Friday 13 June 2014

President Home by MAC

By digging a bit more in MAC's website http://mouvvv.com/ I stumbled on another Miss Steak cover. Another very old song that I do not currently have a recording of called "President Home". I actually remember this one being one of our favorites at some early stage of Miss Steak, back in that time where we did a serie of shows to entertain athletes of the "Jeux du Québec".

MAC's cover is awesome! Not only he brings back to life an old forgotten part of my memory (I'm impressed with his memory!) but also he improved the lyrics and I love what he did!!

Here it is => MAC - President Home

Saturday 24 May 2014

A new Miss Steak webpage

Just to give you a heads up, I have started a new Miss Steak webpage on my own server so I will be able to host audio files and other goodies. You can see it at pvmusic.intercode.ca/miss_steak

Care, an old forgotten success, not completely forgotten.

I remember when I composed this song, it was in the early 90s. The song was basically a ripoff of Smashing Pumpkin's "Today". It was not long after "Today" became popular on MTV. Just like in "Today" my song "Care" featured little hig pitch guitar notes that went on for a while as the verse and then for the chorus, heavy power chords with distortion kicked in.


I did something funny the night I first composed and recorded that song. I used a tape cassette recorder and pressed record, played and sang the song, then played that tape in another tape cassette while playing the second guitar and vocals I came up with while recording the result in the first tape cassette. I was amazed of the result, for the first time I recorded 2 tracks of guitar + 2 tracks of vocals. Everything was harmonized. I made copies of the resulting tape and gave some to all of my friends because I was so proud, I wonder if someone still has one of those tapes anymore, Id love to get my hands on one of those!

Then we proceeded to start playing that song along with my other songs in my band Miss Steak, my friend Guillaume was playing the guitar and vocals harmonies. One day we did a show somewhere and played that song and lots of people came to see us after the show angrily accusing us of stealing that song, pretenting that my friend Jean-Michel Cabana had initially written it. I was like "what??".

This guy Jean-Michel was a good pal of mine, it turned out one day he made a party at his place, played that song and told people it was his. I was not even mad at him :) more like flattered... and a bit annoyed :P

Anyways, on went life, this song "Care" was one of the most popular songs of the early Miss Steak but unfortunately I do not have any recording of it for the moment. Thats why I was so excited when I found out that my friend MAC (see his website at mouvvv.com) had recorded a version of it. Now his version is the only known version.

There is no video version of the song yet, but I am hosting a copy of it on my own Miss Steak webpage (http://pvmusic.intercode.ca/miss_steak) here is the direct link to the song:

MAC - Care (Miss Steak cover)

Monday 28 April 2014

Fubupampalé



I think this is a great punk song with a "woodsy" "swingy" verse that sounds quite original. Developing those "woodsy" "swingy" chords one day at my parents house in Sherbrooke is how the song started for me. Then the punker part came to me just like a logical response to the first part and pretty much all the rest of the song as well... then it was only a matter of setting a fixed structure and the song was ready for the band. The band loved it right away!

The lyrics it was never 100% clear where they were going, I guess I'm still trying to figure what I was trying to say in that song.

One day if we ever find the time to record any of those songs more professionally, this one definitely gets my vote :)

Wednesday 16 April 2014

Masterville


Masterville.. I remember that in the last years of Miss Steak this was our favorite song to play :) This recording is probably not the best time we have played it but it gives the idea. Maybe we will try recording it again one day!

One of the problems with the recording of this song is that it was recorded on a 4 tracks. Ah the 90s... hum well this was recorded in 2000 but you know what I mean. Back then people did not have powerful computers and the Pirate Bay to fetch all the pro music programs for free, back then kids who werent signed with a recording company could only convince their parents of buying them a 4 tracks it they were spoiled enough, like me! So since we recorded on a 4 tracks but I wanted to be able to add infinite back vocals and sound effects afterwards, I had to leave at least 2 tracks free, so I can record a new thing and then copy track 2 and 3 together on track 4 so I can now record something else on either 2 or 3 and then mix it with 4 on the remaining track and so on... so all that to say that we had to record all the music on 1 mono track, drum + bass + 2 guitars, I put my vocals alone on track 2 to be mixed in with the back vocals and sound effects later.

Because of this, it was not possible to remove any fuck ups in the instruments, it was basically a live recording. Like for example at 1:35 there was a fuck up on the MIDI guitar and since it was not possible to remove it or to just mute the entire music for that 2 seconds I actually added a "bwa bwa bwa" vocal over it to cover it up :P But it is what it is, today with our i7 processors and stolen Cubase we have infinite tracks so there is no need to keep and fuck ups anymore... So just wait till we re-record this one :)

Monday 3 March 2014

My Way

This song must have been recorded more or less around 1992 too. Unlike the other songs on our "Demo 2" (even though I dont remember if there was a demo 1) this one is played by me alone.

I remember that we have recorded this whole "Demo 2" in the band room at the music school "Studio de musique André". My friend Guillaume Poitras was going out with the daughter of the owner of the school (and yes its her that the song Mr. Cornflakes is about) and as a result of this he had the key to the music school and we got to go there for free to practice after the school was closed. That was actually very nice of the owner

But that one time we had practiced quite enough and we were planning to record. So we connected a tape deck to the console all the instruments were connected in and just played our songs. So all that to say that when I played this song, even though I was playing it all alone, everybody was there with me :)

I'm gonna kill her!! A rage song!!

Well I guess I got a little bit mad because I had a crush on that girl who looked half asian at school but I never managed to get any attention from her, so I wrote this song about that. It's an angry song and it sounds pretty kewl!!

For some reason the band had taken the habit of ending the song on a drum solo. Drum solos are fun and really cool, plus it gives us a chance to notice the drummer and what he can do.

It's our first drummer François Brousseau who started the tradition, but after we changed drummers for the local drum legend Iohann Laliberté this part became even more interesting. This song features a pretty intense drum solo by Iohann who must have been around 15 or 16 years old at that time.

This must have been recorded also more or less around 1992.

I guess none of my friends spoke much english at the time, so they did not realize how horrible the lyrics were!!

Beatin', possibly Miss Steak's first song

I must have written that song around 1991 when I was 14 years old. I was a big fan of Guns and Roses back then and I used to love listening to their Use Your Illusion album while singing along with the lyrics from the tape cover. I did not speak very good english back then so I didnt understand most of it, but one of the few parts I could understand in their lyrics was mentioning "beating a dead horse". I liked the image, to me it represented the fact of working too hard on something that was hopeless.

I wrote a song about that metaphor. However due to my poor english skills at the time the grammar is slightly deficient in the lyrics, but it is still a very nice little piece I find.

I like the way my voice sounds in this song, somehow it does not sound like its me singing, but it sounds good, not that I sound bad but you know what I mean :D

Miss Steak's first success, Mr. Cornflakes



This must have been recorded around 1992. The lyrics of this song were initially "I am in love with my best friend's girlfriend". But since my best friend was in the band I felt this was problematic, so before anyone can ever hear the song I changed the lyrics to "Mr. Cornflakes, avez vous faim pour déjeuner?" (Mr. Cornflakes are you hungry for breakfast) as a joke and the rest of the lyrics were about a guy eating his breakfast and spitting it out.

It was a hit!! All my friends and everybody at the school were crazy about the song, they asked me for tapes, were playing it on the student radio. I literally became a school star after making this song. I was the Mr. Cornflakes guy!!

Back then we already had a band that I founded myself called Miss Steak but our drummer, François Brousseau was an ok drummer but he hated to practice and repeat the songs, he kept complaining. One friend of a friend Iohann Laliberté was renowned to be a monster drummer for his exploits in the "Harmonie Jeunesse" (an orchestra for kids organized by the city or one of the schools). My best friend and I had asked him to join our band but he was not sure if he was interested he said he would think about it. One night at a party I played this song for him and that's when he decided to join the band, its also him on the drums on this recording and every Miss Steak recording up to date, there are no Miss Steak recordings with François Brousseau but I have recordings of him playing with my previous band "Explorers".

Mr. Cornflakes was the song that initially gave life to Miss Steak and put them on the map, but a few years later we had so many other songs that were so much better and less lame we started refusing to play this song, partially because we were so tired of it :P