by JamesFearnley Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:14 pm
I got a phone call from Brad Wood, who, among many other things, is the Cranky George Trio's bass player, who put me in touch with Ted Hutt. I didn't know who he was at all, and didn't know anything about Go Betty Go, but the session was up in the old Baby O studios (where Joe Strummer recorded Earthquake Weather, and where I'd visited him many years ago while he was recording there; Joe was excited to show me, and anyone else for that matter, where the Brat Pack used to do laps around some gallery up in the top of the building) and Baby O studios down the street from the Hollywood Y, where I'm a member, so the parking was a dollar with validation.
I like the song. I liked the girls. They were friendly and very lenient towards a fifty-year-old draught horse like myself, coming out of some sort of career twilight. The song I thought I wasn't going to be quite so friendly with, because it's in a key with more black notes that I care for. Ted offered to bump it all down a register with ProTools, but it sounded shit like that. So I lit into it with as many of the chords as I could figure out in my head. A couple of hours later I wheeled the squeeze box back up to the Y parking lot, bunged it in the trunk and went for a swim.
Don't do many sessions. Don't know why. They're such fun to do. However, there's not much call for an accordion player for a lot of things. Now and again I get a phone call from someone who's googled 'accordion players' for some wine and cheese thing, usually for some film-related bunfight, in West LA, or some other place I prefer not to have to drive to. I don't like to think I have to don the striped shirt and the beret and hang myself with onions or something like that, so I generally decline.
I got a phone call from Brad Wood, who, among many other things, is the Cranky George Trio's bass player, who put me in touch with Ted Hutt. I didn't know who he was at all, and didn't know anything about Go Betty Go, but the session was up in the old Baby O studios (where Joe Strummer recorded Earthquake Weather, and where I'd visited him many years ago while he was recording there; Joe was excited to show me, and anyone else for that matter, where the Brat Pack used to do laps around some gallery up in the top of the building) and Baby O studios down the street from the Hollywood Y, where I'm a member, so the parking was a dollar with validation.
I like the song. I liked the girls. They were friendly and very lenient towards a fifty-year-old draught horse like myself, coming out of some sort of career twilight. The song I thought I wasn't going to be quite so friendly with, because it's in a key with more black notes that I care for. Ted offered to bump it all down a register with ProTools, but it sounded shit like that. So I lit into it with as many of the chords as I could figure out in my head. A couple of hours later I wheeled the squeeze box back up to the Y parking lot, bunged it in the trunk and went for a swim.
Don't do many sessions. Don't know why. They're such fun to do. However, there's not much call for an accordion player for a lot of things. Now and again I get a phone call from someone who's googled 'accordion players' for some wine and cheese thing, usually for some film-related bunfight, in West LA, or some other place I prefer not to have to drive to. I don't like to think I have to don the striped shirt and the beret and hang myself with onions or something like that, so I generally decline.
