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Random Rants

Waiting for #3

They say bad things happen in 3’s (whoever they are). So I’m up to two right now.

1. Earlier tonight I leaned back in my very nice leather studio chair, the the damn thing broke and I almost broke my neck.

2. Had a gig tonight at a small club. Nothing thrilling there to report. But on the way home it was very windy. I heard a thud and then felt my back tire run over something. I’m not about to stop in the dark on the freeway at 2:00am in a blizzard. When I got home I found that my damn front left turn signal light completely flew out.

3. ?

Categories
Boneheads Musicians Recording

Don’t keep your studio masters with your dope

Recording rappers is always an entertaining experience. Rappers all love to brag about how badass they are. They love to tell you about how much bank they’re stackin’, how many ho’s they’re bustin’ nuts in, and how many coppas asses they busted caps in. (Soon my white man’s rap dictionary will be out so you can understand what I just wrote).

It’s funny when two different rappers show up at the studio at the same time too because they’re very competitive. One will say “where you from man” and the other will say “Compton.” The first one will say “Word mofo, I be from Compton too.” (I know damn well the one dude is from Midvale and the other one from Salt Lake…pretty damn far from Compton).

This one rapper (whose name was a derivative of the chemicals found in pot) was quite entertaining. He would always bring in his “posse” and they were all funny. It is a little scary though because you have to keep your eye on all of them. All small expensive pieces of gear must be locked up before the session. I don’t know why but all the rappers really seemed to like me. I’m pretty damn white so I don’t know what the see in me.

When you work with rappers in the studio you have to allow a bunch of breaks for them to go out and get some “inspiration.” I just tell them to keep it outside. Hell, if someone wants to pay me $60/hour to smoke dope outside what do I care?

So I finish the pot chemical rapper’s album and give him his bill. It isn’t cheap. He makes a call or two and jumps in his ride. 15 minutes later he comes back with cash. That is one great thing about working with rappers: they always pay in cash.

So I gave him his masters and he was on his way happily listening to his new album in his “boom boom car.” (I call those rap cars boom boom cars).

A couple of weeks later I called him up to see when the album was going to be released. As it turns out he and his posse got pulled over by the coppas. The coppas smelled something funny and had to search the boom boom car. Unfortunately they had to impound the vehicle and it’s contents which included the dope and the masters for the new album. Fortunately they paid me already or I wouldn’t have gotten my dough!

So the moral to the story is: “Don’t keep your studio masters with your dope.”

Categories
Boneheads Musicians Rants

Orange Bowl Halftime Farce: Ashlee Simpson is TERRIBLE!

What a joke the Orange Bowl halftime show is. I’m so sick of musicians faking their parts. The Kelly Clarkson (or however you spell it) band was a joke. I just saw the drummer do a big drum fill and the music track was playing the HH. The drums on the recording were an obvious drum machine but they were an acoustic kit live. Trace Atkins’ drummer was playing behind the track missing fills all over.

Oh man, Ashlee Simpson is TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE! She’s out of tune! She can’t even sing in time with her original recorded karaoke guide vocal! Forget the fact that she’s about 10% as attractive as her sister.

WAIT WAIT…HOLY COW, WHEN ASHLEE FINISHED THE AUDIENCE BOO’D HER!!! WHAT A SMART AUDIENCE! YEAH!!!

Categories
Boneheads Gigs Rants

Stolen SUB

Here’s a little salute to the asshole who broke into my bass player’s suv:

After a gig we hauled our gear into our respective vehicles and the bass player had the PA system in his suv. He had a bunch of stuff in his garage so he had to park outside overnight. When he went out to his truck in the morning he found a broken rear window and one of our JBL 18″ subs was missing. That part sucks.

Now for the “justice” part of the story:

At this particular gig we had some kind of problem with the PA. There was a bad cable or something which caused us to blow one of our 18″ JBL subs.

So the asshole crook has a 50/50 chance of getting a good 18″ sub for the pawn shop so he can go buy some crack. Well buddy, no crack for you. You stole the blown one you loser…

Categories
Boneheads Gigs Musicians Recording

Board mix breaks up band

I do live sound gigs sometimes when someone wants to pony up a few bucks to pay me. When I do run sound it usually kicks ass.

There’s a heavy metal band I did some albums for and they hire me to do many live sound gigs as well. They have a big PA and it sounds killer.

The last gig I did for them was at a scary biker bar. The day after I did this gig a guy staggered into the bar with more than a dozen knife wounds…

This is a pretty easy gig. They set up the PA and I show up and twiddle some knobs. So for the hell of it I decided to bring my laptop, and an I/O (that’s soundman geek talk for input/output device) to capture some audio. I just ran a “board mix” straight into my laptop. If you know what a board mix is then you know they don’t necessarily sound very good. The issue is that POST mixer a ton of processing can take place in the PA. For these guys it’s namely thousands of watts of power with some EQ’s and compression blasting out of dozens of big speakers. So the sound coming out of the console may sound quite weak and out of balance if you don’t listen to it out of the PA.

Board mixes are almost always out of balance due to the stage volume of the players. The guitar player in this band for instance has quite a few Marshall amps which are loud as hell. So since his stage volume is very loud it’s not necessary to pump him out of the PA very much. The resulting recording of would then be lacking guitar because of this.

So what we ended up with was a mix that you would simply critique the band’s playing and tightness. I burned the band a CD of the gig (not from awedeals.com).

A couple of weeks later I get this crazy email from the drummer listing his $30,000 (supposedly) drum kit for sale. I later find out that after the drummer heard the board mix he got into a big fight with his bandmates. He thought the sound sucked and said that the singer sounded stupid when he talked to the audience inbetween songs. This singer has talked like this from day one. The only thing I can figure is that the drummer didn’t have as good of time since he was SOBER for the first time at a gig! Whatever the real reason is the band broke up. I felt a little guilty even though I clearly explained that the board mix wouldn’t sound all that great.

So in trying to do a favor for some guys, I produced the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ll think again before I do any more clients any “favors.”