22 September 2006| The Pocket Gods | The Pocket Gods are the brainchild of singer songwriter Mark C Lee, who plays and sings all the tracks along with help from other guest musicians in his groovy kitchen situated in the Vale of Nub Country - otherwise known as somewhere near St Albans! The Pocket Gods had a track played on the Huw Stephens show on Radio One on 10 May 2006. |
After this week we are all absolutely exhausted! We had a long week in the studios, but I think the hard work has paid off. I’m still sounding as if I’ve been smoking my 40-a-day but there’s no rest for the Pocket Gods as we’re off to play at the Robin Hood on Sunday (4-6) and the Caenarven Castle in Camden as a full band on Tuesday (8.30). Recording in the studios was a step up from our usual recording studio in the bedroom, not so many pillows and sweaty socks and quite a bit more space! I’m still having to get used to recording with headphones on, as in the studios I can’t pull rank and be the primadonna that I am and refuse to wear them! Still I think Dave – producer / drummer- has probably worked with a few in his time! SpookyMark, Dave and Bill were all great at their recording, they all got really into it and put me to shame with their ‘recording in one take’. I had fun though putting down a spooky organ part on Shark, our trashy horror film choon, which was written as a tribute to John Peel. It's like Jaws meets Joy Division - Jaw Division anyone?! I was proud of my acoustic guitar track for Sussex which gave the song a country twang and also my harmony vocal which blended really well with Mark’s - a definite ten on ten! We had a long day on Sunday doing the mixing and mastering of the tracks. The boys where drinking copious amounts of milky tea, and me, diet coke without the vodka - honest! EccentricMark in his typically eccentric style brought us all homemade cakes he got from the John Fisher School Summer Fete the day before - next it’ll be cucumber sarnies and jugs of Pimms! The meat and bones of all the tracks were all there, now we had to turn this into a CD you would want to buy after hearing it on the radio - without losing our quirky PG's charm. There are just so many effects and things to change that it turned my ears to putty. Mark’s vocals on Shark where even staring to sound like “Buggles” at one point (you know “Video killed the Radio Star”) but we got there in the end. I don’t know about the others but I sure as hell needed a drink that night! Now the CD should be ready to send off to the record company this week, after little discussion we’ve decided to name the CD ‘Fourplay’. And I’m already making plans for next week - on with music, writing more songs and sorting future gigs out - exciting! Next step - artwork – track order – and over to the record company .... | 
