Sometime around January of 2008 one of our friends who knows a ton about music online told us that she thinks we should be on Pandora. Kristen was absolutely right of course. About a week later Kristen told us that her friend at Pandora had told her that we were already on Pandora. Wow - what great news - we are bigger than we thought (every bands dream surely).
Soon though we realized that the band Buddaheads is on Pandora and not us. So, we read the instructions on the site and submitted our music. Weeks later Jasmyn contacted us to say they had in fact received it. Weeks later Jasmyn contacted us to say we were being considered but that there were no promises. Weeks later still Jasmyn said we will be on Pandora in about 6-8 weeks, and 6-8 weeks later we were told two more weeks would have to pass before their super computer, Big Pandy, would be able to analyze our music. Two weeks later Jasmyn apologized and mentioned that Big Pandy was having some technical issues and another week is needed.
So here we are at the top of that week and awaiting our final appearance on Pandora. Who would Big Pandy say we sound like. Radiohead? YES! Collective Soul? Not so yes. Fingers have been crossed for the last 6 hours until this news popped into my mail box.
Dear Tim Westergren (founder of Pandora) and Big Pandy, please stay afloat - I need to know how an unemotional machine will analyze Buddahead. Who do we sound like?
Tags: Big Pandy, Buddahead, Buddaheads, collective soul, Jasmyn Wong, Kristen Crusius, Pandora, Radiohead, Tim Westergren
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In my opinion, music producers can be put into one of the following categories: The Operators, The Captors, The Middlemen, The X-Men, The Wizards, and The Charlatans.
We are starting with The Operator, and you will be forced to return to read my blog to hear about the rest! Ha-zah!
The Operator
When I was sixteen years old and enamored by Led Zepplein, GN’R, Queen, and pretty much all the legendary rock bands in the history of rock, I booked myself a couple of days at The Refuge, a local recording studio in Reading, near where I went to school.
A strange man who looked like Spike from Notting Hill’s identical twin owned the Refuge. He also had the strange habit of collecting his own shit and using it as fertilizer to grow his vegetables (which tasted much like the fertilizer).
Anyway, The Refuge was armed with Jim “The Tree” Warren. At the time Jim wasn’t “The Tree” yet but due to his height Thom Yorke purportedly gave him the nickname while Jim was working on The Bends.
What made Jim special was that he was in absolute control of the equipment he operated. He had the ability to “dial” in a recording or a mix so it sounded just right. Just right might sound ominous but there is no other way to put it. The Refuge was a small studio with only a few mics and a few pieces of outboard gear, an old Akai sampler, an even older 16 track Raindeer desk which ran with a two inch tape and used Notator as a sequencer. Most producers couldn’t imagine working with such an old and unsophisticated set up, but the Operator knows exactly how to make the equipment sound great, and relies heavily on his own ear.
When an Operator works on your recording it sounds professional and you basically cannot fault the recording and mix quality. Now, note I am not talking about the song writing, or the performance, or even the artistic merit. I am simply talking about the sonic quality of the recording.
The Operator cannot polish a turd. In other words, as Jim explained to me when I was sixteen, “Don’t come in here and tell me you want to sound like Eric Clapton – you have to play like Eric Clapton first”.
If, like me at the age of sixteen, your songs suck, your arrangement is crap, your performance is even worse, then working with an Operator will leave you with a sonicaly perfect fart. A fart that has been recorded perfectly and mixed to sound huge, is still a shit bubble.
An incredible recording of a slightly musical shit bubble is exactly what my recording session with Jim Warren ended up being. I was basically a teenage douche bag.
Not only I was a terrible singer and a horrible guitar player, when I played the drums I sounded like the Energizer Bunny…
So the first moral of the story is the first “shark” you will encounter when looking for a producer is your own ego. If you can’t look past your own ego and see that you might not be good enough or ready enough yet to get in the recording studio, then your recording will most likely sound like anal acoustics, or a great sounding one cheek sneak– remember what I said about polishing the ol’ steamer? So, be honest and true to yourself, put your ego aside, and don’t be a shit-head like I was.
The second moral of the story is that you should never be fooled by the size of a producers studio or the amount of equipment they have because The Operator knows exactly how to work a few pieces of equipment and make everything sound just right.
Also Check Out Navigating Shark Filled Waters Part 1
Tags: akai sampler, Captors, Charlatans, Energizer bunny, Eric Clapton, GN'R, Guns and Roses, Jim "The tree" warren, Jim Warren, Led Zepplein, Middlemen, Music producers, Notator, Notting Hill, Operators, raindeer desk, shit as fertilizer, Spike, the bends, The Refuge, Thom Yorke, two inch tape machine, Wizards, X-Men
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I really like this review. For starters it compares me to Jeff Buckley and Jimmy Gneco and compares the whole band to Fiction Plane, Starsailor, and Radford - all awesome things; but it also stabs at the bands musical drawbacks - which is fine too - without stumbling into assumptionland like other recent reviews.
Check it out.
Thanks Catch The Phoneix!
Tags: absolute punk, absolute punk review, Buddahead, buddahead ashes, catch the phoneix, Fiction Plane, Jeff Buckley, Jimmy Gneco, Radford, Starsailor
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Our old manager Merck Mercuriadis sent me an email today with the subject line Just look at this smile.
This article in Rolling Stone is an amazing revelation of how badly the music industry is doing. On the other hand I couldn’t stop smiling back at the photo of Debbie Southwood-Smith, an old friend from Interscope, someone who loved Buddahead when we were signed by Jimmy Iovine to the label. When I knew her she seemed lost, unhappy, and misguided by an industry she had poured herself into. She was great her job too - she discovered and signed Queens of the stone age.
I have an amazing story about Debbie and Jimmy Iovine but I am going to keep that for “Navigating Shark Filled Waters”, so until then I just want to say, “Debbie, if you read this, I want you to know I am so overwhelmed by happiness to see you so happy - congrats - and I forgive you for trying to get me to buy pants that are way too tight for me”.
Tags: ashes, Buddahead, buddahead ashes, Debbie Southwood-Smith, Interscope, Jimmy Iovine, Merck Mercuriadis, Navigating shark filled waters, Queens of the stone age, Rolling Stone
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