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Zoe: Arrested on Drug and Weapons Charges It’s true! What a shitty Holiday Season I had. I think God is punishing me because I liked the movie BAD SANTA a little too much! Okay, so you wanna hear the details. Well, here we go: It was the last weekend of the football regular season: Saturday December 27th. I was driving to a local bar to watch games and I pulled into the parking lot and just sat there for a while. I thought to myself, ”there must be something else to do on weekend afternoons than sit in a bar and drink. After 18 straight weekends watching games in bars you start to get philosophical. I then started my car and went for a drive. It was actually a sunny day- cold, but sunny. I drove from downtown Rome up to the Delta Dam and past Woods Valley Ski Resort and Westernville and all the way to Pixley Falls! I then turned around and drove back to that same bar to catch the games. After two and a half football games and several drinks I left the bar and on my way home, ran into the back end of a car that stopped short at an intersection. I was arrested for DWI. (The drug was alcohol and the weapon was my car!) My life has been changed abruptly. A restricted license (no more band reviews from bars…no more driving except to work for 90 days) plus several fines and legal fees later (plus or minus $3,000), means Zoe must find ways of amusing himself at home. It’s almost scary how my comment to myself in the bar parking lot received an answer so immediately. It actually may be a blessing in disguise. I was going to make a New Year’s resolution to stay home and get some unfinished projects completed, looks I might be doing just that! Since I can no longer drink and drive around Central New York checking out area bands, I guess I’ll switch gears and listen to the music on area bands’ CDs. But only CDs recorded in home studios. I want to know how you recorded it, the equipment (recording and music gear), the process, some anecdotes, etc.—stuff that other recording musicians would find helpful and interesting. If you have a website and/or mpeg downloads available let me know. Of course, I’ll need a copy of the CD. You can send it to me if the Dude hooks me up with a real post office box. How about it Dude? The Reuben James Radio Mystery Theater Last spring The Reuben James released a self titled EP containing 5 songs that also contained a mini-video documentary of the group. This year, The Reuben James releases a full-fledged album of original material called Radio Mystery Theater. The group spent about half a year recording in their basement studio producing fourteen songs that fill more than 60 minutes on the CD. The album is well recorded and when you listen to it, it sounds like a band performance. There aren’t a lot of studio tricks or production embellishments to give it that “made in the studio” sound. When I say that, I don’t mean that the album lacks a professional sound—in fact it has quite a pro sound, but the sound is generated from the performances of the musicians captured live in the studio. When you listen to the CD, you could picture yourself sitting in a crowd watching the band perform. Many of the songs defy the traditional formula of 3:30 in length with quirky musical and lyrical hooks everywhere. Several of the songs are in excess of 5 or 6 minutes. A lot of acoustic guitar, and a laid back acoustic rock sound with intelligent lyrics ensures that this CD can be listened to repeatedly and over time grow on you. So many songs of today are designed to appeal to the limited attention span of a society that lives with a remote in its hand. It’s rare to find a group playing music that sounds like the people who made it mean what they are saying and are taking the time to say it. You’ll find no screaming angry men or atomic bomb drum sounds here! Before I stray too far into a content review, this is a CD review column that will focus more on the production end of locally recorded music. So let’s get to some of that. Radio Mystery Theater was recorded in the basement on two ADATs synched together. Vocals were recorded with an Audio Technica 4050. In the early sessions, the band was having difficulty getting a good mix of their recorded tracks. When they made a good mix in the studio but then went to play it elsewhere, as the Reuben James drummer Dominic noted: ”It sounded like ass!” They had been running their mixes through a pair of stage monitors set up in the studio. Purchasing a pair of real studio monitors made all the difference in the world. Just listen to the CD. Get some real monitors. It’s an expense that will make all the difference in the world! In a budget studio you may have to make due with a shitty basement or bedroom setup and suffer acoustically—but nothing will screw your mix up like a bad pair of audio monitors or speakers (I include in that description of bad: home “studio quality” speakers that are made for a stereo. Stereo speakers are not monitors!) Using bad speakers and making adjustments to the sound is like watching a black and white TV and trying to guess dress colors. Get good monitors! You can get good monitors for around $200 a pair. The Alesis M1 or something similar would be a good choice (you’ll need a power amp that doesn’t suck (i.e. a home stereo). If you must use a home stereo amp, make sure you flatten the treble and bass as much as you can. Otherwise, your mixes will sound good in the basement and “sound like ass!” everywhere else. To hear the Reuben James, go their website and sample a couple of their mpegs at www.telepathicrecords.com/trj/ Then you be the critic. |