The GaGaGa’s
Sky Dog Eats the Moon/ 天狗吃月
One of my immediate goals upon arriving in Guangzhou was to start a band. I’d managed to throw some folks together for some rehearsals at C:Union to try and hammer out some songs that I’d written, but with many people not willing to come regularly or commit to the project, it was soon moribund. But Max, Angel, and I agreed that there was something there worth pursuing, perhaps we just needed to adjust the way we used our rehearsal time to build songs.
Our new method was simple- we would jam. I’d record everything we did on Garageband, so if we did something we liked we could return to it. This was how all of the songs on the album, save for “Pero Tu Corazon,” were written. That one I worked on with Angel on the roof of my building one night. For the other five, they were built on riffs composed by Angel during these jams. I'd listen and see images of a story flashing in my mind, scribbling down words and ideas frantically, or just mumbling what came to mind into the microphone until I captured something that worked. With "Leprosy," I'd finished reading this anecdote about Hegel and thought it'd be funny to write a song about how Hegel was such a fucking grump built on a ska beat. Both Max and Angel were wizards at knowing the precise direction a song needed to go, as well as the technical prowess to get it there.
The GaGaGa’s that gave me an opportunity to throw myself around like Patti Smith, and it was fucking great. The Sichuan Benefit Concert at C:Union was our first show, and sadly we only had a few after that. We’d just begun to hit our stride during that frenetic, six months before the Beijing Olympics. However, government restrictions had made it impossible for Angel to renew his visa and so he had to choice but to return Guatemala. And that was the end of The GaGaGa’s.
Luckily, our friend Adam graciously agreed to record the tracks that we had amassed. Max and Angel recorded the instrumentals at LOFT 345 one afternoon, and I added my vocals separately in his closet. Adam mixed and mastered them, while Max took charge of the album cover, which he drew himself and is a sketch of our first gig at C:Union. He also came up with the name for the album, which is the Chinese term for a lunar eclipse.
