Week 3 - Friday 3/29/1991

Recording Useless Heart, Virginia's Dress.

Gates wasn't present in the studio today, having taken Gilan to Disneyland. Urbano and I arrived around 10:30 A.M. and listened to playbacks of last night's work on Useless Heart. Wallace wanted to simplify the keyboard parts I had tracked the previous day, so he edited the Mellotron phrases. Berg and Winegar arrived in the afternoon. After listening to playbacks, they agreed that the Emax string parts should be simplified as well, so we planned to redo it another day.

Urbano and I tried to record the backing track for Virginia's Dress, an atmospheric piece that bore more than a passing resemblance to recent recordings by the band Talk Talk. By 5:30 P.M., we decided it would be better to have Winegar play a fretless bass part, so Urbano performed the drum part alone, without click track or instrumental accompaniment of any kind. The highlight of his performance was a sophisticated drum solo part for the song's long outro. Matt's hand was still in a cast, so he would have to overdub the bass part at another session.