Highway 99

Full Stomach

Jerry Lee again. The days are starting to blend into each other in regards to what we did down here. The more acclimated we’ve become to the area, the cloudier my mind becomes to the details of our doings. I believe we lounged around until lunchtime and decided on dining at Neely’s – a famous BBQ joint across Hwy 61.

People like Robert Plant, Eartha Kitt and Sinbad grace the walls with their 8×10 signed glossies inside Neely’s. Quinn, of course, stuck one of our business cards between the frame and the glass of Steve Guttenburg’s picture.

It was the BBQ’d spaghetti that drove Shane and I there in the first place. I was starving and cleaned my plate. Shane and Quinn took bird nibbles out of their BBQ’d spaghetti in favor of the cole slaw and baked beans. Henry and Jon E. Catt shared a sampler plate. Four out of five stars from us.

Stax

While we were in the area, we toured Stax – an old recording studio in the seedy part of Memphis where all the gospel-inspired recording artists in its heyday laid tracks down. It’d been shut down twice, and reopened twice, but a lot of the hits came out of this historic building (since refurbished).

After the educational tour of this era of music history, we drove around the corner to see Booker T. Jones’ childhood home (666 Edith Ave!), who was “Booker T.” of Booker T. and the MG’s. The house was abandoned and in ill-repair. There was some garbage laying around on the unkept property. We helped ourselves to a broken and dirty “no tresspassing” sign.

Prank Rock

The evening culminated in our second night of recording at Sun Studios. Comfortably, we set up and cranked out the bulk of our tracks on first or, rarely, second take. Jon E. Catt was on fire, slapping skins perfectly on all of our cover songs and the remaining originals we needed. But the kicker and highlight of the night was when we recorded our non-instrument songs (Sometimes, and a new one Quinn penned, called Battery Club).

The vocal mics were set up and we tracked vocals for Sometimes, then, with the same set up, we told the engineers – James and Matt – that we were going to record a new one. With some secret planning on our part, we thought it’d be funny to mess with James and Matt and devised a plan to brawl amongst each other while we were recording and film it all – just to punk them. As we were trying to get our first take of Battery Club, we argued and picked on each other and grew more and more cantankerous.

Before long, James, the head engineer came into the studio at referee the tension. At that point, Shane suddenly reached down on Quinn’s left leg and tried a single leg takedown on him. Quinn responded by slugging Shane repeatedly on his shoulder and back. All of us commenced with the random kicking upon Shane and he reeled on the floor. James then announced “Matt and I will kick all y’alls asses”.

The gig was up, though Henry wouldn’t give in to the prank even after James asked if we were seriously fighting. He couldn’t tell!

But the soon-to-be-famous skit was already on tape for prosperity and it’ll be on the CD as the engineers heard it through the mixer board for your enjoyment. James and Matt admitted that was the most elaborate band prank ever done in Sun Studios and called it “Legendary”. We’re happy about that. You’ll hear and see what it was like very soon!

Battery club, battery club…the coolest club I know…wah wah….

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Fanny Alger Does Memphis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.