Early in the recording of My Chemical Romance's fourth album, the band gave mixer Rich Costey a preview. "Everything he heard was just noise and spitting," remembers singer Gerard Way.

Taken aback, Costey asked, "What are these songs?"

"They're protest songs," Way told him. "It's the sound of 'no.'" Only later did Way realized exactly what he was protesting: "I was protesting us."

After a grueling tour behind 2006's The Black Parade, MCR were worn out and fed up. "I thought the band was going to break up," says guitarist Frank Iero. "I was expecting a call from Gerard saying, 'We can't do it anymore.'" Instead, they took a year off and changed managers. This past February, they went into the old A&M studios in L.A. with Pearl Jam producer Brendan O'Brien.

"The plan was to knock it out and not to overthink it," says drummer Bob Bryar. They expected to be done by April, but the record ended up taking all year. The goal, Way says, was to drpo the theatricality of The Black Parade -- which had lots of Floyd-ian pomp an da Liza Minnelli cameo -- and "to harness everything that's great about this band into shorter songs. Almost protopunk, like the Stooges or the MC5."

The song that pushed them in the right direction was "Trans Am." It begins with the lyric "I got a bulletproof heart" and then stomps through four minutes of fist-pumping rock.

With that new direction -- impassioned but melodic -- MCR put aside the noisier material they had been working on and wrote a new batch of songs; the fast-and-dirty "Still Alice," the anthemic "The Only Hope for Me Is You" and the super-catchy "Death Before Disco" (featuring the chorus "Everybody pay attention to me"). "We simply embraced rock n' roll and where we're from," Way says. "We learned how to be an American rock band instead of a British rock band."

On an October afternoon in L.A., MCR are polishing the album. There's only a month or two of work left to do: some mixing, some overdubs, and sequencing. Today, Way is working on that pivotal cut, "Trans Am" -- which he thinks would be enhanced by "1.2 seconds of Queen."

So he warms up his vocal cords, slips on some headphones, and asks, "Can I get a little bit of reverb? Yeah, it's a crutch." then he sings, "These pigs are after me, after you" a dozen times, creating a "Bohemian Rhapsody" harmony. His performance is stylized, almost like a yodel. With a grin, he announced, "When I start sounding teenage-girlish, that's the sweet stuff."

Way's in a good mood, and not just because he's almost done with the record. In 2007, he married Lyn-Z (bassist for the band Mindless Self Indulgence); this May, they had a baby girl, Bandit. Way took two weeks off and then came back to work "like a zombie, long hair and unshaven." But fatherhood gave him a new perspective on his lyrics, which focused on despair and death. "I wasn't writing a record about becoming a dad, I wasn't writing a record for my baby girl, but I was writing a record for the person that she would turn into when she was 15, if anything ever happened to me."

[Source: Rolling Stone Magazine (RS 1092)]
[Scan: tothetune]

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

The empire strikes back

RSS feeds again

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Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

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Enveloped in postcards

Photos of the week

lj_photophile

Anyway, our epic zombie prank turned into an epic fail when there was a (dare I say it) epic rainstorm on the day we were going to go out.  Basically, we were going to be "Zombies in an Economic crisis", and were going to troll the busier parking lots in town in costume.  We were carrying signs that said, "Will work for brains".  Chaz zombied out with me, but we had to settle for scaring kids on trick or treat night in Sarah's driveway.  Next year, we will take it to the streets, I say!!!

We still have pics of us together, though.  I'll get them up as soon as I can get them mailed to me.  One little girl came up to me and said; "You're scary."  Being a terminally harmless-looking nerd with a slight wish to be badass, I was filled with pride, and answered "Thank you so much!"  Sean, Sarah's husband was, of course, far scarier.  Aside from being naturally a bit scary anyway, he was dressed up as a blood-splattered clown with a chainsaw (sharp bits removed, of course).  I couldn't help but giggle when he couldn't get the thing started because of the cold.  I'm so mean.

Sean's mom is living with Sarah and Sean now.  Linda's not so bad this time.  She's really grateful to be away from Sean's sister and her husband and their stepkid.  Apparently the bastard has Shannon, who I always saw as one of the ultimate tough chicks I knew, under his thumb,  is abusive at least verbally and financially to her, and he and his kid are disgusting fucking slobs.  I don't blame Linda for opting out.  Sarah seems okay with it, but sometimes I wonder if she's really okay, know what I mean?

I have a Facebook now, but, to be honest I'm way freer here than I can be on facebook.  As soon as I friended one family member, I was flooded with friends reqests from all of them.  So, I've gotta watch how I type there.  Can't let them know I have such a fuckin' filthy fuckin' mouth (or mind), can I?  (Actually, I think the swearword I use the most is "ass", though.  As in, "that's a load of ass", or "asstastic", or "bite my shiny metal ass".)  On the upside, though, I'm loving the facebook games.  Vampire wars and mafia wars are my favorites.