The View From The Drey

The Squirrel

Well-Known Member
It's Monday morning! Time for:

Crazy A$$ R&R Studio Story #1

At this point I’m still pretty wet behind the ears, so I’m getting the jobs that no one wants. It’s a 24/7/365 type of business and if you don’t have to work the weekends, holidays or overnight, you don’t. This ended up being my wheelhouse for years. So, I get the call. “Sluggs, you’re working Saturday. It will be a long one.” Come to find out, it’s not actually a session, but a video shoot. And I don’t have to do nothin’. I’m just the key/”alarm” guy. I get to sit around and make sure they don’t destroy the place and lock up when they’re done. AND collect overtime! “Oh, and by the way, it’s Aerosmith.” HOLY $HIT!!! I got into this business because I wanted to record the next Led Zeppelin album. Of course, that dream goes up in flames when Bonham dies while I’m in school. Fate had landed me in a studio that didn’t do much R&R (the studio business if fickle that way), so this would be my real exposure to why I got into this business in the first place.

I get there at 9a. I got food and books and I am ready to hang. First R&R lesson-No one’s ever on time. R&R time is almost as bad as Rap time. The road crew shows in the early afternoon. These are BIG guys. Refrigerator Perry size guys, except with long scraggly hair and big beards. I’m hanging out and one of them comes up to me as says, “There’s no full length mirror here.” well, it’s a studio not a dressing room?!? The guy goes to the WOMAN’s bathroom in the lobby of the building, rips the mirror right off the wall and drags it back to the studio. It’s one of those long mirrors that spans the length of multiple sinks. I guess we now have a full-length mirror. The doorman is screaming at me. I look at him, I look at the roadie, and I walk back in the studio and lock the door. Second R&R lesson-Never screw with a roadie.

The guy in charge of the shoot seemed to be OK (another lesson learned). He tells me that there will be two parts to this shoot. The first is the band basically performing the tune in a rehearsal type setting and screwing around. The second is this melon thing that they’ll set up in the back and do after the band is done. Seems harmless to me.

In total R&R fashion the band shows up in limos with the entourage and bodyguards. In the evening! I’ve been there for almost 12 hours and not a single moment of video has been shot. They all have their A game on (if you know what I mean) and there’s nothing but fooling around. It takes about 5 hours to shoot a 4 minute tune from like 12 different angles. And then they leave. At no point was I allowed in the same room with them, so my exposure was separated by thick glass. It was like a day at the aquarium. Very disappointing.

The band splits as fast as they arrived. Now it’s like 3 in the morning and it’s melon time. It’s explained to me that they’re shooting this on film for the slow motion effect. They hang the melon and they’re swinging a bat at it, but not hitting it. I’ve got my feet up and I’m just dozing and all of a sudden there’s an explosion. I mean a huge EXPLOSION!!! Everything is shaking. What that nice guy didn’t tell me is that what they wanted to capture in slow motion was the melon exploding. I was later told it was quarter stick. Whether it was true or not, I do not know. All I can say was I thought the building was coming down. They're blowing this fruit up INSIDE! In a RESIDENTIAL BUILDING!!!! Now I’m pitching a fit and these guys are just ignoring me as they continue to blow up these melons. There’s melon everywhere and I mean everywhere! I’m screaming and they just keep telling me “one more, man”, which it wasn’t. During one of the spaces between explosions I start to hear this loud noise at the front door. I got a bad feeling about this, so I tip toe over to the door and look through the peephole. There are two guys in pajamas. One with a bat and the other with an axe and they are taking turns wailing at the metal door. Oh, this is very bad. I tell the crew, they grab their cameras, leave everything else and split out the back door. And I’m left with the cleanup and explanations. The hell bent guys at the front door eventually leave. After cleaning up, I had wrapped the clock for my first 24 hour workday.

In the end, I got no heat for all these antics, so they must have paid a fortune for that day and the studio paid everyone off. We kept the mirror.

I’m still lost as to what the whole melon thing was worth in the grand scheme of things:


 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
@The Squirrel I've been reading up on some of you work and very very impressed. In particular your 24/192 remaster of Kind of Blue, I have the mono3 in vinyl and another MFSL remaster in SACD but I'm guessing its not HD like yours. I've been out of the game for awhile, do you have a recommendation on DACs to best work with the 24/192 format? I am in no way an audiophile, just someone who likes to reproduce music nicely.
 

pooriggy

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Wow, that was a dark time in Aerosmith history. Joe Perry is probably glad he us not in that video.
 

huffster

Well-Known Member
The Aerosmith video reminds me of when MTV first came out. Looks like MTV came out in 1981 and that was 1982. So, makes sense. Some of the early videos are tough to watch. Kind of like watching Batman or Gilligan's Island. You remember it fondly, but when you see it you think: "I used to enjoy this shit???"
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
The Aerosmith video reminds me of when MTV first came out. Looks like MTV came out in 1981 and that was 1982. So, makes sense. Some of the early videos are tough to watch. Kind of like watching Batman or Gilligan's Island. You remember it fondly, but when you see it you think: "I used to enjoy this shit???"

same can be said about the 90s, with the
MTV Real World
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Saved by the Bell
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Does anyone ever even watch MTV anymore, I don't recall the last time I saw something music related on there?
 

The Squirrel

Well-Known Member
@The Squirrel I've been reading up on some of you work and very very impressed. In particular your 24/192 remaster of Kind of Blue, I have the mono3 in vinyl and another MFSL remaster in SACD but I'm guessing its not HD like yours. I've been out of the game for awhile, do you have a recommendation on DACs to best work with the 24/192 format? I am in no way an audiophile, just someone who likes to reproduce music nicely.

I think the MoFi SACD is from a mix that I did in 1996. Very good mix, tube machine for playback and it's SACD, which is a higher res than the most recent 24/192's. Same mix that I used for the Sony SACD in the early 2000's and the Miles & Trane box. The recent 192's are a new mix and I really went note by note to nail it against an early pressing. A lot of work.

Do you have the recent mono on vinyl or an original pressing? The Miles mono box was what I was talking about in the images from my studio. You can see the box on my rack above the Lp of 'Round Midnight. I think that entire box is at least 96K if not 192K.

As far as a DAC, USB or wireless?
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
I think the MoFi SACD is from a mix that I did in 1996. Very good mix, tube machine for playback and it's SACD, which is a higher res than the most recent 24/192's. Same mix that I used for the Sony SACD in the early 2000's and the Miles & Trane box. The recent 192's are a new mix and I really went note by note to nail it against an early pressing. A lot of work.

Do you have the recent mono on vinyl or an original pressing? The Miles mono box was what I was talking about in the images from my studio. You can see the box on my rack above the Lp of 'Round Midnight. I think that entire box is at least 96K if not 192K.

As far as a DAC, USB or wireless?

can't locate the SACD but pretty sure it was 1997 like the regular CD I have, the vinyl is more recent from the 2008 50th box which also had CDs. My SACD player is dead so all I can play are CDs on a Teac at this time anyway. I listened to the 1997 CD and 2008 vinyl 3 times each and the 2008 CD once. It could be my jaded view on vinyl but I thought it sounded best with the 2008 CD next after that. What is frustrating was that the box set only credited you for the CD, but did not mention the LP. So set me straight, are all three from the same remaster? Honestly my scientific method to this was rather poor, being that all three were on practically different systems.

I'm guessing you're asking about the original press because of the slow 3rd track pitch issue. The only original press I own is Midnight. Miles and Coltrane vinyl is stupid expensive as you know. I've got lots of others instead like Monk, Getz, Chet and Wes. I love me some Wes, anyone working with his recordings at this time?

are we really ready to talk wireless in 2017? Let say usb for now since it sounds more affordable.

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The Squirrel

Well-Known Member
If you thought arguing over the differences between chains, lubes or which direction to mount your CX tires was ridiculous, then you HAVE to go to some of these music forums. They make this site look pedestrian. And forget about the headphone guys ('cause they're never women).

I'm trying to parse the stories out once a week. I'm trying to figure out which is the next one to tell, maybe my Iggy Pop story.
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
haha, like the comments of your work where you didn't remove the pitch issue at 1:32. Fair enough, we can take this to another room. Yeah those forums like bikeforums takes this shit all too seriously, partial reason why I jumped over here 2 years ago. Here you can ask stupid questions without getting blasted in all directions, just don't piss off the monkey.
 

The Squirrel

Well-Known Member
haha, like the comments of your work where you didn't remove the pitch issue at 1:32. Fair enough, we can take this to another room. Yeah those forums like bikeforums takes this shit all too seriously, partial reason why I jumped over here 2 years ago. Here you can ask stupid questions without getting blasted in all directions, just don't piss off the monkey.

Just PM me, I answer all your questions.

Oh, I was talking about sites like stevehoffman.tv or head-fi.org. Those places are as serious as a heart attack.
 
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