Click on the artwork for the full scoop on each era...

One of the goals of our East Asian jaunt was to secure a new record deal in Japan, which we did. Pony Canyon signed us up, and we came home to write the new CD. Taking an opposite approach to the "record it as it’s written" Water sessions, tunes were sewn together and we hit the road.

First, let's talk about Pete.

Pete Dembrowski (nee’ Sykes or Skyes, if you are a movie credit reader) arrived just before the Water tour in 1993. He came with good press from Jay and Phil, and I was looking forward to meeting him. There were two phone calls to tell Pete what he needed to know, and when to show up.

One August afternoon, he wandered in, tuned up, played everything perfectly, and easily. Then he followed us to Taco Bell where he farted loudly.

Clearly, Pete fit in and the Saigon Kick Audition System had succeeded again.

SK did a truncated Water tour with Pete, and then headed home for future planning. DITD would be his first real foray into getting a CD into the stores, as he had been hosed at the altar on a previous attempt in CRYER. It was go time for Petey. On the post-Indo, pre-DITD tour, SK (Mark II) rehearsed new songs at soundcheck every night, attempted some during the set, and remembered what worked and what didn’t. I really liked this style of assembling material because you got instant marketing results. People who heard the stuff either reacted well or they didn’t, just like the pre-major label days.

And they reacted well.

We tore across the USA with growing confidence and headed into Morrisound Studios right after New Years, 1995. In complete contrast to Water, we had a veritable laundry list of possible tunes that we had demo’d up. This allowed us the luxury of choosing between three or four tunes of each type. We always had the heavy one (Killing Ground), the odd one (Sunshine), the quirky one (Victoria), the one we’ll never play live (Afraid or Sunshine), the punk one (All Around) and the sounds slightly like one of our idols (take your pick).

Then there was the get it recorded because it’s the last day and you wrote it one.

We had gone out to the Outback Steakhouse, after much protesting from our sodium sensitive guitarist, and while we waited for our table I punched our visiting Marketing Guru in the shoulder as a gesture of good natured camaraderie for our non-homosexually-interested-all-American-red-blooded-never-look-at-the-other-guy's-junk-in-the-next-urinal-women-worshipping-males kind of thing.

He apparently was more man than I, and told me so as I heard the two outer bones in my playing hand snap like Stella D’Oro breadsticks. As I bent over in pain, he simply said: "American Made, baby."

I said ouch.

Holding my hand against any cold drink was my attempt at trying to heal quickly.  And knowing that So Painfully was on that night’s recording agenda was sprinting through my head during the meal. We got through the high salt intake by getting everyone drunk, which helped my pain and their perception if I really stunk it up (more than usual) back at the studio.

We returned and began tracking, and our usual one-take method was out the window, as equipment was drunkenly knocked over, rhythm-less dancing occurred at random moments and Spinal Tap scenes were re-lived.

The aptly named So Painfully took more than 14 takes.

Again, ouch.

But, we got it done, even if we doctored it (gasp, shock, pshaw!), and it came out fine. We actually had to edit the profanity-spiked intro because Phil was swearing.

I, personally, was shocked.