Below is an excerpt from Ben Blackwell’s personal log he kept during the recording of “Get Behind Me Satan.” Enjoy.

March 10, 2005

I went on a food run to Mexican Village. Jack and I both got the chicken Arizonian, Meg pork burizas, Matthew beef and chicken tacos. Once back at the house Jack seemed more excited than he’d been throughout the whole recording process. He told me to come upstairs and listen to his riff and had Meg sit down at the drums. I’m not quite sure whether or not it was the first time they’d played it together or not (Meg seemed to have her bearings as to the direction of the song) but Jack seemed so thrilled about the song, mainly the riff. It was great…using his POG (Polyphonic Octave Generator?) he’d gotten a great Gap Band tone and the song had a undeniable danciness to it. Almost like a happier, joyful version of “Seven Nation Army”. This was the first time in the whole process where Jack had specifically asked me to listen to anything. I sat in the paint room where Jack had his amps set up (Silvertone/Fender Twin/Bassman/SMF) and plugged my ears in hopes of trying to figure out if the riff sounded like any other song. Couldn’t match it to anything. Jack was more animated then he’d been in the past few weeks, saying “I’ve been waiting my whole life to write this song” and the song being “my ‘You Dropped a Bomb on Me.’” Also “You telling me Morris (my father) wouldn’t get on the dance floor for this jam?” And then as Matthew played the track back through the stereo, Jack even busting out some of his robot dance moves. Very uncharacteristic of him. Some kinda synchronicity though because earlier in the day I was listening to RATM’s “Renegades” and remembered reading how they’d wanted to cover “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” on that album and how I thought that’d been a pretty surefire jam. Jack and Meg began rehearsing the song and figuring out it’s arrangement for a long time. Matthew complained about the buzz or hum coming from Jack’s guitar, so there was some time spent trying to remedy that problem. Jack told me to unplug the phone and I did, not to much success. At one point Jack even called me over to play his guitar while they were working to fix the buzz. He was trying to show me how to play the riff and I actually retained part of it. I was pretty impressed with myself.