The Surprise Reunion Talks

Finishing up at the Fairbanks Building here on the Formosa Lot - back to Editorial next door on Monday.

When I say Fairbanks Building, I do not mean a nice, new, glimmering structure built in honor of Douglas Fairbanks. This WAS his building, and I am just on the other side of the wall from a 1920's soundstage that may be haunted. I liked this corner, especially when I'd walk out and see somebody famous like Chris Schauble from Channel 5 News.

Two days ago the nominees for this year's Golden Reel sound editing awards were announced. I had no idea I'd been nominated in the Direct To Video category - 2 out of 5! - so now it looks like I must go, one way or another.

I started getting Linkedin emails from my old drummer friend John Privitelli, and he was asking what year our band Highway Star opened for Van Halen (it was 1975). Everybody but John and I thought VH sucked, so they left the dance hall; John and I sat right in front and had our own, private Van Halen concert. But, back to present.

Our band had 5 members, and soon two of the other guys joined in the conversation. At once point I said: "Maybe we should pick a night, get together, and drink responsibly." Somehow this turned into a band reunion, and now I've desperately got to learn how to play guitar again by late March.

However, I can't think of anything more fun to do right now, even though we were a short-lived band that split up acrimoniously in early 1976 - 39 years ago!

We were basically a band for hire, but there were tensions about how much of the new "disco" sound to adopt, and how much to stick with Hard Rock. I remember the bass player Gary saying we needed our own, signature sound, but I had no idea what that meant at the time. How could I play guitar any differently? Gary was right: what we needed was a singular vision that we could all adhere to. But I was basically along for the ride, so we just tooled along until the tensions couldn't be ignored.

Probably our best performance was our last: an audition for Marlboro High School, near where I'm living now. I have that (and most of our shows) on stereo cassette, and will hopefully be able to clean that up digitally by the time of the reunion.

(The photo above is from our last performance.)

Who's Going To Take Care Of The Oompa Loompas?

 Once, my son visited Santa. Now, he IS Santa!

Editing Room Tally

Today I leave Pacific Ocean Post in Santa Monica (stairs to my editing room, above). I've already been here three days longer than originally planned (thanks Peter!).

While I can still remember, I thought I'd try and reconstruct all my editing rooms since Soundelux closed.

1. John Ross Mansion up Mt. Olympus in Laurel Canyon. Free meals, insane views, met Tom Hanks. Wow! (two weeks)

2. Universal backlot, in the same building I worked on Bill Cosby's "Ghost Dad" decades ago. Modern but claustrophobic. Fun lunches, though. (two weeks, during the heat wave.)

3. Formosa Building 66 - 1st floor. Okay room, but love the funky old Danetracks building.

4. Formosa 66 upstairs - great editing suite (which is why I got kicked out, eventually) and right next to the men's rooms.

5. Formosa Main Editorial Building. REALLY old structure, plain white edit room. NOT very inspiring!

6. POP - Pacific Ocean Post in Santa Monica. Recently bought by Formosa and undergoing intense, noisy renovations, this is nonetheless an amazing facility.  Great location, cool room with a window, amazing structure (lots of character), snacks, friendly and pretty women at the front desk, decent restaurants nearby (If I didn't have trouble walking it would be even better.) It also smells like sweet tea and honey downstairs, which is how EVERY place of work should smell!

Cons, and they are big: tough (though not impossible) morning drive, totally freeway-congested drive home East on the 10 (going 10 mph!) Parking lot access, but can't drive at lunch or you lose your spot.

Next week is yet another new room at Formosa 66... at least, that IS the plan!

UPDATE

So, no sooner do I sing the praises of POP than they start tearing the front desk apart! (I guess I'm the only one who thought it was cool.)

Warren Zevon - I Get It

For years and years, I heard that Warren Zevon was a Songwriting Genius. 

But the only thing I knew him for was WEREWOLVES OF LONDON, which I thought was one of the most stupid and annoying songs ever recorded. I definitely did not want to hear more from THAT guy!

Then he got sick and died, and there was another flurry of publicity. Once again, artists I respected paid tribute to this guy. Once again, he was heralded as a Genius.

So I thought: "What the hell!" and borrowed his Best Of collection on CD from Chris.

Okay, Zevon was obviously talented, and the songs were pretty good... but I STILL didn't get all this talk about "Genius."

It wasn't until I played his first album from beginning to end that I finally GOT it.

Unlike some artists, I think Zevon really needs to be heard in context. Each of his albums were written against the backdrop of different times and events in his life, and though one song doesn't necessarily reflect on another (though they sometimes do), they definitely work better as a "whole" than the sum of different parts. Heard in context, even Werewolves of London isn't so bad (though I still mostly skip it).

This whole experience also solidifies my suspicion of Greatest Hits CDs. The choice of what goes on those things is somewhat capricious, and even if every song is great, it's like eating too much sugar: you really need the sour and not-so-great tunes to get you where you're going. Also, there's an unspoken tension with a greatest hits CD that EVERY song had better be awesome, or else! If you're daring something to be GREAT, it will rarely live up to your expectations. That was my whole problem with Warren in a nutshell.

I once read a review of the worst Zappa show I'd ever seen - New Years Eve at the Forum. Frank was always great onstage but this was a pickup band and Frank really indulged himself with guitar soloing that night. A review the next day said: "I've never seen Zappa live, but heard tales of his greatness..."
I knew exactly where this guy was going, but I guess the moral is: We all deserve a second chance!

Now I can enjoy the Zevon collection, knowing where the bits came from. I only wish I'd started at the albums, but I'm making up for that by slowly building up my Zevon vinyl collection. Mostly into the first four or five LPs, but I know the rest are there, whenever I'm ready.

The Gang is (Mostly) Here

Todd-Soundelux closed almost four months ago. I was one of the last to jump, and it felt like a sinking ship in every way.

Of course there was little of the old company still standing when I finally handed in my keys, but that hasn't made the loss of my 24-year-old job any easier.

I was actually very close to coasting toward retirement in the same room I'd had for years, working with most of the same people, having my restaurants and dry cleaners and gym and post office all within walking distance.

In the weeks since, I've picked up work at Universal and the John Ross house in Laurel Canyon. Early on, I was added to the payroll at The Formosa Group, where 75% of my Soundelux friends had migrated around August of 2013.

But it wasn't until Monday, almost a year and a half later, that I rejoined my original crew with Per Hallberg, Chris Assells, Karen Baker, Dan Hegeman, Chris Jargo, Jon Title, and others still to come.

My dreams of an easy retirement have been retired, but at least I'll be spending some of these years with my old friends and colleagues. Some of the "survivors" have not been so lucky.

The Last 12" Record

Okay, so what's the date today?

September 15?

Just now I listed the very LAST vinyl record from that vast, 1400-disc collection that I wrote about below... back in MAY!

Of course I have not been processing, listing, and selling these records every single day. In fact, the first month was spent mostly throwing out the garbage, which was more than half. Then, I grouped the most promising records together first, followed by the secondary batch, and finally the stragglers. Many of the stragglers had no existing product page on Amazon, so they had to be created ( like the very last one, above.)

I've WAY lost count by now, but at one point I figured out I had at least 80 records with a good chance of being sold (anywhere from 5.99 to 32.99 each, with a couple maybe even higher.) 

Since I spent $160 on the whole batch, that's comes to about $2 per record, which ain't bad.

How have sales been? Slower than I expected. I know the 80's are the most difficult period for vinyl, because there was just so much of it... but I know some of these remixes and imported 12" singles are rare, and I fully expect to get top dollar for them eventually. But at this moment, I've only made about half my money back.

In contrast, I've gone to other sales recently where I spent about $40 and more than doubled my money in a week. 

Would I do such a large purchase again? Sure, but not for 80's records, unless they were in way better shape than these. But I did discover that 1400 records is the outer limit of what I can handle on my own, and can cause way too much distraction from my family and working life to be worth it.

Fun, though!!

Adventures in Record Hunting

(Email sent to my cousin Doug)

Followed a craigslist tip last night to Monrovia, where a guy needed to unload 4,000 records in a hurry.

"Dude, you could have the whole thing for $500!"

No way I could have done that, but we agreed on $15 per box of (roughly) 100 records. I figured I'd take 6 boxes for $90.

He'd told me they were mostly 80's 12" singles, but "there's some regular LPs mixed in."

When I got there, the sun was setting and the garage had no lighting.

The only way to check anything was to haul out each box and put it on my car. The boxes were packed tight, but the records seemed okay. I decided to fill up the car as far as it would go, which became 12 boxes for $160.  Then, there were a bunch of loose records, which they jammed into my trunk any which way (no charge; they just wanted to get rid of them.)

Carrying them all into Gower, even with Friday and Elizabeth, totally wiped me out.

I started going through them slowly last night.

Pretty quickly I realized this was a DJ's WORKING collection, with beats and other notes written on the covers, and definite use on the vinyl.

But the worse part is, this guy had a signature that looked like tagging graffiti, AND his personal trademark was to create a spiral with magic marker on the fucking LABELS!!!!!!

Given that I have at least 1200 records (probably way more) the law of averages has left a few UNMOLESTED records behind… but making this money back is not gonna be as quick or as fun as I'd hoped.

I had nightmares about those spiral'd labels!!