Xmas Party
Posted by buddy in Life, Love, Music, Shameless Plugs, Tech, Uncategorized on November 10, 2011
Hi all,
As some of you may know, I have recently been invited and subsequently joined the board of directors of the Community Awareness and Treatment Services. They are a far ranging private, tax-exempt, nonprofit organization dedicated to serving homeless men and women in San Francisco, 18 years and over, with substance abuse problems, mental illness, those living with chronic health conditions such as HIV+/AIDS, and individuals who are, or have been, involved in the criminal justice system.
It is a mouthful to say the least, but they are an amazing organization that has been around since 1978. I would call that dedication in the extreme! You can see more of what they do at www.catsinc.org. Please see for yourself the difference they make in your world.
So, why would I tell you this? Why should you care?
Well, let’s start off with the former. Every year about this time I send out a party invite to the “Hell in a Hand Basket” holiday party at the studio. I talk about how lucky we have been and ask all of you to come down and lift a drink with us in celebration of the fact the we (all of us in this crazy business) are still here, working, living, and sometimes even thriving! But this year, I have decided on not having a party, so that we can all celebrate at the CATS party on Thursday December 8 from 6-9 PM at the COVA Hotel on their awesome penthouse deck. It is a fundraiser, with a sliding scale entry fee. $10-$25. We will have the amazing Stephanie Luz spinning tunes for the guests and there will be food and beverages. It is a small fee for a great cause and you NEED to come. Not just for me, not just for them, but for you.
As to the question of why you should care, well to me, that is the most obvious part. We all know the people that CATS serve. We all know folks who have had financially hard times, maybe lost their homes and are just a step away from being homeless. We all know people who have/had HIV+/AIDS. Some are still with us and some are not. We all know some folks who have been in jail for one reason or another and we have ALL had those private moments where we think to ourselves,
“Shit that sucks, but I thank the heavens it’s not me. I sure wish I could have done something for them before the crashed and burned.”
Well, now you can. It may not be for the folks you know, but it damn sure will help the next ones on the brink, and that may end up being someone you know.
I know this is a bit heavy handed and I apologize for the extra drama in this time of cheer. But it’s time to get off of our collective Asses and free our world of the misery that engulfs it.
It can be done!
It is possible, because all we have to do is help, just one person and the world has changed. I realize, that by now your thinking, “Oh, what a line of heavy handed bullshit!”
And you would be right in thinking that. But it doesn’t change the message in the least nor does it make it any less truthful.
Check it out, these are individuals-single people-who, through their sheer force of will have changed our world forever; Galileo Galilei, Harriet Tubman, Johannes Kepler, Jesus Christ, Georgia O’keeffe, the Gautama Buddha, Alfred Hitchcock, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Cesar Chavez, John Lennon, Jonas Salk, the Reverend LordRifa , Alexander the great, Aretha Franklin, the Prophet Muhammad, The Reverend Martin Luther King and the list goes on and on and on.
The real point of this, is how many of you can point to one or two people in your lives, that have had a profound influence on who you are. My own list is long and everyday I am grateful to them.
A single person matters!
So I urge you to come. Help that single person, NO, I implore-beg-demand, that you come. BE that single person and Join us (we are not the pod people, so no worries!). Go to the web at:
cats2011holidayevent.eventbrite.com
And buy a pair of tickets, hell, buy two pair and take some friends. There is secure parking at the hotel ($2.50/hour), and its all tax deductible to boot.
If you can’t come for whatever reasons, by a ticket anyway and give it away. If you are reading this from another state, buy a ticket and put it on your wall knowing you had a hand in that person’s life.
We have always had a great turnout for the parties; let’s do the same here for CATS.
Let’s grab that hand basket and get the hell out of here!
thx
The Rev Budz
The Beeb.
Posted by buddy in Life, Music, Shameless Plugs on September 13, 2011
I wanted to tell everyone how good it is to be here, back in the saddle, so to speak. I also wanted to tip my hat to the great talent I have had in the studio over the last couple of months to bolster my trip back from the precipice of sanity. These are talented people you want to hear, see, and buy music from.
Mica Lee Williams is an extremely talented singer and songwriter. She is currently finishing up her new CD. It’s an Americana CD and it is just wonderful. It’s a very honest recording with no pitch change, no cutting and pasting, all natural-no preservatives.
Eiran Shalev has been in putting the finishing touches on his world-dance-groove CD called “the Body Ginga”. It’s an infectious CD to say the least.
The Ole’ Cheeky Bastards have been in as well, doing a cut with Mike Molenda producing and Maggie Spangler at the board. It’s a Ramones tune called “Strength to Endure” for Acoustic Fury Records. An all-acoustic tribute to the Ramones and it’s a rocking beast!
But as long as I’m on the topic of great musicians, I might as well broach the subject of their opposites. Let’s call them the useless, and the famous-part one.
While I was at the gym today trying to convince my body that it was a banana instead of a pear, I watch whatever is on the TV there. Like the rest of the gerbils on the wheels, we run and watch and like most gyms, there is a plethora of televisions in the cardio rooms tuned to the standards. One for non-stop extreme sports (Where twenty year olds ride their BMX’s through brick walls), one for non-stop news (in my gym it’s the Tea Party channel), one for non-stop women’s stuff (Chick TV, like the View and Gossip Girls) and there is always the one, that is set on the annoying roulette wheel.
“Ok Johnny, Let’s spin the big wheel and see what comes up!”
“Righty-o-Bob!”
Clickety, Clickety, Clickety, Clickety, goes the wheel. Clickety, Clickety, Kardashians,
Clickety, Clickety, Paris Hilton, Clickety, Clickety, Click, Click, Click, Maury, Click,
Click, Click, Click, Beiber.
Crap. I hate that little bastard! So of course, I immediately became inundated by the merciless deluge of the non-stop saccharine drip known as hurricane Bieber.
Well, today’s fare was the Justin Beiber concert, “Never Say Never,” and I actually have to tell you. I was praying for a heart attack to take me.
“You hear that Elizabeth? I’m coming to join you honey.”
Maybe that’s severe, but this kid while talented, is a useless tool. He is just another product put out by the corporate music machine to appeal to post-pubescent little girls whose rich mommies and daddies can afford to by them his swag.
There is no saving grace here. It is child prostitution at it’s most tolerated.
But what is a Beeeber anyway? When I first heard that word, I thought it was some sort of cleaning wipe like a swifter or some such thing.
“ Hey Honey, the dog puked again”
“ It’s OK dear, just go grab a Biiber and wipe it up!”
But then I overheard two kids at school talking.
“You know girl, I was swapping spit with this fool from study hall and he gave me this thing on my lip!”
“Oh shit sister, you got a Bieber! You got to go to the doctor and get that shit cut out or it will never go away!”
“No shit?”
“Serious.”
“It grew so fast, I thought it would just shrivel up and die.”
“ No luck there. These kinds of things are here to stay. You know, like getting herpes or a Cyrus.”
“A Cyrus, what’s that?”
“Girl where have you been?! A Cyrus is when you get a nasty yeast infection that mixes with to much estrogen during your period.”
“Eeewwwww!!”
“You got that right.”
“How do you get rid of it?”
“Well, I hear that you gotta go to your daddy and tell him that he’s been a controlling shit, then smoke some weed in public.”
“Really?”
“For sure!”
I realize that slamming the Bieb is something of a pastime for many a writer and that he truly MAY have worked at some point for his incredible fame. But it’s just so damn enjoyable. Fun for the whole family!
the Rev
The Eleventh Hour
Posted by buddy in Life, Uncategorized on June 30, 2011
We’re used to seeing the protagonists rescued in the last minutes of movies and TV shows. But when it happens in real life, it most definitely comes as a shock.
I mean, who actually believes that Bruce Willis, would pull the trigger to save mankind? Isn’t he a butthead or something? Of course I understand that it symbolizes our eternal battle with hope and despair. To believe or not to believe, that is the question! What do you believe?
I for one am a hopeless optimist; to a fault my wife would tell me. But it is, who I am. I guess it’s some of the leftover hippie in me, which mind you I have tried my hardest to eradicate. I burned all of my dead records, gave away my tie die t-shirts, I went as far as becoming a punk rock drummer trying desperately to mimic Sid Viscous (even though he was a bass player), but the closest I ever got was Sidney Fishkiss, the butcher down the block! (Sidney may not have been a punk, but boy could he cut a lean brisket). Brisket…..mmmmmm
We were scheduled to close our doors at the end of this week. An event I was not looking forward to, but like all things in life, we must take it in stride and run with the ball. Yet I found myself getting more and more morose as the day grew closer. For months I have been going about my merry way in a great bit of denial, keeping the stiff upper lip, cheerio, pip pip and all that. So when it came down to the last month, I freaked out!
What the hell will I do with myself without the studio? I have come to define myself by what I do. (Most likely a shrink would have a party with that one).
I look good on paper, I have a good resume, it’s not as long as Gene Simmons body count, but it’s solid. The question is, whom am I kidding? Who in their right minds hire me? I’m old, aggressive, cranky, (you can skip ahead once you get the idea!) self-righteous, bossy, arrogant, great at my job and incredibly self-righteous. All the things that a prospective employer looks for, in a future employee, right? Wouldn’t you?
So I decided to test the waters out, so to speak. I get my clean duds out and go on some interviews…just to see, if I can keep my mouth shut at the very least. My first was with some film company down in bum-fuck California. It was a sound design gig that would have ended up paying me about 7 bucks and hour. It had a very nasty studio right next to some guy’s bedroom. I can hear the producer now asking me why everything sounds like someone farting in the next room!
The next debacle was for a start-up in the east bay. I wasn’t exactly sure, what these guys did. I don’t really know if the owner even did. But I chatted and smiled, listened to yards and yards of smoke and bullshit. I nodded appropriately and thanked accordingly, all the while thinking to myself; RUN-MOTHER-FUCKER-RUN!!!!!
It was looking bleak. I even did interview with the evil empire, which would have been ok because they had a great facility, but they were a bit too demanding when they asked for a blood sample and the right to re-circumcise me, just to prove my loyalty.
I was bummed to say the least. I tried to join up with an art collective down in the tenderloin, but they wouldn’t have me either. (How does that line go…I wouldn’t be a member of a club that would have me as a member?)
So I resigned myself to Cabo and closing, at least I thought it would be painless.
But then it happened. I was sitting in the chamber waiting for the ball of cyanide to drop, watching the seconds of my meager existence tick away like some crappy ass B-movie, when the call actually fucking came. And it was for me!
Ring, Ring
“Hello?”
“Is Buddy there?”
“He’s a bit busy being put to death right now, can I take a message?”
“Well, it is urgent, are you sure you can’t spare him, for just a second?”
“ You know, it’s really busy around here, we are lined up around the block.”
“Look, I promise, it will only take a second.”
“I guess a second wouldn’t hurt…OK.”
And with that I was saved.
It was my landlord who informed me that he was going to hold on to the property for a bit longer and was I willing to stay?
Well, needless to say, I was stunned. An actual eleventh hour rescue!
So after a microsecond of consideration, I gave him an emphatic yes and threw off my shackles of despair and flipped the executioner the bird!
So here we will be staying.
Open for business
Ready to Rock!
the Rev Budz
Moments in Time #1
Flight of Fancy #2
I have been out of commission for the last week or so, laid up with an infected tooth from a root canal gone sour. (Not that y’all need to know the mundane details). But it has led me to wonder, why is the practice of dentistry still barbaric? Don’t get me wrong, I think my doctors are OK, but in the five thousand years or so that dentistry has been around, why hasn’t it really changed?
I mean they still yank things out of your mouth when they are bad. They still have tools that dig into your teeth and metal files to hollow it out. They still test pain thresholds by actually inflicting pain. Could the originators of dentistry way back when, in the Indus Valley, know that their practices would still be alive today?
Would they laugh?
So what I want to know is, where are the modern tools that I was promised as a child? Where are the little things that look like saltshakers that promise to deliver me a simple and exacting diagnosis? Why does the numbing process hurt as much as the procedure?Where are Doctors McCoy and Crusher when you need them?
Cave doctors or not, I still go, because I like to eat. But I make sure that I am well oiled before anything even remotely begins.
They begin by sitting me down in the seat of despair and put on the mask that delivers the sweet flow of nitrous oxide to my brain. I begin to breathe deeply as I lay back. I can feel just a touch of surrender to the gas, so I suck harder to really drive the point home. It feels good, like a bong with ice-cold water. So I suck on it even harder. In my mind I’m caressing it, like it’s god’s nipple. No pain, no pain, no pain is the mantra I repeat, over and over in my head. But something odd happens. Instead of the little uplift that begins my blissful drug induced dream, I get that dark twinge that says, “It’s all wrong”. I get panicky and start to inhale the gas like it’s oxygen. The assistant looks over at me and asks if I’m ok, but all I can do is suck harder on the nitrous. I probably sound like Dennis hopper from blue velvet.
“ More, I Need more dammit, “Where’s my bourbon? Can’t you fucking remember anything?”
I know now that I have a terror buzz going on and it’s not going to be pretty sight. I feel trapped in the seat as the dentist; the inquisitor begins to ask me questions as he starts pounding his little hammer in my mouth.
“Does it hurt?” He asks, Blam, blam goes the hammer. I am actually freaking out. “Does it hurt?” he persists. I decide that I am not going to give him that information because it is the only thing keeping me safe. I just mumble something incoherently and look up at him.
He turns to his nurse and says, “We have to step it up a notch”.
I begin to sweat uncontrollably because I know what’s in store for me. I try to resist but somehow, I am restrained in my seat, so I suck at the gas even harder, biting down on gods’ nipple until he wants to scream.
“Does it hurt?” he asks again. I am becoming the Marathon man and will not divulge that info. “Do your worst” I think to myself, as my resolve becomes stronger. Gods’ nipple is getting bloody now and he is getting really pissed. So the inquisitor brings out the hot irons to test my resolve. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” he says as the hot poker is shoved down my throat and finds it’s way to my tooth. Like a jolt of electricity the heat from the poker runs through my body. I spasm in the chair and the pain becomes unbearable
“ Just tell me”, he pleads. “ Does it hurt?”
I know I can’t hold out much longer. God has given up and left me to the pain. The poker is now substituted for the ice stick and the pain is elevated beyond anything I have ever known. I take one last deep inhale and suck it down into my lungs, sit up and scream.
“Do it to Julia”! Knowing like Winston Smith, that it is the only that would save me.
The room falls silent. I can hear the beeping and whirring of the machines clearly now. I look around at the puzzled faces of the people in the busy office and rip the mask off my face.
My dentist simply looks at me and asks politely
“Shall we begin?”
The Devil’s Tongue
Generally, I like to think of myself as a fairly active guy, low on the couch potato meter, high on the gym meter. But the reality is, I’m just another lazy guy with a big mouth! Hey, I’m in my fifties, I need increasing support for my nether regions and am follicly challenged. But I think, the true testament to my laziness is in the tools I have and how I use them.
Take for example my Mitre saw. (For those who don’t know…hell, Google it!)
I am so lazy, that after I finish cutting some trim or some such thing, instead of going to the sandpaper or a smaller, more precise saw to finish the job, I will hold the piece of wood against the very large and sharp, rotating-naked-blade and try and trim it there! Not only is it stupid AND dangerous, but it doesn’t even do a good job. Yet I persist.
Another wonderful tool that I use but can’t be bothered with is spell check. I’m sure that this will come as a shock to some of you, but I can’t spell for shit. (f-o-r-s-h-i-t). So when spell check first came out, (I am now dating myself) I found it to be one of these miracle gifts from heaven like penicillin and Buffy.
“ It’s going to correct my spelling! YAY!”
The only problem that I have with it, is that you actually have to read the suggestions it gives you. When it finds my errors, it comes up with a box that says.
“ Hey dumb shit, who taught you how to spell? It’s T-h-i-n-k., not T-w-i-n-k.”
So I happily agree with the smart program and say OK and move on to the next sentence. When I finally finish the piece and read it over, I realize that I have absolulely no idea what it says. For example, in my last blog I wrote the line “Are they on the production side of the equitation or are they on the artist’s side?? What the..? I actually had to look up equitation in a real dictionary! Let me translate that sentence for you,
“ Are you on the production side of riding a horse, or are you on the artists side? I actually may be on the backside of said horse. (I apologize for that bit of uselessness and to all the equestrians out there!)
I love words. But in the hands of the machines they become, “The Devils Tongue”.
OMG just saying that sounds wonderful. “I have the Devils Tongue baby, meet me after the gig and get lucky!”
So easy to use, so enjoyable to handle, wet and warm, with nice long words that make me sound smart! (Even though upon closer examination, the opposite seems to be true.)
Let me give you a fresher example. This blog, this very day, in it’s rough state, has a number of mistakes in it. So let’s Spell check them right now, and see what choices are given to us by the Devils Tongue. (The process is now magically happening behind the curtain.)
For the word blog, the Devil suggests; bog, blot, bloc, blob and blow. Hmmmm Let me try some of these out.
“Please, check out my new bog, it has the best cranberries in the world.”
How about, “ Hey, look at my new blob, the old one got frozen in the Antarctic, but this one, will surely take over the world.” Or even “ you know my new blow is great, it’s very insightful”, you think the cops will mind?
But wait, there is more! You see, it now also tells me what is and is not, grammatically correct. Hell, I don’t even need to get my subject-verb agreement correct. (Those guys never really got along well in my world anyway) It will do it all for me, (And as a lazy guy, anything that’s done for me is OK!) and all I have to do is press a button.
A single word out of context has started feuds that have lasted decades. The second Iraq war could have probably been adverted if only head of CIA had checked his spell check. When he gave the infamous memo to Bush the second. He probably wrote, “We need to look for Weepons of mass distruction”. But after the devils tongue got a hold of it, the memo probably read, “the weeping of mask distraction”. So when W read it, he probably thought that it was a good idea. Hell. He didn’t even know Iraq had a Kabuki school of theater
But I should quit using it. I should go out and buy a Dictionary, a thesaurus; the whole desk set and get it right. I should use the language for what it was meant to do. To communicate real words in real time and to curse… But I’m a little lazy and there are almost no bookstores around and to buy online I’d have to get off the couch and get my wallet…
So I apologize for the use of the devils tongue, but the honest to god truth is, it feels so good in my mouth, I never want to let it go.
The Rev Budz
The Glass
Posted by buddy in Uncategorized on May 27, 2011
Oh well, no rapture, no cry! Can’t win ‘em all. But I have one more thought about the end of days before I drop it. Who have we become, when the time to call it quits arrives? Have we become the great heroes of our dreams or the wise sages in the caves? Are we the backdoor men of song, those lucky few who sneak around the neighbor’s house to diddle the dainty? Or are we just living for the sake of continuance, the world being a hospice for the living. Our lives are an amalgamation of moments of what we believe to be the truth and have we, (have I, for that matter) , taken the time to hear the truth in each one? I don’t know for sure, do you?
Back to Biz!
There is a concept that is fading in our business today. It’s fading because of technology. Fading because of education. It’s fading because we can now be more then a single thought. This concept is known as “the glass”.
When we, (folks in the biz) talk to our peers (and our foes), we usually want to know right off the bat, which side of the glass are they on? Are they on the production side of the equitation or are they on the artist’s side? When I first began, this separation was paramount because rarely, if ever did someone cross over. It almost wasn’t allowed, forbidden, like fruit of knowledge. It made our jobs safe, kept our businesses alive and created a genre of jobs that were too difficult to master without a serious desire to master them. It required practice and diligence, much like playing an instrument.
If you were on the artist’s side of the glass, it meant that you were not technically adept, and not trained in the arcane majic of our craft. It meant that no matter how talented you were, you still needed trolls like me to help you rise to the top. It was our version of political checks and balances. It kept the artist somewhat tethered to reality, which sometimes, was a hard thing to come by.
If you were on the production side of the glass, it meant you were cursed with the ability to do what the artist does but without the courage or industry support that enabled them to do it. So you went for something with less face time and a little more tech time. It allowed you to shine in private without the having to have that special thing that enabled them to be one among many.
On the production side of the glass we could create artists from thin air. Fix the un-fixable and make silk form a sow’s ear. Of course, none of the credit for this was ever publicly given, but that was the way of things. The artists came to us because we possessed that knowledge. The knowledge that saves them from a fate worse then death. The fate of the mundane, the fate of sucking!
This unspoken truce has held the peace for years, there were of course exception to the rule (Floyd, Prince, Scholz and so on) but they were only handfuls compared to the vast amount to people recording. And we were thankful for that.
So as with all things, technology had begun to change. The advent of small multi track tape formats (quarter inch four and eight tracks, half inch 16 tracks) had allowed anyone to begin to have the makings of a studio in their home. It may not have been professional sounding gear, but it was conceptually the same process. This demystified our craft. They pulled the curtain back and said.
“Hey, I can do this”. “No big whoop!” And truth be told, it wasn’t.
Then along came two items, which completely revolutionized the way things were done from the bottom up.
The first was the Alesis ADAT. This was an eight track digital recorder that used videotape as it’s medium. While I may have many, not-so-kind things to say about the specifics of the machine. Overall I must say, that it was brilliant bit of engineering. It allowed for two things to occur; one was that you could now make absolutely clean recording in your home (small format tape sounded terrible). This thing sounded amazing in comparison. The second thing it did, was to allow you to bounce audio information to adjacent tracks, without adding tape noise. ( Also unheard of at the time.)
The second was the Mackie Eight buss mixing board. This was a mixing console that could have twenty-four inputs (or more!), and go discreetly out to the ADAT.
This was tons of room, for a whole band to record live. These were both incredibly cheap solutions to what was an insurmountable monetary undertaking for the normal person at that time.
The Mackie /ADAT studio began to spring up everywhere. It became the standard for mid-level recording. At this point the glass began to break. Bands and musicians began owning their own studios and taking the time to learn the craft. They began to have their own midnight masses where they would pray to the Goddess of wires for a successful project.
The arrival of the Digital workstation had taken this ability to a new level. Not only could you now record and mix at home. But you could also use effects and edit with all of the same tools as the larger studios had and the programs acted like a word processor to boot. So all you had to do was learn how to “word process” and you were in business!
At this point the glass is now once again sand. Which brings me to the last leg of the beast.
Education. With the proliferation of workstations there came a need and desire to teach people how to use this. A plethora of schools began to arise whose sole purpose was just this. Teach people how to be trained monkeys. ( What was it called again…Oh yeah, “The Infinite Monkey Theorem” regarding the works of Shakespeare.. another blog, another time!) But the musician now had all of the tools at his/her disposal to be all of the things necessary to complete the circle.
Composer, player, engineer, producer, savior.
the Rev Budz
Jerry Stucker's ADAT/Mackie Production room at Studio 684
The Rapture
I am writing this first half in great anticipation of today’s rapture. At 6pm today, to be precise, the righteous will finally go to heaven. And it’s about time, don’t you think? I had better get my ass moving and get prepared for it lest I miss my chance. I am so excited! I wonder what I should do to prepare for it. (Like someone can prepare for something of that magnitude). I am getting my finances in order, my priorities straight, even putting my family in line. I am telling you
as a Reverend, it will be spectacular!
First thing after it happens, I am going to get a hold of my real estate agent and pick up some of that great church property. I mean, they’re just getting up and leaving, so I might as well help myself to it. And while I’m there, I’ll most likely pick up the Christian Broadcasting Company. They won’t need to broadcast to the rest of us, we’re cooked! Their job is done.
Now that I think about it, there is most likely some high faulting business’s that I could probably plunder, since they too won’t care either. They will all be in gods arms, all warm and cozy. Down here in hell on earth, well it won’t matter much.
It’s gonna be a fire sale in hell, get your shopping carts ready!
The New Real Estate Market!
Live Nude Audio
As some of you know and don’t care, I am still a student in pursuit of a degree. Maybe a pedigree would have been more appropriate (and easier!), but nevertheless I am still chasing that hunk of paper. I get to sit in clogged up rooms with the rest of my pack and regurgitate the annoying, the useless and the “ I will never-in-my-life-use this bit of bullshit, but yet you give it to me in lecture form. The funny thing is, because I am older than some of my teachers, I actually know this last bit to be true and not just the cry of a lazy ass slacker. When I question them about the validity of their stance, they get that stern tone of, “ This is the way it’s done, son”. “Son”?! Who’s kidding whom? I have pubic hairs that have seen more action then most of these folks! Yet, out of courtesy I limit my snide remarks to their lineage and family, instead of their teaching abilities. I also have to admit that I really do love pushing their buttons! (Yes, shockingly, I can be a jerk!)
But don’t misunderstand me; I enjoy the institution of education. There are things that I find out about myself, (usually unrelated to what I am studying) that I would have missed otherwise. So, here I plan on staying and continuing until the messiah, Armageddon or my degree comes first.
One of the more amusing things that I find, is hearing what’s hot these days. Granted like all folks of my “stature” I don’t understand half of what they say and am terrified of the rest. But every so often, I overhear something of interest. That would be today’s topic.
Analog Tape
There is this opinion going around amongst the unwashed, that tape was a magical item that added fatness and roundness to all that touched it. (Cue homer saying “ mmmmm analog”) An audio elixir if you will, that cures mediocre sound and terrible recordings. It’s a miracle to be sure! When students speak of analog, they get this glassy look in their eyes and that far away stare as if they were thinking about the girl that got away and if only he could get her back all would be well. People find tape players today and try and re-animate them like monsters from a movie. They tinker and twiddle away, just so they can get some of that “classic” sound. (It usually doesn’t work out so well!) They want to set up their Conestoga studio wagons on the side of the road and hawk their wares to all passers by saying that it will fix all of the evil of the digital sound. They bark;
“Live nude audio, step right in. A fix, for all things digital. The cure for the super clean and the soul for the soulless”
How do I gently put this …tape mostly sucked.
Let me clarify that statement a bit more. Tape was a cruel and demanding mistress, that when not served correctly AND consistently, sounded like shit. The problems with tape were that you had to regularly muck with the machinery to ensure a quality of sound. You had to align the heads on the machine, check that the azimuth and bias numbers were correct, set up the electronics, deal with different formulations of the tape itself (all tape was NOT created equal), make sure always that zero, was always zero in all places! (Hey, when is zero not zero? When it’s plus three! Sorry inside engineers joke). There was a ton of stuff to do just to keep it on par! Most studios lacked the specific know how or were just too damn lazy too care. This was a weekly task, just for maintenance, let alone the problems with wear and tear on the machines that made you call in experts.
When I first came this studio, when Neal and Mike owned it, (It was called Sound and Vision back then) they had a one inch, sixteen track Tascam deck with DBX. Weekly, Neal would be on his hands and knees with his head buried up the decks ass, tweaking it so it would be at it’s best. Sometimes he would say to me “someday son, this will all be yours!” and snicker. Like he knew something that I didn’t. (Which he obviously did!) Neal was a freak though and really loved doing this stuff. (I should have paid more attention!). But in a lot of studios that I have been to, this was not the case.
Tape was also expensive. You had to get a second mortgage on your house, just to afford the tape costs for and album. (And how many musicians even owned a house?) Let’s do the math. Each reel was about two hundred bucks give or take, depending upon if you were running at 30 ips or not. (Tape speed for the uninformed) this would give you about fifteen min. of recording time per tape. Assuming you were trying to do a few takes of each song, and trying make a full-length album, this could require between six and eight reels of tape. Now we’re getting into some real numbers! We are most likely talking about one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars in tape costs. (That’s 1980’s dollars!) Sometimes it was as much as the cost of the studio. That’s a lot of cash before you even hit the first note.
There were cheaper tape formats, but you usually found them in peoples bedrooms between their underwear and empty beer bottles. (uhhhh..)
For me though, while I loved many of the things that went along with tape; the sound, the physical splicing of the tape, (it was an actual skill) and even the hiss that was in the background of all things that you recorded. I was not sorry to see it go.
I became a child of the modern workstation in the early 80’s and I never looked back. My first records (Vinyl of course) were computer music records. Can you actually believe we called it “Computer Music”! I had to actually build the computer from scratch and then write the program that let it play music, (Bite me, all of you wanna be, DIY’ers), before I could even produce the record. It was an exciting and confusing time but the path had never been so clear.
Studio 684 Control Room
Flights of Fancy
Well, recently I have become a minister! The Universal Life Church has seen fit to ordain me. That’s right, I can now marry people, take their last rites, and even forgive them if needed. “This house is now Clean!!” (Y’all can call me “Reverend Budz!”). I know of some folks who may be offended by the thought of me being “of the cloth” especially since it was a mail order cloth, (cheaper fabric and all) but, they should know that I meant no offense to their beliefs, religions or their hard work in the study of theology. I just think the world could use a few more folks who are interested in forgiveness. (Ha, I am at the beginning of that line!)
In pursuing my newfound calling, I have been wondering about some things that I have come across in my liturgical studies. Why was the Dead Sea, deemed dead? How come all of the cherubim had fat faces? Why, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, god could only think of ten things to say. (Shit I have more to crap to say in this blog and I’ve spent all of 5 min!) Where was this Valley of the Shadow of Death?
I have really fixated on this last one. “Yeah, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” That’s actually an awesome line! I of course do realize it is a fictional metaphor and these things probably don’t really exist. But, there usually is some sort of real world start to these things, a kernel of truth from which the story sprouted. I thought, well maybe it’s in the Middle East, the cradle of civilization, or maybe North Africa, home to the first humans. I would like to think that I could find this place, if I ever actually went looking for it, even if just to know what to avoid at all costs!
Anyway, while I was searching the new world, looking for people to forgive and marry, I came across a place, deep in the desert, about a sin away from the Salton Sea. It was a huge valley with terrible sandstorms and temperatures so high, they would burn the skin off your bones without the use of artificial blocking. It was here that I discovered the terrible secret that was lost to mankind, all those years ago.
It was here that I discovered, the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Holy crap, it really existed! It was a terrifying site to behold. Massive mausoleum like structures that people lived in, stretching out forever in all directions. They were all the same, with no clear identifying markers, like tombstones in a graveyard, a living graveyard. Grey shells and red roofs, grey shells and red roofs, again and again. (Doesn’t god have a designer in heaven?) Most likely it was created to prepare the almost dead, to become, the newly dead. They were surrounded on all sides by high metal gates, and brick walls. For no other reason that I could see, other than to keep the poor bastards in. I can still see their faces, staring at me through the gates, those who were stuck there. Like cattle, waiting for the slaughter, you can see the knowledge in their eyes.
“This is the place we wait for death? “Man, this shit sucks!”
It had many names this place, Purgatorio, Barakh, limbo, Gehenna, but here, it was called, “Ciudad de Sol”. It was in located in a grizzly part of the southern California desert, that was named after the bodies of dead creatures left there in the sand, “Conchilla”.
It is here that I found the truths of the ancient text.
My tour guide, a Virgil-like- being who called herself, Hope, (most likely for the irony of it all) had told me that “to enter the city was tantamount to a death sentence, for those who come, only leave by dying.” Terrifying to be sure! The fallen souls who inhabit this place all seem to worship a deity they call (and I am paraphrasing) “Del Web”. To bide their time he gives them shallow dreams to chase and 2 and 1/2 garages. He enables them to play mindless games, which occupy their bodies but allow their minds to slowly rot away.
They wait and wait, looking for loved ones, looking for the leader, looking for anything but what they have. A meaningless existence based upon endless outlet shops, bingo nights and countless hours trying in vain to place a white spherical object inside a hole amid manicured grass.
I weep for them. I cast bread on the water in their names, hoping to help them find redemption at the end. Redemption from all of their dreams, gone sour.
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