CWAF recording CROPDUSTER

We recorded our full length album with Marc Bartholomew at Acadia Recording in Portland Maine in the summer of 2004. Conifer and Ocean, 2 local heavies from Maine, had recorded there and we loved the sound they got so we packed up our shit and spent a weekend recording. It took another year before it was done, 4 tracks were used for a split with Noosebomb. Buy it here from All that is Heavy

Here is a download for CROPDUSTER

Below our my notes after the recording was done

*Black Mountain-vocals need improvement,higher pitch...delayed screeching after break, 3 different lyrics for after the break 3:00
*Tighten the Noose-expand lyrics 4:40
*Aftermath-new bass after intro, whole thing if possible(out of tune) 6:20

*Astrobarge-bass track,keep original noise without clean bass mixed in feedback "shooSHOO!" right into arm of the pig, no 4 count 5:40
Arm of the Pig-keep bass intro, redo the rest, redo vocals, double track intro vocals:one high scream, one lower 5:50
*Machine of Death-bass noise in intro, new bass after intro noise ,fading you in rthym to the footsteps into Dirtnap5:00
Dirtnap-Before song starts, have walking noise,refrigerator door opening,matches lighting,then some deep breathing with one last breath into song….bass sounds out of tune? maybe guitar? chiggity check it yo....
Feedback blend into Self Med
2:00
Self MEd...new bass track whole way through, better vocals”fuckin right!” cut into drum machine 12:00
Songs of Madness-bass track(no feedback until end), drum machine too low,
lock with bass drum during first 4 of the part after the drum machine ends, do higher octave for fast part 3:40

*2 forties-mint,right into Killed3:40
Let's get Killed-re-write all lyrics,bass track(sounds out of tune here and there) and extra wah part in middle
Quick pause 5:15
*Mir. Sust.-a little distortion on vocals-reverse delay on the words Mir. Sust, then reverbed out, have ending noise fade out, then quickly fade immediately into AllRise 3:20
All Rise-middle sludge needs more sludge, redo bass track, mix and match between original and new one, bassline during Tom's solo a must, no pause into Nearer 6:00
Nearer to the populous-sound good, maybe some wah noises during the noise riff 2:20
Death Jam(renamed With Nowhere to Burn)-,make more noises, add percussion, african style boombablamps shit! 6:00

A lot of those notes were useful. It always helps to do that because you’ll listen to something and think “oh yeah, needs more ___” and then you get to the studio and your like “duh, I dunno”. Plus the sound in Marc’s control room always sounded insanely good, but before a cd is mastered it won’t sound the same out of all stereos.

We played all of the instruments live and kept most of the guitar, I think I ended up redoing all of my bass tracks. One because the Guild B-300 I used wasn’t intonated right so higher notes were out of tune and second, I didn’t like the tone of that bass, it was too nasally. I used a mexican P-Bass too, but that sounded like crap. I traded the Guild on Ebay for a P-Bass copy by a company called Mann. That bass, which I still have, is super loud and full of tone.

There it is!

The night before recording we went and checked out Ocean and some other bands at the old Geno’s

Some freak in the back room at Geno’s

This was the live room before Marc and the crew built walls and stuff. man, what a fucking room that was!!

Brad and Tom layin it down THICK

The blast master himself, Baron Von Swillhouse

Continued Without a Finding

CWAF, short for Continued Without a Finding was started by guitarist Tom Walsh and drummer John Gillis when they were like, 10 or something. Frank Fernald played bass for a while before he moved into the old Army Barracks in Hingham Cove. I joined in 2003 on bass and vocals. Tom and John had a shitload of songs already written musically so I provided all of the lyrics. Most of the bands I've been in I wrote music for and occasionally lyrics, but with CWAF I wrote all the lyrics and none of the music. It was quite liberating knowing I had 2 of the most creative musicians to handle the tunes and all I had to do was write about, well, whatever! We played a mix of grind/doom/noise all wrapped up in a groove.

We played our first show with me in the band at Tom’s house in Weymouth. It can be found in photo form here. The Reverend from Return to the Pit took the pictures. Check out his site, he took a lot of shots of CWAF and the other Weymouth bands. He also does a weekly radio show on WUNH in New Hampshire. CWAF did a live set on his program, that can be downloaded here. We later released that recording plus 3 songs that Tom recorded in my living room on a four track. Here’s the cover artwork for that CD.

My next post will contain our studio cd called Cropduster. Megaupload is being a bitch tonight, so I’ll try again later.

The Nothings-1995

We opened for Blanks77 at the Causeway. The show went great considering we only had one week to prepare a singer and a drummer, but Dinko and Mango did there jobs well. We recorded a demo called "13" at MassComm and made around 100 copies of it. I don't have a copy to share here, I wish I did though because it was an incredible tape. Shortly after recording it Dinko quit to become an air traffic controller or something.



Drummers are notoriously unreliable. Over the years we must have gone though a dozen trying to find the right guy. Along the way I had taught myself how to play, so after Dinko quit, I said "fuck it" and switched to drums full time. We got our friend Gois to play 2nd guitar and carried on.

This is The Nothings studio session from 1995

Brad Fletcher on drums, Johnny Mango on vocals, Nick Giannone and Gois on guitar and Nick Camilleri on bass. There is also a live recording from the Garage. I found it on an unmarked tape, it's from 1995, just not sure when. This was our first time in a studio, I had just finished school at MassComm. We only paid maybe a couple hundred dollars if that to use the studio, Straightjacket Sound, in Allston MA. Matt Bagarozzo, who we dubbed "Mad Bag 'O Loads" was the owner and was a cool guy, kind of a stoner. Gois was getting really bitchy about trying to overdub his guitar track, his amp had, correction, MY AMP had fucked up during the live take, so he had to overdub. He kept coming in late and not playing right and starting yelling at everybody. Bag O Loads said at one point "don't cop a tude bro" I think Nick G accused Gois of doing dope, so Gois went outside and threw bricks at the building...it was ridiculous.

Ron Lacer from Fanatic Records put out "The Runt of the Litter" CD compilation in 1995. Our song "I See You Bleed" was on there as well as songs from August Spies, Kermits Finger, Bratface and other Boston punk bands. We used the other songs from the studio session to put out a tape. I don't think it had a name, but I might be wrong. The cover was a picture of a pants-less Mango superimposed over the ruins of a destroyed building! We sold a couple hundred of those tapes. We played The Causeway, The Rat, all the Boston bars and some halls. Gois was living with Nick G and was involved somehow with some items being stolen from the Giannone house, so he was kicked out/quit/had his life threatened...it was ugly. That was early 1996.

Where it all began

My first band was called ARBD, or Alcohol Related Birth Defects. The year was 1992. I played guitar, Joe Marino sang, Nick Giannone played guitar and Nick Camilleri played bass. There was no drummer for a couple of months. Dan Callahan from Hingham played guitar long enough to write us our first song called "Doesn't Fit". Opie from Weymouth was our first drummer, and by that time we had adopted the name Iron Lung. We recorded a demo on my boom box and passed that out amongst our friends, most of whom laughed at us. It was pretty bad sound wise, but we showed potential. I don't have a copy of that demo or much after that, I was really bad at labeling cassettes back then. We changed our name to THE NOTHINGS after we put out that demo.

After numerous drummers we recruited Mark Civitarese from Hingham. We played quite a few shows with Mark around Massachusetts; Edible Rex in Billerica, some place out in Worcester with Toxic Narcotic and our first real show at the Hingham Rec Center on January 2nd, 1993. Sometime in 1994 we kicked Mark out and Matt Coady played drums for us. He was more aggressive and also played guitar. Below is the only tape I have from those early days. It was recorded at MassComm on Berkely Street in Boston, MA. Doesn't Fit gets cut off at the beginning but Junk sounds real good. The Nothings with Joe and Coady

This line up of The Nothings didn't last much longer. Joe and Coady weren't really interested in doing much more than partying, which we all enjoyed but me and the two Nicks wanted the band to play more shows, especially in Boston. We got our first break opening for Blanks77 and Toxic Narcotic at The Causeway, a legendary dive above The Penalty Box across from the Boston Garden. We had 2 weeks until the show and Joe and Coady were putting little effort into practicing so we got my friend Eric, AKA Dinko North Shore to play drums and the one and ONLY Johnny Mango to sing. We made a lot of new fans that night in Boston. We played songs that were written with Joe but also had a new song that Mango had written in the week we had of practice. It was called "I Love the Bomb" and instantly became a fan favorite. This show ushered in the line up that would last the longest, more on that next posting.

Now that school is over................

I'm gonna use this blog so people can find the bands that I was involved in. I've played drums, guitar, bass, sang(screamed) lead vocals, and have been the recording engineer. It's a work in progress, like any blog, so if your interested just check back every so often. The tunes will be downloadable from Megaupload and will always be free. If there's a MySpace link I'll throw that in there too, although MySpace is such a fuckfest right now I don't think I'll be using it much longer.