I had gotten my first guitar in December of 2002, because my best friend Jeremy had gotten one three months prior in September. I started to write my first song in May or June of 2003. That first song was “Break”. Sometime from late June to early July of 2003, I went to visit my friend Jeremy Roux in Paris, France. I showed him the intro to Break, which was all I had written at the time and we attempted to come up with something to follow it, but we never did.
When I came back home to Edison, New Jersey from France in early or mid-July, I continued working on Break and began to write a second one, my first emotional love song, “When You’re Not Meant for Love”.
Late that summer I also came up with the band name “The Slopin Fairy 7”. It was the first band name I had ever come up with, and I recall exactly when I first announced it publicly. I was at the American Red Cross with Tom Nunziata and we were discussing band names, to which I responded that mine was going to be “The Slopin Fairy 7”, taken from the Limp Bizkit song “Counterfeit”, during which Fred Durst whispers “Slob and fairy” or “Floppin fairy” or “Sloppin fairy” during the intro. I always thought it was “Slopin Fairy”, and 7 was my favorite number. I believe it was only my favorite number because of the hacking program Sub7, from which I had taken my screen name Hacking Dude 7. I may have also watched a few Conan O’Brien shows and noticed The Max Weinberg 7 as his band. I have no excuse for choosing “The”. I remember some employees jokingly saying “That sounds like plagiarism to me”. The first logo was drawn on August 6th, 2003.
The first Slopin Fairy logo drawing August 6th 2003
At first the band was myself (credited as HDS) on guitar and vocals and my sister Marie-Helene as vocalist (credited as MHJ). My friend Andy Palladino was supposed to join on bass, but that never happened. I was looking for a drummer and “any other instruments that would fit”.
In mid August I decided to record my first material, even though I had only been playing guitar for eight months. I had gotten my very own computer about a year before, in the summer of 2002, a Gateway slim desktop with a 19-inch monitor. Because the tower was slim, it was easily movable, and I had kept the original monitor from our first Compact computer dating from 1996, I think (it had Windows 95). I brought my tower, mouse and keyboard in my room on Stephenville, where the old monitor was already. Half of my closet was turned into a desk where I would usually play Legos. But eventually turned it into my first makeshift studio with every audio equipment that I could find. My Talkboy, some other wires, and rejected pieces of hardware. I had to remember to change the screen resolution of my computer before switching monitors otherwise the old monitor would not detect the lower resolution of the mid-90’s monitor, and the 19-inch Windows ME resolution would crash it. I would then have to bring all my stuff back downstairs, change the resolution and come back upstairs. That made a few of the recording sessions start later than planned due to having to go back and forth between monitors and floors. The Gateway computer came with the 7002345 mini microphone, which was really difficult to work with, even when trying to talk on MSN. But it’s all I had, and I used it to record the whole EP. I plugged it in my input and put it as close to my Fender 15watt amp as possible without only getting crackles. Everything was recorded with Windows Sound Recorder, and to bypass the one minute recording limit, you had to pre-determine how long your song was going to last, and record a blank track the first time around, and keep clicking the record button when a minute was over, to add another minute, and hit stop when you reached the desired length of time you wanted the track to be. Then go back to the beginning and record what you wanted over the blank pre-cut track.
The Gateway 7002345 microphone
I recorded an intro and outro on the EP, which was obviously a reference to Limp Bizkit. The end of the intro would crossfade with the second song “Break”. But I wasn’t using any editing programs, so I let the last note ring at the end of the intro and started recording “Break” at about the same length of time of that same note. It was as close as I could come to having it flow through. Counting the intro, outro, “Break” and “When You’re Not Meant For Love” those were the four originals with eight covers. I think my guitar was out of tune when I recorded “When You’re Not Meant for Love”.
The rest of the songs were all covers. Morbid Angel’s “Desolated Ways” was a song that I had learned when visiting Jeremy. Green Day’s “Brain Stew” was one of the first songs I ever learned on guitar because it was so easy, Andy Palladino had shown me how to play it. POD’s “Southtown” was a nu-metal song that I thought sounded so badass back then. System of a Down’s “Aerials” (misspelled “Areals” on the tracklisting) was also a favorite of mine, and Jeremy and I played it quite a bit together (along with KoRn’s “Blind”). I’m not sure how I came to include the John Barry theme of James Bond in there, but I wanted it to sound metal and called it “Extreme Version”.
I also had three medleys in this session. This was my way of doing things like “The Family Values Tour 1998”, which KoRn had medleys on. The first medley included the Godsmack songs “Whatever”, “Keep Away” and “Moon Baby” and the Papa Roach songs “Dead Cell” and “She Loves Me Not”. The second medley included the Blink 182 songs “Anthem Part Two”, “What’s My Age Again” and “Stay Together for the Kids”, followed by Box Car Racer’s “Sorrow” and ends with something I can’t recall. The last medley included the Nirvana song “Come as You are”, the Marilyn Manson song “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and the KoRn songs “Falling Away From Me” and “Blind”.
No artwork was ever made for it, and I doubt any CDs were ever burnt of it.
- Intro
- Break
- Disolated Ways
- When You’re Not Meant for Love
- Brain Stew
- Medley1
- Medley2
- Southtown
- James Bond Theme (Extreme Version)
- Areals
- Medley3
- Outro
track 3 originally by Morbid Angel
track 5 originally by Green Day
track 6 originally by Godsmack and Papa Roach
track 7 originally by Blink 182 and Box Car Racer
track 8 originally by P.O.D.
track 9 originally by John Barry
track 10 originally by System of a Down
track 11 originally by Nirvana, Marilyn Manson, KoRn
recorded mid to late August 2003