Over the summer, MuchMusic contacted Soul Plane and informed us that they would be invading our lives for a good couple months to film our band's debauchery and give us some national television exposure and to put us through rockstar training to see if we have what it takes to make it somewhere in the music industry. If you haven't seen the episode or heard the verdict yet, catch it online now at http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband/soulplane.asp (full-screen the window for the optimal in-yo'-face experience). These are my memoirs from our time on set with Much...
Day 3 – July 19th, 2008
Location: Machinehead Studio
Time: 1pm
Today was going to be different from all the other days. Today MuchMusic was bringing a camera crew as opposed to just forcing Hector to walk around with the hand-held all day – it was to be our first official shoot day for the reality series. Much was going to film us recording “Welcome to T-dot City” with Harrison Hennick, studio owner and head engineer. We made an extra effort to make ourselves look more presentable and less on welfare – Harrison and Mel were at Machinehead by 10am Saturday morning wiping, sweeping, and vacuuming. Harrison even went so far as to make sure there was toilet paper in the bathrooms. He was cute in his French maid outfit.
Hector, Julie and another cameraman, Andre, pulled into Machinehead at around 2pm. When they strolled into the studio and started setting up the lighting, Harrison was still running back and forth between the recording room and the control room, hooking up the mics to Aaron’s drum set and setting up the two guitar amps in the isolation booth. Despite the efficiency we had exercised all morning, things started self-destructing right around here: Harrison came storming out of the recording room, frustrated as diabetic at a dessert buffet, yelling something about an input being completely shot. Best timing ever.
Originally, MuchMusic had wanted to get clips of the entire band jamming at the same time. We were going to try to accommodate this request despite the studio’s obvious space and set-up issues – normally, we record all four of Soul Plane’s instrumentalists live off the floor and then the vocalists overtop. Harrison was going to try to set it up so that instrumentalists and vocalists could run a live set off the floor at the same time, even though it meant that the loudness from the instruments would bleed through everyone else’s mics. With this input situation all up in our shit, however, we couldn’t even pretend properly – MuchMusic made Kevin fake making noise on his guitar for the cameras (they were filming in the recording room and all the music gets fed out to the control room, and because we had a busted input, only Gideon, Aaron, and Luke came through the speakers in the control room and Kevin had to make believe for show purposes), and the rest of us were to pretend we could hear ourselves as well and just play along. I rapped my verses to “Welcome to T-Dot City” to Aaron’s banging drums, the only thing anyone could hear inside the Machinehead recording room. Mel didn’t even bother pretending; she just shook her head when Andre aimed his camera at her.
We are not good actors and MuchMusic found this out the hard way.
They probably didn’t know how bad we really were, though, until they “surprised us” with a celebrity guest. I first noticed him on the other side of the glass pane that separates Machinehead’s recording room from the control room, standing next to Harrison. The next thing I knew, he kicked down the door to the recording room and entered our sanctuary, introducing himself as Greig Nori, and looking around half-expecting us to perk up with some sense of recognition. WRONG – no one even flinched. He continued his self-introduction: he used to be the frontman (lead guitarist and vocalist) for Treble Charger (a band I actually knew and enjoyed listening to in like, grade 7-8). The real reason we hadn’t heard of Greig Nori, though, aside from the fact that none of us follow Canadian music, was because recently Greig had been busy working with some famous acts behind the scenes, such as managing/producing Sum 41, producing Ludacris and Iggy Pop. Other credentials include production for Hedley and managing Broken Social Scene. That’s big things. But up until the very moment when Greig told us who exactly he was, I swear I thought he was one of Harrison’s friends. I was ready to play host in front of the camera when he barged in; I was going to shake his hand and thank him for coming out to the shoot, introduce him to the Much crew and offer him a drink and ask him if it was the first time he’s ever been in a studio. I don’t know who would have been more embarrassed between the two of us if I actually went through with that. It would have made for some good TV, though.
They had to re-shoot the sequence three times to get the scene the way they wanted: the first time no one was surprised (and if we were we didn’t show it), the second time I giggled and said something derogatory, the third time Gideon farted. We don’t deserve the air we breathe.
After his brief introduction, he informed us that he was to be our “guru” for the next couple days. He told us that based on what he heard, the panel of industry professionals that we were to play for “in a week” (that’s as far as our viewers are concerned, but in reality we have a lot more time) would give us the thumbs down and tell us to disband – would we take his advice and use it to our advantage to make our music better? We would. Would we let him use his experience to carve and mould us, and would we open to making radical changes should there need to be any? We would. Would we drop everything right now to head over the rehearsal space MuchMusic rented out for us? Yup.
Greig wasted no time – he told us that MuchMusic would cover all the costs of the remainder of our booked studio hours (I didn’t know if they knew that we’re not paying Harrison anything as it is), and that it was time for us to drop all our gear and just head on over to the rehearsal space so that we could start working on our tunes under his guidance. This was news to us. We all looked at each other, puzzled like jigsaw, but we complied with Greig’s orders and started gathering our stuff. When the boys began unplugging shit to pack up their instruments, Greig told us not to worry about any of that, that Much had hired roadies to help us out. I looked around and saw no one, but I assumed they were on their way and I felt excessively official thinking that Much would go through all that trouble and expense for us. So, we listened, left everything alone and just casually strolled out the front door of Machinehead Studio. As Kevin sat in the driver seat of his Passat waiting to turn on the ignition, Julie ran out of the studio flailing her arms like she was directing air traffic: “We were just kidding, guys, don’t go anywhere. The cameras just needed to get you all making that exit there...” How fun! Next time maybe you can have an internationally-established record label pretend to sign us only to renege on their offer just as we’re about to put our pen to paper!
Anyway, after all that, they interviewed us one at a time and asked us questions about the day’s experience. I made sure to seem as impressed with Greig Nori as humanly possible without full-on fellating the dude, telling Hector (the interviewer as Andrew filmed) that an opportunity like this to be able to work with someone with Greig’s credentials doesn’t come by too often for still-local and relatively-unknown bands like Soul Plane. I made it clear that I, for one, was very grateful for this “guru,” and that Greig was definitely well-suited for the job considering the fact that he’s already been through where we’re trying to get as far as the music industry is concerned, and would thus have a lot of light to shed on Soul Plane’s current circumstances and level of competence as a band. I emphasized how fortunate we were to have someone who has been on both the musical side and the business/admin side of the industry help us hone our craft. I rounded off my interview with how much I was looking forward to working with a professional. I didn’t just say all that for a camera – I truly meant it. Maybe we weren’t all that impressed at first glance, but when you do the checklist of what substantiates Greig’s belt, you realize what a heavyweight you’re dealing with.
When MuchMusic finally left around 5 30pm-ish, Soul Plane got back down to business with a heavy session that made smoke clouds in the control room so thick I’m surprised it didn’t rain indoors. I’m not saying I hate my life, but it was, without a doubt, a sigh of relief and a breath of fresh air the minute we no longer had to keep up appearances. With the day-long, hustle-bustle, hurricane of hurry MuchMusic brought with them into Machinehead Studio, it was rather difficult to even remember that we had come here first and foremost to record a song. It felt more like we were the victims of an FBI interrogation caught on tape; they dropped in, beat us up, asked a couple questions and left. By around 7pm, though, everything for “Welcome to T-Dot City” minus Mel G’s vocals had been tracked.
On our way home we discussed some possible aspects of the show we knew still had to be brought out: we had the title figured out – “DISBAND” – because at the end of your episode, during your final concert, these music industry professionals either give you a thumbs up, telling you to keep going with the pursuit of happiness through your music and your band and describing what steps you’d have to take to advance in the industry effectively, or a thumbs down, telling you to please not quit your day job. Fortunately, bracing ourselves for the worst-case scenario and then actually going through it is nothing we’re not already accustomed to – we’ve picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off in the wake of much worse. Then, we realized that in order to make our episode less boring, they needed to create tension and drama (words that are hardly existent as far as the relationships between the members of Soul Plane are concerned) – we went over the strategies we devised to avoid buying into their bullshit (mainly avoiding saying anything that would allow them to cut/edit your quote out of context to give it an entirely different meaning than the intended one). Lastly, we also knew that Greig Nori was going to be our “guru,” our music coach, for the next several weeks of filming, and that this type of opportunity isn’t one that you could just ignore. We just hoped he wouldn’t ignore us for the next several weeks.
To conclude, Greig Nori is gonna make us famous.
