Damn Skippy Baby... track by track

 

it's been a few months now since the release of damn skippy baby, so i've had time to reflect and hear with new ears now that it's something that exists out in the world, and not just primarily in my imagination. when amy passed away in february, 2021 the only thing i could really do that made me feel less awful about the way everything had ended up was working on this project. i knew we had enough material left behind that we could finally finish what had basically been planned as shitting glitter's fourth album way back before our third album was even finished. some of these songs existing in demo form, some posted to our myspace page as a series of holiday-themed tunes, one in the soundtrack of a short indie film, and some that had just been emailed around. here is some behind the scenes 'tea' on each song, for anyone who harbors curiosity about these songs which have taken many years to finally see the light of (streaming) day.

microscope

this was the most recent song amy and i worked on, back in 2018. either amy wrote lyrics and sent them to me and i came up with the tracks, or vice versa. by the time she came up to my apartment to record them she was in a pretty bad place, and couldn't make it through an entire recording session. we had intended to come back and finish it later but we never did. after she passed i became obsessed with finishing this song somehow, and because of the lyrics i also became obsessed with the book wuthering heights which i had never read before but i knew it was important to amy so i finally read it. since she had emailed me all the lyrics, i just asked von to sing the second verse. he came down from sacramento to west hollywood to record the vocals. i had also sent the track to aj who - in a streak of brilliance - recorded not only the guitar parts, but also the killer bass line that really made the song. i actually ended up simplifying a lot of stuff later, taking out the vocals in the bridge and just letting it be instrumental, but by the last chorus there's a lot going on. me, von and amy all singing different parts, aj's guitar and bass, the synths and drums i programmed, and a mix by o'grego, who i met through nicki tedesco. 

february 29

this was one of my favorite songs we ever did, and i was so sad that it came right at the end and never did get finished. although, it did kick around for awhile because brandon recorded amy's original vocals on the demo. it was one of those tracks i programmed on the korg, titled (because you have to title it to save the file) and then tried to insist amy use my hastily bestowed title, which at that time was 'leaps and bounce'. i think i had intended it as an easter song because we had already done halloween and yuletide. amy had the brilliant idea to instead make it about leap day which i loved! we played this song live a few times, including in a rare "acoustic duo" set-up that amy and i did once at a sushi restaurant at the hollywood and highland mall. flash forward to 2022 and brandon dug up the original demo files and recorded all new guitar parts. i messed around with the synths and drums until it sounded slightly more modern and little pioneer mixed it.

the first one

literally the first song amy and i worked on when we were faced with the prospect of carrying on as a duo for the second time in the history of shitting glitter. i had just recently started producing my own music on my imac and was eager to shift the band in an even more electronic and trip-hop direction which was something amy and i seemed to agree on. we had basically finished it in demo form so all i had to do to finally complete it was to have the exact guitar part i had envisioned added, which was arranged/performed/produced by little pioneer who then did the final mix.

ex-communicate

at some point after the big break up, and right around the time red fox joined the band, i had dreamed up a dance ep that we could independently record and release quickly. we were extremely frustrated with the amount of time it was taking to finish open for business and had already emotionally moved on from those songs and that era of the band. i wanted to explore the new directions that amy and i had been pursuing with my newfound confidence in producing. the ep was going to be called dance dossier and i think i had intended this as the title track, but as usual amy decided to change the title and wrote lyrics about imagined conversations with all of her ex-lovers and the romantic idea of meeting them for conversations on rides around los angeles via public transportation. it was pretty much finished in its demo form so i just needed to spruce it up with more modern drums, better executed backing vocals, and a great mix done by little pioneer.

black magic marker

amy really, really loved this song and always hoped it would see the light of day. we had previously been asked to record a song for a documentary about charles manson, specifically to sound similar to 'white rabbit' by jefferson airplane, but different enough to avoid any copyright issues. ha! we wrote and recorded 'the man,' but afterward we all really wanted to explore a similar aesthetic but with an original song, in our own style. brandon and amy recorded the demo with just guitar and vocal, and at some point i programmed a track for it on the korg but it never worked as a recording. i had to completely recreate it from the few sparse, original tracks, setting it to a grid and timestretching some vocals to fill more space, or guitars to fill less space, until it all lined up. then, i added all the synth and drum parts and backing vocals. little pioneer then did the final, definitive mix!

spirit butter

this was another one amy and i had been working on and had basically finished it more or less, with a mix done by bradley jacobson at swivek who had also recorded and produced amys final vocals. of course we never ended up releasing anything official after this point and it wasn't a song that any of the new incarnations of the band picked back up. to finally complete it, aj added brilliantly beautiful guitars in layers of trippy melodies, and then von did similar in adding layers of vocal harmonies with Amy's original takes at the end of the song. little pioneer did the final mix and it may be my favorite on the entire album.

stacked

featured in the short film 'scale,' which i have on dvd somewhere, this was a song that started out as a korg program that amy and brandon finished off with vocals and guitar. i had always felt it was done hastily and i wasn't that fond of the version we ultimately sent off to the movie maker, but amy really loved her lyrics and vocal work so I had always wanted to finish it. after amy passed, brandon sent over the original files and i improved upon the synths from the original korg sequences, which had obvious limitations in terms of quality since they were lower-bit samples. i redid the arpeggiators and strings, rearranged some of the guitar parts, and completely replaced the drum tracks with a new beat. then, i slowly added in some of the original sounds back in towards the end and had o'grego do a final mix with instructions to go as crazy as he wanted with sonic tricks to make it interesting!

this song is free

this was another sort of throw-away song that i had programmed first on the korg, actually as a song for someone else. i was working with a young male vocalist at the time, kenyth, and produced a song for him he had written called 'billy b'. we started working on some other songs and i had made this song for him but things didn't work out. so at some point shitting glitter jokingly decided to do a song about how everyone was now expecting music to be free online, nobody wanted to pay for music anymore. i think amy and brandon were on one of their classic 'tears' where they went on inebriated recording sprees, so it never made a whole lot of sense and was kind of just a silly demo, but there was just enough of something there that i kept suggesting to amy that we should finish it. of course that never happened but after she passed, brandon wanted to record new guitar parts and i also had him sing some vocals for the ending part for an idea i had. then, i had von record vocals for that end part of the song too, and then i layered mine in, so that the end creates kind of a cacophony with all four of us singing the same line, 'i guess this song is free.' it was mixed by o'grego.

sistere

for a short time, we had a sort of in-joke that we had started a second band, called believable tv, that would really just be a cover band and play mainly shitting glitter songs, as well as some other covers. the only real difference was that believable tv would play stripped down, acoustic style (as shitting glitter had also done occasionally) and had a slightly different visual style. more hippy and low-key. i think we only played one gig as all three of us, and then brandon and amy did one gig without me. but i know the one gig we did play was a holiday show, and so we did this song which was written for the show, as a believable tv song but also a shitting glitter song. we finished a demo quickly to post it on our myspace page in time for yuletide (at the time i think i was calling it 'the holiday' because i had begun to refuse to say the word 'christmas' so as to not be mistaken for a christian, but later i started referring to it as yuletide, or when it seemed easier i'd just say whatever i figured the person i was speaking to would call it). finishing it was the first project i really dove into after amy's death and to my surprise, when brandon dug out the original files, there were other vocal takes that amy had done, sort of writing the lyrics on the fly and figuring out the melody and harmonies as she was recording it. so there were alternative vocal takes and entire different lyrics than what i'd ever heard in the demo mix. i did a lot of rearranging to take advantage of the additional vocal bits, to give the song more structure and drama, and to make it sound fully realized. i had little pioneer add one more guitar line i had imagined, and then he did the final mix.

there is no end

as i mentioned at the very beginning, three of these songs began life as a series of holiday-themed songs. for a short time we flirted (or maybe it was just me) with the idea of having a whole album of holiday songs. you know now that february 29 started out being more about the easter bunny but ended up being about a girl born on leap day. sistere was our winter holiday dirge. but the tune that started it all off was a halloween ditty originally called 'fruits of evil.' as usual, it proved to be a bad idea to try to control both the music and the title of the song. amy wrote a song about having a 'cure' for hiv, which then in my mind clashed with the title of the song. we were going to re-record it and amy wanted to flesh out the lyrics and we were going to give it a new title. we had completed it quickly in time to release on myspace for halloween, and then i started working on a second version of the song, which included a long instrumental outro. in 2021, brandon located the original tracks, and i combined them with the second version which i had initially created in garageband. i did some extreme remixing, rearranging vocals and adding new backing harmonies, changed up the bass sounds and then completed it the way i had finally imagined it. this is the only song on the album where i did the final mix, and i ended up giving it the title 'there is no end' and placing it last on the album as a poignant reminder of amy's legacy.