Studio.

It is raining a fucking zoo out there.

I just saw a bedraggled lion trying to get out of the pool while poop flinging monkeys taunted him from beneath the shelter of an elephant.I may as well be surgically attached to my electric blanket bar the fact that I have to get up to pee all the time.This time of year sucks eggs.I hate it.But let it be noted that I am a new woman! Well, not really,merely one who detoxed from Dr Pepper and Red bull while away and replaced it with cheap soda water and lost six hated pounds in the process.

My skin no longer feels like braille.My wardrobe has a future.Life is peachy.

Me and Marcus were on fire ( To be pronounced “FYA-HA!” .Think Metallica…see! ) from the get go when it came to crafting epic tuneage.You can talk all you want about Brian Wilson et al at four in the morning down a long distance line but if the magic is not there you are fucked.Thank Elvis it all came together.Leefish came around and hung out sporting a new camouflage jacket which was great.He told the story of my beloved bashed up bass  (gotta love a rhyme) and how she was a repo for unpaid rent. We wrote our first song from scratch the first night I was there and it is like nothing else I have ever done before.I am singing my high stepping ass off. All high and Sabbath/ Soundgarden style. Being there and writing and playing non-stop was just what I needed.I slept like a log and ate like a monk. It gave me a sense of security that I had been lacking for so long.I was loathe to leave.

Miss Nina was stellar road-trip company just as I had suspected,not to mention one of my favorite people on the planet and beyond.

Behind my bass I felt indisputable and bullet proof even with the input all loused up.I now have bullet proof fingertips.Marcus takes his time with me and I soar because of his patience. The guitar player from my first band was such an utter cunt always telling me that I couldn’t play and that I was not a musician etc that I pretty much just manned the mike for a decade.Marcus takes all the mystery and fear out of the unknown and hands me skills at an alarming pace and I thrive.He walked me though the scales that had confounded me for years and we ended up jamming the blues for hours while his cats looked on from sofa arms and backs where they were perched like the silent emissary’s  of  cruel Egyptian gods.

Being validated by ones peers is heady shit…..

Got a call last week from my mates Luke and Curly from Hy-Test,one of my favorite Australian bands. Great players that I hooked up with my ex to tour Europe a few years back where they all kicked ass. They are making an album with their new band “Bruce!” .Hip swinging rock at its finest. They had a few songs that they needed me on and came out to pick me and Lilli up last night.Poor Lil,I am bullying her hard at the moment when it comes to candid photography.To catch the moments backstage so to speak. It makes her shitty but I am not going to let up.She brought a tear to my eye the other week when she told Tony Mott that me and him were the reason that she shoots live music.

Bless.

So off to the studio in the rain to be met at the door by John-boy Rock. The 1st time I ever worked with him was a decade ago on the Hard-ons amazing comeback album “Very Exciting”  and he laughed at me then too. I understand why.I’m all chipper,girly and whatnot in the meanwhile and then you get me behind the mic and….Luke told me they needed metal and they got it.

I miss singing like that.Its a very powerful feeling.I still cant believe that that noise dwells inside of me. Its kind of like Tom Araya and Christine McVie living next door to each other I guess.Its been a while since Meldrum and St Cecilia is not the place to unleash the sonic kracken.Who knows? Maybe Meldrum again someday,that would be so cool.Gene has just finished tracking the drums for Dethklok now that Fear Factory have finally let him go after God knows how long and me? I never say never when it comes to shit like that except if its with my first band.

There its etched in fucking stone.

I call it my “Bad dog!” voice because when you think about it a lot of hardcore and metal singing sounds like someone berating a hound for crapping on the rug. Just sayin’.

I still love seeing the look on boys faces when I do it.Sing that is,not crap on the rug. After one particularly hefty take complete with a little James Hetfield tacked on the tail because I am a showoff  like that I yelled into the mike “This is why I cant get laid!!” and of course we all cracked up.Much hilarity all round and so on. Shit is always funny if its true.

The last love I had was the only one who was proud of me and my music. The last time we spoke he reiterated as much and being that he is one of the finest musicians of the last twenty odd years,yes,it does mean a lot.What also meant a lot was the boys trusting me with the vocals and  the direction on two of their tracks.Of me being able to play Marcus the riffs that I had written and us building a song from scratch out of what I had brought to the table.

I have finally earned my stripes and contrary to my much hated first guitarist opinion I am a great musician.He is writing advertising jingles and no one will be in a band with him.Go figure right?

Ha.

I am not ashamed to say that it means a lot when your heroes see you back and on top of that want to work with you. When Michelle passed away I knew that I had to trust and hone what I had as it was due to her and her belief that I moved back to Los Angeles in the first place.Her not even dead a week ,I got on a plane to Vancouver and sealed my fate with the album “Lifer”. Meldrum gave me my wings and my ex showed me how to fly.I used to love standing next to him at the mike in Brad Cooks pink studio high up in the hills of Eagle rock singing or asses off.

We used to joke if we had a kid that it would be the loudest one on the planet.

Great times that I miss but for the first time I can see more great times to come.

That and the smile worthy fact that I woke up yesterday to a grip of Hello Kitty toys on top of the re-release of “Rumours” complete with a bonus outtakes cd sitting next to the kettle where I would be bound to find it. Thank you Lilli White-tiger.

You know that you have been around men too much when you use the bathroom at the studio and put the seat up after you are done.

Miss Metz who is the one who does all my computer devilry and makes me look good in the process is going to do my new band site for St Cecelia. I am stoked.The chick is a site-making  tsunami.Its going to be great.

I’m doing it.

I’m making music again.