After almost too long, I needed to step up to the plate again.  I lobbied the powers that were, Mark Harvey, and got a gig in the mix room with Ggggarth Richardson, he stutters, and Joe Barresi on an L7 mix.  Garth producing.

I knew Joe and Garth pretty well.  Garth called me the demo king and later the donut king.  He insisted that would be my credit and I dared him to do it.  Joe and Garth brought consistent business to A&M and Garth was part of the Canadian contingent.  There always seemed to be a disproportionate number of Canucks in music production but I liked them all.  Randy Staub and Bill Kennedy both mentored me.  Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, The Wall) is a Canadian and he is one brilliant man.  Google him, you’ll see.  Garth did the first Rage Against The Machine record, arguably their best.

Joe became the shit.  Queens of The Stone Age.  Tool.  Google the talented bastard.  We were born on the exact same day you know.

The Canadians made great engineers and producers.  Google Bob Rock.

Garth looked at me on the morning of the first day and said with unmistakable seriousness, “Mikey, if you do nothing else on this session, I want you to set it up so that every time I hit rewind or stop on the multitracks, the audio from the hockey game comes up.”  The finals were already on the television mounted between the massive monitors.

I ran a mult, from SMPTE  time code always on track 24, from the sync head to a gate,  some fifty five milliseconds before the playback head.  Gave me a five one hundredths of a second advantage.  Trigger to open on rewind and stop, but duck on playback when the gate saw signal of a certain amplitude.   SMPTE time code was of a very consistent amplitude..  A mere threshold issue.  I brought it up on a fader.  In the interest of thorough, I strapped another gate across the insert to close while the mix was playing.  Kinda the same chain but in reverse.  I still took care to mute it when we were printing mixes.

I think they were impressed.  Didn’t think a rookie like me had the chops.  It took me about five minutes; I’d been stealth engineering on my own for some time but hadn’t ever been responsible for maintaining lock on two analog multitracks.  Ahead of the curve and behind it.  Story of my life.  Bane of my existence .

There was only one Canadian I could never muster any affection for.  Scott Humphrey.  Pro Tools hack and  pompous asshole.  His wikipedia page has him as an “American  record producer/mix engineer”.  Wore his money and privilege on his forehead.  Maybe he is an American.  That would make sense.  I’m an honorary Canadian.  This prick did nothing but look down his nose at me.  I never saw him touch a fader much less mix, engineer or produce a single note.  An expectorate absent any acuity with phase coherency.  He was a dick.

A band of Jersey Goombas was across the hall in studio D.  Biohazard.  Dipshits.  Evan Seinfeld is a consumate douchebag and  now he’s married to Tera Patrick.  One of these things is not like the other.  My buddy Rick and I had the good fortune to clown his clueless ass about a decade later.

I have a plethora of tales about the Canadians, Biohazard and L7.  It gets better.  Stay with me.  It gets better.

Drinks for my friends.

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