Pictures

STUDIO REPORT (from the COGNICIDE recording session, August 2005)
Pictures taken by various people, but mostly our singer Jason.
Words written by our bass player Chicken.

		Aug 2nd : We played a free show last night at The Hemlock . It was super fun, but Jason was insanely sick with a fever of 101. He was delirious but we tricked him into playing anyways. We played every song off the upcoming record, most of which we had never played before live. Kenny had a few too many drinks, and Chad got sick. Good times had by all.
		Our first studio day was kinda anti-climactic and consisted mostly of "getting tones" and "setting levels". Tones and levels are for posers but I guess it has to be done. The guy doing our record is Alex Newport, he's from England. He says a bunch of funny stuff like "Chicken, I like the cut of your jib", which basically means he wants to bang me. He also had us do a few hours of Bikram Yoga to get loosened up, but now the studio is all steamy and smells likes a bag of smashed assholes. Maybe tomorrow we will get to actually play our instruments, which would be nice.
		Aug 3rd: So now the illness has spread to Chad and myself. Tag teaming Jason last night probably didn't exactly help in the prevention of spreading the sickness, but it had to be done in the name of band unity. Since we all work at the same job, these dudes phones have been rigning off the hook with stupid work questions all day, but not me because I do mail order. What are they gonna call and ask me, "Hey Chicken, just wanted to see if mail still needs stamps. Oh, it does? Okay, just checking." Some times it pays to not have a poser job like these other dorks. In other news, Alex came to the stark realization that we are not exaclty Bonhams and Satrianis over here, and we needed a couple takes to get rolling. So after about eight hours of practice, we started recording. I know it's too early to tell, but I'm pretty sure we are gonna sell DOZENS of records, the songs are just that good. Crusty punks all over the world will be selling off thier pit bull puppies and spanging for days to get their dirty hands on this fucking album.
		Aug 4th: Holy crap. Me and Chad are dying. We will try to maintain a positive attitude despite the illness, because we know that we if for some reason we are unable to finish this record, the terrorists have won.

		Aug. 5th. Oh snap, it's friday!! I'mma get you high today. Our fevers have slightly been reduced do to copius amounts of DayQuil. So have our IQ's apparently, 'cause that shit fucked me up. I remember doing a horrible English accent and making fun of Alex all day, but other than that, the details are kinda blurry. Rumor has it we will begin doing my bass tomorrow. The National Guard has been called in anticipation of a city wide fucking meltdown due to extreme bass shredding on my part. Hide the babies and cover your faces, or they will be shredded the fuck off.
		Aug 6th. Alex and I were locked in a room together for hours today. Then we started working on the Western Addiction record again. Total bass-assasination party over here. In other news, Kenny has turned into a total vidiot. I let him play Tetris on my phone. That was three days ago. He stopped blinking late last night, and has been speaking in tongues. We're intervening soon.
		Aug 7th: We finished bass and started guitars today. Kenny actually melted the console here at the studio and a new one had to be ordered. We continued to make constant fun of Alex and his British heritage. We still have artwork to finish, people to omit from our thanks list, layout to do, and we are coming up on the deadline the label gave us to have it all done by. Luckily when you are like us, and your record has projected sales of over thirty three copies, they are little more leanient towards us.
		Aug. 8th: Alex "I'm a fancy pants cos I recorded one good At The Drive In record" Newport had us start on guitars today. Sucks for Alex. Good ol' Ken "2000 takes" Yamazaki was first up. Man, those three chords we play sure get tricky to remember apparently, that dude was in there all freakin' day. I think he was having Tetris withdrawals too, cuz he was walking around the studio organizing tissue boxes and remote controls to line up perfectly with books and CD's. Weird. At one point Jason and I were so insanely bored we were taking turns saying nice things about each other. Luckily, before it got too weird, Alex came out of the control room and asked us to go to the store for him and buy a bunch of crumpets and tallywhackers and snidgets and tidbits or whatever he calls groceries, but the dong only gave us a half bit and a haypenny to pay for it!! What a wanker!!

Aug. 9th: Okay, what the hell is going on with the new season of Laguna Beach!?! Stephen really needs to deal with his shit instead of just running to L.C. every time things gets weird with Kristin. I mean Stephen hadn't even seen Kristin in months, comes back into town from SF, meets her at the beach, and is just all "Sup?... am I like, ..'sposed to be all... happy to see you?" What a douche! If any thing L.C. is just enabling Stephen's behavior by being a constant crutch for him. How about this new Jason guy, who the fuck does he think he is? He's trouble, trust me. I have a sense about this kinda stuff. How about when him and Talan are lookin' all hot in thier wet suits after surfing and he's totally flirting with Taylor's friend. Speaking of Talan and Taylor, how rad is it when Talan tells her that he always compares other girls to her, but "There's like, no comparison". Ummm, right. No comparison until he sees Kristin's skinny ass the next night. I mean OMG, I thought Taylor and Kristin were like all BFF, but now there like TTYL.

		Aug. 10th: Jason started his guitars and vocals today. Have you ever paid attention to that dude's lyrics? What the hell is he talking about? Somebody's a fan of alliteration I guess, 'cuz not only does he cram like five billion words into a sentence, but they all start with the same letter! We are gonna have to publish a Western Addictionary just so people can keep track of all the insane words he makes up like "Traumaed" and "Cognicide." Hey Jason, easy there big guy. We get it, you're smart. You got the job, how about using actual words so the rest of us can follow along too? Damn.
		Aug. 11th: So, Alex must be all out of his Brotex Manpons, 'cuz he was in a shitty mood today. Like all of the sudden my lame british accent and jokes about him being a chimney sweeping orphan aren't funny? News flash Alex, we all think it's fucking hilarious. Kenny left for Japan today with the Gimme Gimmes because apparently none of those dudes know how to say "I would like to buy one thousand dollars worth of uncut high grade Peruvian Marching Powder please" in Japanese. Konichiwa bitches!!
		Aug. 12th: Making records is for fucking dorks, this shit is boring. Maybe I should play left handed next time to make it interesting. It seriously sucks when you are a total Orville Shreddenbacher like me because you finish all your parts in one take, then sit around for two weeks. Oh yeah, Jason blew his cabinet playing shitty guitar. In other news, I think it's safe to say I have finally broken Alex and he is most certainly counting the hours until he gets to leave San Francisco and return home never to think of me and my shitty jokes again. Although, I like to pretend he is gonna go home and have his kitty Snowy in his lap, petting him delicately and kinda gaze up towards the sky and think to himself, "Sure Snowy, we had a few rows, took the piss out a bit, but me sure do miss them buggas..." as he sniffles and wipes a lonely tear drop from his sullen cheeks. Or not.
		Aug. 15th: I finally got to do some "singing" today. Here's the thing, I am an absolutely horrible singer and have no business in a recording studio trying to sing. As soon as Alex figured out how bad I am, we just started dicking around the whole time and he even recorded some of my beat boxing. He was totally bagging on my "cookie monster" singing and was outright laughing at some points when I thought I was actually doing a halfway decent job. Sorry Alex, not everyone can be all arty and have an afro and sing about "fences with switches" and "one armed scissors," whatever the fuck that means. I wonder if Alex has ever heard Sparta. They blow. In way more important news, I fucking missed Laguna Beach last night. I can't wait to see that weasel Talan trying to swerve on Taylor and Kristin at the same time, and the previews said that Jason stood up Jessica. See!! I fucking told you idiots that guy was trouble! Anyways, I guess I'll have to watch the reruns tonight if my babysitter Alex Newport lets me stay up that late.
		Aug. 16th: So Jason put the finishing touches on singing last night and we will soon begin "mixing" the record. I am told that mixing consists of us sitting in a room and listening to these songs that I have already heard roughy two jillion times, another eighty billion times. Get stoked. It sucks without Ken here, 'cuz he actually likes talking about tones and levels and all that boring crap. Too bad he's in Japan right now rolling up Yen for the Gimmes. It also sucks for poor Jason because he must now bear the brunt of my name calling and overall spirit breaking. He has a tough skin though, I guess you have to when you look like him right?
		Aug. 17th: I guess it's not true what they say about polishing turds, 'cause our record is starting to sound fucking good! Alex may have actually learned a thing or two on his Peyote fueled spirit quests with the dudes from Mars Volta. Maybe when he was working on some of those Locust "songs" those dudes taught him how to mix in between making him a righteous netted bug eyed mask. Whatever the case, dude is making our songs sound pretty crucial and we are getting close to finishing up, which means leaving the stupid studio and going back to our normal lives.
		Aug. 18th: We only have a few songs left to mix. I told Alex that he can say whatever he wants, I know he'll be driving back to L.A. tomorrow blaring our record staring out at the majestic Pacific thinking, "I would swim upstream through a river of me own tears just to see the cut of me mate Chicken's jib one last time. Charged words indeed mates............ charged words indeed!!" Also, Chad is going camping this weekend up at some river. Me and Jason were cracking up thinking about Chad wearing some studded floaties and sleeping in an Iron Maiden sleeping bag inside of a black tent that has "Punk's Not Dead!!" spray painted on the outside.
		Aug. 19th: One final mix today. Finally fucking done. So there you have it: COGNICIDE!