CHAPTER 7

RECORDING

Making a good record is largely a matter of luck. There are famous studios, producers, and tricks to using such and such a microphone to get a particular “sound,” but there’s no proven formula. New, surprising records are released all the time which have that “magic ingredient”—at least according to their audience—even though they were recorded in a basement or bedroom or bathroom or spaceship. Alan Lomax made verité records on the side of the road, taping field hollers of chain gangs, that have outpaced discs that cost millions made in prestigious recording rooms such as Electric Lady, Muscle Shoals, and Compass Point.

Thus we see that it is the specialness of the thing (whether that be a song, singer, instrument, or whatever) that is being recorded—and not the recording technique—which makes a hot record.

The system of capitalism and the culture of “expertise” want desperately for us to believe that good or exciting records are the result of some magic-science combo of multitracking, digitization, newfangled pedals, or Neumann ribbon mics, depending on what gizmo is commercially paradigmatic at the moment. Much of what we think of as innovations or “movements” in popular music are simply the utilization of new pedals, instruments, or technology (e.g., “drum ’n’ bass,” techno, speed metal), which sound momentarily novel to the listener. Indeed, rock ’n’ roll itself, a notoriously difficult-to-define genre, might arguably be explained as the electrified amplification of music. Plugging instruments in gave them a particular quality, which was different from what people had previously known. However, the resonance or emotional impact of a record is typically not due to such technological circumstances, but due to what was going on in front of the microphone when the record was made.

At the highest level, sports teams are quite similarly matched in a purely physical respect. Their contests are determined by factors that are psychological and strategic—who can scare who into losing. Since rock ’n’ roll is a subjective art form, all groups are actually evenly matched as well, regardless of “talent,” brains, or connections. The Shaggs could have overtaken the Rolling Stones on the world stage provided a little belief in themselves, a bit of worldliness (easily acquired), desire, and—most importantly—luck.

 

 

While in the studio, the record one is making should be treated with a kind of wariness; you are having fun with it but keeping your distance. You don’t want to be “hurt” again; not like last time. Don’t make yourself vulnerable. Keep it “light.” If you show the tape that you care too much, you can kiss the whole thing goodbye. When asked about your new recording, answer with a nonchalant, “I don’t know yet. We’re just having a good time.” You have to trick the tape into a walk down the aisle. Don’t declare it a record until it is completed or it will be just another failed relationship to throw on the pile of could-have-beens and what-was-I-thinkings, a tawdry affair you speak of reluctantly.

After the group’s tape is “cut,” it becomes a matter of psychology, strategy, and good fortune whether it can prevail. What you decide to put on record, and in what order you release it, will ultimately be more important than all the technocratic legerdemain with which studio engineers like to impress the prospective client.

The “sound” of a group is given enormous importance because of the technology of record making. In the 1920s records became a huge industry because a song could be pressed onto a thin piece of plastic and packaged as a bite-size accoutrement to one’s identity. But this was just an arbitrary innovation that gave an outsize importance to the way a group sounded. If a similar technology had been devised which centered on a group’s smell, for example, the story of which groups and singers were deemed important or noteworthy would be vastly different. A “smell radio” (“AM/FM Smellio”) would waft scents of different groups to the noses of the audience, and vials of different musks engineered by various groups would rocket up the “Scent Parade.”

In sum, a group is not just sound. It’s a physical aggregate that can be seen, smelled, sensed, tasted, and felt.

Indeed, the way a group “feels” is, in the short term, a vital ingredient of their likability, albeit one that is difficult for future audiences to comprehend. When one hears the legend of a group such as the Velvet Underground being shunned in their own era by a philistine public, there is great conceit on the part of the latter-day enthusiast. They swell with pride at being so much more enlightened, clever, and discerning than the group’s contemporaneous audience was. Everywhere you look (if you look hard enough) you’ll see another self-congratulatory Velvet Underground T-shirt whose wearer is slyly boasting of his or her impressive connoisseurship, miles beyond that of said group’s original onlookers.

But groups that failed in their own era, despite catchy tunes, cool shades, turtlenecks, and solid connections, might have “felt” bad to their audience. Certainly one can imagine a group like the VU seeming grumpy, cynical, entitled to success, or otherwise having a “bad vibe.” Audiences don’t necessarily want to reward such perceived behavior with record sales or applause. Conversely, groups which might have felt “right” at the time—the Grateful Dead, Grand Funk, Free, the Association—may seem confusing to the listeners of a later era, who are not privy to the pheromones said groups were releasing at their concerts. The perplexing nature of such groups’ in-person charisma leads one to think that the audiences of an earlier era were deaf, dumb, and bereft of sense, despite whatever the testimonials of the groups’ lingering fan base of “you had to be there” true believers.