...or, how I learned to stop fearing digital recording and embrace Pro Tools.


So what's the score now, game fans? 2 years and counting?

Geez, who knows, but it seems as if this tale of the tape has been going on longer than a Dostoevsky novel. Back and forth through smoke and booze-hazed Monday evenings we had trudgingly committed to tape our collective output one song at a time. Lovingly rendering each instrument, each note as if it were our last. Filling reel after reel of what remained of this Earth's final few thousand feet of untouched 1/2" Ampex 456 Grand Master recording tape. When it seemed as though we were finally getting this beast off it's ass and moving forward...we hit that proverbial brick wall: the limitations of 8-track analog recording.

**SMACK** It was a gory scene, but I won't burden you with the details. At this point we had way too many ideas for new songs...we had rough tracks recorded for about a 1/2 dozen songs...what we did have on tape sounded like shit (sometimes that's what you get when you Do It Yourself). This was spring 2005 and The Cocks were NOT delivering the goods. Thus the decision was made...we said "Fuck IT!" and decided to finish our new songs and start playing some shows.

Thusly, shows were played. Hell, it was a veritable world tour (at least in our minds). The Cocks were on a roll...no one could stop us now! This was a really productive period for us. New songs were just coming out all over the place and our repertoire was growing by leaps and bounds. But, godammit, we don't have any of this stuff recorded. We're doing all of these shows and people keep asking if we have a CD. And what are we to say but, "Um, no, we haven't recorded anything yet".

OK, so we lied...a little. But the stuff we did have was unfinished and it was crap, anyway. We're not about to start handing out this stuff...we're a group of highly trained professionals who are not about to release this sub-par drivel and put our hard-earned reputations on the line.

Whoa, lighten up, Francis...sorry about that...got a little carried away. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the recording. Now let's fast forward to October 2005. We had just finished playing the Hurricane Katrina benefit in Wilmington and thought what better time to just fall off the face of the earth (again)! Ah, the pressure's off, no more shows booked...kinda hard to book more shows without a demo right? Right! Can't just get bookings off of our good looks (or can we???). Let's hunker down boys and get this shit done!

And hunker we did...been hunkerin' the past year...lotta hunkerin' going on at Cocks central. But seriously folks, we've been busy as hell. I swear! And did I mention something about Pro Tools? Oh, yeah, well I'll get to that in my next post. In the meantime, go over to our media page and check out one of our new songs to get a taste of what we're working on.

Until then...