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, Navigating shark filled waters, 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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Once I was sworn to secrecy by powers that controlled me, but now, since there are no more dick dongs that control me I may as well share this story…

To begin with you must know that I grew up at the alter of Guns & Roses, bowed and prayed daily to the mythological powers of Axl and Slash; so finding the truth behind one of my Gods and turning away from his church is a big deal for me.

A few years ago, probably about 4 years ago I received a call from an industry friend asking me if my room mate who owned one of the happening clubs in NYC could accommodate on short notice some VIP treatment for Axl Rose who was in town. Naturally, the answer from both myself, and subsequently my room mate was “YES!”

To cut this part of the story short I met my room mate at his club, we told the door men to expect him, we reserved the prime table in the house, and my room mate went as far as calling a special favor from some of his pals and get in some Penthouse girls to hang around Axl.

When Axl arrived he was a pleasure. He knew who I was and for hours we shared stories about recording our albums, stories of early Guns and Roses adventures, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Hours later, basically when everyone had left, and only our table remained Axl asked me if I wanted t hear Chinese Democracy. I said no.

I’m only kidding, of course I said “HELL YEAH”. So he pulled a CD out of his pocket and walked upstairs to the DJ booth and just put on the CD. Music started to play, Axl came and too his seat, and we listened. It was good, really good; it was rock, the kind of great rock that made todays shitty little punk rock bands sound like a doody in a diaper.

Every now and then Axl would turn around to me and say something about how great a drum fill was or how hard it was to get a guitar sounds or some other anecdotal muso crap that I loved and the Penthouse girls grinned on while staring at their boobs. I have to give it to him, he is passionate about his craft.

When the record finished one of the bus boys came over to Axl to ask for his autograph and said, “I am not sure how many millions of records you will sell, but I thought the album was great and I will buy it”. Complement in tow Axl then turned to me and asked, “Do you want to know why it is taking so long to finish this album?”

“It is because of the government” he said. Then he continued, “I know a doctor in China who has found that every human being in the world has an internal frequency that resonates inside them. This doctor has developed a technology where by you can just call him and tell him what is wrong with you and he can send an audio frequency through the telephone and into your ear which will fix you. He can do this for any disease. I have backed him financially and that’s a problem for the government because they make so much money from the medicine that they know if I bring this Chinese technology into the US it is going to take over US medicine. They have actually hired an assasin, his name is Riad and he lives in Saudi Arabia, and he has invited me to a dual”.

At this point in the conversation for some reason I can’t remember anymore we all got up and left the club. Axl then graciously gave me a lift home in my apartment. During the drive we spoke a little more about his album and I said to him, “Axl I have no idea what the world is going to think about your album, but I thought it was great and yo should be really proud of it”.

The next morning at the crack of dawn I was awoken by a call from my record industry friend who said Axl was really pissed off with me because I had said to him that not everyone might like his record, and that made him really insecure, and the bus boy who had said a similar thing to him must be fired. Believe it or not the industry guys caused such a big deal that the poor bus boy was fired that day. Additionally, when I told my friend about the Riad story I was told that only a handful of close insiders know that and I should never share it.

So, in short: Axl you are a douche which is why I don’t feel so bad about sharing this crazy secret story.

Fast forward to today when Toby forwarded this story to me FBI Drops in on GN’R Leaker Maybe Axl was right. Maybe the FBI does care about what is going on with Chinese Democracy. Maybe Chinese Democracy will heal your body because of subliminal tones buried in the mix. Or, maybe the FBI should stop being dingle berries and go look for terrorists or some one really bad!

Tags: ashes, Axl Rose, Bill Bailey, Buddahead, China, Chinese Democracy, Conspiracy, Dick dongs, dingle berries, FBI, GN’R, Guns & Roses, Medecine, Riad, Saudi Arabia, Slash, subliminal tones, US government, W. Axl Rose, William Bailey
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