Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / George Massenburg

Transcript

George Massenburg · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Says Podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is producer, engineer, technical wizard George Massenberg. George,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about skiing.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'd rather talk about AI.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You'd rather talk about AI? Tell me your thoughts about AI.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I think most of the public conversation has been misled
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: and is misleading. Kind of summarize it.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, but let's sort of buy for Katie here. Are
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you on the side of AI is scary or the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: hype is too heavy.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I'm certainly of the opinion that some tech millionaires are
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: making a lot more money promoting AI, and I've recently
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: found out a little bit more of the dollars where
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the dollars move. But I'm not scared of anything. I
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: love technology. The misuse of technology I have problems with.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: But I love fixing things. I love getting things to work.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: And for the past couple of years, my programmers and
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I have been working with AI to suggest code and
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: it speeds things up. By the way, it also gets
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: about half of what it states is fact wrong. That
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: is code that doesn't work or code that causes things
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: to crash, and code is code. I mean you have
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: to run code, and if it's wrong, it crashes. So
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: we have to be as careful as we are with
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: AI generating code. We don't do any generative AI with code.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: We use it to wire controls in some of these
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: development applications.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So, George, you just sent me a document saying why
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: does AI generated music sound so shitty? So why does
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: it sound so shitty?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Well, there are a few reasons. Well, I guess the
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: reason at the top of my head is that we've
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: been years trying to make incrementally better music as we
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: learn how to live and how to communicate, how to listen,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: how to spread out our interests that we allow other
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: kinds of music, other cultures in And it's certainly what
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to do is to make is to understand
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: better how to communicate with music, how to help artists
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: make music better, communicate what they're trying to say. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: by the way, that presumes that artists always have something
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: to say. And you may have an opinion on that,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: but the bottom line is we love making music. This
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: group of seven of us, and you've interviewed half of us,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I think, but I've lived a life of music in
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: its group Bob, It's brought me tremendous joy when I
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: stumble on something I've been working very hard at and
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: finally I make it work or it clicks or it
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: has some magic, and it it affirms my life. It's
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: the best thing I could, best way I can put it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I love music. Okay, that's your general philosophy. But just
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: restating the question, why does AI music sound so bad? Well,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: here's the list. I'll work my way from the bottom up.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Missing the feel.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: AI.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you think of it in terms of
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: what AI doesn't do. It doesn't copy paste happiness. It
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: doesn't doesn't do joy. Joy is very personalized, its individual.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have the tools yet to tell a story
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: in time, Bob. You know groove as well as any
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: of us. Groove is, in one way of looking at
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: groove is a story between musicians and time. Musicians for me,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: musicians in the studio where a great guitar player proposes
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: a groove to somebody else in the room, and it's
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: what can you do with this, Bernard or whatever that
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: might be. Groove is a story in time, and you
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: hear groove that's written to me everywhere. Mariacchi, you know
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: the feel of mariachi is the feel of the groove.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: How something to the uninitiated sounds a little bit like
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: a lurch off the forela, and that's groove, or in
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: one way of looking at that's groove. And AI doesn't
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: do groove. Now maybe eventually you could learn. But the
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: very heart of AI, the heart of AI, is nothing
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: but a machine that does a comparative analysis and a
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: thing called correlation, auto correlation, relative correlation. And the reason
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: it soaks up so much power is the way I works.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: And you've heard it put this way. I know where
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: you take two call them data sets, and you sort
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: on the correlated parts of two data sets. I'll get
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: I'll get a lot simpiler in a minute, two correlated
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: parts of data sets, and you're building a large model library.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: By the way, that's the expensive part of AI, is
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: building the large model library. But all you're doing is
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: finding commonality. And you're doing on more than this, but
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: it's very core. You're finding a commonality between data sets
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: and what I would propose in its most rudimentary form,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: it's turning all of these different data sets looking for
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: commonality into mush into beige mush. Nothing too surprising. It
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: doesn't do anything terribly extraordinary or terribly Monday. Actually it's
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: all Munday, and if you want to look at it
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: that way. But it's selling some kind of genius that
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I'm just not seeing. I think there's been tremendous room
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: for we practitioners who use AI to take an idea,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: see what AI has to say about it, and then
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: adds something of our own. And one thing that I
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: would suggest is there's a lot of room to add
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: it of our own feeling and knowledge. And it's sets
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: of music and joy. There's no joy. Yeah, AI doesn't
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: do joy. Oh god, I'm sorry. I'm running on of
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: no no, no, no no no, I have these is
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: all going to get cut.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no, this is this is genius.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Keep going. How'll come? Insiders like you and Don was
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: have no fear of AI and music and everybody on
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the business side, and those who are not on the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: inside creatively are freaking out.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I love Don and for all the times that we've
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: been in the studio together, and you have to remember,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: because you've been here with this, I know where we
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: spend about five minutes hacking, hacking, doing work and doing
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: some edits and then the next fifty five minutes telling stories.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: And Don's stories are great, and he's worked with everybody,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: and I just love working. He's a great guy to
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: hang with. Why does Don tend to think about it
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: the same way? It's the first I've heard of it.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I haven't talked to Tom in a couple of years ago,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: and I would say that he's a thinking man's producer.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: He's the thinking man's producer with a great, great field.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Now I'm surprised you haven't haven't heard that he's out
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: with us.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: With the Don has told me. He said, AI is
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a tool, just like with the lin drum. He had
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Lynn drum number three I think it was, and he
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: asked Roger len who had number two? Because Roger had
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: number one. He said Prince. And then Don messed around
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: with it, couldn't figure out any great thing. And then
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: he heard princes when doves cry. And then he says, Okay,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I see what you can do with it. And he
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: feels the same way about AI that yes, I feel this, Ye,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: it will have us, but it's not going to replace
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the underlying music.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: It's not going to replace the inspiration. So again you
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: know if you scroll to the bottom, no real intentionality.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: AI doesn't get into a gig with the intention of
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: a quality even reviewing its quality. To ask another add
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: I think it was chat GPT if there was any
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: recycling of data in LIED and said, no, there's none.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: But that's that's a lie. It does recycle data because
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: it does need to study its recommendations and make sure
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: it's not echoing one of those early completely racist AI
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: agents that put out like the worst recommendations, the worst language,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: hateful speech. And you've read about that, and it may
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: have been early Meta that did that, just hateful, hateful speech,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: and they went in and started fishing for ways to
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: limit that, they being the few programmers that really understand
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: how the AI algorithms were. So what I would what
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: my mind jumps to is is how great Prince was
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: because he you know, we all worked with Prince. In fact,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: you remember Cavala Ruffalo, they managed Prince and they got
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: me the gag mastering some of the Prince stuff because
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Bernie Grutman couldn't deal with it what Prince was making
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: him do. May he may rest in peace because he's
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: he was the genius. He was on with true independent inspiration.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: But but that thing that he discovered because we saw
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: him use the drum machine, he used stock Lynn Lynn
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Allen one. We saw Ellen one when when David David
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Foster asked Roger Lynn to show it to him. So
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: that was that was number one where it was still
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: breadboards and uh boy, you could you could see the possibilities.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: And Prince saw it in three D. He was musically
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: and I want to say, emotionally and technically a study
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: in real creativity. Let's go back to the beginning of George.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: So where do you grow up? All over the place.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: My father was an Air Force surgeon, so I grew
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: up in four or five different cities. My father was
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: from Macon, Georgia, mother was from at that time Pennsylvania.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: My grandfather was a mukeeting bucket Exxon which was called
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Standard Oil. And so the most memorable times in my
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: life were going to after they divorced, visit my father
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: in Macon, Georgia, and have this experience with Southern radio
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: that changed my DNA at the very heart is growing
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: up listening to when I was in Macon, listening to
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: race radio, listening to early black radio, and as near
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: as I can figure. My father was a surgeon for
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the better part of the black community of Making, Georgia.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know whether he was the surgeon for notable musicians,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: but he might have been. So I've got something you're
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: going to have to cut out. My father was the
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: only surgeon in town that would put his hand up
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: a black man's ass to check for growths. And why
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: do we have to keep out? Oh? I love you
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: more and more, Bob Okay, use it. But he was.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: He was. The quarter of his year was charity surgery.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: He was, in my mind, a hero. Even though he
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: was a terrible alcoholic and hated being a doctor. He
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: did use it. But growing up in Making, Georgia expose
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: me to the early bird groups and I would turn
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: on the radio and I as a seven year old,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: which is her raw sex pour out of the radio,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And I said, well that's for me. I didn't know anything,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: but I loved music, and that was a side of
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: music that I wouldn't have heard any other way. So
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: that was Making. And we were also Scottsfield, Arizona, and
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: be fifty twos flew Over and my brother and my
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: nephew are service families in the Navy. My nephew is
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: an air boss on an aircraft carrier, and my brother
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: rose to I'm so proud of my brother. We grew
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: up miles apart. My brother went into service and was
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: in naval Rotzzi and interviewed with Rumsfeld. He was one
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: of the top ten guys in service. And we never
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: spoke for years and years and years, and then when
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: we did, we realized how much we loved each other.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: But now I'm really getting farfield. I was a family
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: and I was you've interviewed ry Cooter would refer to
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: him as I was always a George. I was always
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: a marginal person. I felt that way. It was always marginal.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: I was a terrible student. It was horrible.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Wait a second, Okay, so only two kids in the family,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: you and your brother.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Well, we have an extended family yet cousins and nephews,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: and well in the primary family was my brother. And
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: who's older you or your brother? I was older and
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: I was a monster. I would I would fight with
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: my brother and do terrible things. But yeah, no, I
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: was older.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, you must have been somewhat of a good
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: student if you got into Johns Hopkins.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but boy. I didn't get along with anybody, and
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize until I tried to go back and
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: teach at university. I was at McGill for thirteen years,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: and I view those years largely as misdirected and maybe wasted.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, just to be clear, your years at
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins or your year's teaching.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: My years A year and a half at Johns Hopkins,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: and I finally left Johns Hopkins. I quit Johns Hopkins
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: at about the same time that everybody else was smart
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: was quitting university, and I got a job at a
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: recording studio. Okay, But later at McGill, I found that
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: it was very difficult to reach kids. I wasn't there
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: to serve the kids. I was there to serve the
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: administrative layer at the university. And when I fought it,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: I was not welcomed. Okay, So when you were at McGill,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: why was it so hard to reach students. I wasn't
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: silenced early, but I assumed that I could change the agenda.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: And I came to McGill having just started doing video
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: in the studio, because at that time I had already
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: demonstrated as well as I could that video directors. We
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: were missing a lot, and so I wanted to do
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: it on my own. So I bought some professional cameras
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: and started taking doing video and the recording studio. This
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: would be very quick, don't worry. Started doing video on
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: the recording studio. My second engineers would double as videographers.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Would take one let's roll. They would put down their
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: clipboard and pick up a camera and shoot the session.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And I had a completely different experience with video, where
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: I focused on the music and the performance and not
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: what I came into it as a producer. Angry, an
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: r person or whatever forces push a session over on
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: its face. So I took that to mcgil where I
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: was trying to make clear that we had a tremendous
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: resource at mcgillan's and Music. We had some extraordinary performance
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: and we had recording facilities one of the pre eminent
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: recording programs in the world mcguil Sound Recording, and I
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: tried to put it together. We had a tremendous director
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: of the opera, Patrick Hanson, and we had wonderful donors
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Joe and Ivory and gave me discretionary use of some
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: funds and so I could buy enough video to do
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: pro video, and we changed video in Canada, I would
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: submit where you know, we would keep keep it as research.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Everything about about what I learned was about research, conducting
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: research and doing it poorly, I mean, not good at it.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: But and I'm inconsistent and I'm lazy, But I did
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: find that musicians were far better videographers far better. And
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: this is way before anything Instagram or TikTok or anything issues.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Make better videographers because they follow the music. They follow
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the music, and as videographers on a live presentation, they're
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: irreplaceable because they know where the music is going, they
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: know where the action is going in opera, and this
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: is lost on the better part of the school and
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: a professional context. You know, I was not very well accepted,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: and maybe it was my attitude. I still have a
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: bad attitude.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait wait, bad attitude is the essence of
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: rock and roll. But I want to and ask just
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: a little bit more, what was the problem with connecting
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: with the students.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, Well, this is going to be hard to admit,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: but I'm not a nice person when things go wrong,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: and I'm aggressive and more likely to be angry and
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: accusatory and just awful and I hate me in the
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: recording studio, and if you ask any of my second engineers,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: they would have to agree. And with students it worked
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: less well because they thought, they felt strongly and rightly
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: so that they were paying for an education. They were
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: looking for their education. Why why they were looking for
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: their idea what an education was or is? And what
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I needed is for students to pay attention and survey
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: your academics bomb and ask them what their biggest problem,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: the biggest problems were and are. And it's the challenge
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: in my mind and my book is the challenge of
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: getting students to pay attention. That's extraordinarily difficult. And when
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I could capture the attention of and this is this
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: is a graduate level course. Sound recording is a master's degree,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: three year degree, which is when I could get somebody
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: on board with how to think about telling a story
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: in video, because it's all about telling a story, same
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: thing as music. We're there to tell stories. And that
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: idea of coherence over time that first thing that an
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: AIA agent has to deliver. On that list I sent
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: you coherence of a story over time? How to get
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: a story to hang together? I turned a couple of
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: my graduates into the direction of being professionals, and they're
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: all working and they're making a fuck ton of money.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I think they are. But the ones I could reach
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: I did extremely well with. So I was encouraged to
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: think that this Jacqueline Hide demeanor would get a student's
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: attention and allow me to move it move. The conversation
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: on that was just mean, Okay, if.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: We've pulled back the lens, people from our generation all
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: figured it out for themselves with your experience, how do
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you feel about music education on the road to creating
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: professional artists?
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: What a brilliant question and one that I should have
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: been prepared for. We're still looking for brilliant artists, so
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: let's start at the end and work our way back.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Our challenge these days and finding in discovering brilliant artists,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: And I mean there are not many of them, Prince.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: There's he's one in ten million I haven't met, but
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: a small handful of true geniuses and pop music, by
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: the way, I know you watched the Billy Joel thing.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I was so impressed with Billy Joel, and I've did
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: a record with him and didn't see certain sides of
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: him as far as writing went, and was very close
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: to Phil Ramona, and I know what Phil brought to
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Billy Joel, and it wasn't always Billy Joel's idea. But
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: to fill the point I was trying to make, or
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: trying to lead into, is the idea that there's so
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: much noise out there, and the industry is smaller and
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: in competition with sports and with video games and with
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: God knows what that you're likely to draw off how
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: to find that brilliant person again, find that what on
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: terms that I could I could relate to this, This person,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Jimmy well Web is a good example of somebody, ah
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: who I am in awe. The way he puts moving
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: tones together and by the way he puts music, he
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: puts lyrics together is idiosyncrasies. And there are men, there
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: are many others that you and I have known that
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: we would have to call brilliant, but they're harder and
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: harder to find. I did. I started a record Tammy Emmanuel,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: who is that kind of idiosyncratic, complete genius, independent way
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: of expressing himself and God knows where it comes from,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: but you know right away that this is a transcendent artist.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: So that's the problem. And the other thing is nobody
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: picks me as a producer anymore. You know, I have
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: this thing that I do where I'll do it once.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: When I got out of Earth Wind and Fire many
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: many years ago, I had a lot of offers and
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I did a couple of them and realized that they
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: didn't want any innovation whatsoever. They just wanted me to
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: repeat what they thought were my ideas with earth Wind
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: and Fire. And I didn't do the heavy lifting with
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: her from the Fire, Marys wife did and I couldn't
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: fulfill that dream, so I stopped taking work. I still
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: won't answer the phone. But Tommy Emmanuel persisted, so I
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: had to work with him. Also, he was brilliant, so
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I had to work with him. Linda persisted. A lot
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: of these artists persisted, and that worked with him.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, there was a great explosion of artists in the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: sixties and seventies into the eighties. What you talked about
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the competition for interest sports and video games in the Internet.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: But do you believe the what is the problem that
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: we're not having artists? Is there not dedicating the time?
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: We can't find it, we can't amplify it. What is
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the real problem.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. Problem. Well, I think the challenge
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: is allowing marginal people, is allowing a ryecoiter. For me,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: it was getting to know loll George and how he
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: would craft a story, and how he suffered from music
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: with this, with this incomprehensibly narrow view that he had
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: to change the world with the song. I've put it
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: like that before. Nobody's argued with me. But that's the
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: why I saw old George and what he did to live.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: His music was idiosyncratic and independent, and people would pay.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Bob you wrote some checks. People would pay for that
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: in the sixties and seventies, and then people tried to
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: simplify it and gave it to accountants. With the turn
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: of the nineties and the experience of having artists like
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Michael Jackson go for what did he go for forty
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: points to Walter forty five points? You know, and the
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: artists took control, they took their music back, and they
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: didn't they couldn't do that formula anymore where one out
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: of twenty would fund the other nineteen. But you know,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Michael wouldn't allow that. And then Braca, you should interview
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: John Braga Braco wouldn't allow that.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I know, Brinck, I've talked a little bit. That's
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: a good idea. Let's go back to Lowell. George, tell
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: me about him suffering for the music.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Well, first, it's well known that he overindulged, and that
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: was not his about his friend. I mean when we
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: did the rate you've heard about the Rainbow sessions that
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: we did that turned into Waiting for Columbus, which it
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: turned out to be a great record, and everybody had
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: a hand in it. Who I want to say mattered,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: but he his his his wife Liz, had to sequester
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: his funds so they wouldn't buy a lot of really
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: nasty drugs. So before the Wednesday night show at the Rainbow,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: you could see loll in the lobby with an armful
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: of T shirts selling T shirts for half price so
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: he could make enough money to buy blow. And And
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: that was the story of the the downfall of the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: production of the Rainbow.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: That was Lowell.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: That had to do with Lowell's imagination and what he
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: could get away with, what he should get away with,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: what he shouldn't get away with. But he told a
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: great story and he lived, He lived his he lived
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: at the edges of his imagination. He's a great, great
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: recond and a fisherman, loved to fish. He and jenneddiad
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: bonded over fishing. So I don't know where I started
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: that answer, I help, it didn't get to.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, how did you meet Lowell? George?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good story to it. The artist of
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: my life was began as Emulou Harris, and I was
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: a small recording studio in Hunt Valley, Maryland early on,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: and word got to Washington, d C. Where Tom and
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Emmy Lou lived, and she was doing her thing, playing
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: her songs out of the folk scare of the late sixties,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: and I got to know, I mean, I did a
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: couple tunes for her, and shortly thereafter she heard from
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: her friend Lindron said that Lindron said was sick and
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: she was going to come to do this record with
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: John Starling, the leader of the Seldom scene. You probably
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: never heard that name, but he had the great bluegrass
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: and I come out of bluegrass. Bluegress in classical music
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and the bluegrass were a lot of these early bluegrass artists.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Live to two track, where I really learned how to
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: mix live to two track for Rebel Records, Country Gentlemen,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the Osborne's Seldom Scene and and John Starling was no
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: was throat doctor. And when Linda fell ill on the road,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: she went to stay with she. She canceled her gigs
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and this is seventy four. Canceled her gigs and went
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: to live with John Starling and his wife, Issue Starling,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: also wonderful singer. And during that time We'll quit Little Feet,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: I'm out, fuck you guys, and was hanging out with
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Linda and so Lowell on this hiatus from Little Feet,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: wanted to get a song with Mike Aldridge, the dobo player,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: and he had this wacky tune called Everybody Slide is
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: all about slide guitar. And just hung out and that's
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: how I met Old George and we got to be friends.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: He was impressed that, rather then yelling at people to
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: be quiet in the control, that I put on a
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: pair of headphones and carried on. Nothing stopped me. And
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: had proposed that we worked together, and we did a lot.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Let's go back a little bit, fill in some detail.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So what kind of kid were you. Were you like
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: a member of the group playing sports? Were you a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: kid in your room reading and tinkering and book.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Kind loath sports, and when I found out how to
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: make gunpowder, I was making explosives and homemade rockets that
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: didn't really produce anything, but didn't kill me either. Now
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I fiddled around with electronics. So my earliest experience was
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: who was I was just talking to somebody about this
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: is early on as a kid, I was talking to
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Douglas. And if you have an interview Jimmy, you
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: gotta know he's one of the greats. Jimmy Douglas and
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: I are doing a podcast, and I'm and I tell
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: this story, and he said, wait a second, that happened
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: to me too, And as a three year old. As
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: a four year old, he was wondering how light bulbs work.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: So each of us had the same experience where we
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: unscrewed the light bulb and stuck our finger in the
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: socket and got blown down, blown on our backs, but
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: experienced the universe. I don't know how to make it
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: more trivial sounding, but we learned a lot about electricity.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: So I was always impressed with this great power that
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: electricity had. It. When I got my first piece of
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: shit tape recorder, it was five years old, and it
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: was just.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: We just slow down a little bit. You're five years old.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: It's the early fifties. This is long before the compact
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: is set. What kind of cape recorder you get? And
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: why do your appearance buy it for you? Well, it
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: was a piece of shit. It was one of those
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: thirty dollars recorders that had friction drive all the take
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: up takes. But before then, I was fixing radios when
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I was five or six year old.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: One of the.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: First plait you're five or sixey, I got a soldering.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Where does all this team I fix anything? Wait a second,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: I didn't fix anything. I just poked around and took
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: things apart, and would generally lose all the screws and
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: just poke around or replace the batteries, or there's a
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: loose wire and I'd solder a wire. And I didn't
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: do anything that was valued. But I had a soldering
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: iron and by golly, and put it put it to work.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: But yeah, do you get the tape recorder? I got
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: a tape recorder and it was a piece of shit.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It's horror. I mean I was already doing sound in
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Baptist Church and I was away from my follower and
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: moved up to Baltimore. I was at a church and
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: they lost their sound engineer.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: In the.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Baptist church would do a radio broadcast and I would
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: sit back by the mixer, off the main secretary and
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: just run, run, level, run the radio broadcasts. It got
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: me out of going to church, which I have never
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: really felt very good about except for the music. I
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: love Catholicism for the music. You love Judaism for the justice.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I tried to convert and it was too hard. But
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: but early on I would anything that touched sound I
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: thought was a miracle. And that's where I wanted to
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: quote enturity, because his, his, his, his, his, His line
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: was the music must be a miracle to be able
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: to put that feeling through a wire. And that resonates
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: me still with me still, Okay, I was. I wasn't
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: good at anything. Wait a second, I don't want to
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: claim to be good at anything. I didn't. I mean
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: only occasionally when I fixed something and it was by accident.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: But were you the type of kid who had heath Kids,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: et cetera.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Oh I did. I had one of the early heath
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Kid catalog computers, but also as early as high school
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: when we're talking about over thirteen. I would be on
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: the stage crew, and mostly it was an excuse to
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: sneak backstage and smoke, which my mother discovered one day
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: I was cutting French class and she happened to look
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: in the auditorium where at my feed up on the
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: balcony railing of smoking ball boy. That ended that. So
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I would I would do early stage crew, an early
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: audio crew, and mixing.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're involved with this, you know, stage crew stuff.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Are you listening to music?
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, listening to classical music, mostly classical music. One
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: of the earliest experiences was my mother and she had
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: a subscription to a seventy eight music service and a
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: thirty three to third music service, and I would wear
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: records out. Earliest experience as we're listening to classical music
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: on on shellac.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, how about Elvis and what came after Elvis? Was
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: that something they interested you? The first forty five not
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: at all. The first forty five I bought was Del Shannon. No,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: it was a ballad of New Orleans. Ballad of Ballad
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of New Orleans. Yeah, now I've forty five. But mostly
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I listened to radio pop radio and R and B.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Baltimore had the greatest jocks in the world. They had
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: a guy named Fat Daddy Paul Johnson, I think it
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: was his real name, and you would have heard of
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: this guy who was the hot DJ W W I N.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And I remember coming home from when I was still
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: in college, and this is a good story and so
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: but I'll make it quick, coming home from the late
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: night card game at AEPI API. Mostly we smoked pot
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: and played cards, but I remember an all night poker
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: session and I wasn't particularly good at poker, but I
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: didn't lose too much either. But I remember coming home
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: at six point thirty in the morning, driving home and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Paul Johnson was playing Stay with Me Baby Lorraine Ellison
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and played it over and over and over again, five
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: six times in a row, and every time just raved
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: about what a great record. But it really struck me
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: as how to connect how to connect that kind of
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: performance with radio, because I know you remember the song.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Everybody remembers the song, and everybody tried to do it.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Linda tried to do it, and nobody could quite do
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Lauren Nellison. And by the way, that's a whole interesting
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: story because that was a Phil Remont record where Frank
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: had the studio booked. It was an early an R
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: on forty eighth R recording and an ar got the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: call to do this session for Frank Sinatra, and so
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: they booked an orchestra a band because it was all
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: about room. And the day before.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Frank canceled, and he canceled with the now famous line
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: not today baby. And Phil gets the call. I've written
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: this up if you want to read it. Phil gets
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: the call, calls Jerry Ragvoy. You know it, says Jerry. Jerry,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: I've got the studio courtesy Frank for an afternoon. Can
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: we put an act together? Do you have an act?
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: And Phil and Jerry put together the Lauren Allison record
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: off the cuff. They say some charts were written. I
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: don't believe it. I think it was all head off,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: off the off the floor. But that's one of the
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: great stories of Lorraine Allison was in the right place
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: at the right time and knew the right people, and
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Frank was going where Paul Springs to get married. How's
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: that for a story that one I haven't heard?
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: So where were you when the Beatles broke? And what
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: do you think about that?
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: I didn't like the Beatles. I mean I watched it,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: watch the two early in Sullivan shows and recorded them.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: I had a better tape recorder by then and recorded,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: but I didn't didn't understand it in terms of what
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: they were doing with my favorite tunes, you know, the
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: he they did, like Twist and Shout and Isley's and
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: they did some a lot of a lot of covers,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: and I didn't. I didn't get to really appreciate the
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Beatles until until Sergeant Pepper and what they did with
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: that record, and then I got to work with him
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: and we did a Boy. One of the records we
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: did was got to Get You Into My Life. And
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: I had known George pretty well by then because I
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: had built his automation system for uh their at the
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Oxford Circus, and he had sued Neve. He among others,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: had sued Neve form ninety six, and so I was
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: famous in the business for having got up in these face.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: But I don't think I gave him what he wanted
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: on that record that he was with the Beg's and
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Peter Frampton, which was the first record I knew of
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: to return platinum. Yeah, and you know the record it
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: was not a good record, but it was a copy
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: or an emulation of a pooky Valentine to the Beatles,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: where they just kind of copied Beatles arrangements and copied
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: the Beatles sounds. And we did, we did got to
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: get You into My life and from scratch arrangement, and
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: we did it. I remember playing it for George, who
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: immediately took it to Paul, and Paul listened to it
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again for a whole Sunday,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: just listening to Maurice's vocals and the arrangement. And now
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: I'm way off track, But the but the I didn't
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: really like the Beatles until until George and realizing how
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: much influence Georgie had, and for a while that was
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: who I wanted to be. See. I think the notifications
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: are a gift from God. Every time I say something
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: I could really state as a fact, it goes off.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, not the middle of the screen.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, yes, stay center, stay centered in the screen. But
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: as we're sitting here and you're getting phone calls and notifications,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: A are people looking for you all day long? And
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: bybe you like that or do you find it interrupts
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: your work?
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: It very much interrupts my work, and so when and
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I let it go like this,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: because when I used to mix extensively in this room,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: I would figure out a way to make sure the
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: phones were turned off in other rooms and cookie doing
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: what was happening my wife, And I don't know why
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: did I not do that? I'm terribly sorry.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Guys just drilled down on something. You said you built
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: an automation system for George. Are you talking about something
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: like the board flying fingers that type of thing.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Well, it's flag faders and that was pretty much lifted.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: But that was a guy named Joe Martinson who saw
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: the success I had with gm A automation and we
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: were the first system that actually worked. Ask anybody, and
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: especially when he came out he six failed and me
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: was sued. Mark Crabtree was sued and developed the Red
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Hot Hatred for me. That was unequal in my life.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: And one thing he did was to offer me, however
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: much money to buy my company, and then when I
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: would sell it, he collected enough money from Joe Martinson
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: to just copy my system, and that fun A little bastard.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Joe Martinson tried to patent one of a broad array
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: of ideas. Because we were building from scratch. We hated
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: DeCamp ninety six, so we built the fader from scratch,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: built the hard disk processing from scratch. I programmed a
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Unix like automation system from scratch so that whenever you
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: rolled tape, the system would locke into where you were, which,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: among other ideas, turned into ideas that stuck. And I
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: didn't patent that. It was like the equalizer. I didn't
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: patent the parametric I didn't know it was worth patenting.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: I should have. And then rained Olemy came along and
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: copied parts of it, and that was another story, another nightmare.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: So all of these, I think at some point you're
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: going to say, this guy is so full of shit.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: So I did bring my paper on autom and so
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: I can show you that. I could show you the
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: parametric equalizer paper that I delivered at seventy two.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Let's go back before this, Okay, let's start with a
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: parametric equalizer. How did you come up with the idea
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: for that?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: A group of us came up with the guy I
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: was working with, a guy named Burgess McNeil. I eventually
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: started a company with had an idea and I had
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: an idea and a friend of mine that had gone
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: to Princeton, Bob Beushaw eventually worked for NSA had an
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: idea and I put them together. But there was one
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: thing missing and I had to make that work. It
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: was the queue control or the width of a peak,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: and I figured it out and it took a lot
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: of work, but that's what made the parametric equalizer unique
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: and would have made it patentable. And it just came up.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I came. I was recording music at that time I
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: had done. I was running a directed two track studio.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: What did I do that you would have heard it?
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: I did the demo for arthur' connelly that he took
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: to Memphis and Steve and he wrote sweet soul music.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: But the demo that he went with where you lead me,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I will follow. So that's the record we sold to
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Stacks and I did that in Baltimore, directed to track
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: and so I was doing music when I wasn't doing commercials,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: and that was my recording studio experience. When I dropped
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: out of Hobbins, I got a job doing commercials for
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Lean Shapeer, Golding Bank and car commercials, package commercials and
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: learned how to how to work in the studio, but
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: a lot of it. We invented the mixer. It was
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: a two mixer that sounded great. Listened to Philadelphia records,
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: listened to New York records. Early all the pop records
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: were bell sad and a handful of studios. Later, an
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: R much later, An R And figured all these records
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: sound great because there's some piece of equipment that I'm missing.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: And so I built all this stuff. And it wasn't
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: the equipment. It was the musicians and the arrangements and
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: the writing, the songwriting. So I learned a lesson there.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: But there was a studio called it I Studios, Recordings
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: in corporate and then it TI. So I'm really jumping around.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: So this must be very hard. Stop making excuses. You
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: come up with the idea of the Pyrami metric equalizer
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: with these other guys. Did you then have it manufactured?
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I did it.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: I did all the design except for one piece of it.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: The mechanical design was done by another team. The company
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: that we went with, which was a video manufacturing They
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: manufactured video tunes for early merchery missions. And they had
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: a team and they were out of market, and so
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: they bought a recording studio and that was my recording studio.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: It turned it too it TI so you see it.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: I in early parmetric eq so that was that was
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: my equ and I did it. I did the hard
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: the almost impossible to realize how to vary the queue
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: with a Vernier.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Nob but I know that.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: We went to the guy that wrote the audio op
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: and cookbook, TODG Shung Tomjong, who worked at Aircraft Armaments
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: around the corner, and he looked at it and said,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: this is impossible. To do something else and I stuck
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: to it and did it. So I did. I did.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: I generally am the one to stay up around the
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: clock and figure out software, figure out design, and I
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: just enjoy it.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, how did you decide ultimately to get into the
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: hardware business.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: There was a piece missing, same thing as as now
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: is something doesn't work, or there was a piece missing
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: something doesn't In the case of an equalizer, it was
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: I'm in the studio with a graphic, a seven band graphics,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: seven thirty one seven band graphic, and it's well, you know,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: the figures are sixty two one twenty five two fifty
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: something something something. None of them were sharp enough to
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: cancel a residence in a snare drum or an acoustic
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: guitar or taken note excuse me, take a note out
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: of a piano. So that was the gig is. I've
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: got to build my own equalizer because we didn't have
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: any money. We couldn't afford anything. And I built my
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: own four track just because I needed one. But I
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: didn't learn it from anybody. Got to work.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: What's your viewpoint on analog versus digital?
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Now, it's funny. It's funny that you should mention because
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I still have a very strong viewpoint on how to
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: improve digital, and it has a lot to do with
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: how good analog is. And I didn't bring up any
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: of my examples, but I can show you some work
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: I did on well more of the compressive of the
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: DRC which I have. I think it's the best dynamic
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: range controller ever made, very slow to teach people how
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: to use it because it doesn't do that crunchy thing,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: and that's what people think a limitter does. Any rate
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: back to an equ so the EQ was going back
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: to the RCA Radio handbook and picking out a circuit
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: called a te filter two resisters two capacitors, and all
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: depending on how far apart the pastors are spread, you
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: can make a sharp notch or a broad notch or
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: broad them to a very wide range and move the
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: game up and down on the notch and you have
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: variable Q. Well, nobody had tried that before, and that
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: was where I got into trouble at Hopkins, because I
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: wanted to learn something in my first year systems course
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: and the professor was, ah, was what I hear lately?
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Real warfare? Stupid? I mean, these the assistant professors were
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: just fucking idiots, and I just had to get out
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: of there. But I knew what I had already done,
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: and he said, well, that's a possible and I use
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: a circuit variation called a gyrator to turn a cheap
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: capacitor into an adductor. It trans transforms is not the
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: right word transforms. Reactants turned a deductor, which is why
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: are around the back accord into a capacitor, which is
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: two plates. He said, well, you can't do that, that's
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: only a theoretical abstraction. Well, I've got one, and you're
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: an idiot, so that wasn't very good. I didn't say
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: you're an idiot under my breath. But all this stuff
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: is there, Bob. You know everything that you see smart
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: designs in plugins, it's all there. Apple and these other
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: companies put it out there, put the tools out there
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: for free, and you had to do something with it.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: So we built plugins. It's changed a lot, business has
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: changed a lot.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: But let's go back. You had a few point ana
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: line versus digital.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Well, and here's the key thing about music, and I
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: knew I would have to circle around the music, is
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: that all our recording sounded not only better, much better,
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: much better. The first digital machine I heard was Tom
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Stockin's Honeywell data recorder with a really awful front end,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: and I remember playing something back for Jeff Bercaro and
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: at Sunset Tom Stockher was trying to make a business
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: out of digital and there's a story before that, but
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: at any rate, we Jeff would walk into the control
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: and say, hey, man, where's the high hat And we
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: had to say, well, it doesn't go up that high yet, Jeff,
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: because it didn't. It had a fifty k badwidth sampling
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: and high hat didn't sound like I had and it
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: was sixteen bit, so all of that digital direction that
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: I took was in response to hearing something that sounded
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: awful emas awful awful fiddles didn't sound like fiddles. And
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: I had just come out of real musicians playing on
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: great microphones to an Ampex three hundred through a console
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: that we built tube console using high trans conductance twelve
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: A y sevens. It's pureless K two forty one D
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: had put transfer. Its amazing And I remember this shit
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: and it was immersive and small eye immersive, and I'm
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: getting chills still remembering going out and doing remotes at
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where I'd take out a couple
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: of mics and do a feed, an FM feed to WBL,
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: the FM station in town, and nobody listened. So I
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: could do anything. I could put the microphones anywhere I wanted,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: and the experimenting with an orchestra, I'd never lost that
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: lust of experimenting with dorks room.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: So okay, the original sixteen bit digital was bad, but
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: digital was improved after that.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no, it wasn't sixteen bit. That's
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: the key. The early Sony machines were, if you're lucky,
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: twelve or thirteen bit monotonic. The digital goes like this
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: up and a step. Well, early non monotonicity was what.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: It goes up, it goes way down that it goes
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: up and then goes way down. It's not monotonic. So
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: you're lucky if you get twelve bit accuracy out of it.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: So I knew right away that they were all fucked,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: and unfortunately I would have to tell them and made
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: friends of the Ajax men of science who thought they
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: knew everything and they didn't and couldn't because they were
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: blocked blocked in they're thinking. So I got a better
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: converter from Renee at DBX had done a different kind
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: of converter, and I bought blocks from what we made
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: our on converter. It started to sound better. But that's
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: all I ever hoped for is if you can work better.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: I have a direction, that's what hey round up the posse.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: That's where we're going. I know the direction now it's
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: not there yet, but I know where we've got to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: go with it. And so I'm working with Serus Semiconductor
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: these days, who are really great engineers and sort of
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: discovering the border borders of where I can go with
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: design and digital. It's still is not there, but I
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: love three eighty four. We did the Tommy Emmanuel one
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: nine two, and I can say that I feel the difference.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: So I've got let me brag for a minute. So
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: I've got the best headphones I can get. These are
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: automatic research and I've also got well you've seen Audies.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of audis and all these are
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: these guys that our audience can't see them, but I
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: can flash them. These guys are you've seen these?
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: I have them.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: This is the you have them? There you go. Well,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: I'm mixed the last two, three four dozen records I've
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: done on these and I'll listen to them on speakers.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: I've got genleis now I'll listen to them on speakers.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: But this is where I do the critical listening where
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: you can hear the grass grow. You know, I hear
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: digital clicks, You're going to hear them first on Audies headphones.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: So you know, I'm friends with those guys. If I help,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: If I help these guys that have built something brilliant
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: get the word out there, we're friends for life.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, If I said you could use state of the
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: art digital or I gave you as much tape as
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: you wanted, Which would you choose?
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I honestly if I had enough tape, and I
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: don't think I would have enough tape, but if I did,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: I'd use both. And we did that with the earliest
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: we did a director I did director desca tuc sacs
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: where we had We were recording both on on this
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: new got this another long fucking story, this new technology
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: called DSD or direct steam stream digital. It was an
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: engineer at Sony that I got to like. Cold Taka
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: was the smart guy at the Shubora Jubbara factory and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: he was the that it talks on you Sodia to
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: putting money into this black project in the corner of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: the factory. And we both discovered that the very earliest
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: good converter, which was a crystal something crystal converter was
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: a company before it was Cerrus. And discovered that one
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: of the pins was the output of a modulator and
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: if you took that pin, that one pin out of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: the chip and just ran it into a filter, that
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: was the DDA converter was a resistor and a capacitor.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: It was the DDA converter coming out of a digital
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: digital stream which was pulse with modulation, and so a
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: talk and D show turned that into a product before
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: uh Shaboya the Home office was ready and set the
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: samp or a too fucking low. So there were better
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: DSD processes that came out that were faster sabary. But
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: here's the takeaway is that no matter how fast we went,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: and of late we're doing three eighty six and DSD
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: times sixteen, which is sixteen bits wide at sixteen x
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: fs sixteen times two point eight megaarants sixteen times, you
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: can imagine the data rings and it's pretty fucking hard
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: to hear. So I'm gonna have to say that eventually
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: it'll get there, and maybe there'll be another way to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: do the converters. But the guys at Cerrus are about
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: the best I've heard so far, So I mean, I'm
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: liking digital. It's so much more convenient. If you have
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: a mistake, we've learned how to LaVey attract together to
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: fix one little mistake that casts this long shadow over
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: a performance. But she had she had one note wrong
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: in the chorus, and that colored her thinking. And I'm
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: talking about a female artist, now you can guess that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: colored her thinking about the whole track, and a lot
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: of artists are like it that you're one thing and
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: forget about the track. So so early on I got
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: really good at and I'm going to brag about it
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: because we all got good using a Sony thirty three
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: forty eight edit takes together before there were workstations. Before
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: there was It's about the same time as Sodic Solutions,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: So there was a Sodic Solutions workstation, but it was
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: very expensive and the converters were terrible, but I stayed
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: friends with him. For you, that's Andy Moohr, who was
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: one of that handful of digital engindeers that invented everything.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: Andy Moore sort of the when he worked for George Lucas,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: he invented this machine called the sound Droid, and he
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: did it so that he could do one performance of
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: the deep Note. You remember the Deep Note the t checks.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: He that was Andy Moore, the musician said now I
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: could if I just had a powerful enough computer. So
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: he got George to invest in Sprocket Systems and he
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: was going to build at the edit Droid, at the
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: sound Droid, and uh, he's he's really my bottle of
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: a great university professor. He was at Stanford for all
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: those years, and everybody remembers, and he wrote the basic papers.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: We still talk and he stole a musician. The point
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: is is that he was always pushing the boundaries and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: it was an inspiration. There was always something better. So
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly throwing the baby in the water.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about playback. What do you think about? Okay,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: this Vinyl revival. Louder is better. Let's simplify this, louder
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: is better. Okay, the Vinyl Revival.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: This first studio that I got a job of, it
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: had an early mentor press, had a record press, and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: shortly thereafter and I'm just in a high school at
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: that point, and I'm going to go to work at
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: this place of the summer, and I got introduced to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: their pressing plan, and so early on I knew how
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: to master because we had a lath that was a
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: model laith, but I invented the digital pitch. Since then
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: it became the standard. You're welcome and a record press.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: It later had two fabels and two fine builds in
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: the dirtiest environment ever in Pratt and Paki Street in
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: downtown Baltimore, and I did labels and jackets wherever there
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: was a need, I say, well, I could do that,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: and learned printing in graphic arts because I had to
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: do it, and process photography, you know, the big cameras
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: of the whole rooms process photography. In other words, anything
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: that came along that interested me. I would try to
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: fill a need and build something or make something. And
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: I'm bragging, but I don't know any other way to
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: put it. I learned how to press records. We learned
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: how to master records of very automatic variable pitch systems.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: We had a better system, and eventually was Jerry Block
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: who really came up with the working system. He was
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: chief engineer of Sigma Sout for a long time. What
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: you're getting under the idea that this life is in
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: the technical world is a world of relationships. And I
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: can't stress that about all of these different ideas were
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: relationshipships that we had with other energy. The latest relationship,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: let's balance the one thing that the okay, but this
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: latest relationship that is in an actually relationship. Barcodiari who
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: was head engineer at Real World for Peter for a
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: long time. Okay, carry on.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, okay. If you talked about being McGill
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: and you described your personality. How you're angry, you're diffident, okay,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: and distracted, which it implied that way you were working
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: and you were on the line as opposed to teaching.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: It has to be right. You're a guy who calls
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: its street. There are many people who've worked, absolutely work
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: behind the board, who have never created equipment. Never mind
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: theorized how many people are on your level? Who can
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: you talk to and have a fulfilling conversation.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I just met a couple of guys who now
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: work for Bows, and we tried to interest them in
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: the idea of supporting our show because we're looking for
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: donors give us a bunch of money. And there are
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: a couple of really smart guys still at this company
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: that Bosbolt called McIntosh. Remember Macintosh amplifiers. Of course, when
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: you heard a good system, you look behind the curtain
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: and hey mc seventy five five. And so I had
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: a conversation now four or five weeks ago with Chris
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: and Mike, and you couldn't get us off the phone.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: We were talking about old designs that made Mackintosh special,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: especially the output transformer. And there aren't that many guys
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: to talk to, And I want to say. I keep
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: looking for them because I did find a young kid
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: three years ago that was recommended to me as an
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: analog engineer. The kid wants to be an analog engineer.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: All I want to do is take him to lunch
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: and say, are you fucking kidding? You know that you'll
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: never make any money. Nobody will understand a word you say.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: And he and I have been working together on new designs.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: So I have to invent the people to talk to.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: I have to go out and find somebody that I
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: could train. And this this kid is brilliant. He's brilliant.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: Somebody will seal him.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: How about everyday life? Do you spend most of your
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: time alone? Or do you have a social life in
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: What are those people like?
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: I have a wonderful circle of friends in Nashville, and
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: you will have heard of many of them. And you
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: have read the story about Randy Travis doing the Redo,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: which was ai of a song that he had written
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: and that my friend Kyle Lenning had produced. Kyle Letning
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: is good, and I go back to the beginning, back
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: in time. Kyle Lenning bought one of my early automation
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: systems when they cost ready for this one hundred and
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: thirty five thousand dollars. It made some money. It was
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: one of the few things I didn't make money. And
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: Kyle bought the idea and it wasn't his idea. It
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: came from an art the record company. Generally, I'm not
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: keen on talking about record companies in any kind of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: positive way, but had the idea, well, why don't we
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: try to do that? But we do it right and
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: right meant that Randy had to be involved with the song.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: So we're circling back to AI. Randy had to be
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: involved with the song and it had to get past
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: Kyle because Kyle it's an old analog engineer. It's not old,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: but he's in my my group. Mike Reid, you've certainly
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: heard of Mike Read and one day you should interview
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: Mike Reid. I'll tell him about it because we've all listened.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: We talked about it. Mike Reed, you recall, is the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: guy that went to uh Penn Penn State with Paterno
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: and was writing string quartets and playing football. Mike Reed
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: went to the what team did he go to? But
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: head played three seasons in the NFL and then wrote songs.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Was and still is a songwriter and a the funniest
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: guy I've ever met in my whole life. And so
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: we get together every Friday morning with Bill Stay. I'm
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: surprised Bill didn't talk about this. I see Bill every
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: Friday morning. We used to get together in Los Angeles
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: every Tuesday and then every Thursday night. Now we get
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: together here and have coffee every Friday. So Bill, Bill
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: is if you'll allow me to rave about Bill, He's
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: He's who I would like to grow up to be.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: Is Bill Stay is a mixer because he is all musical, bustle,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: Every twitch of his fingers, every twitch of his body
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: is musical, is performing. He's my hero.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Let's just go back playback. What's your viewpoint about vinyl
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: versus other methods of playback today?
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: Well, right now I'm listening to a one hundred ninety
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: two k D day. I find that if you play
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: a CDs back and up sample them to one hundred
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: and ninety two, they sound better. So my favorite playback
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: I can tell you is not Spotify. And the only
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: reason I would go to Spotify is if I can't
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: find a song any other way. But that guy's the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: dem Daniel act. Somebody should shoot him in the back
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: of the dick. Okay, your favorite playback platform is Oops,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: my wife read that you have to be invented. My
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: favorite platform would be a super high rate converter one two,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: three four with actually with an analog app that we've
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: just built for the back end of a d d A,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: so it has yet to be invented. It's called a
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: DAC follower. It is that little piece of linear gear,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: linear silicon go on the other end of digital analog
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: converurner and everybody does it with the same circuitry, and
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: we think we can do it better at doing it analog.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: So is there a place for analog? Yep?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, So, but in terms of what's commercially available today,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: cubas or co buzz, do you think, well, how do
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: you feel about that? Shaking your head.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: What I heard a couple of years ago? Yeah, because
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: it sucks. What I heard a couple of years ago sucked. Certainly.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: The only service that does immersive right is a service
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: that does not use a codec. As soon as you
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: neck down data streams, you're throwing away stuff, you know,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: the whole, the whole. All these guys that did that
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: work in codex did the FP three and it was
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: Carl Heinz Brandenburg and James Johnston and another guy that
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: did most of the codex are. They're okay guys, especially
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: James Shaunston. He's a really good scientist. Data scientist. Carl
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: hides is hopeless. But it sounds like shit. And they
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: did it based on what's called perceptual coding. Everything that's
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: wrong about MP three's is because they depend on perceptual coding.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: You want to guess what that is, I'll just tell you.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: It's that you know, it sounds enough like music so
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: that we can pass it off if a listener isn't
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: listening too carefully, that's perceptual coding. Perceptual coding is a
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: little like how many animals are in this picture? Well,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: there's a bear behind the tree, isn't there? That's perceptual coding.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: And it just sucks. And at the bandwidth and data
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: sizes or capabilities that we have now, there's no reason
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: for it, and they're still doing perceptual according the best
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: work I've heard has been Morton Lindberg at L two Records.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: L two Records. So you run through you were you
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: see the immersive Gravvy Ive wought a couple and I'd
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: have to say that Morton Ledbergh, that's the best work
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: in the field, and he is relentless about quality and
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: nobody knows it. So next time you see Morton Lindbergh,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: imagine that you could get one of his productions and
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: listen to it. But that's what I'd use. I'd use
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: a Morton Lindberg inspired system and a Morton Lindberg source.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: How about the fact that you know, listen in the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: late sixties and seventies, the goal was to get the
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: best stereo you could have, and then we hit the
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: leading yah ladies in nineties were a boombox became your stereo,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: and then.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: Airplans in the two stereos.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: And needless to say, a lot of records are kind
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: cheaper than they used to be. But you have these
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: records were going on here about You're trying to get
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: the sound exactly right and the people are listening on
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: these inferior playback systems. Doesn't that make you crazy?
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: Well, something must make me crazy. But one of the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: things that you might have talked to Bill about is
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: we had just listed his Telby Houston record. I was
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: on the original what was called the National Recording Board,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: the National Recording Preservation Board with my friend Eric Schwartz,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: and this last year we listed the Telby Houston record. Now,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: you must have talked about that with Bill, because it
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: was book in our minds. It is in our minds
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: and our ears and our hearts. That was Shining City
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: on the Hill and it was so good, and he
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: was such a good live mixer that he could capture
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: that off the floor. So there's so many stories I
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: couldn't even beginuse. You should get built to tell them.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: But all our audience were high fi stories back when
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: there was such a thing as a high Fi store,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: and that seduced us into thinking that it could be
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: possibly the difference could possibly be heard by anybody. Now
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: at the same time we're trying to do this, we're
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: trying to do great music. So we have a couple
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: of different tracks here that we're trying to satisfy because
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: we learned pretty quickly that if it's just a technical
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: presentation of some piece of shit music, then it's hopeless
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: that it has to the music has to be there
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: as well, which means everything about the music, the writing,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: the arrangement, the performance and the recording all have to
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: all have to work. So here's where we come to
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: the part in our story where John McBride at Blackbird
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: Studios and you've been here, have you seen my play?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about your room at Blackbird.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: I've been there.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not my room. John paid for it, and
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: I'll do anything for job because he.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean I talked to John about it. He followed,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: you know, he gave me a tour.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: But that's but this was the other thing that a
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: lot of rooms suck. You know, in Los Angeles, there
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: are a handful of rooms that kind of work. Sony
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: Studios works well, the Barbers Transit station works well. But
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: uh so I thought, well, I've been dreaming this thing
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: for years. I'll build a room so that too. So
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: there's no part that I haven't tried to prove. That
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: was the answer to a question three times ago.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: Well I have to ask you, you know, for those
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: people haven't been there, the studio that you designed at Blackbird,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: where there are a number of studios, essentially there are
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: all these It's not a flat surface, they're different I'd
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: say probably one inch by half inch like a ruler
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: size rods that come out from the side very densely. Okay, okay.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: Did it achieve the goal that you wanted it to.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Depends on who I was promising or with. John said,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: if you come with me, I'll build the studio and
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: support you. And I opened the studio in two thousand
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: four or five, and the town took a collective yawn
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: when they weren't hostile, and most people were just hostile.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: You know, I can't work in there. What are you crazy?
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: That's not music. And they're making, as Nashville has done
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: over the years, some of the worst sounding drek I've
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: ever heard, and defending it, you know, and dissing me.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: You know, I did not. I arrived here on the
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: back of the trio record, which I think to this
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: day is a marvelous record. Is Dolly, Linda and Emmy,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: which I produced, is a marvelous record, and so many stories,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: And so they hated me when I came to town.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: They thought that I was could acclaim that I could
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: make this kind of record for anybody. There were a
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: couple of artists that did roots records. Mary Chapin Carpenter
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: did that kind of record. Others did that kind of record.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: But they're just not getting back to getting back to
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: some kind of innovation, and they're still making these god
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: awful records, these god awful country records, and the business
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: is long gone, that country music radio, the radio record,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: that radio hit record long gone. You know that you've
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: written about it, and they just won't let go of it.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: So finally there are a couple of vacus. Oh what
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: is Jack White? Jack White recorded in the room next
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: to it, and he loved showing people around the room
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: the studoc when he was doing some of those other
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: records that he did. He's a good guy, by the way,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: Jack White. I love Jack. He invests from his heart
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: to your original question about about Blackbird is John has
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: poured his heart into it, and I don't I think
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: that he is really delivered on his promise because I
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: didn't delivered to John McBride what I promised him. I
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: promised him that the studio would work, and it did.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: But what it did best was to provide a listing
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: room in a totally immersive environment, a diffuse, a purely
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: diffuse room. And it wasn't my idea. I mean I
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: had an initial idea. Peter D'Antonio of RPG, and I
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: seeded his thinking early on, but he did the best
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: he could do. I did the best I could do,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: and that's what I decided to go teach because nobody
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: liked it, nobody until recently.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, So, over this career of engineering producing having GML,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: did you make any money?
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: Nope? Oh well yeah I did a couple of times. No,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: that's not true. I would say no, because, like everything else,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: just unpredictable. So I have made when when music failed me,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: I made money with gear when gear fe failed me,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: teaching was a pretty good gig, and so there was
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: always something I can do. So it's only recently where
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: you know, these bastards have devalued recorded music to the
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: point where nobody pays engineers like the until Alicia Keys
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: came along and a hired Eric and I and Michael
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: Romanoski to do her catalog. And it was Anne Mitchelli
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: whose vision it was to remix her catalog and it
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: was hideously hard to do. That's that's that's a recipe
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: for failure, trying to remix multi as immersive interfuse. I
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: did my best, and I think I failed so much
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: that I owed a lot of money because I think
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: I failed and it's my responsibility. I told him we
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: could do it. We didn't, So I'm sorry, and I'm
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: sorry Alicia. And by the way, if you haven't interviewed Alicia,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: she is the most extraordinary artist of the geniuses that
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: I mentioned, she's at the head table. She is completely brilliant.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're, you know, old in age, but historically did
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: you just sit at home and wait for the phone
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: to ring or did you beat the bushes for work?
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: The funny you should mention because when we developed the equalizer,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: or when ITI wanted to put a product out, the
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: parametric Equalizer, I was the one that walked to the
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: round to studios. He got my engineer and this is
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: seventy four to seventy five, got my engineer friends to
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: listen to it, and that was hard to sell. So
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: I've always been able to introduce ideas and introduce gear
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: and sell stoff. With the equalizer, guys would look at
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: it and say, well, it's interesting, but it needs clickstops.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: Is completely the opposite of what it was designed for.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: And it took a while, but it took guys that
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: were particularly inspired to see the possibilities of having variables
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: frequency and be able to tune a dip equalizer to
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: take out a harmonic that was just driving you crazy,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: or a fundamental of a guitar, or the fundamental of
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: a snare drum, so you could get that big fat
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: snare drum. You're welcome.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: What about the AFIX World exciter? What was going on there?
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: That's a guy named Marvin Caesar, and I had a
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: big fight with him as well because it was bullshit. Oh,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: but the bigger bullshit was Q sound. It was the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: guy that was trying to voiced Q sound.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: So let's slow this down. You had to give a
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: credit on the record on a fix didn't do anything Afix.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: No, yes, yeah, it was like it was an equalizer,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: and it had a particular kind of curve that you
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: could call unique. It had a very steep filter, and
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: there were problems with the filter. But at the end
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: of the day, it didn't do enough to warrant a
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: point on the record. Say as Q soun, he wanted
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: a point on the record. Guy that did that.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Q sound. The famous album was the Immaculate Collection, and
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: you could hear something It did not sound like traditional
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: stereo the whole thing failed, but it definitely sounded different
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: from traditional stereo.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: But the idea of having what are called HRTF pinot cues.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: HRTF has head related transfer functions, and right now Sony
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: vm ME three sixty, which you've written about Sony VMB
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: three sixty, which alleges at doing a good job of
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: storing these samples, and they do a pretty good job.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: But that's an idea Sony that we've been pushing for
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: years and finally formalized it in Sony vm ME three sixty.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: What that is is something that was around even then
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: and was around as a product with the roland RSS reverb.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: And so the way Peter Asher and I busted that
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: is Boostin had a party at his house post Medata,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: and I fed Peter Asher, who was also very smart,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: exactly what that was, what HRTF simulation was. And the
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: day before or maybe it was Lenny, one of the
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: two had to sign the contract for points on Q sound.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: Peter went to a dinner party at most it was Christmas,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: He's Jewish party and told them that it really wasn't
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: worth it, that the idea had already been patented by
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: roland In RSS, and that was the end of that.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: So that's something that I love, really love to do,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: is the guys that are disinclined to be honest about inventions,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: disinclined to be clear about where IDs came from, disinclined
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: to be respectful of patents. A boy, I'm at their throats.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's my job.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Let's switch gears a little bit. You married, you have kids.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Well, no, I gave all my money to two ex
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: wives and have of the most wonderful person in my
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: life now and wish I had married her first, but
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: I would have had to be robbing the cradle, and
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: wonderful things happened to us every day. But the ex
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: wives got the houses well especially. Oh here's a tidbit
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: that you'll have to love. X two is a singer name,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: well sort of a singer name, Renee Armand, who was
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: in John Denver's road band, but she also had some
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: records on her own, and she got into the business
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: as a writer. She married San Francisco Bay Captain talking
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: about Captain Noah, very captain, nice guy. Her second marriage
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: was to Jim Gordon. Her third marriage was to Jim Horne.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: Her fourth marriage there was a woman in here somewhere,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: so she married a woman in there. But fourth and
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: fifth marriage was me and then she married a stock
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: and security salesperson. So I've had a personal life all along.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: I just kept going for it. I can't but for
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: the X two, the X one was loved by life.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: When just after I had designed the equ and we
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: no longer did that, it was the next of years.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: I just had to get out of the country. What
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: to do well? We moved to Paris and I lived
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: in Paris for two years. Couldn't speak French to save
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: my life. Do you speak French? Mom?
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: I do not. You seem to me to be a
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: guy that would be willing to learn.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: Well, the only thing in France now it's not like
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: the seventies, not like the old days. A lot of
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: people speaking English and they're not as denigrating as they
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: used to be for those who can't speak French. But
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: to what degree did your two marriages break up? Because
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: the nature of the studio work is your work?
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: In twenty four son, it was used at his excuse
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: and it's still a challenge when I tell my wife
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: that I'm going to do something and it's become chimerical.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: It just drifts off into the ozon. I really have
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: to I have to be responsible. I've had to grow up.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: I just had a double fusion operation and I was
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: fucked up. I had I have spinal synosis from lifting
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: all that ship for all those years, and had two
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: procedures and a labinectomy in a ten eleven hours day
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: under propofault, and she coaxed me back to life, but
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to do it. Take the exercise, will
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: whatever it was, take the this horrible drug that they
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: got paid. So I'm just coming out of that and
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: I owe my life stenosis.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: You can't. You have to get the operation. But when
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: you marry who's been married like three or four times before,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: this is like what's his name? King? You think it's
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: going to be different with you? Well, what makes you
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: think that the pattern's going to change?
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: Because I'm supposed to be able to design that. I
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: designed this other stuff and I was. I'm not that
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: way anymore. I've got to work for it now. But
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: I used to think that I could design my life
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: and I can't. I couldn't and I can't. What I
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: can do is be good as good as I could
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: possibly be to my friends and the guys that have
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: worked for me. I've got a guy doing manufacturing in Gmail,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: been with me for almost forty years, and just give
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: him whatever he needs. Or my young assistant Kasrie Orrai,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: who I taught at Berkeley, and she said I'm going
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: to move to Nashville and get a gig, and that
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: was almost thirty years ago, and nobody would hire her,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: and I had to hire her, and every time I
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: gave her something to do, she would excel at Kasri,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: could you learn photoshop? Yeah? How about my next Friday, Casri?
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: How about Final Cut Pro?
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: Wednesday? And these people that have been so good to
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: me and worth everything you had.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: This recovery from the operation and fusions are really you
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: know it was just rated because I know somebody else
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: had it is the most painful. But other than this interlude,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: what's keeping you busy? Into? What degree are you working now?
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: Our work? Every day? I around two companies and we're
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: doing I haven't talked about Studio Confidential, but you understand
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: from Adam at Shortfire, who's been great, that we are
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: doing a show.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: Talk about this show, this shows you're doing in February,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: How did this come to be.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: Well, it came to be what would have to admit
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: by default, because we adjusted that how to do great
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: immersive recording. I want to say that because we were
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: brought together by Phil Ramon to do these projects which
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: were which became DTS five point one, which became at
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: most except that ATMOS is not very good. We came
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: together and we couldn't get any work anymore. So I'm Elliott,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: and I've been friends with Elliott forever because we mix,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: We're of like minds and like hearts. The way we
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: mix and the way we the way we listen, and
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: I just have so much respect for him that he'll
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: never suggest anything that I say, I can't do that. Never, never,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: I can't think of the thing. So we got together
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: in this group run by another buddy, kind of a
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: manager of the group, and the seven of us, all
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: seven would get together have meetings that we'd have actual
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: meetings at ah shows and then we'd have virtual meetings.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: But every time we got together there would be endless laughs,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: especially for med Journey, who's the funniest guy on earth.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: Before that Al Schmidt and before that Phil Ramon, and
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: it all came from you know, at the show one
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: year in two thousand and too, Phil mentioned it to
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: a bunch of guys and then Al said, yeah, that'd
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: be a good idea, and then and helped move it
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: to Narris to the Recording Academy. Now it's the P
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: and E Wing, But that group that we got together
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: exists today as the Meta Alliance Music Engineers Technology Alliance
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: and Elliot and I did a book that Jim sort
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: of liked the idea. I don't think it did very well.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: It was the Drum Book How we all did drums.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: Thought that was going to be be great, didn't make
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: any money, And then we did in the studio with
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: the guys and we do demos back when Ed and
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: Al Schmidt were participating, and then and then Phil died
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: and looking for other people, and I chose Nico Bolas
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: and and not in the pushy ways. So nobody thinks
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: it's my idea. It was my idea, and Nico, you know,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: did Neil for all those years Bill Young and and
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: then and then after Ed died, I've always wanted to
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: invite Jimmy Douglas and had also talked to Sylvia Massey
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: and they weren't ready, but then they were ready. So
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: the seven of us now include Nico, Bolas, Jimmy and
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: Sylvia Massey. And in the studio with the guys didn't work.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: So Elliott and I proposed doing sitting on stage and
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: telling stories, which everybody hated. So Elliott and I said,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: this is a great idea. Let's just do it without
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: the guys, and so we designed it and funded it,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: and eventually the guys fell in line, and we did
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: a show at Bridgefield a year at the Ridgefield Playhouse
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: in in Ridgefield, Connecticut, which we designed. We kind of
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: we kind of scripted, but we scripted in the sense
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: that we organized telling stories. I kept them on a
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: spreadsheet and could work off a spreadsheet. And it was successful.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: It was the proof of concept, and I would be
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: surprised if you hadn't seen it, because we were encouraged
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: to do it by everybody we talked to, including my
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: next door neighbor Gary Getzman, from when I lived on
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: Valley Vista in Sherman Oaks. But we never really we
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: never pursued it until we did it at Richfield, and
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: then Elliott and I said, well, what the fuck, because
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: we're both old, We're two old guys, and I had
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: to do it. And so that's what Machine Center. The
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: thing at Machine Center is a boy, Bob. If you
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: could help us do anything, we would be in your
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: debt for all time.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know I got the press release, but since
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: I have you, yeah, because it talks about a window
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: from February second to sometime later.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: In February March. First, how many shows are there going
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: to be? Twenty eight? They're going to be twenty eight shows?
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: And what is going to be different about those shows?
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: Different stories and different ways of approaching it In this
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: last in this last show we did we did Ron
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: Robin seven stories. Each of us told one, and then
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: in the second half we kind of loosened up a
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: bit and told some stories that we couldn't fit into
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: that fixed time. And this time, in one of the
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: promo passes, we asked the audience if they had anybody
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: that they'd like like to hear about, and some gentle
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: souls said Phil Ramond. And we've each of us got
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: about ten Philramonds stories, including that one I told you
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: about Stay with Me Baby. So the way we do
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: it is we get together on these calls and we
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: just entered tain each other, and I write down a
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: short version of the idea on a spreadsheet, and then
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: we get together and decide which ones to be serious
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: about and which ones to rehearse. And once we rehearse them,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: we know what kind of time they'll take and how
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: to fit them in. So we're doing this, this show,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: and we're basically at living it, which just about everybody
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: has told us won't work, and we don't think they're right.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: We just so we understand. Is it twenty eight? Is
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: it like a Broadway play? Were there twenty eight performances
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: of one show? Or is it different every night?
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: It can be different every night, but that's a stretch.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: If we're lucky, each of us has well. We started up,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: I said everybody has to have one hundred shows. Couldn't
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: do that, So then we got down to each one
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: of us has to have thirty shows. That was too much.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: We finally got down to every one of us has
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: to have at least eight shows, where we could rotate
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: them if we feel so inspired, or we add one,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: but we give ourselves a break in that we've got
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: one that's well rehearsed and we could just roll that
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: story out, because you know, at the end of the day.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: That's what we did in the studio. We could tell
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: stories and because you had to make people, there are
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: a couple. Here's one of the things that AI doesn't
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: do is it doesn't know how to tell a joke.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: So I started with AI asking an AI agent to
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: tell me a joke, and it couldn't. But it could say, no,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: you tell me a joke, which meant that it was
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: taking my joke and stealing it. And so I didn't
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: tell any jokes. But AI doesn't do certain things at all.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: It does not do well this thing of coherence of
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: a story, like a song, where you can have a
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: last verse that wraps it up like a Jimmy Webleer,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: and I love you more that says, and I love
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: you for all time. It's bad English that he famously repeats.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: But it's something today I couldn't do. I love you
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: more than need I love you more than need you,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: but I and I need you for all time A.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: I couldn't do that because it dismays the laws of grammar.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: Couldn't do that. I can't do good vibrations, could not
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: do good vibrations. Even if it did good vibrations. It
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: couldn't imagine the way Brian Wilson put that together. So
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: we can tell a story, we can tell sort of
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: fucking Phil Remond, you'd be working. We did the second
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: Duets record Lennon Segon some frack tracks, and we got
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: started with with Phil Remone. Came to Northern California, we
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: started recording, or we thought, but no. Bill Vermont started
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: telling stories at eleven or twelve in the morning, and
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: about the time six or seven o'clock rolled around and said, well,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: we got to eat dinner. We'll finish after dinner. Got
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: back to it, hadn't recorded note one and Phil turns
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: to us and said, well, are we going to get
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: anything done today? So that kind of story. I've got
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: a Linda's story about Linda eating a cherry pie off
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: the floor, a cherry pie with a lard crust that
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: she had the cook that we had in Northern California
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: bake and do you think there's a lot of lard
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: in Northern California. So I mean, we've got stories. So
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: we've got stories.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: How many seats will be available? And does it cost
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: to go?
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah? It does. But you know we're having Trump with you,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: I can tell the truth because you've been here. It's
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: been a challenge selling tickets. You know, we've got guys
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: that have never done Instagram. Well what has Jimmy Douglas
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: has and Sylvie has?
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: But I have.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: So we've now got to dig deep into stuff that
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: we can roll out and get some promotion to get
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: people to come and pay from eighty to one hundred
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: and thirty seat. Well, we've had to add students at
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: half price. We've had to do a week of of
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: prep work. Maybe we have a couple of free shows
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: the first week. But it's been a struggle and very
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: slowly we're selling tickets. But you know, we've got to
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: get the word out there because we're not reaching our audience.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: We know we haven't. We have an audience.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, the press release talked about video distribution. What's going
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: on there?
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: Well, the very first thing I did when we did
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: Ridgefield is I know how to do video, how to
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: produce a director. So we did. We spent some money
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: with good cameras. I did the rough edit we got
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: We've never done a finished show out of Ridgefield, but
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: I did the mastard and from that we got the
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: sizzle reel. So that's the one that I'd hope you'd see,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: and eventually you saw it. Yeah, So that sold everybody.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: So then I went to my insiders. I went to
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: Gary Gatsman and he's so busy he didn't have time
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: for it. And we'll go back to Gary, and we
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: were well positioned to pass the idea off and have
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: somebody else do it. But I've never had that kind
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: of involvement with a director where I trust them, because
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: they all fucked me over the largest largest portion of
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: my career. One thing I could say is that every
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: video director I've ever worked with should be buried under
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: thirty feet of sand at the bottom of the marrier
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: this trench. They're just got off and I keep trusting them,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: and I've said I'm not trusting director any well unless
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: it's certain classic guys. So well, so we decided to
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: do it on a all but we didn't have enough money,
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: so we thought put on a show.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know, I saw the sizzle reel send to
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: me from the PR person. Is that sizzle reel on YouTube?
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: We've tried to keep the stories off of YouTube so
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: that they'd be fresh at the show.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: But I thought this is going to be different stories
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: from the Ridgefield thing. Are they the same?
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: It is, but we didn't want to show that one
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: off because we might go back to it, particularly the
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: one out deal Young and the red Neck.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Listen, I'm gonna give you a place because it's my nature.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: Ah, you're good at it too.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: People go to see the band and to hear the
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: same song multiple times. People would go to Hamilton multiple times.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: People are watching K pop demon Hunters. It is so
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: hard to reach people. You of all people, and you're
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: sitting with in the studio. I've heard the same stories
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: multiple times and still laughed. You know. We have to
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: so to put out something where people get a taste
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: of it and spread the word. What you were doing
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: is unique, But you're first going to appeal to an
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: older demo that is hard to reach, who we're going
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: to be unaware of it. So you have to literally
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: do everything you can to reach these people. Don't hold
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: anything back, Bob.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: If only I had talked to you in October, but
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: I did so right now, we're redoing some of these
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: so that we could connect better. So you're right, Oh,
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: I can.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: Say, I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: a little bit further because it's not necessarily too late.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: You know, Todd Rungren is on TikTok telling how he
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: recorded and wrote some of these songs. Okay, for a
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: long time people wouldn't talk about that. Let's not talk
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: about whether you should or shouldn't do it. Now. Jackson's Brown,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: of all people, is on TikTok telling his stories. Okay.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: So if each of you got on there and told
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: the story on TikTok, the way the algorithm is, some
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: people are gonna find it. And if you find something
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: you like, you're gonna tell other people. You have to
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: give yourself a fighting chance.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: You're right, You're right. By the way, I've got a
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: great Jackson Brown story because he and all we're best friends,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: and we pretty much invented how do the modern vocal
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: overdobe with Jackson and Old George a multi track.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: Jackson was famous for comping that infinitum.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: So that's what we turned it into. And what is
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: your take on that? Well, what he didn't do was
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: to avoid punching in a word in the chorus that
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: if he just got down to it, he would punch
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: a word or phrase of the course, which invariably didn't
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: work because it has the wrong phrasing, the wrong breath,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: the wrong place in your voice where it comes from.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: And what we did with Lowell and Jackson was to
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: record whenever we could a bigger track. So if we
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: had one phrase that was wrong in the first chorus,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: we would never spin it, fly it a copy it
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: from courts to chorus. We would also encourage the singers,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: which were Lola Jackson, to sing it from the top
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: every time, even if you have just one line you
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: need to fix, get lost in the song, sing the
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: song again. So I could get on today and tell
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: that story and get people to listen to it, and
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: you would still cop and it became the Handley Cop.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: And there's a story in doing Handley Cops because he
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: was just I mean, if Jackson was obdurate, Handily was crazed.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: Guys was JD. Southern And there's no better voice in
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: the world than Henley. But boy, working for it is
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: a drag. Never say yes again. But I can't say that.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: They never speak to me again.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I'll just talk one Henley's story. They
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: had these shows before a COVID at Dodger Stadium, and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: then on the East Coast they called it the Classic
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: one or some whatever, and that was the first time
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: that the Eagles were out with Vince Gill and they
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: were great. Oh, I remember that, okay. And then I
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: in the next day, because there's a two day fair.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: I'm talking to Irving and I said, what did Don
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: have to say, because you and me both know Don's
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: a perfectionist, and he said, Don said that the monitor
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: mix wasn't perfect and the horns were too aloud on
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: a specific song. And I was very close. There's fifty
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: thousand people there, and I could hear it a little bit.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: So I say to Irving, I say, you know, I
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: heard that a little bit. I don't think anybody would notice.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: And he said, those little tiny things what make the
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: difference between good and great? What makes it to like
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: it average? To it really touches you. And I'm telling
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: the story years later because yes, as my psychiatrist says,
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: sometimes you change one thing and the whole picture changes.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: And you know what that particularly pertains to is one
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: note out of tune in the chorus is somebody in
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: the business, here's this one, and the whole vocal is attitude.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: She can't sing in tune. That came back to us
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: any number of times, just one note. And when we
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: went to doing autotune, well, when we went when we
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: learned how to do autitude, well all you had to
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: do was fix that one note flawlessly invisible weaving, and
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: you change everyone's mind altitude. But you know what what
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: this goes back to with Don is he was right, exactly,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: He's right. I've done vocals vocals with Don where he
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: do a hard like a bizarre harmony that he would
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: write that just me, you know, like a Jimmy Webb harmony.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: H.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: Two's and nines and elevens and just open harmonies and
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: nail it, nail it. Maybe he say you to a
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: bass guitar and nail the pitch that you gotta respect,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: that you gotta you gotta. I mean, Linda, is that
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 2: kind of opperate.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: The other thing about it is most people don't care
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: that much. There's a complete opposite philosophy of let's do
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: it quick, down and dirty. Okay, but if you worry,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: most people are not willing. The other thing is you
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: talked about Lowell George suffering. These people are suffering. For
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: their art. It's not like they're going home putting their
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: feet up on the couch and watching television and are happy.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: They're consumed by this.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would I would argue that Linda has
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: made the right choices. And when we started over see
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: all the early records, Peter and Linda would do only
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: live vocals. So part of why Linda kind of push
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: for me going back and doing your work was that
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: I had done you know, those earth, wind and fire vocals. Yeah,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: they they they I directed pitch from the control room.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: I did an overwhelming amount of work making those rand again.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: They remember the guys, remember, so asked Larry Dunn when
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: you eventually interviewed Larry Dunn. And they didn't sing in
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: tune until we really got a hold on how to
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: direct their performance in the studio. And of course they're
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: brilliant performances. Don't get me wrong, I can't sing, but
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: why do I have it here? From pitch and for
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: harmonies and how to make harmony's buzz. So so getting
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: those right had a lot to do with that sound
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: of earth, which let me go way out the limb.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: Change the sound of R and B markedly and quickly
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: R and B was one thing before we did Earth
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: Wind and Fire and another thing after not quickly. It
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: was a different game. You know.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: One thing you did with Linda you cut a cover
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: of Tom Petty's The Waiting, which is just phenomenal.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: Well, except that the background voices were wrong. Boy, I
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: tried to redo that. That's an example of getting wrong.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: We got the background voices are so weighty that it
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: just it was never bright because that bright happy thing
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: had to play against the idea of the waiting is
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: the hardest part, and it should have been more iron Boy.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: I wanted to read you this, but you've got a
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: great performance out of her. Okay, we're gonna leave it here, George.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: I wish you luck with these performances. I say, I've
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: seen the Sizzle Wheel. The stories are great for those
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: people who you know, who are not insiders. This is
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: just gold. This is stuff he can't get anywhere else
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: that in most cases never been anywhere else.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: And never will go unless we do it.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it's a tragic loss with al
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: and Ed, especially Ed long before his time, but a
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: character he was before.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: But Bobby, you're so patient. Thank you so much for
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: getting me the opera. I wanted to talk to you forever,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: back when I was talking about that thing that we knew,
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: that that Quincy did on the Brothers Johnson, I really
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: wanted to talk to you about all these experiences i'd had.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: So you know, I'm sorry, I'm so long with I'm
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: so ash.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: It is the spice of life. It's that's where that's
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: where the new guy is. That's that's where the good
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: stuff is. When people say I shouldn't go any deeper,
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: I should go, that's where the stuff you want to hear.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: So there's still, you know, tons I want to hear,
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: but we're gonna leave it for today. George, thank you
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: for taking this time of my audience. Till next time.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: This is Bob Left sets