uganda XII

recording session in kampala

monday, august 25/08

the way that roger arranges things is a bit of frustration for me. for instance, a recording session done in canada needs to be arranged and planned ahead of time. in roger's mind everything is arranged but not in reality.  we knew we wanted to do the recording and were already planning for it.  then he phones to make the arrangements! we were to start at midnight and would have the studio (with engineer) until 6am. 

when we got to the studio we found ourselves in the middle of the ghetto, in a very dark alley. unfortunately the door was locked. we could hear music but nobody responded to our constant pounding on the door. roger said he would phone the engineer on his cel. but he was unable to get a good signal so he said he would leave to get a better signal and i should wait for him there. "here!?" i said. it was dark and several times there were suspicious people walking past. of course, at midnight in a dark alley in a ghetto in africa, anyone looks suspicious. i probably looked suspicious. "i'm not staying here alone." roger seemed amused by this. he said to follow him. he led me into what seemed like an abandoned building with a hallway. from different directions we heard loud noises from people yelling, music, tv, and radio, and no-one was  responding to our calls. finally, a phone call resulted in an unlocked door.

the studio had state-of-the-art equipment but the place was very dark and grundgy. the windows were almost opaque with dirt. the engineer was a pleasant guy who also owns the studio. he actually owns many of the buildings in the area which is why the studio is situated in this area. 

roger and i had hoped to put some "real" instruments in this recording but the engineer immediately began to sequence the music. after a long discussion around what was expected by the public and the time available, and who was really the producer here (he had produced roger's recordings in the past and expected to do this song as well), the sequencing continued. roger seemed ok with this so i had to let it go.

one of the things that i noticed was that roger is an intuitive performer. he really knows what he's doing in the studio and is able to get the feel and emotion of a song into the recording which is not a common thing.

after the recording (which took only a couple hours) we had to find our way home because there was no more taxi's available. roger said we would take a bodaboda which is like a motorcycle taxi. unfortunately, they weren't available either. and i was not excited about getting on one of these with someone who likely was either drunk or had been smoking dope for the last couple hours. roger made an arrangement that he would drive one bike with me on it, and the other bike would have the two drivers (one of them the owner of the motorcycle we were riding) follow us. it didn't take long for me to realize that roger didn't have alot of experience on bikes and the ride home was hair-raising and nerve-wracking. but we arrived safely and the recording day we had looked forward to was over.