FROM CHAPTER 14…
The Not So Good, The Bad & The Really Ugly
Working in an environment where you’re trying to help fulfill other people’s dreams can often be depressing and downright risky. The recording studio is “ground zero” for aspiring singers, musicians and songwriters, and strange antics often take place. Sunburst was somewhat off the beaten track (being in Culver City on the Jefferson Blvd. corridor, not in Hollywood), but we still had our share of bizarre behavior. This chapter presents a few examples of real life situations encountered by my staff and myself as we struggled to keep paying the bills and hopefully, make a profit at the end of the month. All the individuals and company names in this chapter have been changed, as I don’t think many of them would appreciate the notoriety of the following recollections…
“The Edward Scissorhands of Recording”
...”Edward” could be difficult and sometimes even childlike in his behavior - like a “spoiled little brat.” However, he was quite gifted and had some amazing ideas that just needed direction.
At first, everything was going smoothly as Edward recorded some inspiring guitar and vocal tracks. Then we switched to mixing down the songs…simple guitar / vocal tracks, so mixing should have been a snap. Well, not so fast...I soon found out with our first playback of the mix. Edward was listening and started screaming about how awful his voice was, or his guitar playing was, or the song, or the mix. During recording, everything was fine, but committing to something on tape for others to hear was simply too much for Edward to bear that evening. So, I suggested that we try a re-mix to see if that would fix the problem. He agreed, but then the strangest thing happened.
Normally, you just erase and re-record over the mix that you’re not going to use, mixing again from the multi-track tape. But Edward had other plans! He wanted to destroy the mix, literally, as if it harbored some evil spell and needed to be exorcised! Asking for a pair of scissors, hoping that he was not going to slit his wrists, I reluctantly gave them to him and stood back. He told me to run the mix tape into the trash can and, as it spooled off the reel, he started cutting it into hundreds of small pieces. I tried to stop him and said that the tape was expensive, and it would also be very time consuming to be doing this, aside from being totally unnecessary. He didn’t care and seemed to be finding great joy in aggressively slashing the innocent tape, making loud grunting and other unintelligible noises as he cut. It was as if the tape itself had sabotaged his recording, and it was going to pay the ultimate price!
So next mixdown, next rejection, and next execution of the defenseless tape. This continued for hours until, finally, Edward decided to halt the executions and call it a night... (continued in Chapter 14)