NotThatBright
New member
The thread title is an homage to one of the best lines of an excellent movie (Platoon), which happens right after King gets in the helicopter to leave Vietnam for good.
Forgive the verbosity of this post. I can't say that it will be worth the time you spend reading it, but what the hey.
I'm done with any kind of home recording (and by extension this website) until such time as I'm living in a place where I can play drums again, which likely won't be for a year or more. Thank you to all you guys who helped me out with stuff, gave opinions on mixes, or just shot the shit with me when I was bored.
This is the first song I ever wrote. I actually wrote and recorded my first version of this about two weeks after I had acquired drums, a bass and a guitar (a year and several months ago)- it was on a Tascam 4-track recorder that I bought off amazon one night when I was trying to think of a way to motivate myself to actually learn to play the instruments I had just bought. I saw recording as a way to "make learning fun"... which sounds like something a high school teacher would say in the month between when she gets out of college and when her idealistic spirit is completely broken by the sheer indifference and cruelty of the kids she's trying to teach.
I believe I recorded this second, more polished version of this song (which appears here) shortly before when I got on this website for the first time and started learning how to do actually do this stuff properly. At the time I remember thinking that I nailed this mix... and compared to the stuff I had recorded before, I did. This was done with my Tascam DP-24 mixer, which I still use today, but with one overhead mic (an SM57) and the cheapest drum mics I could find on Amazon- some CADs. The first decent drum mic I ever bought was a D112 (a kick mic). I can't remember if I had it at this time... if I did, I obviously had no clue how to EQ or mix it yet (though I don't think the kick sounds totally bad).
This song, GARY BUSEY, is a song that I actually started writing at a local diner when I was 16 or 17 after a regular weekend night of high school drinking. One of the guys I was with was a few years older and was playing in a local punk band (a neighbor of mine who was a cool guy but I seldom hung out with), and I told him that I was going to write him a song for his band because I just assumed I'd be a great songwriter. I came up with the idea of writing a song about Gary Busey... I suppose because he seemed like an admirable person. I think I'd only seen him in Lethal Weapon by that point in my life, but I must have heard something about his exploits/insanity to have made me think he'd be a good subject for a song (this would have been around '94, which, for all intents and purposes, was "before the internet"). I grabbed a napkin and pen from the lady running the place and was off. My aforementioned friend and I went back and forth writing verses that I'm sure were great. I don't remember if we had girls with us, but if I had a girlfriend with me at the time, I probably deserved to get dumped for this.
20+ years later, when I wrote this version, all I could remember from the song we wrote that night was the first line... "Gary Busey, la la la". So as soon as I could play a simple drumbeat, I came up with a simple melody, started with that excellent first line, and wrote a song in the vein of the obscenity we wrote that night. I never posted this here before because Gary Busey seems like the kind of guy who, if he heard it, would either track me down and kill me, or track me down, come in my house and never leave. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. I still think he's a great guy, though.
Song is all original, except for a short part right after the second verse where I borrowed some lyrics from a silly song called "Dope Money" by GG Allin. The night I recorded this second version someone must have mentioned that song for whatever reason, and I guess I thought it would be amusing to include a quick homage to it, as it could be easily related to Mr. Busey. I also ripped off the music from Dope Money for that short portion, but that tune was obviously ripped off from the old video game "Spy Hunter", so we'll call it even.
So here's my home recording swan song. I don't have the original tracks I recorded anymore, so this is the mix I made many months ago. I must have done this second version right after GB was in that amazon commercial a while ago... I quote some of the lines from it at the end. Song contains off-color lyrics, as it obviously should. Tell me what you think!
https://soundcloud.com/user92696274096/gary-busey/s-L4x2g
Forgive the verbosity of this post. I can't say that it will be worth the time you spend reading it, but what the hey.
I'm done with any kind of home recording (and by extension this website) until such time as I'm living in a place where I can play drums again, which likely won't be for a year or more. Thank you to all you guys who helped me out with stuff, gave opinions on mixes, or just shot the shit with me when I was bored.
This is the first song I ever wrote. I actually wrote and recorded my first version of this about two weeks after I had acquired drums, a bass and a guitar (a year and several months ago)- it was on a Tascam 4-track recorder that I bought off amazon one night when I was trying to think of a way to motivate myself to actually learn to play the instruments I had just bought. I saw recording as a way to "make learning fun"... which sounds like something a high school teacher would say in the month between when she gets out of college and when her idealistic spirit is completely broken by the sheer indifference and cruelty of the kids she's trying to teach.
I believe I recorded this second, more polished version of this song (which appears here) shortly before when I got on this website for the first time and started learning how to do actually do this stuff properly. At the time I remember thinking that I nailed this mix... and compared to the stuff I had recorded before, I did. This was done with my Tascam DP-24 mixer, which I still use today, but with one overhead mic (an SM57) and the cheapest drum mics I could find on Amazon- some CADs. The first decent drum mic I ever bought was a D112 (a kick mic). I can't remember if I had it at this time... if I did, I obviously had no clue how to EQ or mix it yet (though I don't think the kick sounds totally bad).
This song, GARY BUSEY, is a song that I actually started writing at a local diner when I was 16 or 17 after a regular weekend night of high school drinking. One of the guys I was with was a few years older and was playing in a local punk band (a neighbor of mine who was a cool guy but I seldom hung out with), and I told him that I was going to write him a song for his band because I just assumed I'd be a great songwriter. I came up with the idea of writing a song about Gary Busey... I suppose because he seemed like an admirable person. I think I'd only seen him in Lethal Weapon by that point in my life, but I must have heard something about his exploits/insanity to have made me think he'd be a good subject for a song (this would have been around '94, which, for all intents and purposes, was "before the internet"). I grabbed a napkin and pen from the lady running the place and was off. My aforementioned friend and I went back and forth writing verses that I'm sure were great. I don't remember if we had girls with us, but if I had a girlfriend with me at the time, I probably deserved to get dumped for this.
20+ years later, when I wrote this version, all I could remember from the song we wrote that night was the first line... "Gary Busey, la la la". So as soon as I could play a simple drumbeat, I came up with a simple melody, started with that excellent first line, and wrote a song in the vein of the obscenity we wrote that night. I never posted this here before because Gary Busey seems like the kind of guy who, if he heard it, would either track me down and kill me, or track me down, come in my house and never leave. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. I still think he's a great guy, though.
Song is all original, except for a short part right after the second verse where I borrowed some lyrics from a silly song called "Dope Money" by GG Allin. The night I recorded this second version someone must have mentioned that song for whatever reason, and I guess I thought it would be amusing to include a quick homage to it, as it could be easily related to Mr. Busey. I also ripped off the music from Dope Money for that short portion, but that tune was obviously ripped off from the old video game "Spy Hunter", so we'll call it even.
So here's my home recording swan song. I don't have the original tracks I recorded anymore, so this is the mix I made many months ago. I must have done this second version right after GB was in that amazon commercial a while ago... I quote some of the lines from it at the end. Song contains off-color lyrics, as it obviously should. Tell me what you think!
https://soundcloud.com/user92696274096/gary-busey/s-L4x2g