The Story of DAVE 3

 


Almost immediately after I finished DAVE I started work on DAVE 3 with a concept in mind for how the album would be structured; what if, instead of 10 songs that are a minute each, what if I made one song that was 10 minutes long.

What a journey.


BIG NARF!

The first part I completed for Big Narf was the part after the double bass part in the beginning, originally called Betty. Then, I made the double bass part to go before Betty. The rest is a blur to be honest, although I know I came up with the opening drum “solo” after the reverb bass tapping part. I’m not going to explain the story behind a lot of the parts, although the part directly before the tapping part, called Melly on music for white people to clap to, is based on the Black Cats song from Call of Duty World at War. Also, the beat on the second to last part in the song is the same beat to Joe McCarthy’s Ghost by the Minutemen, and the very last part is meant to coincide with the beginning of Tovik on DAVE. In terms of how long it took me to complete it all, I had been doing test runs for a few months before I finished the song, but the final version of Big Narf, and the test run I may release later, were recorded about a week and a half before I released the album. The intro and the ending were mainly to make the song hit the ten minute mark, but also since I like misdirection a lot, I thought it would be funny to make the beginning really nice sounding, and then kick into the real song. I had Sam record the piano, and for inspiration, I sent him the Taxi Driver sax theme. The crowd noises were stolen from YouTube. It took about an afternoon to record all the instruments on my end, as I finished the drums and bass in one day. The reverb bass part had been recorded a few months before I started recording DAVE 3. It took 3 days to mix, and I re-recorded a bass part a day before I released the album.


[UNTITLED]

I was originally going to call this one s l e but I decided against it for some reason. This was recorded a week or two before I recorded Big Narf, and was completely recorded in my bathroom. The first part was 3 guitar parts layered on top of one another, all playing the same thing, and a bass playing the same thing as the guitars. The second part was just two guitars, and took surprisingly long to record because I kept messing it up. It took only a few hours to mix



Fun Facts


  • Charlie suggested I call it DAVE 3 instead of DAVE 2

  • The credits have a new face, that being Astroboy Albini (Steve Albini)

  • The voicemail at the end is a voicemail Neel left for Sam, and I asked to use it

  • There is Call of Duty World at War gameplay in the background of the Melly part. It is much quieter than it is on music for white people to clap to, but it is there

  • DAVE 3 was released at 4:20pm on 9/10/21, the funniest of days

  • The address listed as the place where the album was recorded is the address for Wrigley Field, which I know by heart after watching the Blues Brothers. The Rusty Cup is the name of the Parkers’ summer home in their backyard.

  • The back cover is the first instance of my now common style of back cover, where I take a photo and heavily edit it so it fits in with the black background

  • The front cover is a slightly edited picture of my cat Alice

  • The cover was originally going to be a picture of Charlie’s dog, Yurei, with a title position referencing American Football. After that, it was going to be a picture of me wearing sunglasses while smiling, while the back cover was going to be Charlie taking that picture of me. Another back cover I was thinking about using was a picture of an Elvis/bear animatronic that is at Jungle Jim’s.

  • The back cover on the album was taken after a movie night at Nate’s house, where I’m pretty sure we watched Tall Girl and then IT.

  • The bathroom I recorded [UNTITLED] was extremely hot, which probably contributed to me needing so many takes to record it