Career highlights?

[akai96]

First would have to be,I was working on an album doing some midi programming,and they decideded to use Eric clpaton to play gtrs over one of my tracks.
Second when I was in college and I got a call to work on the next cher record.

[kheftel]

Originally Posted by akai96

Second when I was in college and I got a call to work on the next cher record.

How'd you get that opportunity while you were in college?

[akai96]

Originally Posted by kheftel

How'd you get that opportunity while you were in college?

Because I was already working in the industry at 16.

[memphisindie]

Originally Posted by akai96

Because I was already working in the industry at 16.

That's a point many who read resume's miss, some of us started very early and were so into it we just worked every chance we got.

[Waltz Mastering]

Originally Posted by akai96

Because I was already working in the industry at 16.

It was age 15 for me...

When I was around 22, I was running monitor sound for B.B. King one night in Boston. It was a multi-night engagement so the rental equipment was left set up. After the first show I was noodling around with a guitar left onstage. BB and his band came up from the green room after eating some southern food. BB walks over to me and asks if I want to trade picks (gave me his pick with his name on it) and we proceeded to jam on blues for a good hour or two in a nice theater with great acoustics with just the "crew" hangin out.

After this night I decided, as a guitar player, it wasn't going to get much better than that for me , and chose to only play guitar for fun as opposed to making a living from it...and really started to concentrate on the engineering/producing side.

I've had a lot of highlight's before and since, but this stands out to be the single biggest thrill.

Originally Posted by rcm

looking at the arc of the last 20 years, its is still such a highlight that I get to wake up and make records everyday.

+1k

[Tony Shepperd]

Originally Posted by robmix

I've been truly blessed in my career, but probably the most important moment happened to me and my ex-wife in Best Buy. We were buying a dishwasher, and the young lady helping us was, well, not very good with people. She kind of reminded me of "Pat" from Saturday Night live, bad hair day, a bit overweight, etc.

She kept looking at me, and quickly turning away if I made eye contact. She seemed very nervous. Comes time to ring up the sale, and I hand her my credit card. She looked at it, and said "I knew it, you wrote the song "I will Be" for Christina Aguilera".

I said "Yeah how did you know about that ? It was just a b-side in the UK".

She turned to me teary eyed, and said "I recognized you from the VH-1 special. That song helped me through some very difficult times. I even wrote to RCA and told them to release it as a single in the U.S.. I love your songs"

My wife and I just about broke down and cried right there. As a songwriter it doesn't get any better than that. . . . .

Great story Rob!!!

[Jim Williams]

I was already working with the guys of Canned Heat just out of High School. I went to school with Richard Hite, brother of the Bear, Bob. I even painted his Topanga Canyon house in 1970. There I met all sorts dropping by. Once Donovan came by, we smoked a few joints and hung out. He's a real nice fellow, although at that time I didn't know who he was, just a nice guy with a funny accent. Only later some one told me it was Donovan.

A couple of years ago I went to a concert at the Kodak Theater with him and David Lynch. Backstage I talked with Donovan and he remembered me! He still sounds great and is quite a good guitar player as well.

Then in the mid seventies I did some guitar stuff for Leon Russell. I went to his Encino home studio (one of the first) and visited a few times. He was the original home studio pioneer back then.

Once I was at Frank Zappa's place on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the early 80's. I came up with Ike Willis and Joe Conti. We brought up some nice instruments for Frank to use. He ended up using one of Joe's custom basses, it was an 8 string Ricky bass with custom pickups, active electronics and EQ I had installed. I'd already done most of Frank's guitars so he wanted a custom bass sound. We used it on that session. I don't remember the song but is was a 1/VI/IV/V fifties diddy. Frank just got the new Sony 3324 DASH machine, one of the first. He was really digging it. After a couple of takes he played them back, stopped and looked at me. He said, "what do you think of the Sony?"

I paused, then looked straight into his eyes and said, "Frank, that 's the best reproduction of analog hiss I've ever heard".
He gave me that look. The same look I aways got when he caught me pulling his leg. No one was brave enough to challange Frank, but I always did, mostly because that's who I am and I'm not intimidated by anyone.

He respected me for that, more than the yes men got.

I also have a MJ story, but that should wait for awhile. It's sort of weird.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Waltz Mastering]

Great story about FZ.. There's a FZ gear thread in "to much - not enough".

It would be cool to hear about some of the mods you did on his favorite guitars... wink..wink..nudge..nudge

[Jim Williams]

In 1976 Me and Rex Bogue visited Frank at the record Plant in LA. We were showing off the custom guitars, electronics, etc. Frank was impressed, but skeptical. He walks us over to a beat up guitar case and says; "if you can put this sucker back together, we'll talk".

He opened it up and it's a burned up broken Fender stratocaster, the one Jimi Hendrix gave to Frank after the Miami Pop festival in 1967. The neck was broken off, the headstock missing at the nut. The sunbust body was fractured in 3 places, the pickguard burned off.

We glued it back together, replaced the neck, added piezo pickups in the headstock running the wires down the side of the neck. We added binding to cover the leads. I put a treble/bass EQ preamp insides and we drove it back to the Record Plant the next week.

Frank was very impressed as the guitar played well and sounded great. Then he walks us over to the pile-o-guitars and says, "which one do you want to work on first?" We took back a couple of SG's first, the plain one and that special one with the redwood inlays on the body top. Eventually all were done up. That Hendrix strat ended up on the cover of Guitar Player magazine, Dweezle has it now.

Later in the 80's I hooked up with Frank again. Then I did up Ray White's Tele, ( I still have the original bridge and pickups on one of my Tele's) Ike Willis's Explorer, etc. I didn't do Scott Thune's bass as he was anal about it even though Frank wanted it and agreed to pay for all of this work. Once I did up a Strat for Frank, I used Bartolini strat pickups and a 2 band sweep frequency onboard EQ.

He told me it was "too clean". I told him that was one of the best compliments he ever gave me. Then I got that look again...

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Waltz Mastering]

Great info. Thanks, He always got some awesome tones and I'm sure the mods were a big part of it. He was a big musical influence. Best

[kheftel]

It's inspiring reading all of these career highlights from people who have rubbed shoulders with all these amazing people. keep it coming! I hope to one day have stories like these.

[hey_mavis]

my high light would be opening my own small recording studio and acting as the only really proffessional studio on my island (Tobago west indies)

allowing the people here to record their work and put it out with a modicum of professionalism, as opposed to what had existed here previously which was recording/production that really did not do justice to the kinds of singers and musicians this island houses.

while I have worked with a few 'big names' in my area of the world, my funnest and most enjoyable sessions have been with no name artists for the most part. (with a few notable exceptions)

[memphisindie]

Originally Posted by hey_mavis

my high light would be opening my own small recording studio and acting as the only really proffessional studio on my island (Tobago west indies)

allowing the people here to record their work and put it out with a modicum of professionalism, as opposed to what had existed here previously which was recording/production that really did not do justice to the kinds of singers and musicians this island houses.

while I have worked with a few 'big names' in my area of the world, my funnest and most enjoyable sessions have been with no name artists for the most part.

Like Alan Tiah?
Hey Trini! A Trini here too, cuz! Better hope I don't move there and mess it all up.
I do agree with you, too many great artists and not enough professional follow through.
Now, send me some curry, I hungry!

[hey_mavis]

Originally Posted by memphisindie

Like Alan Tiah?
Hey Trini! A Trini here too, cuz! Better hope I don't move there and mess it all up.
I do agree with you, too many great artists and not enough professional follow through.
Now, send me some curry, I hungry!

lol yes father!

how the RAS you reach memphis?

also the 'big names' i was talking about are like Machel, Bunji, Benjai, David Rudder, 3 Canal, Fay Anne etc

must say tho, that while in studio with smaller names can be more fun at times, the end result of how much father the music goes with more known artists is a definite bonus.

[narcoman]

.....just had an amazing day yesterday !! Was working with Brian Blessed....."Gordons ALive "..... awesome !!!

Mans got some fab stories....

[memphisindie]

Originally Posted by hey_mavis

lol yes father!

how the RAS you reach memphis?

also the 'big names' i was talking about are like Machel, Bunji, Benjai, David Rudder, 3 Canal, Fay Anne etc

must say tho, that while in studio with smaller names can be more fun at times, the end result of how much father the music goes with more known artists is a definite bonus.

Spent 12 years in NYC working with big names, lots of salsa too, got a sweet lucky break in Carribean music on my way out, working with soucous, calypso, Mighty Sparrow, Pathrupi (HOT), and Burning Flames from Antigua, got family there too, a lot of us are in music and I believe we have more talent Hahaha, melodic maniacs! (I guess you can tell I'm getting old)
I busted butt, like we do, but, I think I had a lot of weird good luck! I used to get calls from the Burning Flames every time they came stateside, Love those guys. Then I moved supposedly through the south and stopped, my Trini mom and granny lived there, got married, had kid, kid got very sick, Memphis had the best care. My boy is doing better now and I'm off to California, where I was going in the first place, with family in tow.
I hear you with the smaller acts, In NYC many of the unknowns were extremely talented on a level that is hard to match, same thing from the acts from Trini I worked with. I'm glad you mentioned the names of the acts you worked with and liked, now the secret is out!

[barefoot]

Originally Posted by HookedOnHardware

Let's get people like Barefoot, Toft, Katz, Ohlsson, Albini, Massenburg etc (I could go on but you get the jist) in here shall we?!

If your name wasn't included in the above, feel free to post anyway .

I began teaching myself to build guitars, amps and speakers when I was 13 years old. But I only officially started working in the audio industry about 4 or 6 years ago, depending on how you look at it. Before that I was either doing academic research or working in industrial R&D. In the late summer of 2005 the confluence of some health issues along with the growing popularity and workload of my moonlighting speaker business wound up getting me fired from my senior engineer position at Intel. Serendipitously, only a couple of weeks would pass until I met my future business partner. Tetness invited me to bring these odd new speaker prototypes that I was working on down to LA for a "shootout" with some other well established and highly regarded monitors. Being a newbie to the industry, I wasn't really familiar with any recording monitors to speak of. I only knew them by reputation. And the only real perspective I had on my on gear was that I simply set out to build the best speakers I possibly could within a reasonable price range.

So, I went down to LA thinking that I would get constructive criticism about my fledgling monitors. There would be discussion about their pros and cons relative to those other speakers and it would be a great learning opportunity. I brought my prototypes to a beautiful home studio in the hills of North Hollywood, a giant front picture window overlooking the setting sun and the city lights. We setup all the monitors. I quietly sat in the back of the studio listing along with about 6 invited recording engineers. As they cycled between the monitors, altering levels and positions, I thought to myself "is everyone else hearing what I'm hearing, or am I just too self deluded about my own speakers to be objective?" Well, it turns out that everyone was hearing what I was hearing. And the discussion was not on the level of "we like this about your speakers and that about those speakers." The discussion was focused on how my new design seemed to be on a completely different level than the other monitors in the room and perhaps on a different level than most any monitor that some of the engineers had ever heard. It was a very unexpected and exciting moment. Of course, those prototypes were named the MicroMain27.

Since then we've sold speakers to some extremely talented and highly respected people. Some are artists whom I've idolized for years. I've even had the opportunity to meet a few. But I would say it's that evening in the Hollywood hills when my still rough hued MM27s sang clear above the rest, that is the scene in my audio career, so far, that shines brightest in my mind.

[NoFalsetto]

Wow, I'm not sure... It's hard to choose. Perhaps it was walking into the control room of Middle Ear in 1985 and finding Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb and producer/engineers Karl Richardson and Ahlby Galuten there. Michael was the nicest person in the room second to Barry.
Another highlight was much later when I was working for AMS/Neve. We had just installed a baby DFC at Skywalker and George Lucas walked in and shook my hand.
Maybe the wildest was at Warner Hollywood when John Frankenheiner gave me a guided tour of his Merc 600SL that was totally maxed out. He showed me the engine and it was spotless. He said that he got all his cars detailed twice a week.

[lpkyer]

Originally Posted by wheatus

Opening for James Brown in Belgium summer, 2000.

and this...YouTube - wheatus teenage dirtbag party in the park!


bbb,
wheatus.com

I always wondered if you guys did a pact with the devil to make a song so catchy hahah !

[Silvertone]

There are way to many stories to tell but one of my highlights would be becoming great friends with one of my hero's while growing up... Mr. Tony Levin.

Others would be jammin (and touring with) with the Allman Brothers (and becoming life long friends with several members), Dixie Dregs, Marshall Tucker, Commander Cody, Freddie Fender, Orleans, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Larry Coryell, Johnny & Edgar Winter, etc... with all the drugs going on back then it's amazing so many of these guys survived... and unfortunately some of them didn't... RIP Toy & Tommy!

[kheftel]

I love hearing about all of these stories. It's inspirational to someone who hasn't been doing this as long. Thanks for sharing!

[HookedOnHardware]

B
u
m
p

[Joram]

There were more highights but as this was my first big gig...:

Some years ago I did a multitrack editing project for Philips Classics (Seiji Ozawa/Wiener Philharmoniker/Strauss Alpensymphony). After the first edit round the producer gave me kind of free hand to finish the high profile project (of course the producer's and conductor's approval was needed before release). After editing, recording engineer Onno Scholze (Bruce Swedien of the classical recording) asked me to assist him during the mixing process. As I was so much involved with this project and there was only one week before the release I was asked to do the mastering as well.
2 weeks later I heard that there were 60.000 records sold in one week.

[lobsty]

Years ago I had ventured outside Australia for the first time in my life... I was at a well known club that I had heard a lot about and the DJ played one of my tracks straight after New Order's Blue Monday and I thought "wow, this holds up OK and actuually sounds pretty good!"
Made me pretty happy...
There's been more and biogger stuff since then of course but that always comes to mind

[Bob Olhsson]

I have had three career highlights:

The first was seeing five singles that I worked on in the top ten of the Billboard chart while the Beatles had four of the others. Its been all down hill from there!

The second was being given a tour of EMI studios at Abbey Road in 1968 and finding myself treated the way George Martin would have been treated here in the U.S. I'd never had the slightest idea that Motown was much bigger in England than we were in the U.S.

The third was riding a fader sitting next to Stevie Wonder as we listened to GC Cameron absolutely nailing the lead vocal on the rundown of "It's a Shame." This was the very first song Stevie ever produced and we knew from that moment that it was going to be a huge hit.

[HookedOnHardware]

Thanks for joining Mr. Olhsson!

[kheftel]

Those are awesome stories! Thanks for sharing!

[imixrecords]

Assisting Bruce Swedien on a 5 day session in Philadelphia

Recording and mixing a Charlie Wilson song

Recording with Stanley Clark

Recording with Roy Ayers

Monitors for Tito Puente (Bill Cosby special guest on "trumpet")

Monitors for Candido ( I Love Lucy Band)

Recording and mixing for Usher

[Benmrx]

Mine really has nothing do with engineering. But my highlight since getting in this whole game would be getting to do some quick backup vocals for a Black Flag album that Henry Rollins put together while working at Cherokee studios in L.A. There were a bunch of different vocalists that each sang a different song.

The song "TV Party" was being worked on, and Henry looked over at me and Matt and said, "hey you guys each want to pick a TV show to shout out?",.... we kinda looked at eachother like...... well **** yeah! Matt was in the same position as me. We were both assistants, that became "house engineers" overnight on this record.

Anyways, this was also the same day that Tim Armstrong (operation ivy, rancid) was in the studio. Tim had a TV show as well. When I was in highschool I utterly worshipped Operation Ivy, and I was a pretty big Rancid fan too (although that stopped after the "Lets Go" album). So, there I was, doing vocals with Tim in the tracking room of studio 1 at Cherokee. Probably one of the most famous rooms to exist on the west coast. It was pretty surreal. He was my punk rock idol...... I actually brought in theeee very first Rancid 7" they ever released and asked him to sign it. Not only did he sign it, but he asked for my phone number and called me at home to ask if I wanted to see his new band "The Transplants". I was actually in the shower when he called, and my wife answered the phone. Now keep in mind, that you can barely understand this guy when he talks. I mean..... barely!!! So my wife shouts at me while I'm in the middle of washing my hair "Hey babe......do you know a Tom Annstreng"......... I don't know if I could have jumped out of the shower any faster.

Anyways, I chose "Judge Judy" as the TV show I'de shout out. It was hilarious because I did my shout as kind of a question. "Judge Judy??!" Everybody cracked up. I was the only guy ever to shout the TV show as a question. It was great. It's on the record: Black Flag "rise above", which was a benefit to raise money for "the west memphis three".

It was a pretty ridiculious record to work on because of all the different people that came in. Lemmy and Tom Araya from Slayer were the other two that had me gasping for air. Let me tell you, recording vocals for Lemmy was kind of insane. That guy is just such a presence in the room. That man is living, breathing, Rock 'n Roll.

Through working on that record, I actually ended up playing guitar in a band with the guys from the Rollins band. That's how L.A. works my friend.




Oh yeah. Assisting Andy Johns, Butch Vig, Michael Patterson and Dee Rob at Cherokee was pretty ****ing bad ass too. But the above takes the cake for sure..

[amanitas]

I'm in Asia right now, on tour with an artist that I've been working with essentially from jump - I was called in to play on her record by a producer she was working with, which then turned into more sessions with a different producer as well as a bunch of gigs playing live. This all started around March of last year. Since then we've done most of the major late night TV shows (Conan, Leno, Kimmel, etc.) and I've heard the horns I put on her track in movie theaters, coffee shops, airplanes etc. all over the world. We've been touring pretty heavily including US, Canada, Europe and now Asia. The other day I heard my horns coming through a speaker in the largest CD store in the largest shopping mall in Korea. I guess this last year and a half has been a career highlight of sorts. Good times...