Recording Notes
Good Morning Spider was recorded in Linkous’ 16-track home studio set up in a rented house outside Richmond, Virginia. An arsenal of thrift-store keyboards and discarded equipment was employed to give the album its distinctive sound. In a 1999 interview, Linkous listed some of his favorite gear:
“I have a lot of cheap, little keyboards and this octagon thing and this synth module that has a zillion different sounds in it. A lot of the keyboards I got at thrift stores. I have a little Casio SK-1 that has a built in sampler. My favorite microphone I found at the landfill. It was on a CB base station. I’ve got these wireless intercoms from the ‘50s from an auction from a dentist’s office.”
Linkous experimented with songs and sounds on the album; the song “Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man” is notable for its middle section, which consists of nothing but radio static. This was done intentionally by Linkous, who not only wanted the recording to sound like an AM radio station broadcast, but also feared that the song was too catchy otherwise and would end up being used by Capitol Records as a radio single. As he deadpanned to the online music blog Swizzle-Stick at the time, “‘Happy Man’ kind of sounds like everything on the radio. Who needs that?” Eventually, Linkous was convinced by Eric Drew Feldman to re-record a radio-friendly version of “Happy Man” without the static at Easley McCain Recording studios in Memphis, Tennessee. Easley was chosen because some of Linkous’ favorite artists like Pavement, Cat Power and Guided By Voices had previously recorded there.
In 2001, Linkous defended his unique, idiosyncratic sound: “None of music is that weird at all. It’s not that inaccessible. …A lot of other people, especially in America, think it’s really weird or experimental. But it doesn’t seem weird to me at all. Blink 182 seems weird to me.”
Vic Chesnutt was scheduled to appear on the album but couldn’t make it to the sessions. So Linkous inserted Chesnutt’s phone message apology into the song “Sunshine”.
Read more about this topic: Good Morning Spider
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