Hey, you've read me harping on Pandora and what a great service to music they've done these last couple years or so. And, of course, a Pandora employee is the only person so far to have left a comment for me, so I guess I'm fishing for comments here, but anyways, you have GOT TO check out their new video series on recording studios. So far, I've just seen the Record Plant in Sausalito, Ca docuvideo. You can find it here at http://blog.pandora.com/show/. I hope to see them do more of these as they go on, but I'm not holding out hope that they'll do one on the little Fairhaven College studio where I learned my recording chops. Watching these videos - MAN, how I want to get back into a studio and get a refresher course.
I'll never forget waking up at 5 a.m. on a Monday morning, getting the keys from the college security office and going over and setting up for a good six hours of studio time to mix a project for class. I'd end up spending sometimes up to two hours just mixing down the drums, then usually an hour for every other instrument, including vocals. Then, there'd be time to combine it all together and put it on a DAT. I assure you it's all very different now with computers - I was probably one of the last few classes before computers started to take over studios. I was in that little window between analog and fully computerized - the simply digital era, I guess you can call it, I don't know.
I got an A on that Audio Recording 2 class from my wise instructor Kevin Bressler (who's apparently now working for Seventh Heaven Studios in Everson, Wash.), but I could never find an avenue after my time at Western/Fairhaven to keep up with it and to this day, the long hours spent in the first floor studio out in Fairhaven College is my only time behind a mixing board. Shoulda woulda coulda, right? I have no regrets with my life right now, but I do miss studio time some days. That is all, for now.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Musical beginnings
Hey there -
I know, it's been a while again. Almost a month. Life gets in the way. I'm a working stiff, what can I say?
Anyways, in my CD player in my car lately has been The Who's 'Tommy.' This is really what I consider to be my introduction to rock and roll, period. My parents owned the album. Mostly, my parents are soft/schlock-rock fans - they always kept the radio on easy listening stations, prompting me to know all the words to 'Summer Breeze' by the time I was 10. But for some reason, they hooked on to 'Tommy' and I had it around to look at. Now, that's a fairly mystical album right off the bat. The sounds seem to come from some parallel earth - they're just guitars, drums and a few other odds and ends (kettle drums, tambourines, 12-string acoustics, The Ox's french horn). It's the production - well, and the songwriting - that makes it come from some place where sound is meant to be touched. And where feeling is as obtuse as the odd angles of faces of ancient Egyptian statues. You know it's still a face, but the way it's viewed is through an exaggerated sense of curves and perception.
Growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s, even as a kid less than 10 years removed from Tommy's release, it seemed like some ancient artifact. The music at the time of the late 70s-early 80s was some of the worst mankind has produced over one era. Overproduced, oversweet and aimless. Not that there wasn't some bad music in the 60s (hello, Sonny and Cher). But it takes a lot to imagine 'Tommy' as being a 1969 album.
There's not a hint of 'psychedelia' - well, maybe 'I'm Free' can be waved as a flag by the LSD crowd. But otherwise, it's a Pete Townshend album - that's the only way to describe it. A who's who of obscure chords and voicings. Listening to 'Underture' today, I love the layering - the studio was definitely the fifth member here - you've got that 12-string going, the regular 6-string acoustic and a syrup-thick electric guitar without much distortion.
A note must be made of the art in the sleeve. A near Daliist surrealism pervades every painting by Mike McInnerney - and it isn't just fanciful. It's stark, it's empty, it's unnervingly similar to Frank Kelly Freas' killer robot on the cover of Queen's 'News of the World' (another album my parents happened to have around the house in the late 70s).
Take the art for 'Sally Simpson' for example - those two hands in front of these ghostly hypnotized faces sitting like stoned mannequins - that type of hollow, lifeless image (and that's a compliment to the artist, by the way) sticks with a 4-year-old. The Star Wars-ish dome in the 'Tommy's Holiday Camp' drawing - that just had to be some future Martian-Earth civilization/cult. Then, you've of course got the calliope organ and the toothless, mentally sick, menacing Uncle Ernie (a very different vocal sound for Pete) character chanting in his thick cockney accent. That all adds up to an unsettling alternate reality - a genius mixture on Townshend and McInnerney's parts.
I couldn't find many links to McInnerney's interior art, except for this one that shows the art for 'Christmas' and 'The Acid Queen.' And, of course, his iconic cover. It reminds me of a rose trellice, but with the space in between the trellis being nothingness and the trellis itself being the world at large, possibly fractured, possibly frozen in place like an ice sculpture - the theme being 'nothing is entirely together' - the least of all, Townshend.
You almost feel guilty for taking joy in his music. From all I've read (which, to say, isn't a ton) about the man, 'Fiddle About' is more than just an upbeat, silly song about a weird old man - it's an altogether too true reflection on child sexual abuse. As some of you well know, Townshend was arrested some years ago on charges of child pornography - he did have a charge on his credit card from a site that sold child pornography (how do they live with themselves?), and said that he was researching the matter for the autobiography which he has not yet written. He was cleared from any charges of downloading images, as he never got that far - not surprising for someone who had been there - why would he ever want to go back to that hell?
'Tommy' has been seen as many things, but I see a writer creating a character who has just had too much to deal with as a child and shuts down, and when he emerges from his 'darkness' - which he sees more like a light to escape to, a sensation magnified by mirrors - he is all of a sudden a celebrity.
A celebrity like a young Pete Townshend, who came out of a personal hell as a youngster to emerge as a much-followed musical figure and 'rock god' who was looked up to for his musical, writing and other creative talents. I see it as an autobiographical fantasy on Townshend's part.
Okay, there's my spiel for today - what do you think Tommy is about, and what are your thoughts on McInnerney's haunting, frigid art?
I know, it's been a while again. Almost a month. Life gets in the way. I'm a working stiff, what can I say?
Anyways, in my CD player in my car lately has been The Who's 'Tommy.' This is really what I consider to be my introduction to rock and roll, period. My parents owned the album. Mostly, my parents are soft/schlock-rock fans - they always kept the radio on easy listening stations, prompting me to know all the words to 'Summer Breeze' by the time I was 10. But for some reason, they hooked on to 'Tommy' and I had it around to look at. Now, that's a fairly mystical album right off the bat. The sounds seem to come from some parallel earth - they're just guitars, drums and a few other odds and ends (kettle drums, tambourines, 12-string acoustics, The Ox's french horn). It's the production - well, and the songwriting - that makes it come from some place where sound is meant to be touched. And where feeling is as obtuse as the odd angles of faces of ancient Egyptian statues. You know it's still a face, but the way it's viewed is through an exaggerated sense of curves and perception.
Growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s, even as a kid less than 10 years removed from Tommy's release, it seemed like some ancient artifact. The music at the time of the late 70s-early 80s was some of the worst mankind has produced over one era. Overproduced, oversweet and aimless. Not that there wasn't some bad music in the 60s (hello, Sonny and Cher). But it takes a lot to imagine 'Tommy' as being a 1969 album.
There's not a hint of 'psychedelia' - well, maybe 'I'm Free' can be waved as a flag by the LSD crowd. But otherwise, it's a Pete Townshend album - that's the only way to describe it. A who's who of obscure chords and voicings. Listening to 'Underture' today, I love the layering - the studio was definitely the fifth member here - you've got that 12-string going, the regular 6-string acoustic and a syrup-thick electric guitar without much distortion.
A note must be made of the art in the sleeve. A near Daliist surrealism pervades every painting by Mike McInnerney - and it isn't just fanciful. It's stark, it's empty, it's unnervingly similar to Frank Kelly Freas' killer robot on the cover of Queen's 'News of the World' (another album my parents happened to have around the house in the late 70s).
Take the art for 'Sally Simpson' for example - those two hands in front of these ghostly hypnotized faces sitting like stoned mannequins - that type of hollow, lifeless image (and that's a compliment to the artist, by the way) sticks with a 4-year-old. The Star Wars-ish dome in the 'Tommy's Holiday Camp' drawing - that just had to be some future Martian-Earth civilization/cult. Then, you've of course got the calliope organ and the toothless, mentally sick, menacing Uncle Ernie (a very different vocal sound for Pete) character chanting in his thick cockney accent. That all adds up to an unsettling alternate reality - a genius mixture on Townshend and McInnerney's parts.
I couldn't find many links to McInnerney's interior art, except for this one that shows the art for 'Christmas' and 'The Acid Queen.' And, of course, his iconic cover. It reminds me of a rose trellice, but with the space in between the trellis being nothingness and the trellis itself being the world at large, possibly fractured, possibly frozen in place like an ice sculpture - the theme being 'nothing is entirely together' - the least of all, Townshend.
You almost feel guilty for taking joy in his music. From all I've read (which, to say, isn't a ton) about the man, 'Fiddle About' is more than just an upbeat, silly song about a weird old man - it's an altogether too true reflection on child sexual abuse. As some of you well know, Townshend was arrested some years ago on charges of child pornography - he did have a charge on his credit card from a site that sold child pornography (how do they live with themselves?), and said that he was researching the matter for the autobiography which he has not yet written. He was cleared from any charges of downloading images, as he never got that far - not surprising for someone who had been there - why would he ever want to go back to that hell?
'Tommy' has been seen as many things, but I see a writer creating a character who has just had too much to deal with as a child and shuts down, and when he emerges from his 'darkness' - which he sees more like a light to escape to, a sensation magnified by mirrors - he is all of a sudden a celebrity.
A celebrity like a young Pete Townshend, who came out of a personal hell as a youngster to emerge as a much-followed musical figure and 'rock god' who was looked up to for his musical, writing and other creative talents. I see it as an autobiographical fantasy on Townshend's part.
Okay, there's my spiel for today - what do you think Tommy is about, and what are your thoughts on McInnerney's haunting, frigid art?
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