the middle of the solo piano part. I had written it that way, but he wanted something added to it so it didn't sound so naked. Tom put in the tubular bell hit and bending timpanis there. It was one of the last changes on the recording. The first time Paul and I heard it was after we had sent it on for mastering. We laughed so hard we almost fell over! It reminded us of a Warner Brothers cartoon. We could just picture Yosemite Sam being hit with an anvil and shaking back and forth in one spot till he stopped vibrating. That's Paul on loud guitar over top of the big horn band. I think he's playing through a Marshall. Tom and Paul can comment more on that. He recorded it over at Tom's studio. The clarinet choir at the end was originally a bass clarinet melody that I played and made up on the spot at Tom's studio. Tom and I came up with the idea to “computer harmonize” it so that it sounded like 3 off-kilter clarinets playing together. Tom later decided to just re-learn the “computer harmonized” parts and play them straight on clarinet and alto clarinet. A remarkable feat, really. Choombachang: Dave - Paul had (unbelievably) gotten in touch with Marshall Allen, one of the original alto sax players from Sun Ra's great Arkestra, and had (doubly unbelievably) gotten him to agree to come down and record with us! As icing-on-the-cake, Marshall was bringing along another alto sax player, Knoel Scott, from the Arkestra's more recent incarnation. We had originally wanted Marshall and Knoel to just record solos on "5:00 Shadow" (which was, at the time, being called "Minotaur" - more on that later) and maybe play with us on a few improvs. But as the weeks progressed I got more and more excited about the prospect of playing with these great jazz guys. "Choombachang" came along as an answer to this anticipation. I was practicing sax with my son, Sam (he plays alto in his school band), and the beginning baritone line just popped up out of nowhere. I took a break to record it, and the 2nd and 3rd lines quickly followed. The whole tune was written in a straight line in about 10 minutes. (It's moments like these that make me believe that the muses are out there working their stuff on us lowly musicians - almost like the composition is already there, fully formed, it just needs to be freed and set loose! By the time I was finished recording the basic idea of it, I felt as though I hadn't done a thing - like it had written itself! Bizarre!) The day arrived. We set up the session at Paul's house in Baltimore, MD. Marshall and Knoel came down by train. I remember that I was suffering from the last stages of the flu. I felt terrible. It was all I could to remain in a standing position, let alone play kick-ass jazz with two great sax players. Marshall and Knoel could not have been nicer. They were very flexible and open to any ideas that we threw their way. And they regaled us with wonderful Sun Ra stories when we weren't recording. Paul and Debbie provided all of us with a great lunch. Knoel ended up playing the solo on "Choombachang". I had originally approached Marshall with it, but once he heard that I wanted a kind of bluesy solo, he nominated Knoel. Knoel nailed the solo in one take. I videoed him playing it, and that's the solo we have on the CD and on film. BTW, I had wanted Knoel to end his solo earlier than he did, but we all ended up liking his "over-hanging" alto bit there at the end. It's those happy "accidents" that sometimes give certain songs their souls, I think. The Batman-type riff there is a tip of the hat to the rumor that we'd heard for years that it was Sun Ra's Arkestra that played the theme for the 60's TV show. Marshall denied this, but Billy still believes it's true. Paul - The Arkestra did some music for BATMAN - maybe not on the original theme, but it is documented in more than one place that they and some of the members of the Blues Project were involved. This had to be the fastest tune I ever learned....we recorded it what? 10 minutes after 2 takes? Life should be that easy - sorta ersatz Batman!! Dave - Doug Elliot came in later and put down the trombone solos, also in one take, I believe (complete with bathroom plunger wa-wa) and added to the horn section, which is just Tom and me. The Ugly Buttling: Tom - I wrote this tune for my youngest daughter Tara. Dave had reservations about the title until I shared with him the source of the title, so lets get this out of the way right now. Tara came into this world as a precipitous breach birth. Which means she was born very quickly and she was born backwards (at home and into my waiting hands, I might add). There are two kinds of breach birth that I know about. One is a "footling" and is very dangerous for mother and child. The other is a "buttling" and is (to my knowledge) the safest way to be born breach. Thank the Good Lord, Tara was born a buttling. Being a buttling is a fact that Tara is very proud of. One day when Tara and I were discussing the Story of "The Ugly Duckling" I shared with her that if she weren't so beautiful we could have called her "The Ugly Buttling", being six years old, Tara had a good laugh at the idea of being called any kind of a Buttling. In fact, all I have to do to get a giggle out of her is to say "Buttling", but now I digress. I wrote the rhythm section to this tune and waited until the final rhythm tracks were recorded before I wrote the melodies. It worked out great because the interpretation Paul and Billy did on the rhythm tracks charged the tune and influenced my melody writing. When it came time to record the Rhythm section Dave asked me to do the Organ part. So many new songs had been writen for Double Negative that Dave wasn't yet comfortable with the organ part. "Buttling" is written in two sections. The first is a solo-melody-solo 15/8 swing...yes, you can make 15/8 swing. In fact, I think Dave and I did a rather good job of a 15/8 swing sax section, however, I did put a few bars of 4/4 in the middle so Billy could turn on his Fuzz Bass and "Rock the Room". Of course once you let Billy play the Fuzz Bass he is going to want a fuzz bass melody, so...the last section starts with a duet for cello and fuzz bass. Then Billy rejoins the rhythm section as a 16 piece string section plays the closing melody over Dave's driving tenor and bari sax section. Yeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaa! The Man in the Skin-Painted Suit: Dave - This is for Robert Wyatt - he used to paint a shirt and tie onto his upper body when he played with Soft Machine in the early days. The title marks it for him, but I also wanted some part of the melody and/or the instrumentation to sound like something that he might do, one of his kind of Latin melodies. I hope I've come close. Originally, this tune had another piano melody in the 1st section, but I recorded the 2nd section piano melody first and by the time it was almost finished and ready for the 1st section melody, it didn't fit anymore - I ended up liking the contrast of all horns in the first part and then piano in the 2nd. Tom had already inserted an alto melody of his own in that 1st section, which I liked a lot as soon as I heard it. (This is an example of something that we did on this album that we hadn't done much of before - add actual melodies and harmonies and even parts and extra instruments to each other's compositions. This collaborative process really gave many of the tunes a whole new spin.) So I asked him to add some more sax melodies onto that first part. He added two more during the last week of mixing, and we were done. Childhood's End: Tom - I wrote this tune for my daughter Ena. She has decided to follow in her fathers footsteps and is becoming quite the accomplished alto sax player. Watching her grow from child to adult has been an enlightening experience. I saw her one day during this growth process playing with one of her dolls (she pretty much looked the part of a woman already), I asked her if she still enjoyed playing with her dolls, and she answered "every once and a while". I remember thinking to myself that I might never see her playing as a child again... and in reality, I never did. She is deep in the transition at the time of this writing, it takes years you know, and pretty much all is going well...I will never see Little Ena again, but Big Ena is, bit by bit, turning out to be a really enjoyable adult. This tune starts off with an almost child like melody, in a easy 4/4 time feel. No sooner than eight bars in, the timing changes to a slightly awkward 10/8 (this is, after all, a tune about one of life's most challenging transitions). After Dave had recorded the baritone sax melody he added a line he had in his head, it was a great counterpoint part that enters second time through the melody. The Bass bridges us into the next section. I tried to capture the tension and emotional growth created by maturation in this section... the struggle to integrate new feelings and an ever changing moodiness. At this point the melody is two handfuls of notes struggling to work in synchronicity. Only by working together do they create the desired effect. The melody that Billy plays in the section after this represents for me the beauty of the new heart that develops out of that turmoil. At this point the emerging adult is not quite finished with the process but is definitely more an adult than a child (it is kind of a sweet sorrow feeling and the melody reflects this emotion). Next comes my favorite section of this song. I really love the ensemble sound. It is definitely my favorite flute line I have ever done. This final section represent the end result...a responsible, fully developed adult... hopefully! Exquisite Corpse: Dave - I had just finished listening to Kraan ("Borgward") from Progday 2002. It's a kick-ass rock number, and I wanted The Muffins to play something solid-rocking like that. Section 1 - This is one of those tunes that wasn't completely fleshed-out when we went to record the basic tracks. For a long time I was just listening to drums, bass and piano on this first section. I remember very clearly being in the parking lot of Borders listening to it for the 30th time, when that big band horn section came to me. I kept that part playing on my car stereo singing the horn section out loud the whole way home so that I would remember it well enough to record it. Thankfully, I got home to the studio and got it on tape before the muses took offense and reclaimed it. The rounds at the end came later. (I love rounds!) Section 2 - That's me playing flarinette, which is just a flute with a bass clarinet mouthpiece. It's natural key seems to be something on the exotic side. Section 3 - Paul on spaceship guitar. My piano chord progressions there are from the Jan Hammer / Mahavishnu school of playing. Section 4 - Ahhh...the leprechaun percussion ensemble! Billy said all along that he wanted toys and little percussion instruments on some part of the album. This seemed like the best spot. He mailed Tom a box of assorted noise-makers. Tom spent most of an afternoon (5 hours?) recording each sound individually and placing it in just the right spot. Huzzah! Section 5 - This was one of the last sections to get overdubs. I was really stumped about what to put in here. I had written a double alto / tenor line, but didn't like it. It was Tom's suggestion to just improvise one horn at a time and build a kind of weaving multi-solo construct. I put down the tenor first, then the baritone, then Tom put the alto overtop. I really liked how it came out - sounds like the horn players were just having lots of fun...and we were! Section 6 - Janusch is speaking in Czechoslovakian. I asked him many years ago to record himself speaking in Czech and reminiscing about the small town that he grew up in. I'm...hoping that's what he actually ended up recording. The background sounds are Amy on violin and Doug on trombone. They were told to play like they were mice running around in Janusch's head. Section 7 - A whole tone scale. I asked Tom to play his sax solo like he was running so fast he was getting ahead of himself. Tom interpreted it as one of those dreams where you run as fast as you can, but never get anywhere. Section 8 ) Ahhh...more rounds! (Can't get enough of those rounds. I fell in love with rounds when I discovered Moondog - he's an old blind "hippie" composer who made a couple of albums. He uses rounds really well. Check him out if you've never heard him.) Altos first, then baritones, tenors and trombones, last come the sopranos. By the time we finished these final rounds, I think "Exquisite Corpse" clocked in at 54 overdubs - the most on the album. (Tom, does it still hold that record?) Our one fade out. Finally, a note about the title. It was originally going to be called "Hungry Ghosts", nabbed from a poem by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827). The Hungry Ghosts Flowers scattering - the water we thirst for far off, in the mist. I had e-mailed Steve Feigenbaum (Wayside/Cuneiform) about it. He told me that one of his other bands, Djam Karet, had taken that title for one of their songs on an album that was already in the works, further along than ours. I guess somebody over there was reading the same book of Japanese haikus that I was. So then it was between calling the tune "Half A World Away" and "Exquisite Corpse". Billy said it had to be "Exquisite Corpse" because of the way it had been written. The dada-ists used to do a collaborative art thing with the same name. They would take a piece of paper and fold it into thirds with two horizontal lines. One artist would draw a "head" of some kind at the top of the paper. He or she would continue the two lines of the "neck" down into the top of the second section and pass it on to the second artist. Without looking at the "head", the second artist would pick up from the "neck" lines and draw the "body", again continuing down the two lines from the "body" into the third section. The third artist would then finish up the "corpse" by drawing the "legs", again without looking at the other two sections. With all of that in mind, "Exquisite Corpse" DID seem to be the best title after all. Tom - It does indeed hold the title of "most tracks tune". Next Page © 2006-2008 ProgScape Entertainment.