Singled Out: The Cringe's No Control (Recorded With Steve Lillywhite)

"No Control" is the first single from our album, "Play Thing," and also the first song we recorded. Unlike our last two albums, each of which were recorded in one 6 week black out session in studio, "Play Thing" was recorded piecemeal, in between touring and other projects over the course of about a year and a half.

When we started recording "No Control," we were operating under the belief that we were (as we did with our last album "Tipping Point") going to track and mix the entire album on tape (i.e. no pro tools, no digital effects, real mid 1970's old school). We were able to maintain this methodology for the first three tracks recorded ("No Control," "Give & Take," and "Start Again.") The tape manufacturer then went belly up, and we ran out of good quality tape stock and had no choice but to dump everything into Pro Tools and record the way pretty much the rest of planet earth does, i.e. digitally.

Around the time we started working on "Play Thing," I met and become good friends with rock producer extraordinaire, Steve Lillywhite. He was gracious enough to work in studio on "Play Thing" with The Cringe, in between his other projects (which at the time were U2, Blue Monday, and Phish.) "No Control" is the first song he worked on with us. As a result, the song contains what we affectionately refer to as "The Lillywhite Edit." After we had completed recording the song, Steve came up with an idea to cut out a measure of music just after the second chorus, going into the guitar solo. It adds a nice little unexpected flourish to the track, as the rhythm seems to jolt a bit out of whack (in a cool way) before quickly recovering.

At the time, however, we were still working on tape, and accordingly couldn't (or wouldn't) simply (and safely) delete the measure from our pro tools session with the quick click of a mouse. So short of re-recording the entire track, we did not know exactly how we were going to cut out a measure from the hunk of tape that contained our precious piece of completed music. Luckily for us, Steve suggested something that used to be done quite a bit, but is rarely (if ever) done anymore -- a tape edit. Basically, the extra measure would literally be cut out of the recorded tape -- with a scalpel blade -- and the two remaining pieces would be taped back together. All in all a very scary proposal to the band (after all we had worked very hard on recording the track, and it was about to be hacked in half with a razor.)

As it turned out, deep in the dusty recesses of the studio, we found an engineer old enough to have learned how to edit tape. We coaxed him out of hiding to carve up our precious hunk of music. 5 minutes later -- voila -- we had our "Lillywhite Edit."