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Story Behind The Song - Music For Speeding
21 December 2005
The latest updates - Jun 5th 2003

GIMME A DOSE
AC/DC meets Cacophony meets Raven and Fastway in the new millennium. I always wanted to hear music like this. The intro was supposed to sound like a stoner just picking up the guitar and trying to play the main riff in the song. It has some timing errors in it, but I don?t think it sounds as messed up as I had hoped it would be. Maybe I needed to hire a stoner to play the part, or just get stoned myself~!

FUEL INJECTION STINGRAY
This song inspired the ?music for speeding? title. I had much of this tune written while I was in Megadeth, but I made it a little more modern when I did it for this album. This song is all about full speed driving in a muscle car. The title I borrowed from a Beach Boys tune, and no one writes car songs like they do, but they never really did any heavy ones so I had to be the one to do it. This song features both bass players, Jimmy and Barry. Jimmy is playing the funky stuff under the solos and Barry is holding down the heavy riffs. I got really particular about using each player?s separate strengths to the fullest.

RIPPED
This has got everything in it that I would have drooled over had I heard this in the Cacophony days. I finally figured out a way to mix fast, syncopated leads in a heavy but mod context. Old school and new school co-exist on this track. Sonic Bitch (my engineer) called this one ?Layla on Speed?.

IT?S THE UNREAL THING
With a backbeat that reminds me of Andrew W.K. or Rob Zombie, again I try to bridge the world of modern percussive elements with aggressive soloing and warped guitar arrangements. I played this song in Chile with the backing track on a cd, and the audience was jumping up and down so furiously that they made the cd player skip. I love a beat that makes people do that. A version of this tune was just done by an up and coming heavy rock/metal band, Razer. They added lyrics and some really cool vocals, and retitled it ?Do Ya Want It?. I think their version is absolutely amazing. You will definitely hear a lot from this band in the near future.

CHEER GIRL RAMPAGE
This tune has so many facets and unique elements that it is literally an amusement park for the ears. I was aiming for that unique happy noise you hear when you walk by a pachinko/slot parlor in Japan and the door opens and you hear this magical noisy pumping music coming out. It?s like there is something really exciting going on behind those doors, and the music draws you in. That said, I?ve only played pachinko once or twice. It?s hard. ?Cheer Girl? has techno, bubblegum, and heavy metal elements along with my strange way of playing guitar all co-existing in a hard and pounding arrangement. This was absolute HELL to mix, as there were over 128 tracks to deal with. Also, the sound at the end of the song where it sounds like the tape is being slowed down, was done by literally leaning on the 24 track 2 inch tape machine with my whole body with force and slowing down the actual tape. I don?t think that the studio owner would like to know about that...

LUST FOR LIFE
This was written in my first Tokyo apartment. I had no guitar so I just hummed the melody into a cassette recorder. My fave thing about this one is the girl?s voice that I slipped in right before the guitar solo near the end of the song. When I was a kid, I thought guitar solos were totally orgasmic, so what better way to enter a solo than with a moaning voice? Just for the record, the voice was taken from an outtake of the spoken part from ?Realm of the Senses? from the ?Scenes? album. I still had the master tapes! Thanks, Kayo!

LOVESORROW
This is my fave ?orchestral instrument emulating? piece to date. I?d love to do ?Triumph? (Thunder March) with an arrangement like this. How many times have I recorded that song?? I learned a ton about orchestrating various instruments during the making of this song. What is amazing to me is that I used the exact same amp (Crate 300 Watt) for the glassy clean melodies at the beginning as well as the loud lead guitar at the end. I think this tune is what I may have been aiming at with ?Be? on the Introduction album. I feel like I came a lot closer to the mark this time.

NASTYMACHINE
Dedicated to the nasty machines that some girls use so well, this one has more electronic elements in it than I?ve ever used before. I really got into hacking up samples and creating my own loops before starting recording on this album and aside from ?Cheer Girl Rampage? this has the most sequencing going on. I believe no one has done anything like this; techno beats, but with instead of electronic bass, a retro 70?s disco feel human bass piled high with fast and weird guitar all ending up in a heavy metal crescendo, or climax, if you will. Kind of a ?Free Bird? for techno geeks. This one also took about 128 tracks to record. The mixing engineers hated me!

CATFIGHT
My fave intro on the album. It was fun to create. I blended traditional Korean music with Japanese Gagaku music and warped both of them; stretching out words and sounds, playing parts backwards, the whole lot. The middle of this song has one of the heaviest riffs I?ve ever played. It?s one of those simple riffs that I wouldn?t mind looping and listening for an hour straight. Feel free to do that at home...

CORAZON DE SANTIAGO
I don?t know if my Spanish is correct or not, but I titled this one after a trip to Santiago, Chile. That?s a great town, with many warm, friendly people, and I would love to spend more time there. The theme of this tune is pretty Latin, at least for a white boy like me. This tune is the first of the ?Quilogy??my tongue-in-cheek expression for the fact that the last 4 songs kind of tie into each other.

0-7-2
This 40 second classical piece is semi-serious, semi-joke, and was loosely based on part of the live guitar solo I did on the last few Megadeth tours. I?ve been asked what 072 means so many times, I guess I owe it to all of my friends who visit this site to put the answer here. OK, it means masturbation in Japanese. Get it? Fast, classical flavored guitar playing, high on technique but low on melody = Masturbation? Anyway, it?s mercifully short so enjoy.

SALT IN THE WOUND
Great war flick title. There are some cool military-like, drum rudiments by Jeremy Colson in here that really gives the tune a ?battle? theme. Richie Kotzen engineered some of the solos on this track, and he put some wicked plug-ins on my guitar when we laid down the tracks.

NOVOCAINE KISS
Semi-ripped this title off a Runaways song. This is the spaced out tune to end all spaced out tunes. The spacy intro took many hours to create. How does one know when there is enough space? When do you say, ?It?s done.??? I have had this main melody for a while and I had grown quite accustomed to hearing the demo. I was chasing the sound of the demo quite a bit for the real album and was unsatisfied most of the time so I used some of the actual demo tracks in the final version. That was quite a technical task, as they were in a different tempo, recorded on a different format (digital tape as opposed to hard disk) and in some parts were even in a different key. What I?m saying is that it was basically a pain in the ass. It was worth it, because you forget the pain after it?s all said and done. You just wind up with a perfect piece of art. (or just a piece of something?) Growing up, I always wondered what kind of music would be running through your head if you knew you were going to die. (Kinda heavy concept...) I figure it would be something like this.
 
 
 
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