Swim Herschel Swim Skeleton 3: Mahi Mahi

My 2009 alternative title of this track: Hot Mess.

I can’t recall why we decided to call this one “Mahi Mahi”, but this smacks of 1990. This recording is a mess and of the work I’ve done, this one has taken, by far, the longest to remaster. There are a couple of mic hits in the middle and I probably could have edited them out, but given the slopfest that is this track, I’m not too worried about it. As these were essentially live recordings with minimal overdub or sweetening, it just contributes to the chaos. This song really got the kids worked up.

We dropped this from our playlist in late ’91/early ’92 I think. We had better songs and the funk breakdown in the middle seemed weird to me. I loved the super synth horns and all, but we just weren’t that kind of band and as time passed, it was clear we needed to focus on better work. At least to me. I wish my band mates would comment on some of these tracks, because I’m not sure my memory is holding up.

Production Notes
The synth sounds on this one were all my original programming. I also played the triplet figures by hand and boy howdy does it show. Atrocious and embarassing. Probably my least favorite song on the cassette of I WIsh I Had a Raygun, i was glad when we stopped playing it live. So hey, let me share it with the internet:

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Direct Download – Swim Herschel Swim – I Wish I Had a Raygun – Mahi Mahi – Remastered, MP3, 320kbps constant

  • 3Trends

    This shit is almost as good as that great BYU band Kensington High St. from the same timeframe. I might even have a photo of Rich playing drums for them above the Bird Palace, Haloween 1988..

  • patatomic

    Oh man, what a turd. I made it up to :43 and had to shut it off. Yes, I’m glad this one died. I don’t ever recall playing it.

    • http://blurbomat.com blurb

      hahaha! There’s one more clunker and I’m not sure I’m going to release it because it’s such a personal embarrassment.

  • sh

    Well… if it makes you feel any better I remember this one sounding better than you have it here. Being full of youth and listening live could have made it so, but none the less my memory has this one sounding better.

    • http://blurbomat.com blurb

      This recorded performance is horrible in my opinion. We kept it because it was one of our songs, but we should have waited until we were fresh to record it. You can hear how tired everybody is and how sloppy we all sound.

      Keep hope alive, sh.

  • sxr

    Jon, your comments are for the most part on target and your tweaks and tuning of the songs is definitely helping. I think the tapes we originally released Raygun on were recorded a tiny bit faster than what you are releasing.

    I liked playing this song live as it did get the kids moving. This was one of the first batch of songs we created along with Chevy, SKFU and Baby Babar way back into the days with Russ. We were just starting out and were still defining the sound of SHS. The sloppy recording started with me laying down the drum tracks at the end of the day I was burnt out. We had already finished drum tracks for the 9 other songs. I think the funky breakdown was leftover Scubabus vibes from the prior semester. For 1990, the breakdown seemed like the right thing to do.

    All that being said, I liked the song and it was fun to play. Would I have wanted to re record it? I probably would want to re-record most of the songs. Between mic hits, mistakes and overplaying just on my parts, I still like the total package. It was the songs as a whole that pull it together.

    • http://blurbomat.com blurb

      I can’t thank you enough for sharing this! I think you are right that we recorded this one at the end of the day and should have spent the extra money on additional sessions to record it well.

      I forgot that we did SKFU! I remember doing the live recordings at BYU (I have those on a DAT somewhere) and both Rod and Merkley felt that they sounded too “commerical” and “slick” and if you listen to them now, they are super raw.

      This song was fun to play. If I remember correctly, we used it after the first rush of songs to rev up the crowd after a slow song. Then we’d have to play a slow song to chill everybody out.

      I think we had a mastering issue with the cassettes. These files were pulled from the DAT at a sample rate of 48KHz using a digital transfer (data, not audio) so the tempos are as we recorded. I’ve played around with the sample rate conversion and these songs are at the tempos we recorded. You might remember playing them much faster. I recall a lot of arguing about slowing stuff down a little so the lyrics could be understood and the music not so manic.

      I’d love it if you’d share on other tracks as well if you haven’t already!