This album was critical in the regaining the scene’s trust. At the same time of BBQ’d Salad I was working with a group called Psycobabble. A demo of theirs got to CI and they decided to take a chance on me. Thank God they did! It was a marathon session. We worked 80 hours in a four day period. Not only did they record in that time, but we also did a remote live recording at the Waldorf at the end of the second day. It was insanity. We were all zombies at the end. We took a 10 break between day 2 and 3 before we started mixing. The mixing went for 28 hours and I got home at 4pm on Halloween night and fell asleep. I slept through Halloween because of them and they know that they will never be forgiven for making me miss “my night!”

But then came a change in personal and Mario, the bassist or Psycobabble came into the fold to put on bass tracks. I felt like I was cheating on a girlfriend. It was weird. Then our studio lost the big Neve console we had mixed the album on. So I had to remix the record on a considerably smaller Soundcraft with no automation! OLD SCHOOL! Then they decided they wanted to record three more songs! I did my best to make it all match and the album came out in the spring. The response was immediate. I finally had something out that people really liked the sound of and that really brought more work my way down the road. As nuts as it was, it was totally worth it. I was referred to as “The Reluctant Vampire” in the credits.

UNRELEASED, well not yet. So this time the CI boys had a lot more studio chops and had been playing a lot in town and in LA and were ready to go with some really cool material. It just a matter of squeezing into the studio. Whitesnake had book the studio for 7 months and we trying to get CI and Fall Silent as soon as Coverdale would take a break. After months of rescheduling, a week in March of ‘96 opened up and a mad panic to squeeze them ensued. We tracked a bunch of songs in one night. Just enough to get the drums down and we could finish in the smaller room. We took our time and it was coming together beautifully. The drummers mother, Polly Frasier did some guest singing on the record.

The style was changing and diversifying. We even did a acoustic tone poem that was missing for 3 years until a month ago. They were writing a lot and at the same time, by happy coincidence, they won a local battle of the bands whose prize was more studio time at our studio. So they tracked five more songs, for the most part live. One of which was a hysterical cover of “Message in a Bottle.” The changes in styles made for a very very tricky mix but a very interesting album. Before the album went to mastering the group broke up. And I was sad. But rumors of a CI reunion are stirring. You may be able to hear this yet.

I love the way that the Spanish sing. The driving force of this group are twin brothers whose name escape me now. Their voices were just magical together. One played accordion and the other played bass. The bass player kinda reminded me of a Hispanic Greg Lake (Emerson Lake and Palmer). The Guitarra they had was not tunable. That drove me bonkers and made vocal overdubbs really fun! Thank God their manager was there to translate for me because my Spanish was really bad! All in all we still managed to establish a good enough communication to get good performances out everyone. I must admit the polka feel for 14 songs did get a bit long. But that’s the genre I guess.