Billy Furnett & Ghost Collaboration

As threatened elsewhere on this site, I am now making available for your dining and dancing pleasure a little tune written by Billy that he sent to me and asked me to do the vocals and what ever else came to mind to finish up the track.

This is yet again another all analog project as both of us have TASCAM 38's which are a half inch, 8 track reel to reel so, Billy started the project in Chicago and sent me the tape here in Toronto where I have finished it off.

A small warning and disclaimer is that I am getting over laryngitis from my last project in the studio called; Dead Wrong, which some of you heard and after hearing the screaming in that song, you will know why I lost my voice and still haven't gotten it back 100% yet but, I wanted to do this come hell or high water and I think hell showed up first! :D

The song is called;The Gang's all Here

It is the track at the top of the page on my Sound-Click site.

This song features Billy doing the drum programing, bass patch, and acoustic guitar.

I did the electric guitar, piano, main vocal and various backing vocals.

As always your comments, critiques and advice are welcome.

Enjoy! :)
 
Sounds nice -

There's a nasty (15k Video? Sorry - RTA's busy right now) whine in there... It get's masked pretty well, but pops up quite a bit - Can't tell where it came from...

Gotta nice feel to it.

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
 
tell you what my ears are getting Ghost, nothing bad but it's familiar ground. Song..the wholt tune/chord progression/melody reminds me of Blur's Country House. Vocaly it sounds like Mark Knophler (sp?) Dire straights with Kurt Cobain on harmonies.

It's absoultely solid! maybe I'd have liked to hear the mix opened up a bit more in the stereo field, but just maybe. This could benefit a lot from a real bass line..I read this was synth bass right? That missing beat percussion @ 0:25 really throws the song from the strong intro but it recovers well. Man that sounds so Nirvanaish on the harmony parts. I really like this song but there's something noisy about 12K..just extra noise I don't need to be hearing. Real nice recording. This is a keeper, one that makes visits to the clinic worth while.

Thanks for sharing

Alec
 
Ghost and Billy

G you know I'm a huge fan and this is a good tune.
Your recordings are always so warm and inviting.

This one sounds a little , muffled? in my speakers though.
Sorry for the non-technical response but thats my impression.

Great song though.
 
Nice mix. Very clean, very clean. I can't get over the weird shift at the end of the verses. It seems to complicate a cool groove. I like the chorus, though.

I guess, like others have noted, it gets a bit old after a while -- it seems the lyrics are trying to carry it, but they're not that strong to do so. After a few minutes, I was lost.

Still, the mix is solid, and I like the vocal performance -- playful and laid-back at the same time.

Cool.

G
 
Massive Master,

I wanted to thank you for spotting the offending noises that you were detecting around the 15Khz range!:)

It turns out your ears are very adept at detecting noises which my older, more burned out ears, no longer detect.

I did perform an analysis of the wave form and detected a spike at 15,805hz that was coming up close to 12 db too loudly on the graph and attacked it with a couple of surgical notch filters and have hopefully corrected the problem.

A refreshing of the file has been performed at the same link above in the first post and I would really appreciate if you would give it another fast listen to confirm if the offense has been dealt with properly.:cool:

LemonTree

Thanks go to you for as well, spotting the noise and additional thanks are due as well for your kind words about my questionable vocal performances on this track.

I am constantly surprised to find people's perceptions of who I sound like at different times. I can only say that I had very different vocalists in mind during the moments of conception but, I'm glad to sound like anybody famous at all, so for that, I do thank you.:)

Dan

Thanks again to you for checking out the track. I am hopeful Billy will be pleased with what I have done to his masterpiece.

I guess there are some issues of clarity on this recording and I have made a valiant effort to extract the maximum result for it. Alan Parsons, I am not.:D

gmiller1122

Thanks for your kind words an feelings on the lyrical content of the piece. If anything, I think it's my interpretation of them as the vocalist that can be directly faulted for not making the words take on a life of their own.

I am reminded of a comedy sketch of Orson Wells reading a phone book and making it sound interesting! Hitting the right notes is only the start when it comes to emoting lyrics and I am always learning.:)

Thanks again to all that have checked the tune out so far.:)

Cheers! :)
 
Cool song; I hear a Beatles influence in the intro. I'd like to hear a harmonica solo in there somewhere, ala John Popper. Really dug the bridge to the chorus.

Great mix, Jeff!

Cool tune, Billy!
 
DigitalSmigital

Thanks for the Beatles reference to the beginning of the song! :)

I kind of heard a little of that after it was done myself.

I was actually discussing with Billy if I should put a harmonica part into the song but, three things stopped me.

1 - I am not a good harmonica player

2 - I had laryngitis during this session

3 - I couldn't find my harmonica!:(

I am guessing that my notch filtering touch ups reduced the noises that Massive Master was referring to?

I wonder where Billy is?

I hope he hasn't gone and done something silly like go on vacation or something like that?

He's probably going to kill me!:eek:
 
Hey Thanks Everyone:

I've been sick and haven't even heard the tune myself, but I have no doubt Ghost threw down his magic and did what he could with what I gave him (Which was less than stellar to begin with I assure you!)

Anything that's good in this tune no doubt is Ghost.
Anything noisy, muffled or when you get bored and wish it were a 3 minute tune, that's all me! LOL

The bottom line is I feel really lucky (And rather grateful) to have the chance to experience a song of mine (For better or worse) from the "Outside", it should prove a great optunity to learn.

So thanks Ghost and thank you guys that commented.

Billy
:)
 
BillyFurnett - Thanks Billy for finally resurfacing!

You had me worried for a while where you had disappeared to and I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to work on one of your songs.

I had a lot of fun with it and I look forward to getting in on a couple of other projects that are currently in the works.

You have given me way too much credit though for whatever strong points this song has.

The truth is, you wrote a great tune and some very good and interesting lyrics that I had fun with.

Feel better, man! :cool:

betty rumble - I wanted to thank you as well for checking out the song that Billy wrote and my efforts to sound like John Lennon with laryngitis in the head and tail of the song.

I know this is not the kind of stuff that you usually listen to and I appreciate you checking it out.

Thank you.:)
 
G-

You sound like Bob Dylan would if he could sing!!!:D

Neat tune.

I think the vocals could come up a little-the drums kinda own this one...everything else seems to be hiding behind the drums, and there's a lot of cool stuff going on back there.

I enjoyed the shit out of it, though!
 
cool tune ghost
Its kind of like Mark Knophler with Jethro Tull unplugged.
I really like the parts where you break the song down...good groove there.

Congrats on a good song
 
As stated, there were some Knoefler/Dylan moments on the vocal track. Actually there was some interesting stuff going on with the vocals during the first half of the song. Not exactly octave singing but not conventional harmonies either. Yeah, I'm liking the vocal track. I'm a sucker for that little chord progression you guys are using too. I''m not gonna comment on your mix since I read that "this is the final mixing of this song" on your page so, good work, I liked the song a lot.
 
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