Archive for the ‘Making Records’ Category

I was in a Popeyes Chicken the other day and there was a was paraplegic parked in front of the self serve soda fountain. A young dude inked up and seeming less than coherent. You never can tell.

We ordered the new chicken bowl. It sucked. Full of gristle and bone. I actually couldn’t finish it. I was disgusted. I have a slightly broken molar bottom left that has a jagged edge. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I discovered a giant wad of chicken cartilage lodged in it, so I spat it onto Vineland Avenue as I sped away.

We waited at an unwiped table for too long for a tiny shitty bowl of gruel. During that time the guy in the chair asked for my help in fastening his watch. I think he said, “Hey Bro, can you help me with this?” I didn’t mind. I helped him. It ended up on the inside of his wrist and I wondered if he wanted it turned around so it sat on top. He told me no.

I started thinking about him and imagined he was some sort of gangster who’d gotten lit up pretty messy.

I met a guy the other day that within just a few minutes was lifting his shirt to show me ugly scars from being stabbed by some guy on meth that owed him money.

People are strange wherever you go.

Today I sold a piece of audio equipment that was pretty close to my heart. The Cranesong STC8, was the most brilliant stereo buss compressor I’ve ever used. Last stage before the two track. I liked to plug the output of the console into it, the Cranesong, and then it into the half inch via XLRs. Nostalgically melancholy. Oh well, I’m up $2k.

Those of you I offered it to privately should be ashamed you didn’t bite. It went to a good home. A passionate engineer from Mexico who’s company is called Pigsound because he likes a fat sound. I left him in the lobby with the gear while I went back up to my apartment to get a business card. I let him know I trusted him so he knew he could trust me. I came back down with my card. Then he paid me.

We bonded a little. It was a lucky day for both of us. It is an exceptionally musical piece of gear that will now be making Latin music. I checked him out. He’s got talent. Cool studio. Nice gear. My advice to Fernando is more tubes. A certain amount of harmonic distortion is a good thing. Don’t forget that very bottom toggle switch, it’s key.

I told Fernando I’d call him to make sure he was happy. Maybe then I’ll ask him if he wants to know about distortion. He doesn’t need my input but I could show him a few things. Distortion can be anyone’s friend. It’s merely electric dissonance. Dissonance makes the heart grow fonder.

A beautiful woman has given me sincere advice that I have no idea what to do with.

For the first time in months, I have rent before it’s due. Cool.

Drinks for my friends.

We made this record once. Turns out it was brilliant.

Lush and complex, with balanced flavors of spice and chocolate milk. Nestle’s Quick. Cinnamon pastries, wasabi, soy and ginger. Kung Pao and various sauces including Hollandaise, port reductions, gravy and marinara.

Flowers and rainy wind. Lazy motes in a sunny meadow.

Nevermind the textures and colors.

Nearly a decade went by, I never listened to it. I didn’t care about it. Dug it out one night to impress a girl because the acoustic tracks were pretty and I could tell by her eyes she would like them.

It’s one of the very best things I ever had anything to do with.

I barely remember making it.

Alex.

It was Alex, that little fucker made sure it was a great big lovely record. His feather gathered mass over my anvil. He knew exactly what he was doing. He walked me through it, using my anvil when he needed it. You can hear where he did it. He used a bullhorn to demand my anvil. Emasculating. I was a monkey with a hardon for a beach ball and he saw it. He began by showing me pictures of the ball. He continued with elaborate puppet theater. Towards the end, hypnotisim.

In no time at all, I was a sideshow.

The production is extraordinary and it really is there the soul of Alex.

I was lucky.

His creative musical genius for arrangement and nuance amazes me. Born on the same day, we were otherwise polar opposites he and I. He was the architect, I was the general contractor and the subcontractors were all spectacular lunatics. You can almost never go wrong when pairing eggs with cheese and champagne with fruit. Champagne with eggs, cheese and fruit.

I like brunch.

There was Betsy, leader of the lunatics, exceptionally bright, extraordinarily talented and somehow, we’d earned her trust. She sang celestial and played with terrible conviction. She composed like a vulnerable wraith.

Betsy gathered quite the formidable parade of shiny muses. Calliope and Euterpe. Melpomene to Thalia. We had a blast. I don’t know how I wasn’t in love with what we’d done or her. I remember working at a pretty grueling pace and sometimes being confused by exactly what overdub we were in the middle of.

But that shit was normal.

Michael Whitaker too. He’s all over this thing. Crazy bastard. Feedback Monarchy. Mellotron mendacity. The personalities in that tiny control room left a pastel vapor trail that would show up like smoke under certain sensors to this day.

Actually, we only did the first nine of sixteen songs on the record. Michael P. Tak of Carnival Art fame recorded the rest at his home studio, “Sweaty Elvis”. Those songs were mixed at Triad in Seattle.

Our assistants were Bamford, Srebalus and Sperger. Bamford ended up playing bass on the song True Fluid and he fucking nailed it. He engineered a Weezer record a few years back. Srebalus has produced a documentary film. Sperger is a bathroom attendant in a Vegas titty bar.

Somehow, I didn’t really get it by the time we were finished. I was still upside down.

Al often shined (sic), but never more consistently, never so inspired, as on this record.

He had fun. There was a point where I surrendured the entire thing to him. Maybe it was early in the mixes, but I think it was well before that. He knew exactly what we were all doing. I did the best I could to be a shit hot engineer.

We ended up bringing in an auxilliary console for some of the mixes. Eight channel Neve broadcast consoles on wheels we called “Sidecars” for submixing etc. A ton of experimenting and ludicrous methodology. Backwards tape and lotsa flangers. Those days, A&M studios was a mall for gear sluts. We were prostitutes just inside the mall’s main entrance.

We earned a decent living and never wanted for gear.

Betsy slept in the live room. Not because she had no place to go. She was owning it.

She gave me a first edition Steinbeck, “Tortilla Flat” with the sweetest most honest letter I’ve ever recieved folded in it’s pages.

She was effusive with fruit. Ask me about it sometime.
She brought in a machine to make us lattes.

“incidents and accidents…….hints and allegations…..”

I’ve spoken to her a few times in the last few years but I’ve been a little self involved and have no idea how to reach her now. She has no idea of my sheer joy with this record. I started to tell Alex but I need to finish. This piece will help.

The bottom line is this. If you don’t like this record, the fault lies with Alex as he took it upon himself to rest his nutsack on my left cheek and all the while I allowed it. He was driving. I rarely remember taking the wheel.

It get’s worse. He then took the best I could possibly do and directed it towards his own vision. He used me. A kind but insidious man.

His hands were always much larger than his feet when it came to mixing. He’d have this schedule of mutes and fader moves we had to perform perfectly before we could go home. Just about every record we did was manually mixed. I was there to make things girthy and/or pretty. Once I did that I was thinking about whiskey and noodles in that order.

Al was way more musical. He was the doctor and I was the monster.

I liked making cymbals sound like silver air. Drums like mountains. Guitars like giant vibrating walls of electricity and dirty oil. Bass guitars taste like chunky peanut butter on mayonnaise covered popcorn with a side of maple syrup. Brass, woodwinds, strings, harmonicas, concertinas, banjos, percussion, all tasting like cheese from mild to sharp or fruit from sweet to sour. Sourdough toast with butter and orange marmalade. Best job ever. Except it never leaves you.

Do it right and you end up with a very drinkable wine.

You can take words but never even attempt to borrow a concept.

Drinks for my friends.

Nothing smells like a tire shop. I loved it. Always a chrome gumball machine. Newspapers, car magazines. Displays of motor oil, fascinating three dimensional cutaway presentations of tread and steel belts. All kinds of shit to look at and the coolest smell.

Kinda like the Barbershop behind Cactus Jack’s. It had it’s own vibe and there were comic books from Andy’s Smoke Shop around the corner on Main Street. A guy named Bob took care of me and the Old Man. Light blue smocks and the scent of Barbicide.

The tall jar of aquamarine disinfectant filled with combs is something that fascintes me to this day. I have an overwhelming compulsion to put red striped straws in with the combs.

Someday I’ll do that.

Dad always went first so I could get started reading a comic. I didn’t like getting my hair cut and I don’t know why. I’m not sure we’ve ever understood each other but he always understood what I needed.

The apparatus, gauges, hoses and tools at the tire shop set my imagination of fire. Pneumatic engines and hydraulic lifts leave a huge impression on a six year old. They lift the whole goddamn car! The sound and power of pneumatic wrenches. Every man’s hands were dirty but they were all friendly and smelled of hair tonic and aftershave. VO5, Tres Flores, Hi Karate, Brut, English Leather or Avon.

They all chewed gum. Some smoked cigarettes while chewing gum. They rarely removed the cigarette from their lips. They talked, smoked, chewed gum and worked on cars.

The Old Man was polite and talked to them with respect. They liked him. He liked them. They saw he was a man who made a living with his hands. Mutual all the way around. His Detroit muscle needed new rubber. Mercury Cyclone. Dirty snow steaming on the edges of the parking lot. Coffee in flimsy styrofoam.

I really like the sound of guns being cocked and loaded in the movies. Know what else? When the bartender in a movie slams the shot glass on the bar and fills it with whiskey. Great sound. There’s a reason musical instruments are made from wood.

I collect marbles. They fascinate me. I know the best glass blowers in America and I own their work. I keep them in large, shallow crystal bowls. The sound as I pick them up and put them back is sublime. I can barely stand it when somebody picks up a bowl and they roll in chaos against the side.

I have somewhere between two and three thousand comic books. I collected them from the age of eleven to sixteen or so. I read every single one. I haven’t looked at them since then. They’re in boxes in my closet.

Did you know that Ralph’s supermarket brand of SpaghettiOs is far superior to that of Franco-American? Not so sweet and much cheaper. Half the price. I bought five cans for five bucks not long ago. Off-brand Spaghettios should be a staple in any pantry. Cheap and nutritious. They’re best cold, straight out of the can. Trust me, I know. Use a soup spoon.

I’m really afraid of bees. Can’t help it. Took a barefoot walk through some clover when I was two. Don’t remember it but it’s a preternatural fear.

The last day before summer vacation in seventh grade was overcast. I don’t recall ever feeling lonelier.

I miss the eighties and the nineties. I’d go back.

I’ve done heroin. Twice. I smoked it and snorted it. I’d been around it enough, I was young. I was curious. I’d already done just about everything else.

The lead singer from a band named Dumpster indulged me. His girlfriend was a falling pornstar with the ugliest pussy I’d ever seen. She brought him his rig every night around seven. His name was Robert. She showed up with a black lacquered box that was somehow ceremonial. She was thin and white. Tall and sweet. Brunette.

One morning he was there before me, missing an eyebrow. He and told us an elaborate story about waking up and finding it intact on his pillow. Laid out perfectly, he told us with a sweep of his hand. An interesting and angry man. Compelling. He liked life.

We were happy to be there.

He told me about getting hit in the head with a full beer can from a speeding car while walking down a highway in the South. He said he thought he had it coming because he was just some punk.

His left front tooth was broken, he shaved his head and had brilliant blue eyes. He reminded me somehow of Anton LaVey. Very, very smart. Confrontational by nature, aggressive if you happened to be stupid.

He hid behind being a hick sometimes.

The drummer showed me some porn Robert’s girlfriend starred in. That’s how I know she had beef curtains like aging cold cuts.

I wondered how ugly a pussy could be and I found out.

One night she brings his rig and we’re finishing early. He’s ready to use the lounge to tie off, boil it in a spoon and slam it in his veins. He’s done his best to abstain during the daytime for the sake of performance. I respect this. He already understands I’m curious and we get along very well.

He starts by telling me he refuses to take responsibility for what will probably happen next. I tell him a big boy and not to worry. I can take care of myself and I own my actions. He prepares brown powder on aluminium foil for me. He hands me a glass tube and lights the foil from underneath with a Zippo.

I chase the dragon.

He goes to the lounge.

It is bliss. I walk the halls of the studio and eat an orange. I drop the peels on the floor. Everything I see is gorgeous. Each step starts like thunder at my toes and ends as pillows in my head. I drive my piece of shit Bug home and sleep like an infant.

I get home by feel. Instinct.

The next night he chops it for me. Razor blades not hard to come by in recording studios. It’s brown, like cinnamon and sugar. I snort it and so does he. He takes me for a walk. Sunset and La Brea. He takes time to point things out, people and situations. I’m higher this time. Everything is so much bigger. Lights and sounds and smells are grandiose.

Hoy’s Wok mixed with Burger King, Wendy’s, a 50’s Diner and a Mexican joint named Acapulco. A gas station, a couple dry cleaners and an El Pollo Loco.

So content. So happy. Inspired by the largesse of a warm and swarming evening.

I would be fine walking with this volatile bastard all night.

I consider pissing myself because it sounds like a pleasant idea in my head.

I understood then. I could never, ever do it again. It is the best drug I’ve ever tried. That was fifteen years ago.

Never did it again.

Another in a long series of brilliant bands that the record company either didn’t get or didn’t have the stones to sign.

See, when you work with a band in a recording studio, you can’t help but become a member of that band to one degree or another. Almost without exception, you become an advocate of their vision. When you make an actual record, if a bond somehow doesn’t form, something is wrong. It is by no means a normal enviroment. At least twelve hours a day, sometimes twenty four. An intensely creative and challenging atmosphere. Often a pressure cooker of conflict over vision, the big picture or the very small.

I was a producer/engineer. I came to know and understand people better in weeks than people who’d known them for years. In different ways for different reasons. The archetype of the dumb musician rarely applied. As a group, they are very bright and intellectually curious. Almost always more politically aware and better informed that the average shopper.

Robert was no exception. Axl Rose was, he was a complete moron. Tina Turner was pure class, elegance and talent. Mel Torme was as cool as a man that age can be. Bono and the band turned out to be very nice people. Annie Lennox endured a ride to her hotel in my shitbox VW Bug. We talked politics while she had a spring up her ass.

Art Alexakis is very difficult to describe. He’s very bright and knows exactly what he’s doing. At the same time he’s volatile, cranky and unpredictable. We definitely had fun but he’s a handful. Excellent songwriter and brilliant lyricist. He may just be a miserable man with a big heart.

I would have been happy to beat C.C. DeVille into a coma.

Chrissie Hynde threw a sausage at my head and I made sure Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick didn’t get the shit beat out of him in a titty bar.

Kenny Aranoff used to get pissed at me for playing his kit at night but Jeff Porcaro (R.I.P.) never said a word. I played just about every kit that came through. Dean Castronova and Terry Bozzio. Jim Keltner, Steve Gadd and Stewart Copeland. Vinnie, Omar and Manu Katché.

Over the years I met, worked with and came to understand some of the most interesting people there are, famous or not. I paid my dues but understood I was lucky. Hindsight tells me just how lucky. For a few years I was A&M’s Demo King. Sometimes a different band everyday. One day it was cellos and woodwinds, the next it was banjos stand up bass and concertinas. Wind up the week with a hardcore punk band.

I want to squeeze my nose with a pair of pliers so that it bursts like a cherry tomato and the pain enters my head in the sweetest and most delicious way.

Seems like it rained more back then.

Always direct the pyroclastic flow towards the ocean.

Drinks for my friends.

Rick morphed into executive producer by funding what we couldn’t scam. He funded a lot. We scammed a lot. Two prongs.

Prong three of the trident was our ability. What we knew how to do. The three of us. Me & Al, Rick and the band.

Not just demos, we were here to make a record.

Once those first five days were spent, it was a logistical clusterfuck to get ten broke musicians from Denver to LA, on schedule to do overdubs, track another song or participate in some mixes inside a tiny window we swindled for nothing or next to nothing. Part of the prongs were A&M’s a&r department. Suhy, Whittaker, and father and son Anderle.

More often than not Rick made it work.

His other contributions ended up being huge.

A sharp motherfucker my buddy Rick. A marketing savant. He devised black window boxes with an orange background, sourced them, and we spent a few nights mounting CDs and a six inch glass bong inside each one with twist ties and rubber bands.

Individually addressed, one box went to every A&R rep in town. The greater Los Angeles area. Delivery split among Alex, Rick and I. Rick paid for every move we made.

They loved it. They adored the record and they were smitten with the packaging. Almost more enthusiasm for the window boxes than the record. We’d made an impression. More than a handful wanted to see them live.

Cover art was a flashlight shown through the bass player’s ball sack. Abstract, but once you understood what you were looking at, there was no mistake. The record was called “S.A.C.”

Not three chords and hair.

Plenty of chords and hair. Accomplished musicians with more or less the same thing in mind. Not the least of which was pushing an envelope. I didn’t always recognize the envelope they were so furious about. I always ended up seeing it though.

It is a brilliant record. I am as proud of it as I am of anything I’ve done. Alex Reed of course, is a genius.

The studio rats liked it.

When I see them, they mention it and I smile.

It wasn’t wrong place and it wasn’t wrong time. Many understood the genius of the band. The powers that were simply had no idea what to do with them. It wasn’t a band that was going to break on pop radio or MTV. They were all so confused. The contemporary paradigm wasn’t a fit for these guys.

Punk rock was gathering steam.

We got that. It would have to be done the old fashioned way. Tour support and getting them on the right bill. The band had to establish a live presence in LA. They were rockstars in Denver and Fort Collins. I visited them there, it was impossible for me to buy a drink within a hundred mile radius. They could do that here.

Wherever they took a stage, it was like this, “We’re The Psychodelic Zombiez, we’re from Denver Colorado and we’re not here to fuck around”. I never saw them fail to win a crowd. Seattle, Lake Tahoe or LA. One night in Denver, the first night of school, they packed an airplane hangar. I was there.

My own nephew walked in on them doing bong rips before taking the stage in Tahoe one day about a century ago. He was five or six. He told everyone his name and walked back out the door. A memory both vivid and fond. Hysterically funny. Yes, he was expelled from a parochial high school in his senior year.

They had successfuly manifested the cult of their personality. If given the chance, they could do it here in LA. With time and reason. I’m guessing there wasn’t enough of either of those.

Then. This tale is past tense.

Mitch B. from MCA gave us money to try and make something into a three and a half minute single. I got the call when I was home for Christmas. Rick, Al and I were pretty fucking excited.

A fool’s errand.

Mitch used to have his secretary call us at the studio to schedule an appointment to rip from the elaborate waterpipe Rick had donated. We’d ride through the backlots and sets of Universal City in his convertible, out of our fucking trees, when suddenly we were cutting to the front of the line for the Back To the Future ride at Universal as many times as we wanted.

We did rough mixes one night in B. The entire band took acid and ended up stealing the keys to famous people’s cars and rearranging them according to some hallucinogenic ideal. I just about shit my pants when I found out what they’d been up to. Then again, it was five in the morning and I was still on my first beer. None of us slept for a day or two.

So, Mitch sent Al and I to Denver, we spent the better part of a week in rehearsal. Can’t remember why, but Al wasn’t able to be with me in the studio. I always hated being in a new control room with out him. Was Xantipa pregnant? I was with him through the time his mom died. This is where I’m a dick. I don’t remember.

The best I was gonna do without Al was fifty percent. I’d convinced myself it would be fine because I had no choice.

I’d do well to remember half the musical and production stuff. Particularly in this context, it was all about arrangement. Song structure. Kinda dangerous if I only retain my ideas. Al’s specialty, his territory. I was barely able to keep up with him, there was no way I could do what he did.

There were ten other guys in the same room. I couldn’t be counted on to remember it all. They ended up acquitting themselves with discipline at the very least. I don’t recall any of us being particularly inspired.

It may have been a disaster. I barely recall. So odd to have Alex by my side in a strange place for a week and not have him in the control room. Dav (saxes, flutes and the like) got terrifyingly sick. He played his parts and was a complete warrior but left the control room for the emergency room. That spooked us.

My assistant was this kid named Jeremy, I doubt to this day he was on my side. He had sharp edges like he thought we were playing chess and he had me cornered. I didn’t like him. He was smart but he had his own agenda. He left the taste of carpet in my mouth. I think he had stupid hair.

It was ridiculously cold and we spent a night at Koony’s smoking pot, drinking and watching “Trinity And Beyond”. It’s only the coolest atomic bomb movie ever. Moscow Symphony Orchestra baby.

I was unable to make it my bitch. It spat me out. I believe I failed.

The Fish visited me. We ended up backstage in Boulder at some Samples show. Al and I had done a mix for them.

It didn’t take long. They went kerplooey.

Koony (most mature member), looked me in the eye a season before and asked me if I thought they’d fall apart if they didn’t come to LA. I told him yes and pointed out that they were on the rocks already. He scoffed.

I’ll never be happy about being right.

We believed they could come the rest of the way. All of us. They’d never appear on tabloid television.

We were sure they could make a profound musical contribution while selling records and packing houses. Too good for us to discount the idea. I knew we didn’t have an arena band on our hands but we did have extraordinary talent by the handful.

In the end, we all fell down.

But we made a shit hot record. Great recording, awesome performances.

It did happen to be, one of a few straws too many, on the back of the proverbial camel. I’m no longer in the business of dreams. Now I sell tangibles.

Drinks for my friends.

A Monday morning in Studio C.

Hollywood 1995.

Spring clouds and humid heat.

Coffee from The Fish Lounge.

Shitty everday rocket fuel.

Go from control room to control room stealing patch cables and XLR connectors for the outboard gear.

Steal the goddamn outboard gear.

Standard methodolgy is to show up a day or two before and hoard as many mics and as much gear not bolted down as possible. Pile it on one of the ubiquitous grey plastic gurneys with shopping cart wheels, tape it off, attach a sign warning of death for trespass and park it in the room we’d be tracking in the next day or hide it somewhere, depending on the budget.

If Bill Kennedy was booked, steal everything from his stash. Prick bastard hoarder once used forty seven mics on a drumkit. It took two days for him to sort out phase. Prick bastard. Fucking Tazmanian Devil. I was trying to make a fucking record and he was jerking off back in Studio D with Motley Crue on a demo no one would ever hear.

I did loves me some Kill, however.

He’s dead now.

Crazy prick bastard.

We pulled Neve 1066’s and 1073’s, Focusrite pre’s, GML pre’s and Eq’s, Nueman U47’s 49’s, a C12, fet 47’s and every 87 we had. Plenty of 57’s, 421’s and 414’s.

I was gonna need everything for this band I made stupid promises to.

I raped and pillaged.

I was desperate.

Alex and I requisitioned gear. We um, hid it. We had secret stashes and by then we’d begun to buy and own our own. At a studio like A&M, in it’s heyday, an engineer never lacked equipment. Still, we were sluts for gear. Ask Al about his goddamn Panscan. I wish I could buy it now and give it to him for his birthday.

Same day as mine.

Next, assessment of strategy and tactics with co-consprator Al.  Poor bastard had no idea what I’d gotten him into but I did. Map it out, figure out where to put what musician where for basic tracks and then overdubs.  Figure out what performances we could keep and what what we’d have to do over.

A big band with complex arrangements and long songs.

Studio C was one goddamn tiny livingroom.

Fresh white tape above and beside each fader.

I liked doing that.

A Zen before the clouds burst.

Check messages at the front desk.

Leave a list of who will be arriving.

Thirteen guys in shitty cars or vans or trucks.

Remind the techs you’re first up and you need the machines aligned. Ampex456 +3. Agfa 468 on the half inch +5. Couldn’t always get good stereo buss compression so we’d learned to run the half inch hot.

Remind the runners you’re first up and there’s still no coffee or fruit. We’ll need one of you to help with setup. Who’s game? Were they to ask you to get permission for them, their vaginas became obvious.  Just do it.  Just fucking help us.

Choose one. Talk to the others, thank them for picking up the slack and we’ll return the favor next time you’re ballsy enough to volunteer.

Pussies.

Studio C was designed for demos and overdubs, never intended for anything on this scale.

But we have this room inside of the greatest recording studio in the world and we are going to kill this.

Scramble, scramble, scramble.

Feed them a click?

I didn’t think we’d need to.

I ended up being wrong on at least one song.

We were shooting for four or five songs in as many days complete, save for mixes. No time and no budget to lock up two multitracks, the whole project would be done on twenty four track two inch.

Tall order for a production so elaborate.

We always bit off more than we could chew.

She requests a double pirouette. I ask with or without skates.

The architecture of studio C was of particular challenge to this project. One live room, maybe twelve by twenty feet. Eight foot ceiling. No iso booths, the only other airlocked room was the machine room, barely real estate enough for an amp and cabinet.

There were varieties of closets and a tiled room with a prominent sixty cycle hum behind studio C we called The Dancehall. Some sort of ancient power grid in there. Blue and black tile. Part of an historical landmark. An honest to god chickenwire cage. Fuck me.

Crazy wierd shit everywhere.

If you recorded anything in the Dancehall, it better be fucking loud. Good place for a bass cabinet because you could always fuck with polarity between it and and a direct box to defeat the ground hum.

We didn’t care. We ran cables out to the street or the guard shack at the rear entrance. I used the public bathroom at least twice that I remember.

The console was a thirty two input, sixteen buss API with a twenty four input monitor section that was patchable and sounded wonderful. The desk itself was the best sounding one in the place. It smoked the SSL’s and even the custom Neve across the hall.

That API was my goddamn training wheels.

There was an eight channel self mix headphone system, a dozen real EMT plates and six live echo chambers accessible from the patch bay. We had Pultecs, Fairchilds, 1176’s, DBX 160’s, LA2A’s, H3000’s, API 560’s, Rev 5, Rev 7, SPX 90’s, AMS, an ETM, Eventide Harmonizer, two Studer A800 MKIII’s, Studer half inch, two DATs and two cassettes already in the walls.

Fresh fruit, coffee and water every morning. Half & half and milk in an ice chest with mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise

Allegedly.

About ten, the band loaded in. It was awkward. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, they didn’t know Al and asked after Rick. I told them he was dead.

I had killed him but he’d most likely be around after six.

We were lucky enough to have a little bit of a reputation at that point and they’d studied us.

They got we weren’t fucking around.

Still, they expected a bigger room.

They were recording at A&M fucking Studios fer fuck’s sake.

Buss assignments, cross patching and track sheet info shouted at a boy named Sperger. Over and over. He was new. Over and over. The chosen runner.

Enough mutual trust to allow us all to dive in.

So we did.

What we ended up with was gorgeous.

They played. That’s what they did. Fire and fucking brimstone. They gave us their very best.

It took about six months to finish after that first five days of furious activity. Despite some glaring flaws, it’s among the best work  I ever did. I believe I mixed “Insecurity Mishap” on my own in studio A.  Otherwise, Al was there. over my shoulder for most of it.

Al brings a difference to every table he sits at. He brought his genius and good sense to this record with a disappearing nuance and intuition.

We were lucky enough, and I don’t remember how, to track two more songs in Studio B. Best sounding tracks on the record. B was the best sounding room in the place if you bypassed the SSL and ran every thing through Neve and API mic pre’s.

We did that.

“Desert Flower” was a song that was new to us as the band hadn’t written it. It was beautiful but there was a problem with the horn arrangement. Al and I clocked it early on. There was an obvious hook they were ignoring. I had no idea what to do, but we understood the chart didn’t work as was.

Al had made his case.

What Al did was wake me up at about four a.m. and make me stay awake while he and G worked it out. Then, we had to record it. Two men put their hemispheres together and G translated it to staff paper. G, bari sax, shining light in a chandelier and writer of all horns, solved it. Gave us what we were looking for.

It worked. The album opens with it.

It’s an example of what Al really did and the musical prowess of Double G.

Al was always subtle in an overt way.

Over and over again I hear him on the records we made. A bridge or an outro that he would assume responsibility for. He would take a section, a chunk of a song, and shine a light on it. Exploit it shamelessly. Whether it was the melody or the lyrics or the music, he’d grab the vital visceral part and put it in your face with an understanding that often dictated the rest of the entire mix.

The record is a bit of a masterpiece because of him.

It’s flawed for sure.

That would be my fault.

I’d hoped to floor them the way they floored me the first time I saw them play.

Drinks for my friends.

There were barely any cell phones and I’d never seen the internet.

Seattle Washington.

They were a band. A large one. Traveling minstrels who knew just how to navigate any situation as a single unit. There was a communal intellect. They moved through the lobby of our posh hotel with fluidity, silence and stealth. In seconds there was fifteen of us in the elevator without a sound.

With the precision of piranhas, they emptied the mini bars in both of our rooms. Appetizers before the cases of beer we’d brought. An organism of free hooch musicians.

We ended up in Rick’s room.

Sometime before five a.m. they sent a team to break into the hotel kitchen. The team returned with a mere few dozen plates. What went on next is something I’m unable wrap my brain around to this day.

Seven or eight of them shut themselves in the bathroom. There was chaos. Dishes shattering and maniacal chanting.  Ridiculous laughter. After a time, drunken pot induced stupor breached, I slithered my head inside the bathroom door. There was red wine everywhere. Everywhere, literally. They were dancing in a way that struck me as pagan.  Wine was gushing from their mouths. The look in their eyes convinced me not to say anything.

I’m not sure they even saw me.

They did.  They all looked right at me.

My mind’s eye has it as a Ralph Steadman painting.

Preservation as insinct reared a welcome head. I sweet talked the lonely waitress with the nice big ass to come back to my room. On the way out, I stole one of Rick’s gay Gucci loafers.

I followed her trailer to the elevator. My room was pleasant after the asylum.  Turn down service. Classical music playing low and sheers blown by  the smell of rain.  Chocolate on the pillow. Her name was Sabrina. She had really nice tits and cute feet.

She was sweet.

She had a way of almost whistling her consonants.  Like an anti lisp.

We talked on the phone for a few months and she came to LA and spent the night once.

The phone rang around eleven. Rick wondering if I’d seen his other shoe.

He was a floor below me. I took it down to him.

I knocked, he answered.  I gave him his shoe.

It smelled like crotches and armpits and booze and they were everywhere. Unconscious and reeking. One of them slept on top of a dresser. Thirteen dudes in one medium size hotel room. Wrappers, beer cans, broken bottles, jackets,ashtrays and wine stains on the walls. Broken dishes trailed from the bathroom as though there’d been a stampede of fucking cattle right out of a china shop.

He asked where the girl was. I told him. Fourteen other guys and she ends up in your bed he said. I’d be back down after I showered I said.

Checkout was noon.

Fifty minutes later I’d seen her off and was back. He answered the door in a towel. All I could smell was the shower. The band was gone and the room was spotless. Immaculate. He was as confused as I was.

There was time to kill before our flight and we had dumbovers that required a booze mop as the very first step. I impressed him by having scrambled eggs with salmon and a gin Mary. We were in Seattle. He had scrambled eggs, toast and  beer. We drank for a few hours until it was time to get a cab to the airport.

We snored on the plane.

The Psychodelic Zombiez from Denver Colorado showed up in LA the following spring.

We made a shit hot record.

Drinks for my friends.

There once was a band from Denver Colorado named The Psychodelic Zombiez.

I never liked the name, but they were among the most exceptional group of musicians and people I’d ever make a record with.

All of them ringers. They could play. My God they could play. Ten piece band.  Not a weak link in the chain. They could literally play anything I ever asked of them.  I’ll never forget asking the horn section to double their parts.  I watched the light bulb turn on in their eyes.  And they nailed it.

I’d just returned from Madison Wisconsin, co-producing and engineering what would be my biggest claim to fame. My friend Rick had a band he was on fire about. So much so, he was willing to fly me and an A&R rep. from A&M to Seattle to see them live.  He was working for Jimmy Iovine at Interscope back then. He’d first seen them at SxSW the previous spring.  They couldn’t even get a venue there.  They showed up anyway and just marched and played down a street where all the clubs were bursting with new bands one night.

They’d been on his radar ever since.  They had a record out but it was watery gravy and Interscope didn’t give a mad fuck.   He’d already been to Denver to see them for himself.   A ten piece band playing jazz influenced pop funk that ruled Denver Colorado and the neighboring college town of Fort Collins.  A completely unlikely Cinderella story that had me thinking of the Primus phenomena in the Bay Area.

We’d booked a room at a discount through a friend’s mom at Sony in a charming but swanky hotel called the Sorrento. We landed, checked in at the hotel and went straight to the gig at a club called the Phoenix Underground.

I remember being intimidated by the complexity of their arrangements. An absolutely incredible horn section. I was a rock/punk guy. I’d never recorded a horn section, flute or half the other instruments they used with a grace and aplomb that I’d never heard before.  They were so confident. Tight. No air escaping anywhere. They rocked my goddamn face off.  I was floored.  It was almost too much.  So Rick and I got shitfaced enough to brawl on the floor in front of the stage at the end of the set. It wasn’t absurd behavior for us back then. We were nothing but thrilled with this force of musical nature we had just witnessed.

I was sure we’d blown it.  This wasn’t some nihilist punk band.  These were serious musicians.  They stared at us in confusion. They knew we were dickheads.

I remember standing there in that empty club, ashamed and embarrassed.  Sweating and out of breath.  Realizing just how ridiculous I must look.

But I think that’s where they figured out we weren’t suits.  I think that’s where they figured we were more like them than not.  They got that we were excited.

Still, I was bewildered when they asked us to their show the next night at a place called the Ballard Firehouse.

So Rick and I had a nice civilized dinner beforehand. Seared ahi and a Leonetti cabernet I’d called all over to find. The sommelier was pissed. It was his last bottle and he didn’t want to sell it.  I told him to sell us the bottle or cancel our order.  We had a nice meal.

We decided, in the interest of decorum and in light of the fact that this band was truly something special, there would be no rolling on the floor violence in front of them this time.

Little did we know what chaos would be.

They were brilliant that night. I’d never heard anything like that before and haven’t since. What they were doing would have confused my primitive musical sensibilities if not for the rhythm section locked into a groove so compelling and fluid that the rest was a platter steaming with flavors and spices at once exotic, strange and familiar.  Way more than the meat and potatoes that was my stock in trade.

They scared me.

I had no idea how to record them.

Sound occurs only with atmosphere as a requisite. A medium for the sound to excite. Vibrations and frequency allowed merely because of air. What they did was control that medium, with absolute authority.  With muscle and gravity.

I couldn’t believe it.

They were fucking amazing.

We smoked some wicked hash afterward backstage with the owner of the club and we all began to talk seriously in some backstage basement. They asked all the right questions. Cautious and careful at first but they could see we were thrilled and they started to believe we  had the means to actually do something with them and for them.  I told them I had the the keys to the universe.  I told them I would record them in good faith and that at I would do the the best I could by them.  We told them there was no need for paper between us.  If they could get to LA, We would make good on this conversation we were having.  I never told them I’d never even recorded a goddamn trumpet, much less a whole horn section.

I was panicked about the possibility of making good on this music I barely understood and desperately afraid this gem would slip through my fingers.

They agreed to let us record them without any strings except permission to shop them and make a record if we could.

Trust.

That’s all I wanted.

I became their engineer producer for the next year or two that night.

We invited them back to our hotel along with a charming waitress with a nice big ass.  That woman was brave for sure but she had no reason to feel threatened.  They were dirty but harmless musicians  more dedicated to their craft to than the subjugation of women.  The trust was flowing.

They were a two unit convoy back then. An ancient Dodge truck they called the Starfish and a beat to shit Van called Old Blue, both with CB radios. We shared a lot on that trip back to the hotel.  The CB crackled when we got lost.

They introduced themselves with names like Dijon, Chevy, Double G, Hoj and Doody.

They pulled up corners of carpet where they slept and ate up and down the west coast to show me their porn stash and offer private snacks to me. Some were barely nineteen or twenty.  Some were in their early thirties.  They were all far more innocent than Rick and I when it came to the evil business of music.

We stopped at a Safeway to buy five cases of the cheapest beer there was.

Cheapest beer was to become a staple of a long, satisfying but ultimately heart breaking relationship.

They actually wrote a song about it.

It would be nearly a half year before we saw each other again. When they showed up in LA, I had my fingers in half a dozen pies. I simply wasn’t ready for them.

Rick was in the same boat.

We talked and it didn’t take long to arrive at the right thing.

I arranged for time in studio C.

Five days I think.

Oh, they could play.

Drinks for my friends

I know there were two major debates this week. One was particularly contentious and the other quite conviviial. What. Ever. Sorry. What follows is what I felt like writing about.

BITCHES:

The Gotohells, minus Gene Gene the Dancing Machine and Timmy the worlds happiest bass player, picked us up at the airport in Tampa.

The humid South engulfed my head the second we stepped outside.

Edo and Hunter.

Edo: Guitar and lead vocals.
Hunter: Drums, backup vocals and one lead vocal. Last song. Good song. Shitty vocal.

I think I’d met Edo, but Hunter and I were old friends at that point. Hunter played drums, sang and was a human holiday on the very first record Al & I ever produced, recorded and mixed. “Punkrockacademyfightsong” – Down By Law -Epitaph.

Hunter, maybe a buck twenty five soaking wet, played so hard, he took chunks out of cymbals. It wasn’t unusual for us to change snare heads after just two or three takes. Jacked up grill and losing his hair at twenty one. He could drink and he could hold his liquor. He did an hysterical impersonation of Johnny Thunders. Brutally funny, painfully bright and consistently, unapologetically, honest. Character and integrity for weeks.

I fucking loved him. Whenever he was in town he’d leave a message with the receptionist at the studio. Always the same. “Plate of Shrimp” and a number where he could be reached.

Then we’d go drinking.

There was a twelve pack of cold Bud Talls on the floorboard of the backseat. I had a couple.

They took us straight to the original Hooters. Then to a nice little motel off the highway for the first few days of our stay and rehearsals. It was a very magnanimous gesture on the part of four broke ass cracker redneck musician punks.

Rehearsals were rainy, dark and smelly.

Al and I would couch surf after that ’til the record was done.

At first, we were accomodated by Edo and a guy named Sticky, who Hunter confessed he’d take a bullet for. I had some really stupid shoes on and Sticky asked me through a nicotine stained smile if I’d made them in wood shop. I kinda liked Sticky but I don’t think he liked me.

Given his fragile constitution, Al was pretty much sick the whole time.

Picture Al, Alex, as a young and thin Dustin Hoffman.

In retrospect it’s kinda comical, but I was concerned. Al had some form of bronchitis and Sticky and Edo were content to chainsmoke Marlboros in the same room he was desperately trying to sleep in.

We also stayed with Timmy and his unbelievably happy family. We came and went at very odd hours, often drunk. We preferred Timmy’s house to that of Edo and Sticky because there were no chainsmokers and there were teenage girls, sometimes food and coffee, if you got up in time.

Hunter shared with me that it was a bad day indeed if Timmy wasn’t smiling.

There were other reasons we liked staying with Timmy’s family better.

Timmy had an excellent selection of movies along with a shit hot media setup for the time. There was the beautiful saltwater aquarium that lent tranquility to our slumber after long days in the studio and long nights drinking. Someone always had pot, Edo I think.

Timmy was a big boy, wore thick glasses and chewed tobacco. He was a terrible bass player.

We made the record in a studio called Panda. George, the owner was spindly, tall and angular. Very gracious and accommodating. He had that eighties ponytail through the back of the baseball cap thing going on and long fingers in perpetual motion. Very funny, very helpful and completely unselfconscious with his intrigue at our recording techniques and methodology.

George spent most of his time on a beat to shit couch in the back of the control room reading a book by George Carlin. He’d spew laughter and read out loud.

One of the first things that is consciously forced down your throat in life is the concept of not throwing things, especially at other people. I have to tell you, I threw a lot of things, mostly those fat Sharpies, at a lot of people back then. Sorry about that Sam.

Anyway, was his sidekick named Charlie? I think so. Charlie kept the band awash in beer and they consumed it in copious amounts. The record brought to you as much by Budweiser as by me & Al and the band.

Funny when I think about it. The band would drink all day. Al and I rarely touched more than caffeine while in a control room. The brisk clip of an eight hour day was foreign to all of us. Making records is ponderous, repetetive, intensley creative and often maddening.

Recording, documenting and then rendering music actually, is typically a twelve to fifteen hour day. It just is what it is.

At one point, consensus was reached to start the sessions earlier; reason being to get enough done to allow an hour or two before closing time to get our drink on.

I recall it being a bit of a challenge.

On the way to the studio every morning I gawked at the clusterfuck that accompanied the latest Virgin Mary phenomena. About a year before, the redneck faithful of Clearwater Florida had discovered what they believed to be the divine image of her in the reflective glass of an office building just off the interstate. The bleachers and folding chairs were filled by the hundreds every morning to stare in awe at what looked to me to be a warped window with an oilslick on it.

It was an unspoken rule that wherever and whenever Lynyrd Skynyrd could be heard, all four members of the band would remove their hats in a maneuver that struck me as not unlike synchronized swimming.

Tampa/Orlando is the lightning capital of the entire planet and we were there for the season. Late spring. Crazy. Power outages and just plain fear of electrocution forced us out of the studio a handful of times. We hung out in the parking lot, smoking and drinking beer in the warm rain.

One morning in Madison Wisconsin, me and a band called Everclear watched the clouds rotate in the sky over the studio like in some Bradbury novel. Smart Studios. Butch Vig.

Marie Osmond caught an eyeful of our roadie’s penis that day and then bounced off a glass door, but that’s another story.

We knocked off early that night.

I had a suite overlooking the state capitol building. I turned off the lights, cracked open a beer from the mini bar and watched the most spectacular light show I might ever see. Huge bolts. Not just white, but pink and blue, as they hammered the golden dome of the state capitol building.

Next morning we discovered a pair of Neve 1073’s with all the knobs melted into a puddle. Kinda sucked because one was for the vocal and the other for rhythm guitar.

Recording studios are magnets for any atmospheric discharge.

There’s no Waffle Houses in LA. I coveted cheese eggs, raisin toast and grits when I studied engineering in Atlanta. Waffle House is where I ate when I had money. Not often.

I told Hunter and he made sure we ate there a handful of times, including the morning after the last mix before they took us to the airport and after working all night. He pointed out various oddities of Waffle House protocol. The specific spot the middle aged rubenesque waitress stood to shout orders to the kitchen, for example.

Still a vegetarian back then, I loved it when the matronly woman taking my order would inevitably ask, “Honey, you don’t want any meat with that?”.

Hunter stole laminated menus for me that morning. Stuffed them under his shirt. I still have them.

Nothing mattered that day. We’d finished a record and the sun was shining. I could have punched the sky.

There was even time for a nap.

I called The Fish from a pay phone in the airport to tell her when I was landing in LA. Angry and in tears, she’d been all over LAX the night before looking for me. I had given her the wrong date. There was a schedule adjustment half way through the record because we knew we’d need an extra day. I’d forgotten to tell her.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that kind of bad. At the time I was furiously in love with this woman and I had just made the worst mistake a man can make. I had, however briefly, forgotten about her. I’d crawled into my head in the company of men while making a record, and forgotten about home completely.

I was still in that head when dialing the phone.

After that conversation, despite the damage I had wrought, I couldn’t wait to come home.

We made a very good record. I’m proud of it. No samples or technological fuckery. What you hear is what they played. I’ve been listening to it lately and it makes me smile. It rocks.

The band is The Gotohells. The record is Burning Bridges. The label is Vagrant.

Drinks for my friends.

There once was a band called The Ape Hangers.

Actually, when we started the record they were called
Throttle. In the middle of the record, about
the time the lead singer/guitar player’s brother died,
they had to change their name.

He never missed a step.

They were a trio.

We did the record over the Holidays. It ended up
being one of the three or four best records we ever
made.

We, is me and Alex.

One of the biggest reasons it turned out so good was
because they could goddamn play. The groove was nice and slippery but there were no leaks. They could play. No air escaped.

Another reason was Pete, singer guitar player, could write a motherfucking song. He had a charisma on the mic unlike I had ever seen or heard in a not yet rockstar. One of the very best rythm guitar players I’ve ever recorded. A consumate musician.

He bought me a bottle of Jim Beam and a copy of Leg Show for Christmas.

There wasn’t any click tracks, protools fuckery or razor blade abuse. No computerized consoles for the mix. All manual and hands on. Recorded and mixed in studio “C “, the redheaded stepchild of what was the world famous A&M recording studio complex.

Conventional wisdom was you couldn’t make a record in that room. It was for demos and overdubs. Me & Al made quite a few very good records in that ten by twenty space with the ridiculously low ceiling.

What most of them didn’t understand, was the little thirty two input sixteen bus API was by far the best sounding console in the place.

Even better than the Neve across the hall in “A”, built for George Martin with the basketball sized tracking room.

Fools.

By that time, Al and I had figured out how to squeeze every last drop of sound out of that woman. Nobody could do what we could do in there. We ate it and slept it.

The most manipulation the Ape Hanger record saw was Me & Al cutting the master sequence together. Al did an excellent job and I was present.

We’re talking master mixes here and I hated cutting tape. It caused my manhood to atrophy.

Al has had his own genius on most of the time.

I don’t know what Al would say, but it was probably the easiest
record we ever made. I say that because I can hear it
in my head and it sounds marvelous. It cracks and
soaks and chunks and bathes and bites.

I heard it in my head as we made it. During basic tracks I could here the vocal effect I would use. I owned it.

It’s true. We were good. Alex and I thought
differently about a lot of things. Born on the same
day, a few years apart, and nearly opposite in most
ways.

But a crazy understanding between us. I
brought an anvil and he came with a feather. I was the barbarian and he was the diplomat. I still regard him as a geek savant. An impressive intellect, and a very sweet man. Funny as fuck.

His feather was as awesome as my anvil. The feather
and the anvil were a good mix.

It’s true, Al had mad skills. He also brought an encyclopedic knowledge of virtually all music.

So we made this record, and we made others. Damn
near every record we made was quite good.

I knew we were doing something in there because the
opposition kept growing. Our contemporaries had begun to treat us differently, to look at us with different eyes and faces, and we could feel it.

I was coming off Everclear’s “Sparkle And Fade” debut on Capitol. I co-produced it with Art Alexakis (lead singer and guitar player) and engineered. It yielded a couple top ten singles and the album ended up in the Billboard top ten.

We had the president of A&M dancing and playing air guitar in the control room on his sometimes daily visits. He often came with David Anderle, an A&R legend among other things.

The promotion dept. had landed two songs on two different soundtracks and tracks in two different movies starring the likes of Liv Tyler, Renée Zellweger Andy Garcia and Christopher Walken. Empire Records and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead.

We made an excellent record.

Empire Records was to be a high profile release with a major promotional push. Somehow, that never happened. It wasn’t a great movie but it didn’t suck. Must not have tested well.

We were told we’d be guests at the premier.

I think it went straight to video.

The band was a formidably cool hang.

Dennis, the drummer with the wandering eye. One of the funniest motherfuckers I ever met. He would drink with you until you were done. He would ride in the back of Rick’s piece of shit red Mazda without even being asked and he channeled Keith Moon constantly.

He played fucking brilliantly.

I understood that Dennis would follow you into hell because he’d already been there more than a few times. If you knew him, you knew that about him.

Then there was Bob. Bob played bass. Very well. I’m thinking he had a kick drum for a prostate. Very nice, a little dark, and I’m guessing more disturbed than the other two. I adored Bob, It’s just I knew him less.

These guys, along with Al and whatever assistant the studio may or may not have given us for the day, made up an absolute holiday of humans.

Really good times.

Pete eventually let me know I’d burned a hole in his pristine white carpet with a cigarette.

Either Bob or Dennis or maybe both, bought me a plastic candy cane tube full of mini bar booze that year.

Then it seems, everyone forgot about it.

Everyone involved.

They pulled support for the movie, so it tanked. Then, the entire tiny rustic lot of my record company forgot about it. They all walked away from a record they had either been on fire about or ordered to be on fire a few months prior.

They actually played live on that lot one hot afternoon, every employee was invited. It was catered by In & Out. I was sure Dennis would die that day.

No matter how good the record was, it hadn’t cost them a dime. To scrap it meant less than nothing. We were paid salary from the studio and the record company paid me thirty five an hour as an engineer.

And that was it.

All I can tell you is it’s a great fucking record.

Drinks for my friends.