FASTER THAN GOD
Recording has gotten too easy:
It should not be possible to create a five-minute drum track in less than five minutes, period. These days, you cut and paste two bars of the solo drum intro to "Living After Midnight", clean up the start and finish points, copy and paste the fucker a few hundred times, and, BAM, you've just created five minutes of awesomeness in less than thirty seconds and beaten "God" in a foot race.
SHIRLEY MANSON'S BUSH
For some reason, I doubt I will ever forget about reading an interview with producer Billy Bush (Garbage) in TapeOp magazine (subscribe to this cool producer-and-studio-intensive bathroom browser if you don't already! It's FREE!). During the delightfully nerdy interview, Bush chuckles about the time that he found using an Abbey Road plug-in during a recording session AT ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS!
Ha ha ha, who hasn't? Happens to the best of us.
Here's where Billy Bush and I differ, though: I would never *forget* I was INHABITING the legendary Abbey Road recording studio, where the motherfucking Beatles and producer George Martin did their thing, especially when using an Abbey Road plug-in.
See, that would be like playing a video game called "Pandemic" during a pandemic and never once noting the irony.
Did I mention that Bush is married to garbage singer Shirley Manson? Do you hate him now, too?
(some days I'm kidding, others not so much)
TELL US ABOUT THE DINOSAURS, GRAMPS!
You know you're old when there are videos on YouTube of millennials losing their shit while trying to understand how good ol' fashioned tape recorders work.
That was nothing compared to the week I spent trying to learn Ableton Live before finally setting it ablaze and, in doing so, regaining my love of both music and FIRE!
MY THOUGHTS ON EVH (AND STAPLES)!
The passing of Eddie Van Halen has come as a devastating shock. Fuck cancer.
Even more unbelievable than bumping into Eddie Van Halen at a Studio City, CA Staples store at 3AM back near the turn of the century is the fact that Staples was ever open 24 hours, but that was the world we lived in pre-9/11, my friends.
Most unbelievable of all would be that the legendary heavy metal guitarist, almost unrecognizable for a variety of reasons at the time, would engage you in conversation whilst waiting in line to pay for his items and, in doing so, begin a conversation that would end with the two of you exchanging phone numbers after EVH offered you - free of charge, no less - the remaining studio sound-proofing tiles from a recent install at his 5150 studios.
Keep in mind that Eddie did not know me (and thank goodness for that considering the ink I got from offering copies of my CD in exchange for unwanted copies of VH3 a year or so prior to that) and, truth be told, was probably happy just to get rid of the stuff, but the gesture itself struck me as incredibly friendly and outgoing.
Granted, it was a tad obvious Eddie was buzzed, but so was pretty much everyone else at a Studio City Staples store at three in the morning is tripping on something.
I will say that once you trade phone numbers with Eddie Van Halen at a Staples store, every other trip to pick up toner cartridges will be disappointingly uneventful by comparison. Hell, I could find a bone-dry Benjamin on the floor of the men's room and still have a case of the "yeah buts" in the parking lot.
Rest in peace, Eddie.
Rest in peace, Eddie.