Your music industry stories

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I was reading through the Rapper Boosie thread (full disclosure, I don't think I have heard any of his music) and found it really funny that a bunch of mostly white, middle and upper class college educated people were talking about all kinds of rap.  Anyways, it got me to thinking about my short, but packed, career in the music industry.  I know there are at least a few audio engineers and many musicians here.  Probably a few folks that worked as promoters or even bouncers.  I know y'all have some awesome stories, let's hear them.  I'll kick it off with one of my favorites.

I was working in a studio in Washington DC in 2001.  The owner of the studio struck a deal with a couple of rappers/producers to provide beats for discounted studio time.  That meant I was the one to record and mix their music.  One artist came to me about recording a day-in-the-life concept song.  He was going to record a bunch audio throughout the day to incorporate into the song (alarm clock, eating breakfast, slamming car door closed, etc, etc).  Me: "cool man, sounds like an interesting idea. We can dump the audio from your DAT tape into Pro Tools and edit it throughout the song."  Then the homie lets me know that towards the end of the song he hooks up with this chick and she blows him.  My response is, "ok, we can lift the audio from a porn".  His response was hell no, it needs to be authentic.  I am intrigued but confused.  He tells me that at the next session he is going to bring one of his hoochies to record the "scene". 

So the next week he shows up to the studio with a women I hadn't met before.  He tells me its to record the audio for that particular scene.  Ok, cool.  I walk them back to the vocal booth.  I set up a mic for him at normal standing height.  I set up a second mic at crotch height.  I head back to the control room and queue up the song.  She starts to suck his dick in the vocal booth.  I think we did two takes.  They finish up and come into the control room.  She says bye to me and he walks her out of the studio.  He comes back in, looks at me, I look at him and we just start busting out laughing.  I am like "you motherfucker, I didn't think you were going to actually do that".  He laughs and I say next time to bring a second chick for me.  Fucking bastard.  Then we proceed to edit the blowjob scenes into the song.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

A shitty scan of a shitty photo from that era. 
 

[Celery Man 21036]

I feel like I should, but I don't think I have any particularly crazy stories.

When we were on Warped, we ran into Bert McCracken from The Used walking around between the buses. I'm not a huge The Used guy but he's kinda a legit rockstar - he asked us who we were and then told us his car's CD player broke with our EP stuck in it, and that it was pretty good. Then he told us he was trying to get a Werewolves game together. Apparently he was wandering around trying to find people who would play Werewolves that night. So that night we played Werewolves with The Used and a bunch of other pop punk/metal/emo/etc bands.

Actually Warped was pretty cool in that... for the most part established bands who had had a lot of success treated little bands like us playing The Ernie Ball stage as equals. Say what you will about the music, Warped Tour is about the hardest tour you can do (especially in a van without a driver) and that kinda drives that feeling across the tour. Funny shit was the one person I saw trying to be a rock star was Juliet Simms (contestant from The Voice), who nobody gave a shit about and was playing one of the small stages. Other funny shit was... going to take a shower in the Pistons' locker room and the lead singer of a melodic death metal band is showering in swim trunks. There was a day off in Scranton, so we went to do laundry. Every other band had the same exact idea, and so there we are in a laundromat in Scranton just absolutely full of warped tour bands and a handful of locals wondering what in the blue fuck. A band that was obviously about to take off but hadn't yet (I think they had just done a tour with Owl City) was Echosmith - so, they were on our stage and we spent a lot of time with them, and I spent a lot of time trying very hard not to creep on the very attractive but underaged singer. And a lot of time talking to the 14 year old drummer about rollercoasters because that is the only thing he wanted to talk about. Both Echosmith and The Used kept trying to trade their beer for our water (The Used was a sober bus, Echosmith were all teenagers except maybe the guitarist).

I guess the whole rhythm of that groundhogs day experience was interesting. Every single day at 7:30-8 in the morning every single stall of the bathroom at whatever location we were at would be full of people taking dumps. Because by noon the whole bathroom would be absolutely destroyed by "punk rock" teens. The food was really good. Every single morning the crew blasted Rosanna by Toto. Every morning rolling out of the van, finding a half empty water bottle, using some of it to brush my teeth and pouring the rest on my head, go set up the merch tent so we'd have a decent spot, take a dump, and eat breakfast. Go pick up the water and the beer, go see the lineup to figure out when and where we're playing, push merch all day, eat lunch load gear play a set load gear push merch eat dinner load gear breakdown the merch get in the van try and sleep a bit whenever it's not your turn to drive, roll into the parking lot of the Comcast Theater in Camden or the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls or wherever it is at 5 in the morning, get a few more minutes of sleep, find a half empty water bottle, etc

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I would imagine a tour like that would be pretty interesting and conducive to crazy/funny stories. Did y’all get paid worth a shit?

The only band I recognized in your story was Toto.

I only went to one Warped tour. In Austin at South Park Meadows. I think it was 1998. Hot as fuck.

[Celery Man 21036]

Not really. I think we got like.. something in the range of $600-1000 a date. Which isn’t completely awful but more “it isn’t costing us money to do this tour” than “we are making money in this tour”. Certainly not “we are individually getting money for this”. I was actually still clocking in and doing data monkey work at my day job whenever I could.

There was a “uhgggg” moment around pay at one point- a band we had buddied up to, much bigger than we were and probably about as big as we could ever hope to be. The bassist was explaining that Warped was the moneymaker and for the summer, each member of the band takes home $20k. Some of the dudes thought that was pretty great and the other guy with a real job and I were looking at each other just ☹️

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13597]

Worked at Pro-Tape on S Congress. (I think) it was Jeff and Frenchy (from Sixteen Deluxe) who came in with a blank check from Jeff Coffey for some recording materials. Called # on check to verify. As the phone was ringing 2 + 2 equaled "Trance Syndicate" so of course, it all made sense...

"Hello"

"Uh... hey, is this King Coffey?"

"Only my friends call me King"

"Uh...well...just wanna make sure no one was trying to rip you off there....

Buddy..."

[jimmyjazz 46525]

You probably sold me a fair amount of Hi-8 tapes for my Tascam DA-88 decks.  I lived within walking distance.

[jimmyjazz 46525]

On 6/19/2022 at 11:56 AM, Celery Man said:

Not really. I think we got like.. something in the range of $600-1000 a date. Which isn’t completely awful but more “it isn’t costing us money to do this tour” than “we are making money in this tour”. Certainly not “we are individually getting money for this”.

Yeah, I asked my daughter about their tour supporting OFF! and she said they made $500-$1K per show.  They make more than that in Austin, at least most gigs.  It's enough to pay gas and food and some hotel rooms, but if they (a) didn't crash at various family/friend's places along the way and (b) didn't sell a shit ton of merch, they would have barely broken even.  It is not the path to riches, at least not from where they see things.  Hopefully things scale up.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13597]

10 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

You probably sold me a fair amount of Hi-8 tapes for my Tascam DA-88 decks.  I lived within walking distance.

Tascam 8 tracks were the standard DIY just before the ADATs. 

[jimmyjazz 46525]

These were the digital Tascams, their answer to the ADAT.  They did sound better.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13597]

29 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

These were the digital Tascams, their answer to the ADAT.  They did sound better.

...and the backup to the new wave of digital audio recording?

Tape. 🙂

[Celery Man 21036]

Was pro-tape in an armpit industrial park on south south Congress somewhere? I remember driving out to somewhere like that to pick up our tape for… probably our 2008 album. Coulda been north Lamar somewhere though.

[jimmyjazz 46525]

6 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Was pro-tape in an armpit industrial park on south south Congress somewhere? I remember driving out to somewhere like that to pick up our tape for… probably our 2008 album. Coulda been north Lamar somewhere though.

Pro-Tape was actually in a prime spot, although it was a bit dumpy at the time.  South Congress, just south of the bridge.

[Paul Wesley 3303]

4 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Worked at Pro-Tape on S Congress.

Did they move to S Lamar and Oltorf (by that Office Depot) at some point?  Or am I thinking of a different place that carried 2" tape?  

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13597]

Just now, Paul Wesley said:

Did they move to S Lamar and Oltorf (by that Office Depot) at some point?  Or am I thinking of a different place that carried 2" tape?  

I think they did eventually. When I was there we were by the Firestone and Austin American Statesman. I sold Bob Mould the blank 3M 996 2 inch reels for File Under Easy Listening. I think a few years later they moved. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13597]

2 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Was pro-tape in an armpit industrial park on south south Congress somewhere? I remember driving out to somewhere like that to pick up our tape for… probably our 2008 album. Coulda been north Lamar somewhere though.

I wouldn't call it a park. Wedged in between Riverside and the river on S Congress.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13597]

2 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Pro-Tape was actually in a prime spot, although it was a bit dumpy at the time.  South Congress, just south of the bridge.

It's weird thinking about how dumpy that location was/how it's ground zero prime real estate world wide now. The convenience store next door had an inflatable Look-At-Me King Kong next door.

[Celery Man 21036]

Definitely thinking about a different place.

[G650 14304]

8 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Tascam 8 tracks were the standard DIY just before the ADATs. 

I had an old r2r Tascam 8 track back in the day.

 

Still have an ADAT actually

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

My wife gets quite annoyed that when she tells people that I worked with Beyonce in the studio once I am just kind of indifferent/whatever about the whole thing.  She claims she is one of the most famous people in the world and I just shrug my shoulders.  She did compliment my Brasil jersey.

[jimmyjazz 46525]

2 hours ago, Patricio Swayze said:

My wife gets quite annoyed that when she tells people that I worked with Beyonce in the studio once I am just kind of indifferent/whatever about the whole thing.  She claims she is one of the most famous people in the world and I just shrug my shoulders.  She did compliment my Brasil jersey.

Did she wear her Vince Young jersey?

[Pato del Muerto 52963]

Closest I got is I know someone who is a session harmonica player. Seems like it should be enough.  Has a day job, also plays harmonica in some local jazz band, and sometimes goes in and cuts commercial jingles and shit. Used to get residuals too, but apparently they changed that setup to one time pay.  Guess he still gets a check now and again for old stuff if it still gets played. 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Did she wear her Vince Young jersey?

I wish. She was gorgeous in person and very nice.

[jimmyjazz 46525]

I'll tell a thinly veiled story that has always stuck with me:  I had the opportunity to record a string player from a super famous artist's band.  That's all I'll say.  I was typically just the engineer on my gigs -- it was my studio, but most people who came in acted as their own producers, or brought in a producer.  On this occasion, the artist asked me if I could help write the string part.  I said sure, grabbed some staff paper I happened to have in the house, and laid out the basic string part.

Said string player couldn't read a chart.  We're talking about a total pro with a bachelor's degree in music, but couldn't read a (very basic) chart.  Bizarro world.