Blue Man Grope

I feel your pain and it's starting to hurt, so wouldja just get better already?

I had eight and a half hours of airtime this weekend- three two-hour shows as DJ and one show as engineer/producer. I was so impressed with myself that I took my own picture so that you, the reader, could admire me as much as I admire myself. Actually, I was trying to examine the sunburn on my scalp but I won't post those pics... suffice it say that next time I go for a drive with the sunroof open I will wear a hat.

Anyway, six hours of music is about seventy-five songs- plus the 30 minutes I picked up from the 6am DJ who overslept- usually I post and narrate my playlists, but this is 75 fucking songs- who the hell would read that? Better yet, who would write it?

Me. But without the details this week.

First, Zendo Soundsystem. DJ Ras-Bob usually mixes it up with modern flavor, but my groove music collection tends towards the WayBack Machine and the Mothership Connection- (and a few cuts from South Park):

Cameo- Word Up
Funkadelic- Freek of the Week
Talking Heads- I Zimbra
Curtis Mayfield- Little Child Runnin' Wild
Master P- Kenny's Dead
Average White Band- Schoolboy Crush
Papa John Creach - Enjoy
Red Hot Chili Peppers-If You Want Me To Stay
Funkadelic- I'll Stay
Steve Hillage-Unzipping the Zype
Parliament- Big Bang Theory
Little Feat- Spanish Moon
Big Brother & the Holding Co.- Funkie Jim
Tower of Power- I Gotta Groove
Grace Jones- Inspiration
P-Funk All-Stars- Funky Kind( Knock it Down)
Isaac "Chef" Hayes- Simultaneous
Marvin Gaye- Come Get To This
Troublefunk- Woman of Principle
Kool & the Gang- She's a Bad Mama Jama
Rick James & Ike Turner- Love Gravy
Ray Manzarek- Begin The World Again
Stevie Wonder- Superstitious
George Clinton - Kredit Kard
Chris Spedding- Breakout
James Brown-Living in America

Saturday I spent four hours in gridlock and barely made it to the station in time to host Songs From the Big Hair, our weekly 1980's show. I had the pleasure of being assisted by my "trainee" Fontaine, who added some fresh air to my stale records. I used the air-quotes because Fontaine has been a DJ at another station for many, many years- in fact, she trained me as her summer substitute over a decade ago... by the end of the program she was running the show while my assistant Eric and I set up the studio for our musical guest - the wonderful Lauren Kendall - who played four fantastic songs on keyboard, voice and cello accompanied by her man Blake on percussion. Not only did they sound great, they also came prepared with gear and good-natured humor that helped soothe my white-knuckled nerves. Kudos to musicians who carry microphones with them- special thanks to L&B for the cables and to Fontaine for the tunes!

Big Hair:

Danielle Dax- Inky Bloaters
Gary Numan- Engineers
King Crimson- Model Man
Fleshtones- Girl From Baltimore
Opal- Magick Power
Crack The Sky- Lost in America
Dead Kennedys - Viva Las Vegas
Bad Brains- Re-Ignition
Sonic Youth- Hotwire my Heart
Siouxsie and the Banshees- Arabian Knights
XTC- Wake Up
Tom Tom Club -Genius of Love
Mission of Burma- That's When I Reach For My Revolver
King Crimson- Elephant Talk
X- White Girl
Tupelo Chain Sex- The Revolution Will Be Televised
Snakefinger- Kill the Great Raven
Talking Heads- The Great Curve
The Soft Boys - I Got the Hots
Keith Le Blanc - But Whitey/Einstein
The Cramps - Garbageman
The Blasters - I'm Shakin'
Pere Ubu - We Have the Technology
Magazine - The Honeymoon Killers
The Fall - Copped It
Pixies - Tony's Theme
Dream Syndicate - That's What You Always Say
Run DMC - Mary, Mary
Udokotela Shange Namajaha - Awungilobolele

By the time I was finished with Lauren's show I was exhausted and starving, having not had a chance to eat all day, so I said fuck the diet- I got myself some fried chicken and went home, did bongs and watched the Sci-Fi channel. Maybe it was the weed, but does Sci-Fi's original programming consist entirely of monsters eating bikini models? I didn't even notice when one movie ended and the next one began- all I know is that if you hike in the rain-forest wearing a g-string you will be eaten by dinosaurs.

I wanted to dream about the g-string models-sans dinos- but I barely had time to sleep at all before I had to rush back down to the studio at 6:30am to fill in for he-who-shall-not-be-named, who had * ahem* overslept.
Then, of course, my own weekly show.

The New Breakfast Snob:

Raput & The Sepuy- Up, up and away
The Scramblers- Mister Hot Rod
Circle Makers- Circles
Eleanor McCovey- Whisper and a Prayer
Victor Banana- Stall Genie-Gooseneck Hollow
King Crimson- Thrak
West of Eden- Hide and Seek
Rosemary Woods- Everywhere I Go
Clann an Drumma- Visedail
Velvet Underground- Sunday Morning
Fiona Joyce- Cry Over You
Siobhan Skates- Short a Penny
The Kinks- Village Green Preservation Society
Grace Slick & Paul Kantner- Ballad of the Chrome Nun
Loreena McKennitt- Caravansrai
Claanad- Why Worry?
Briege Murphy- The Sea
The Stranglers- Midnight Summer Dream
Marianne Faithfull- Witch's Song
Pentangle- Springtime Promises
Jethro Tull- Fat Man
Jefferson Airplane- Rock Me Baby
Little Feat- Fat Man in the Bathtub
Slick & Kantner- Fat
Captain Beefheart- This is the Day
PrettyThings- Goodbye/Going Downhill
Graham Central Station- Ole Smokey
10 CC- Sand in my Face
Mike Watt- Against the 70's
Tom Verlaine- Always
King Crimson- Ladies of the Road
PJ Harvey- Workin' For the Man
Can- Soup


Now for my next trick: some serious nap inaction.

Patterns

To the right is an illustration of a microphone's
pickup pattern. This particular microphone has what is known as a directional cardioid pattern -
(the term 'cardioid', aptly enough, derives from the heart-shaped response curve illustrated by the blue bands)
-in the simplest of terms, what it means is that the mic "hears" sounds that are directly in front of it
much better , i.e., louder and with more accuracy,
than it does sounds from peripheral sources...and it almost entirely rejects whatever noise is behind it.

But I'm not here to teach you about microphones. Not today, anyway.

Today, we are students and the microphone is the teacher- not the actual mic, really, but a visual representation of it's function- the graph to the right speaks to us:

Imagine, if you will, that the Front (0 degrees), is the 'Now'- that always happening moment where past, present and future meet- the Now is as close to the future as one can ever get.

Now is where the music is.
That is where you point your microphone.
That is where you aim your heart.

To the side and to the rear ( 'off-axis' in geekspeek) are sounds that you may or may not want- these might be noise or they might be musical- but what they really are, in the Now- is distraction and clutter.
Think of them as the Past and the Future. They are both friend and foe, so be careful when dealing with them.

If too many of these off-axis distractions leak into your Now, the Now becomes lost in a brownsound mudpool and you can't really hear what you are trying to listen to.
Important information vanishes into a discordant roar- think of the Beatle's Live at the Hollywood Bowl album:

What is the loudest sound on that record? Screaming.
You can barely decipher what song the Moptops are playing, but you sure as hell can hear the screaming.

That is the sound of the Past. Like any life ( life, not live- no typo) recording , it is going to include some screaming. It's part of the package. But that particular recording is all screaming and if you listen to the screaming Past too long you will be driven into madness. Ignoring it entirely presents the same risks.
We need those screams to remind us that the Past is still there, but care must be taken that it does not drown out the Now.

That's the simple part and it took me forty years to learn it.

Here's where it gets complicated and just a bit anti-intuitive:

The Future is the sound that is behind the microphone- a good directional mic will barely hear the Future- most of the sounds of the future are just the echoes of the Past and the Now reverberating off the walls of perception - and yes, Mr. Huxley, if perception has Doors, it most certainly has walls- it can be interesting to listen to, but it's never very clear what exactly it is that we are hearing.

That is because we cannot be entirely certain what the Future sounds like. We can look behind us, around us and even look forward, but the best we can do is make a guess based on what we know about the Now and the Past.

For example, let us say that we have learned from the Past that if a freight train is passing through our backyard, the sound of that train is going to bleed into and probably ruin everything we try to record while the locomotive is roaring by.

Pause. Turn off the tape deck and take a break until the train passes. It may take longer than we'd like, but it will pass. It always does.

So now we know not to attempt to record during times of heavy local railways traffic; even if the sound of a passing train does fit nicely with certain Blues, we are not looking for the Blues.
We are not looking for anything definable, really- that's part of the mysterious Future- we just don't want any more Blues Trains ruining our otherwise sparkling recording. That is one reason why we must remember the past- it helps us avoid inbound trains and their potential sonic wrecks.

That doesn't mean that we need to ignore the tracks, or worse, sit immobilized on the rails, paralyzed with fright from merely thinking about all the trains that have rolled through here. That would be surrendering to the Past and that is not a good idea, because it means we forfeit the Future.

Do you ever have thoughts like this?:

"Oh my God, I can't sing right now- what if a train comes by? My song will be ruined!"

I have. These sort of thoughts are the enemy of Art. Godzilla only knows how many masterpieces have never been recorded because of this fearful thinking- but that's the Past.

There is no train Now.

But if one does come rolling through the middle of a song in the Future, we should sing louder and in harmony with its steel-wheeled thunder, because that train might just sound really good in the mix, even if we are not singing the Blues.

It's not somethingthat can be planned- you just have to do it, take a listen and see what you have.
Either it is good or it is not, but you gotta sing first and ask questions later, because we can't know where that train is heading, but we do know it is not going to be here forever.

Tech-Speak

Most folks are in the dark when it comes to sound engineering. That's because you have to be a genius to understand it. I've been doing it for twenty years, and like most things that I do, I've been making it up as I go along and so far, so good...but I have learned a few technical-type terms that might be of interest; perhaps even of use.

DARK: I'm sure you have heard bands referred to as being dark, i.e., gloomy or depressing. Bauhaus and Joy Division were dark bands. Lou Reed's Berlin (tips to EotR) and Neil Young's Tonight's the Night are dark albums. Nick Cave is dark, but he's so ridiculous about it that I have a hard time remembering how cool "Release the Bats" was...anyway, there's an actual technique that recording engineers use to get that "dark" sound.
It involves keeping the microphone out of direct sunlight. For certain Death Metal (Carcass, for instance) the preferred method is to record inside an actual coffin, which is why so many of those guys sound like they are singing with a mouthful of mud; it's not mud, it's actually gravefill. Keepin' it Real!
For the typically angst-ridden musician , a drawn curtain will suffice. The darkness is in your heart- but nobody understands that, man. That's why you are such a tortured artist.




BRIGHT: This is often mistaken for 'shrill'. In fact, the only solo album released by Shrill Spice was titled 'Bright '(whatever happened to the Spice Girls anyway?)
Some guitar amplifiers have a "bright" switch, as do some boombox radios. Ideally, on the guitar amp, it's a slight boost in the more audible sound frequencies of the guitar (usually slightly hi midrange), making it 'stand out' during leads and stuff. In reality, it's often another word for "piercing , squealing feedback". On the radios, the 'brightness' button is used to counteract the 'loudness' button and vice versa.
In a commercial recording 'bright' is the technical term for the recording of cheerful instruments- steel drums, xylophones, kazoos, those wind-up noisemakers you see at New Years...and it's hard to record a kazoo in the dark -why, I can't explain- so a light of an electrical nature is employed to augment the sun's muted rays. A steel drum recorded in shadows has the funereal sound of a distant tympani- turn on a light and dance around a little. No one is watching.

FORESIGHT: This is the hardest part about sound. For my purposes,it involves making sure that all of my microphones and other gear are actually working and that there is enough space in the room for the musicians to set up.
This is something that they don't seem to teach many nightclub soundmen. While I was setting up the mics for a radio show, our guests were being held hostage by the short-sighted ineptitude of the guy doing their soundcheck at the club- so all my foresight was for naught. I felt like setting up microphones- I was in that sort of mood- so it wasn't a total loss.