Tis' the season for pre-production, fa la la la la, la la la la... (sung to the tune of "The Stroke" by Billy Squier).

That's right, all my little Who's in Whoville. While you're spending the holiday season nestled all snug in your beds with visions of January credit card bills dancing in your heads, Scamper returns to the studio this month to lay down a couple of new sugary morsels of power pop to kick up the saccharine level in your oh-so-fragile diabetic blood streams.

Whenever a new recording session rears its stressful head, your local rock heroes have their endurance tested with a few dreaded pre-production sessions with wonder-producer/bronze medal-winning soul kisser Tom Polce.

Don't get me wrong - Tom is a great guy and a lot of fun to hang out with, but he can be quite the demanding taskmaster. And all the cute John Travolta impressions in the world don't take away the sting of him stopping rehearsal, turning to you and saying "Douchebag, are you even trying to play this right?" Ouch. He's lucky he gives such good handies or there'd be trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Polce, Tom.

By far the most nerve-shredding aspect of pre-production is the evil metronome. I'm pretty sure this thing was forged by the drippings of Satan's scrotal sack. To get the tempo perfect, we spend hours playing along with an obnoxious robotic voice screaming "And ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR, and ONE and TWO..."

Needless to say, this robotic metronome voice haunts my nightmares. And to say the least, it doesn't exactly detract from the general tense atmosphere in the rehearsal space. So if you read about the grizzly murder of a local power pop drummer, tell my wife not to sell my Billy Ripken "Fuck face" card while I'm in prison. That shit's going to be worth some serious dough some day.

I'll be giving you updates on the pre-production sessions over the next few weeks. Huh? Won't that be fun?