Before Jeff and Kyle joined, Rob played bass and Schuyler played the rest. That meant recording guitar and bass to a metronome then sending the recording home so Schuyler could spend some weeks writing drum parts with his Sony SPORTS walkman. A few of these songs wound up on greedyfeedr‘s first release, but most of them were laid to rest. 

That is until now.

CELL MATE

Of the big 3 songs that Schuyler played drums on, (Cell Mate, Faceful, Eurydice) this might be the best of the group. 

No clue why it didn’t end up on the self-titled record, other than some of the writing and production choices near the end of the song don’t really stack up. Anyway it has its moments.

CONFESSIONS IN AN ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

This one has some merit as well, but overall doesn’t suit the aesthetic. 

There are more demos of this song than any other greedyfeedr song. Schuyler worked very hard on this one for it to turn out bad. Such is life.

DOGSKIN

Dogskin is the most obvious example of a song that doesn’t belong in the catalogue for aesthetic reasons, though it’s also pretty poorly executed. 

Schuyler was happy to include acoustic instruments, pianos, etc., during this period. greedyfeedr was meant as an exercise in rule bending, but too great a variation in energies across a record can be onerous for the listener.

These songs were all recorded by Randy Solski at RS Sounds, and were mastered at Metalworks Studios by the most peculiar mastering engineer you ever did meet. 

The Rob + Schuyler era was short, but cool. Lots of writing, lots of learning, lots of demos, lots of creativity, discovering new pedals and effects, learning a lot about production in a short time. 

We also spent a lot of time looking for other musicians. The band was supposed to have a female singer, but we couldn’t find one. And we met a lot of weirdo Toronto players – schmoozers, nerds, and this one incredibly sweet metal guitarist who after absolutely shredding for 2 hours, was like “y’know I really like you guys … your music … but I just have to play what comes out of me.” 

I hope that guy is extremely happy somewhere.

This is when we became 4.

The early era produced a bit of work that never made it to recording. Difficult to recall the material.

One of our first original songs we wrote as a group was this slow jam groove thing from a Rob riff called Following Orders, and if you’re wondering whether the title came from the Nuremburg Trials, well I have some very good news for you.

We also covered versions of Bjork’s Army of Me, and Bowie/NIN’s Afraid of Americans. They were average.

We recorded a few cover songs during the Like Sisters era.

IMMIGRANT SONG

One of them was Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, waaay before Trent Reznor and Karen O made their sublime version, we made this blasphemous monstrosity.

Oh BOY did people hate this cover. Y’know what? Fuck those people. Fuck those people where they live.

LOVE SONG

We also recorded a cover of The Cure’s Love Song with some other influences mixed in. Schuyler’s brother filmed some Super 8 footage of this session.

These were recorded at the now defunct Mastermind Studios.

Oh look it’s the Like Sisters era. Ever wondered what else was going on musically during this time? Well soon you won’t!

final mix.wav

Firstly there were some lackluster electronic experiments.

Wanna know how you can tell this is a demo? No reverb on the vocals, gumshoes.

temp mix.wav

And there were also some piano songs that sound like the soundtrack to a guy trying heroin for the first time and then running through a meadow. Or a young woman who summers near a lake realizing she’s soon going to have a change of heart about her cousin.

Damn, this song is more versatile than I thought.

Ignore the flubs baby, just let them drift over you.

Along with electronic experiments and piano noodling, Schuyler was creating some of the most bitch-ass guitar based demos you ever heard.

Not gonna include those here because they’re literally mortifying to everyone involved, even you, dear reader. But just for reference, you can listen below to Schuyler writing The Eternal Return if you’re really so curious to see how the sausage gets made.

The Eternal Return – demo.wav

You see kids, even respectable songs have modest beginnings, and that’s the rub. Often you don’t know until the very late stages that what you’re working on is bad. This song sounds dumb as hell here, but turned into one of our better pieces.

gf june 14_mixdown

And here’s where it goes the other way.

This is a Schuyler demo from June 2005 that is objectively the worst thing we’re gonna post here. It has all the hallmarks of a Schuyler bedroom demo: the insufferable metronome, prioritizing drama over songwriting, infernal rhythms repeated ad nauseum, Schuyler singing well out of his register – this track has got it all. The difference is, this one amounted to absolutely nothing. Just an embarrassing chunk of dog shit that rightly never saw the light of day.

Fortunately some vocal stuff from this calamity was lifted and used in Dearest Heloise pt. 2, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

T(6) – jeff guitar2.wav – demo

Here’s Jeff’s guitar demo that Schuyler stripped for parts and turned into T(6). He even left most of the best parts on the cutting room floor like some sort of international super fool.

Rita Waxes Poetic

But it’s not all bad news. Here Schuyler learns the valuable and long overdue lesson that he should stop writing other peoples’ parts, because when he does that, the songs turn out like whatever this is.

Recorded by our dearly departed friend, ne’er-do-well, man about town, and handsome devil, Dave. 

Oh look!

That session there is 3 Victors. This is how this particular song structure was finalized. Each of those red waveforms is the same waveform, organized and automated to create a structure that Schuyler could sing over.

I mean, is that remotely interesting? The jury is out.

January 3, 2006

This year started out pretty fun, ‘cuz sometimes the prog rock gods smile down upon you and you have a good show the same night your lead singer dresses up like a divorced shop teacher and for some reason a bunch of photographers are there plying their craft that night and the whole thing results in a free set of promotional live shots.

The Horseshoe Tavern, a home away from home

The Horseshoe was always good to us. A bunch of Tuesday nights we rolled pretty hard in there. One time we looked out at the crowd and Cone from sum41 was staring back at us. Imagine that. The renowned bass player of such hits as [blank] and [can’t remember] eye-to-eye with greedyfeedr. What a world. What an experience. It’s like that time Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees, except we’re all the Monkees in this scenario.

penultimate.wav

Well here’s a fascinating little phenomenon. Usually mixdown sketches are called like “final” or “finalfinal” or “finalfinalasdfasdfasdfasdf” but this guy here is called penultimate. Looks like somebody had more plans for this opus and then lost interest!

Fun time to decipher some of Schuyler’s lyrics, as he talks about the planet in this one like 2 decades before it was cool. So, yeah, usually “mother” means earth or something very large, “father” is time or heredity. “sister” is usually someone or something very close, and “brother” is the self, ‘cuz Schuyler was a boy. Still is, baby!

What, did you think nothing interesting was gonna get said on this page? Move along, pal.

Kyle at Metalworks Studios

This couldn’t possibly be interesting to anyone but Kyle or possibly his kids if they can peel themselves away from TikTok long enough but here’s the man himself during a session we did with our friend Scott Rickwood at Metalworks Studios. The video looks to be shot with a potato.

We were studio guinea pigs a few times for friends studying recording arts. It’s not really that fun.

bootheel mdma mix final.wav

This is a remix of Bootheel, from our self-titled record.

It’s not that bad and not that good.

Video, Video

The first thing we (unwittingly) did that would be part of INDICES was a music video shot on Super 8. The footage was originally shot to be the video for Press Your Skin Grafts Against Me, but the footage would end up working better for And Finally, A Dream.

There’s the camera tests with Schuyler’s cousin Alexa.

KILLS GERMS • FRESH SCENT

Of course, as the creative exercise becomes more onerous, the creator grows prone to cynicism.

The old apartment

This is the last picture of us together, on our lawn in Paris, Ontario. Taken by Schuyler’s brother on a plastic Chinese Holga on 35mm film. 

We were all injured later this day in separate head-banging accidents.