Something I ran across online earlier today reminded me of a project I worked on long ago (late 1985), when I was a staff engineer at Power Station. It was a record by the great Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano, and I hadn’t heard it, I think, since the album came out in early […]
February 12, 2024 – 6:12 pm
On Saturday the lovely Nina and I found ourselves in Woods Hole, at the far end of the Cape from where we live, where we had been invited to attend a living-room performance by two extraordinary musicians: violinist Darol Anger and mandolinist/guitarist Mike Marshall. (Their websites are here and here, respectively.) It was music the […]
January 7, 2024 – 1:15 pm
Before we wade, in our teeming millions, into the riotous disorder that 2024 is sure to bring, I thought it might be nice to “cleanse our timelines” for a moment in the clear air of a serene and ancient vastness where the vital spirit of remote antiquity still touches the living. Here, then, is Batzorig […]
December 30, 2023 – 6:25 pm
I realize the tone’s been kind of gloomy over here since I started posting again. As Woody Allen once put it: More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Yep, we’re in a bit of a pickle, and no […]
August 23, 2023 – 5:20 pm
Although I no longer have to mix records to pay the bills, I still love to do what I do best, and so I enjoy doing a few projects a year in Hiram Hill Studio, the superbly equipped little mixing room I have here at home. This spring I mixed a five-song compositional-jazz EP for […]
If you will forgive the digression, I’ll leave aside current events for a moment to offer a year-and-a-half-old recording of a fifty-four-year-old song. In December of 2021, some friends and I got together in a studio in Dobbs Ferry, NY (Riverworks Recording) to try our hand at a classic Procol Harum tune. A few weeks […]
We follow yesterday’s sad post with more of the same: David Lindley, the great session player and maestro of every stringed instrument, has now died as well. You might not know the name, but if you are over the age of 30 or so, you know his playing. More and more of the great musicians […]
I’m sad to report that the musical giant Wayne Shorter, lyrical virtuoso of the tenor and soprano saxophone, has died at age 89. Mr. Shorter first came to my attention as a member (along with Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter) of Miles Davis’s incomparable 1960s quintet (which released a series of albums including […]
February 23, 2022 – 10:49 pm
Sad news yesterday: Gary Brooker, the singer, composer, and pianist of the English band Procol Harum, has died of cancer at the age of 76. This was a particularly poignant passing for me; I’ve been haunted by his masterpiece A Salty Dog since the first time I heard it, more than half a century ago, […]
December 8, 2021 – 12:35 am
Sorry not to have been writing more. (Soon the Muse will nag me again, I hope.) So, instead: I bet you’ve never heard of Devin Townsend. Headphones on, and brace yourself.
October 25, 2021 – 11:09 pm
I mentioned in the previous post that I’ve just made some improvements to my mixing studio. I haven’t written very often about music and recording lately, so here’s a post about some of that. For most of my recording career (I got my start as a staff member at Power Station Studios back in the […]
August 24, 2021 – 8:07 pm
How sad to learn today that Charlie Watts has died. The Rolling Stones have died with him, as far as I’m concerned: it was Charlie, not Mick Jagger, who was really the heart of that band. I was fortunate enough to meet the legend in person long ago, when I was an assistant engineer on […]
February 14, 2021 – 1:50 pm
I was deeply saddened to hear that the great jazz/Latin keyboardist and composer Chick Corea has died, at the age of 79. He was one of the towering musical artists of our time, and I’ve been a huge fan for more than fifty years (I first heard him play on Miles Davis’s groundbreaking album Bitches […]
August 28, 2020 – 8:39 pm
Here’s the latest collaborative video from my Star Island music team: a lighthearted cover of another Beatles classic. (You can see our others here.) Lead and background vocals, some bass guitar, and mixing: your humble correspondent.
My old pal Jimmy Haslip sent me a link to a new version of the old Weather Report song, as conceived by Zawinul protégé Scott Kinsey. The video features Jimmy on bass, Scott Kinsey on keys, the terrific Hungarian drummer Gergo Borlai, saxophonist Katisse Buckingham, and bassist/singer Naina Kundu on vocals. Here it is. Turn […]
April 27, 2020 – 10:29 pm
Like so many other musicians, during this enforced quarantine I’ve been collaborating online with my pals. In my case it’s the group of talented players and singers I get together with every September for a musical retreat out in the Isles of Shoals. I put up a mix a little while back of one of […]
April 19, 2020 – 11:41 pm
Just to take our minds off the Wuhan Red Death for a moment, here’s some music you might enjoy. The piece is called Spirit Moves, and it’s the opening track from Vince Mendoza’s album Instructions Inside, which I recorded and mixed back in March of 1991. We did the sessions at Edison Recording in midtown […]
April 13, 2020 – 12:49 pm
I’ve previously mentioned the musical retreat I enjoy each September in the far-flung Isles of Shoals. I get together with an eclectic assortment of musicians (both pros and civilians), and we have a fine time as the house band for all the people enjoying Star Island‘s final conference of the year. With this global panic […]
Yesterday was this year’s “Pink Moon”. Here’s a lovely song by that name, from the long-departed Nick Drake.
I was very sorry to learn this morning that John Prine has died of the Chinese coronavirus. He was a truly gifted songwriter, and made his gift a gift to us all. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I will never forget seeing him perform in Princeton’s Alexander Hall on April 1st, […]
March 25, 2020 – 11:09 pm
As a person with a long career in the music biz, I am often asked who I think is interesting, and worth giving a listen (keeping in mind that there is a lot of interesting music out there that most people simply wouldn’t “get”). I often mention King Crimson, because Fripp and company have maintained […]
February 14, 2020 – 11:22 pm
I’ll ask your forgiveness once again for the lack of substantial posts here over the past few weeks. Regarding the political scene, I’m finding it awfully difficult right at the moment to summon up the will to comment on any of it — not that there isn’t plenty I could say, but at this point […]
December 8, 2019 – 5:17 pm
Unless you’re au fait with the musical genre known as “progresssive rock”, you’ve probably never heard of the British musician and producer Steven Wilson. He’s best known as the leader of the now-defunct band Porcupine Tree, but he’s also made quite a few records on his own. I admire his work, which is always good […]
November 17, 2019 – 12:33 am
A little while back I had David Bowie’s 1977 song Heroes — probably my favorite of all his songs, and that’s saying something — stuck in my head. I thought it might be fun to go downstairs to the studio and see if I could knock it off on my own. Here’s a rough mix […]
October 6, 2019 – 4:50 pm
I note with sadness, if not surprise, the death of drummer Ginger Baker. As celebrity deaths go, this is for me a pretty big one: Ginger Baker was my first drum hero, and a big part of why, about fifty years ago, I took up the instrument myself. Mr. Baker was not, by any account, […]
September 16, 2019 – 10:52 pm
Finding myself with nothing interesting to say tonight about the passing scene (I’m beginning to worry that, after almost five thousand posts, I may well have said it all already), I’ll take a moment to plug a YouTube channel I’m keen on. This will be of interest only to a small subset of readers: drummers […]
I note with real sorrow the death of Mac Rebennack, AKA “Dr. John”, who died yesterday of a heart attack. He was 77. In my opinion he was a national treasure — a first-tier master of an indigenous hybrid American musical style. I worked with Mac on a couple of projects a long time ago. […]
November 24, 2018 – 6:06 pm
Recording technology has undergone a fundamental change over the past couple of decades, and what has changed the most, and has caused the most controversy, is the move to “mixing in the box”. I’ll give some background for those of you who aren’t familiar with what this means: In multi-track recording, individual instruments and vocals […]
November 23, 2018 – 5:37 pm
Thirty-two years ago this week, I spent a fortnight or so behind the console in Studio C at Power Station Studios, recording overdubs for David Bowie’s album Never Let Me Down. The record is generally looked back on as one of his weaker and more time-bound efforts: it’s a fossil of 1980s record-production, preserved in […]
October 3, 2018 – 2:18 pm
I’d have thought that old recording engineers, like old soldiers, “never die – they just fade away.” It isn’t so. I note with sorrow the death of Geoff Emerick, who punched out yesterday at age 72. He was a towering — preeminent — figure in our arcane craft, and when he took over as The […]
March 24, 2018 – 11:13 pm
As occasional leavening for the steady diet of politics and reaction I’ve been posting up here for years now, I think I’ll begin revisiting my other life: decades spent recording and mixing music. (Because so many of the recordings I’ve worked on are now on YouTube, it’s easy posting.) I’d say about three-quarters of the […]
January 25, 2018 – 8:37 pm
Timeless advice, never given more beautifully.
January 16, 2018 – 11:40 am
I’m note with sorrow the death of Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of the Irish group the Cranberries. She was a unique talent, with a haunting, unforgettable voice. Ms. O’Riordan suffered throughout her brief life, battling depression and anorexia. From her pain came beautiful, sometimes gorgeously uplifting music. We should be grateful to her for that […]
January 7, 2018 – 1:05 pm
Today I read an article about Dmitri Tymoczko, a music theorist at Princeton, who has developed a new spatial framework for the representation and comprehension of music, using mathematical objects called “orbifolds”. It seems fascinating, but I’m sure I haven’t fully grasped it yet. (The easiest way to take such things in is by visual […]
December 20, 2017 – 3:27 pm
With a hat-tip to the indefatigable ‘JK’, here’s a delightful video: Riccardo Muti on conducting.
November 17, 2017 – 6:05 pm
Off to see King Crimson at the Beacon Theater tonight. They are a remarkable ensemble, including, among others, two of my favorite drummers, Pat Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison, the great bassist Tony Levin and — sui generis — the Gurdjeffian guitarist and musical innovator Robert Fripp. I’ve never seen them perform, and I’m happy to […]
November 2, 2017 – 10:44 pm
I enjoyed this very much: Mark Knopfler playing his guitars, and talking about playing guitar. (The clip is hosted at Laughing Squid, where it’s described as Mr. Knopfler giving a “wonderful guided tour of his guitar collection” — but that isn’t what it is at all, as older and wiser readers will understand.) Here.
October 24, 2017 – 12:02 pm
Here is David Bowie, in a 1999 interview, predicting in considerable detail the transformative, revolutionary effect of the Internet on media and culture.
September 5, 2017 – 11:11 am
A happy item in the New York Times today: Power Station Studios, where I was a staff engineer from 1978 to 1987, has been bought by Berklee College of music and will be re-opening after a long-overdue renovation. Power Station, Studio A: my alma mater. This is the second time this magnificent facility, which in […]
September 3, 2017 – 1:28 pm
I didn’t see this coming: Walter Becker is dead at 67. If you’re a musician of my generation, or a fan, that’s a heavy blow.
August 18, 2017 – 9:36 pm
I had sad news today: my old friend and colleague Jason Corsaro died yesterday of cancer. I’m not sure of his age, but he must have been about my age, 61. Jason and I came up together as assistant engineers at Power Station Studios (now Avatar); he was promoted to full engineer just before I […]
I’m saddened today to hear of the death of guitarist Chuck Loeb. I hadn’t seen Chuck in many years (we worked together on many records and other sessions back in the 80’s and 90’s), but he was one of the finest musicians I ever knew, and a good man besides. He was only 61. Chuck […]
So many talented people! Here’s a splendid solo version of Eleanor Rigby by a gifted young musician named Josh Turner.
Tired of the crap the kids are listening to? Do yourself a favor and buy this album, made by grownups. Trust me on this; I know about these things.
I’m saddened to note the death of yet another important musician of my generation: Gregg Allman, at the age of 69. They seem to be going faster and faster now.
I note with great sadness the death of Chris Cornell. He was a musician of exceptional gifts; in particular, I consider him one of the greatest vocalists in the history of rock music. He will be deeply missed.
April 24, 2017 – 11:35 pm
I’ve been too busy over the past few days to put pen to paper (or pixels to page). The world seems more frantic than ever, and it’s hard to keep up. So, here’s a pause, a musical interlude, for you; let it be a little five-minute fermata. The music is by the lavishly gifted composer […]
April 11, 2017 – 10:47 am
Sorry for the lack of original content here lately – I’m weary of the news, and temporarily abandoned by the Muse. Here’s something out of the ordinary for you, then: a huge clown in whiteface channeling Johnny Cash to sing “Pinball Wizard”. (That would be extraordinary enough all by itself, but this man has a […]
I was saddened yesterday to hear that Chuck Berry had died. (He was 90, and so it was bound to happen soon, but it was a jolt nevertheless.) He was a majestic, and majestically stationary, feature of my generation’s musical landscape. He was always there, a great peak on its eastern horizon, and the shadow […]