In honour of tND's Halloween throwdown last week at New York's Playstation Theater (available for download HERE: http://bit.ly/1NvAVa0), this week's #ThisDealInHistory is pulled from our 2002 NYC Halloween Special at BB King's.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in this cut, starting with this early take of "Gone Gone Gone". We were just beginning to get the tracks together for the GGG album and the title track was one of the first to develop.
This initial version isn't fully fleshed out - it's missing the main synth melody (having not been written yet) - but it does feature Dan pitched way up and doublng the intro melody with me. We get into some neat counterpoint around 0:28 until we kick in to the next section at 0:55. It's weird to hear GGG without that signature synth melody, but since we were at our creative best in front of an audience it was never daunting to take a half-finished track and try and develop it live.
We seem to have the middle section worked out just fine, though. This section on the studio record was typical tND - take an idea and just jam it out in various forms while letting the tape run. We'd then pick the best version that we liked and edit it into the rest of the song.
In my opinion, this whole TDIH excerpt really invites the listener into the tND creative process - at 5:00 we switch gears, move into some Drum+Bass and start working out another future GGG track - in this case it's "A Little While/A Little While Longer". Dan starts playing the "A Little While" chorus at 6:32, mixing in a little "Self Orbit" at the same time. I can be heard working out some early keyboard parts that eventually made it into the finished song, including the electric piano segments from 7:29 - 8:39 and the synth line starting at 8:02.
Settling back into "Gone Gone Gone" at 8:40, we stretch the intro a while with some more high-pitched bass from Dan at 10:28, some serious drumming from Darren at 10:41 and a build back into "Gone Gone Gone v.1.0"
PS: For those keeping score at home, we dressed up as the Dixie Chicks for this gig. -Jamie
