Motus Mentis

I’m sorry to have been off the air yesterday; it’s been a busy couple of days.

Yesterday evening I went to an enormous party at Avatar Studios, which was founded as The Power Station 30 years ago. The current owner, Kirk Imamura, decided to put together a big reunion for all the former staffers and some longtime clients, and the turnout was impressive. Most of the staff engineers from the old days were there: Bob Clearmountain, Neil Dorfsman, Larry Alexander, Scott Litt, James Farber, Jason Corsaro, Garry Rindfuss, and of course me (I was on staff at Power Station from the end of 1978 until early 1987). Conspicuously missing from among the members of that original crew were two other engineers, Bill Scheniman and Josh Abbey, but it was wonderful to see the rest of the cohort all together again. Founding owners Tony Bongiovi and Bob Walters were on hand, and original technical chief Ed Evans, as well as a great many of the later alumni. There were many hundreds of people there by late in the evening, and it was quite a bash.

The party was timed to coincide with the Audio Engineering Society’s gigantic annual trade show at the Javits Center, and the Recording Academy honored the studio by hosting a “Grammy Sound Table” panel discussion this afternoon, featuring Tony Bongiovi, several of the engineers from those halcyon days, and producer Nile Rodgers (who pretty much lived at Power Station during the years I was there, and whose successes with Chic, Sister Sledge, David Bowie, and so many others helped anchor the studio’s reputation as one of the foremost facilities in the world).

The discussion, which was moderated by former Power Station and Hit Factory studio manager Zoe Thrall ((Zoe now manages The Studio At The Palms in Las Vegas, and she is one of the most honest, intelligent, likeable, forthright and competent people I have ever met in my 30 years in the recording business.)), was held in a large meeting hall, and there was a standing-room only crowd.

After the panel Neil and James and I wandered the exhibition floor, looking at the latest toys — a slow process, because every five paces you run into someone you know.

So, quite a busy weekend, but it wasn’t over yet — after leaving the AES show I headed down to Chinatown for a banquet honoring Grandmaster Norman Chin’s 35 years of teaching Southern Praying Mantis kung fu in New York. GM Chin is an old friend of our own Grandmaster Frank Yee — and, apparently, of every other prominent kung fu master on the Eastern Seaboard — and the banquet hall was packed. One school after another got up on stage to give demonstrations, and it was quite a spectacle. (I have some interest in Southern Praying Mantis myself, having learned some of it back in the 1970’s under Master William Chung, who was himself a disciple of the great Gin Foon Mark, probably the foremost living practitioner of this system.)

Anyway, having just got home from all this, I’m totally whipped. So no post today.