Killdozer time!

[leaper]

Hi Butch,
It's probably time to lightly brush up against the subject of Killdozer.
Just how tall is Michael anyway? He sounds like a giant trucker of a man.
How did you manage to record the biggest voice in the history of rock?
And were they as fun to work with as the humor in their songs suggests?
Thanks man.

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by leaper

Hi Butch,
It's probably time to lightly brush up against the subject of Killdozer.
Just how tall is Michael anyway? He sounds like a giant trucker of a man.
How did you manage to record the biggest voice in the history of rock?
And were they as fun to work with as the humor in their songs suggests?
Thanks man.

Mike Gerald has a deeper voice than the Man In Black himself, Johnny Cash!

The Killdozer albums we so much fun to record! They were loose and spontaneous, and the band played with a drunken swagger unlike anybody else I have ever recorded.
Being on Touch and Go, there we no restrictions other than small budgets, which was good because we had to work FAST.

Snakeboy was recorded on 8 track, and has several songs that became live classics, like King Of Sex and Going To The Beach. They were the only band that I would sometimes mix live, which I liked to do because I had a sense of how to make them sound big in a small club.


It was after hearing 12 Point Buck that Subpop called regarding a band called Nirvava, as well as Billy Corgan.

I had been in NYC making the 2nd FireTown album, which had been long and not somewhat grueling, almost 4 months...and the day after I flew back to Madison i went into Smart with Killdozer to record 12 Point Buck. We recorded and mixed the album in 6 days, and o the 7th day we recorded For Ladies Only!

On the first day of recording, the band said they didn't really have that many songs finished, so i just told them to jam, and I cut sections of music together via tape edits to create songs. We also wrote a list down of things we wanted to record: celtic riffs (New Pants), accordian (Free Love In Amsterdam), brass section (Lupus), sexy Barry White vocals (Space 1999), radio broadcasts (Richard), even an ode to Irwin Allen (Man vs Nature)...

The album is pretty weird sounding, but I love it!!!

When Mike would overdub vocals, Dan & Bill Hobson and myself would sit in the control room, turn all the lights off, and solo Mike's vocal channel at stun volume!!!!
We would fall over with laughter at some of the lyrics he came up with, and to hear his voice all alone blasting through the speakers was pretty scary!

[Brian Brock]

can you say anything about the snare drum on 12 pt buck? It rocks.

I love how Killdozer used odd time signatures to make everything messed-up and drunk, where for most bands it serves exactly the opposite purpose.

[leaper]

Ha!
Thanks for the reply.
Yep, I can imagine that everything was rough and ready and that's a huge part of the magic to those records.
Sorry about mentioning Michael's height.. It's just that I have this indelible memory of them playing once and he stood on a soap box for the whole gig!
For what it's worth, "12 point buck" was also one of those albums where I just needed to know who produced the damn thing.. and it was such a pleasure to turn people on to it.
So.. u is da man!