I somehow got it in my head that I am interesting enough to start a blog. Nothing like being on the cutting edge of technology and popular culture, huh? Jeez, all these years of reading blogs, many of which made me think some people just have way too much time on their hands.
I will cop to reading quite a few blogs, and enjoying them very much. Some I check in on fairly regularly, and some have been invaluable sources of information and inspiration. But a lot of them leave me cold, in all honesty. Kinda like back in the late 70s and early 80s, when we were all putting out private release albums and singles with our bands. Just because you COULD put out a record, did not automatically mean you were good enough that you should actually DO it.
So what will this grand experiment in self indulgence concern itself with? I dunno. Will it be interesting? Probably not to most people, but I will try to keep it rewarding for you to spend a few minutes here.
I remember from high school that when writing a paper in English class, you were supposed to tell the reader what you are going to tell them, then in the next section, actually tell them that, and then in the end section, tell them what you just told them.
That always seemed to me to be like writing the same thing in triplicate, just to hit the word count the teacher inflicted on us. I think I was pretty lucky to get through high school with a passing grade with an attitude like that. It's the attitude that got me this explanation from an English professor I had at Kent State for a comp class in which I received an "F": "You're the only one in the class with even a spark of talent for writing, but you didn't do what the class required, so you got an "F". That's what's wrong with the modern university system."
That was back in the early 1990s when I tried going back to school after 3 years in music retail. It was also the last college course I took. I hope things have changed since then, but I bet they haven't.
So, a little bit about me: I am currently about 3 weeks from my 46th birthday. I have been playing music since I was in the 4th grade, mostly in the rock realm. My main instrument has been bass, since being busted down to that in my first band in 6th grade. I also play guitar, can fake my way through a gig playing drums (I can count to 4 and hold a reasonably steady groove, just don't ask me me to play any Rush or Yes songs), and for a while, I was an utterly incompetent keyboard player in a band. But I covered it up fairly well by insisting on hauling out an actual Hammond C3 and Leslie, and burying myself behind a fortress of vintage keys that subliminally made people think of Keith Emerson, while I snowed them with simple triads, swooping glissandos and switching gears on the Leslie.
During the 1990s, I tried my hand at running a recording studio. I filled a rented space with a dizzying array of audio gear, and hung up my shingle. I did some rock bands, a couple folkie types, some jingle work, and a massive amount of rap and hip/hop. I never truly enjoyed the rap sessions, but I did eventually learn to discern between guys who were pretty good at it, and guys who really sucked.
One high point of my foray into rap was my semi-legendary time as "Cool-Ass Dave". What would happen is this:
Guys would come in with their beats programmed into the sequencers in their keyboards. They would say something like "I need eight minutes of this beat for my rhyme" and we would proceed to transfer the tracks to my ADAT recorders. Usually, the keyboards only had stereo outputs, so we could only do 2 tracks at a time. We'd sync the keys to the recorder using MIDI, then run 8 minutes of the first 2 tracks. We would then go back and the same thing for all the tracks.
After 2 or 3 passes, I would get bored and pick up a guitar and start fiddling along with the track. The client would hear what I was doing, and say some variation of "You gotta play that on my shit, man!" So I would get to the end of the MIDI transfers, plug in a guitar, play a few wacka-wacka 9th chords, and we would move on to the vocals.
Some time later, one of the groups dropped of the finished cassette of their project for me, and I discovered that they couldn't remember my full name, so I was credited on guitar on a number of tracks as "Cool-Ass Dave".
That would be enough for me, but the best part was a few weeks later when another group came into my studio to check it out to see if they wanted to work there. They were a little worried that the white kid with the long hair and Floyd and Rush posters hanging in his studio might not get where they were coming from. Then one of them noticed the tape of the previous gangsta group sitting on the console. Dubiously looking back and forth between me and the tape, one of them finally asked why I had such a tape in my possession. I told them that it had been recorded at my studio, and that I had played some guitar tracks on it.
They all looked at each other with growing excitement, and one of them asked if I was stroking them. I said, "No, I'm credited on there as Cool-Ass Dave." The went nuts, and the leader yelled, "YOU'RE COOL-ASS DAVE??? We've been trying to find you, man! We want you to play on our shit!"
Alas, the studio business dwindled as the trend went toward doing everything in your laptop at home, and I went on the road with 1964...the Tribute, a Beatles tribute band that I had done a bunch of jingle work with, and after mixing and co-producing their "All You Need Is Live" CD, I went on the road as their Front-of-House engineer, which I have been doing for most of the last 13 years.
During an 18-month period away from the band when my daughter was born, I rediscovered photography. It started innocently enough. I convinced my pregnant wife to let me buy a Nikon D40 kit by telling her "We'll need it for BABY pictures, honey!" We were in Norman, OK at the time for a series of 64 shows at the university. She had come along to meet my "harem" of friends that I have there, all of whom happened to be women. Anyway, we got the Nikon at the Best Buy across the street form the hotel in Norman. I chose the Nikon because I had a Nikon FG already, and knew I could use the lenses I had for that on the D40.
Then, when my daughter was almost 2, I found my first 35mm camera, a Minolta HiMatic G that my parents had given me when I was 10 or 11 years old. It was in a dresser drawer, and I found it when we were moving the dresser and cleaning it out for my wife to use in her sewing room.
When I was in high school, a friend had given me his darkroom equipment, and I had set up a rudimentary darkroom in my basement. It was fun, and when I was a Junior, I signed up for the photography course the school offered, but was told that I couldn't use the Minolta for the class, and would have to get a manually controlled SLR. A classmate sold me a Yashica TL Super with a 50/1.7 lens, and I was on my way. The Minolta went into the dresser drawer, and aside from 2 weeks when I gave it to my Dad to shoot while he and I were in Ireland in 1996, the Minolta stayed in that drawer for 25 or so years.
When I found it, I decided to run a roll of film through it to see if it still worked. The light seals were kind of a mess, but I put the film (which had been stored in the junk drawer next to the dishwasher and was left over from the Ireland trip) in anyway, stuck in an A76 battery and shot the roll while the wife and child and dog frolicked in the front yard.
Holy Shit! Aside from some minor color shift that made the wife's t-shirt look more blue than purple, the prints from Walgreen's looked spectacular. There was a depth and warmth that I had yet to see in anything I had gotten out of the D40, and certainly head and shoulders better than any of my digital point and shoot cameras to date. Why did I leave this camera in a drawer for 25 years???
Now, I must explain something here. As a recording guy, I have been involved in many, many "discussions" debating the analog vs digital mediums. Pro-analog guys all carry on about the warmth and punchiness of analog, and the pro-digital guys all go on about pristine clarity, lack of tape hiss, blah blah blah. I am firmly non-committal about this debate. I went with ADATs in my studio because I could afford them at the time, and 24 tracks of ADAT was 1/6 the cost of an Otari MTR 90II, the analog machine I wanted to own someday. In my experience, digital gave you back exactly what you gave it. There was none of that lovely tape compression you get with analog. You have to be happy with the sound before it goes into the machine with digital. It's more work, but that's what it is.
I was talking over drinks with Alan Parsons at a NAMM show once (not like we're friends or anything, just one of the luckiest incidents in my life!). A group of us had stepped out of the Audio-Technica 25th anniversary party, and one of the group asked Alan all the questions I wanted to ask, but was trying to be too cool to ask. One question was whether he was gonna go analog or digital in the new studio he was building. He scoffed, and said, "Digital, of course!" The other guy said something like "But, but...Dark Side of the Moon...Let it Be....warm...punchy...!" Alan just smiled and said, "Man, do you know how hard we had to work to make that stuff sound so good? Believe me, those records sound that good in spite of analog, not because of it!"
Now, just lately I have been thinking longingly of how easy 2-inch tape used to be compared with the endless updates and upgrades I have to deal with in the digital studio of today. I am seriously wondering if I should chuck the computers and track down an old MTR-90 after all...
So analog vs digital in audio? Both about the same as far as I am concerned. The pros and cons of each leave it a dead heat in my view. Your mileage may vary.
Analog vs digital in photography? Man, digital sure is a lot more convenient. Memory cards can hold a thousand pictures, and can be reused, so film cost is a thing of the past. The 1000 shots to get one good one accidentally works decidedly in my favor. Dump the stuff in the computer and tweak till you like it...no chemical stains on your clothes...all in broad daylight. Awesome.
But I really like film. I like how it looks better. Especially black and white. That grainy silver stuff just looks so yummy. And, dammit, I like the smell of fixer.
So that's gonna do it for my first-ever blog post. I guess I'm doing this as a new way to justify my obsessions. All I know is, I don't want this to be a clone of Matt Denton's camera blog. He already does it so well. I imagine his influence will shine through, however. I just wish I could shoot as well as him. Maybe someday....
