Not exactly a Shaker barn, the Capitol Records Building
has a certain curved nature that is famous all over the world. For a
very long time it has been the only recognizable building in Hollywood
(the Hollywood Sign being a structure, not a building per say). In the
80's I used to deliver my cartage clients to Studio A & B for
recording sessions. In Studio B I watched Bob Seger play
basketball on the hoop mounted high on the back wall with thousands of
dollars worth of keyboards set up underneath. I also raced in on a
tight call with 7 trunks of percussion and nearly ran over Miles Davis's trumpet while he glared at me through the control room glass.
As they have added on to the building, some of the
doorways are in new places, but the rooms still carry the heavy mojo of
Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and many others who recorded there.
We loaded in to be a part of Sessions @ AOL or whatever they call it.
The Band was to perform 5 songs, though they were
prepaired to do more. A lot more. As video (and we discussed this last
week) is friggin' slow, I'm glad the list shortened. One of the great
surprises was our old friend Butch Allen, who was there to provide the
"look" for the show. Butch and I go back to when I was peeling the
skins off the animals for the drums and he was lighting the trees on
fire to provide "ambiance". I complain about smoke but when the trees
burn down and you're being hit with flaming coals, it really sucks. I
guess I should shut up and ask for another hazer to be pounded up my
ass.
Butch's look included large cogs strewn about the
studio as if a petulant giant had thrown his watch at the wall. Always
one to show and light his cog, he provided the proper "ambiance" for
the boys to friggin' rock...
"Can I get more cog in my mix?"
Daniel Bonneau, our system engineer and failed bus
monitor, now shows us the proper micing technique for a big, hard,
rigid cog...
Good job and nice stage blues... are you going out
with Prada for some hippie food after the session? Well, as Tiki Flood
Crunch was either busy at Yoga class or talking down a coupla hundred
of his friends from a bad trip who went to Vegoose, Daniel was a busy
guy. Between our needs, the recording folks and the mic fairy, you can
see there was at least as many mics set up as there was at the OJ trial.
Dino on ther other hand, had only one and was quite cool....
Gear heads, here's a double whammy: a Gibson 335 and another cog!!!
Kevin on the other hand, can't decide if he wants to give me the heavy metal devil horns or flip me off...
Did I mention he got a 95 on his LA driver's license test? He did...
Under this sign was the constant sound of Blackberry's getting e-mails, salsa ringtones and people cursing....
So, all in all, we did our 5 songs, shook hands and
all went our separate ways until December when we resume in Japan. By
then, I'll have been to Mexico, RC will be back from India, SS and J
will have gone to the island and made it official, Prada will just make
his flight, BS will have made it downtown to watch the flop and AK will
have loaded more trucks than the rest of us combined and found time to
talk to his cats. This is the break; it starts now. Will you guys
remind me how much I wanted and needed it when I start buggin' out in
week or so?
10:24:19 PM 
|
|
