Monday, May 1. 2006
“MORE THAN WHORE”
An exclusive TCD studio-report by Grim Rita (Introduction by Martin Walkyier)
The story of how I met Grim Rita, and how she came to perform the female vocals on The Clan Destined “In The Big Ending…” c.d. is one of the very strangest cases of ‘serendipity’ I’ve ever encountered. For those of you who are yet unaware, Grim Rita is the official ‘agony aunt’ from the Faceparty website. A former dominatrix and Alexandrian High-Priestess, this hard-living and hard-drinking Pagan lady is truly the kind of girl who would quaff Cillit-Bang & Absinthe cocktails for breakfast given half the chance! It was March 2005, and I was still reeling from Iscariah’s most unexpected and unexplained departure from TCD. James Murphy was arriving in the UK in around 10 days to begin work with me on the vocals, and the female singers I had intended to work with were either slandering my name upon the internet or refusing to answer my calls & mails. Basically I was going frantic with the worry about my elderly father’s ill health and how I would get the TCD demo finally completed. I’m not normally a chat-room kind of person, but I joined the Faceparty website out of sheer desperation at the lack of any social life whatsoever. It never ceases to astound me, that out of the 6 million members on Faceparty I should ‘accidentally’ happen to message Grim Rita one evening, and that just 4 days prior to James Murphy’s arrival in the UK she should kindly agree to drop everything and travel to Nottingham to help me finish this demo for you dear reader. Grim Rita had never even heard the TCD songs before we began working on the vocals, and neither had she ever sung such highly complex lyrics for a Metal band. The effort and true dedication she showed to the TCD cause was outstanding! She has in my humble opinion far bigger ‘balls’ than the any of the so-called ‘men’ who either sat-back and did absolutely nothing, or spread malicious, kindergarten gossip about me on the net when their time would actually have been far better spent in helping me to finish-off these 6 songs for you all to hear. Horns ablaze Grim Rita! I guess I should let you carry the story on from here… Martin Walkyier.
So there I was happily tapping away at my computer; writing another bunch of arse for my weekly column on Faceparty, when, out of fit of boredom I messaged Mr. Walkyier. We started chatting, well I talked he whinged. “What’s the matter mate?” I enquired vaguely, “I’ve got these songs to record, the producer is flying in from Florida next week and my backing singer’s not answering my calls or texts”. He sobbed, (in a manly way).
“Well”, I said, “Buy my train ticket and I’ll pop up to Nottingham and do it.” Well he did, and so did I!
After a week of rehearsals and the odd exclamation of “Fucking hell Martin, you like to pack the lyrics in, when can I breathe?!”, we went off to Andy Sneap’s enormous pile in the country. I met the producer James Murphy, or “The Pitchfinder General” as we called him, and Martin started laying-down his vocal tracks. The really weird thing was all the while we were rehearsing and recording I kept getting this really odd feeling that we were being watched, Martin said “Yeah that’ll be me old mate, Dave Halliday from the band Hell”. As I walked into Sneapy’s studio there was Dave’s photo. So I put it next to the vocal recording booth and asked him to keep an eye on us.
Well Martin must have buggered-off somewhere when it came time for me to record the falsetto ‘opera’ section in ‘More Than War’, I must have warbled ‘Sanguine Spiritus’, about a thousand times. And each time I thought it was right, James “The Pitchfinder” pipes-up in his laconic Florida drawl, “You’re flat on ya guine”. After two hours of this ‘tuning-torture’ and half a bottle of brandy later, we finally got the damned thing down. Christ that man has the sensitive hearing of a bat!
Then the vocals were finished and the fun really started as various ex members of the band began acting like the retard guests on Jerry Springer. I had to watch as Martin tried in vain to soothe the various leathered beasts. “Of course you’ll still get your royalties”, “Look bro, you left me all alone to finish this demo.”, “Sweetheart, I had to use someone else for the female vocals, as you didn’t even bother to answer my emails or phone calls for months.” And much other such unnecessary, childish bullcrap. “I’ll be fucking bald after all this shit”, declared Martin.
Luckily at that point he met a lovely lady with enormous hooters to take his mind off all the bollocks. I honestly think that if she hadn’t turned-up Martin would still be sitting in a corner now, drooling and scrawling lyrics on the wall in his own excrement.
So readers, when you listen to The Clan Destined tracks remember, from start to finish, Martin never gave up on his fans, never gave up on the music and fought tooth and nail to get these songs recorded and released. I hope you fucking appreciate it!
GRIM RITA www.faceparty.com
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