Hello, Cannonball! It All Comes Together In the End

Rock 'n' roll changes people. Some find themselves helplessly screaming for The Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. Others fondly recall an angry mob at a Metallica concert chanting "Die, Die, Die." I imagine the screams. Then, I imagine the death chant. I think about the debut album my indie band, The Humming, had just recorded. I picture the screams. Then, again, the death chant. Screams. Debut album. Death chant. I can conclude only one thing: we need to get this LP off of the ground and into the public ear.

Post-production is the last edition in this series, where the priority is to "make things happen." Now with music in hand, ready to be mastered and sent off to the duplicators, we enter the final stage in the rock album saga, and, indeed, our final weekly acquaintance as writer and reader.

One of the most important, and hardest, steps of post-production was sequencing the songs for the album. The first song proved especially difficult, and rather controversial. Must an album start with an upbeat number? Should it be the catchiest tune? The strongest? As one industry saying goes, the average public lends you six seconds of attention, and record executives give half of that. This led to a band summit meeting concerning the goal of sequencing. Was it solely for "hooking" an audience? Should it be more for the flow of the album? One member suggested, as a compromise, that we begin with the slowest ballad we recorded, which would, as he put it, successfully "compromise the album." The idea picked up three yeas and one nay-though two of the yeas were conditional that we only release the debut on 8-track tape.

Obviously, frustration was setting in. Two songs were in the running: "Stella," a slower number in which the narrator appeals to his love for affection and "Four More Days," a up-tempo ditty involving a fairly pathetic and lonely character remarking on his insecurities during a taxicab ride. We all agreed on each tune's basic pros and cons. "Stella" was a stronger song, but lacked the initial energy of "Four" that could help jump-start the disc.

We tried various tests, including opening our car windows, playing each tune at a volume more closely associated with Slayer tunes, count how many looks you get and grading the looks between 1. Irritated, 2. Ambivalent and 3. Intrigued. In the end we decided on "Stella," which worked out well, as it received only two irritated or ambivalent looks and a promising five intrigued expressions (though this could have been due to band member Brook "Helmet-Head" Boardman changing clothes in the back seat). It was a bold move to start with the slower number, but one that will help contribute to the uniqueness of the album. Our producer claimed we were "ballsy."

With the sequence secured, we went to New England Digital Recordings (NEDR) to get the disc mastered. Mastering prepares the music for its final fate as zeroes and ones in a CD groove. First Toby Mountain, the owner of NEDR, transferred the songs from half-inch tape to hard drive. During the transfer, Toby boosted the lows and highs of the EQ. This made the songs sound fuller and more present; more life in the vocals and more "seat" in the bass and kick drum.

Once the tunes were on the hard drive, sequence and other changes could be made with the click of a mouse. This was fortunate, as we changed song order twice at the mastering studio. We demoted "Four More Days" in favor of "Isn't It Strange" for the second slot. The latter, which was clearly a better number-two hitter, describes a delusional and obsessively metaphysical photographer, whose photos show his on-again-off-again love standing behind a closed door, so that "all you see is the door, and nothing more."

Luckily our real life photographer was more sane than this, as our photo shoot later that week provided sundry pictures to choose from for the album's graphic design. We worked in a studio in the Back Bay, where we mixed fairly standard portrait shots with more adventurous movement-oriented photos. In each case, our photographer Philip Porcella fulfilled his role nicely, yelling at us the whole time: "yes, good, yes, yes, beautiful! More! More! Yes! No! No!"

Enter Brook, who was kind enough to model as our fictional character called "the cannonball guy." Like the photographer in "Isn't It Strange," the cannonball guy has a few inconsistencies up in his thinking dome, and tries to launch himself out of a warehouse window from a "trash-can cannon." The album, then, is entitled Hello Cannonball.

We also forced Brook to ride a metal panda bear fixed on a large spring in a nearby playground. We thought, if nothing else, a man dressed up in a crash helmet, fighter boots and shock gloves would inspire the kids at recess. More than inspired, they made their wisdom heard by yelling "hey, helmet-head," and "look at panda-man." The shots came out stellar.

At our graphic designers we worked to put the pictures together in a narrative progression. The result of the cannonball guy's attempted flight from the aforementioned trash can, for instance, has a few different outcomes, depending where you look in the overall design. Mysterious, we thought.

We rushed to get everything off to the duplicators, as we had CD release shows booked a mere month in advance. With this final step, our long mission had come to a close. Far from an ending, however, Hello Cannonball stood as our entry into the realm of the rock 'n' roll album. Whether it elicits screams or death chants, only time will tell. Within the group, though, there was no question. We loved the way it sounded. The Humming had itself a debut. And with that, I add only this: long live the rock. Long live the 'n'. Long live the roll.

Ty Gibbons '99 is a member of The Humming, and can be reached at ty@thehumming.com. This is the final part of this series. In our next issue, we review the finished product.