Gotham Artists

When the World Trade Event occurred, 911, or whatever you want to call it, we stood on the roof of 21st and Broadway where we owned a music production company. My business partner, Michael, and I had gotten to work early because we had two tasks to get done before the start of the business day. I think we were working on one music project for McCann-Erickson, an ad agency, and another for Sesame Street. Then another early bird neighbor on our floor ran in and told us that one of the towers had been hit. We were far enough away to consider ourselves safe, but after the second tower was hit, it felt like planes might be falling out of the sky at random, and you didn't know if the next one would drop right where you were standing. I recall seeing specks tumble out of the tower, every few seconds it seemed like. I turned to Michael and confirmed what I assumed we were both thinking, "Y'know, those are people.”

I called my parents and a couple of friends for information, because our TV reception was intermittent. It was a couple of hours before we understood that what we had witnessed was a terrorist attack. The first reports we got were that an accident had occurred between a jet and a smaller private plane. And as dramatic as the scene was to behold, no one stayed on the roof very long before going back downstairs to continue working. I think that's what most New Yorkers did, so used to being part of the machine. I even called a messenger service and asked them if they were still delivering packages to midtown (had to get that package to McCann) –and of course they were! It seemed like nothing, short of the world's end, was going to stop our great metropolis from working.

Among others, we shared the floor with an architect who drew a diagram on a piece of paper explaining why the towers, although injured, would not fall, he said. Afterwards I went back up to the roof in a curious attempt to fit what I had just been told with the ominous black cavity that now bore through the top of the north tower.

And as I stood there, the south tower fell. But I didn't see it, because I experienced its disappearance almost like watching a magic trick: First there was a tall building. Then a puff of smoke. And as the smoke dissipated I realized I could not possibly be seeing what I was seeing, so I strained my eyes, looking for the building that was supposed to be, but of course, it was no longer there. Instead in its place, the unimaginable, nothing, and I too, also felt hollow inside.

I ran downstairs and told my everybody within hearing to stop working, that one of the towers had fallen. Amazing, maybe some people were in shock, but it seemed to me that even then, a few were reluctant to push aside the work at hand.

Later, when the second tower fell, the following words peel off my brain and burn themselves into my consciousness:

Two arms
Stretched towards God
They pulled them down
And our spirits with them

My girlfriend and I lived down by Washington Square Park, within the border cordoned off by the military, and well within the sad and acrid smell of the two broken buildings. Our next door neighbor worked for Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. and he lost hundreds of friends and colleagues. Another neighbor who lived across the hall, David Crafa, was not only the owner of The Cutting Room Recording Studio, but also a welder, it turns out. As such, he had been called down to work in Ground Zero in order to assist in the search for survivors. And I, too, like so many others I knew –artists, musicians, singers– wanted to do something to help, but what could we possibly offer?

A song to help heal our souls, and our wounded city, too, perhaps?

So on October 3, 2001, myself, and a few of my friends, all of us session musicians and music production types, assembled at The Cutting Room Recording Studios in order to record a memorial song. It sounds insignificant in retrospect, but when I think back to those times, I realized the writing process was part of working through my own grief. And I think those who participated in the recording also saw in it a way to move through their own pain.

I wrote the following passage in the liner notes of the memorial CD:

Via television broadcasts spanning the globe, the entire world was a witness to the incomprehensible events of September 11th, 2001. A shared feeling of utter senselessness permeated the planet the moment towers fell. Our initial shock was immediately followed by frantic questions: Where are my loved ones? Where are my friends? Did I know anyone who worked at The World Trade Center? Did I know anyone traveling from Boston or Newark that day? Whom do I know in Washington? At the end of it all, another question surfaced: What could we do to help? We are simply musicians, singers, and artists who happened to have made our lives in New York City and the surrounding areas. Understandably, the city needed more rescue workers at Ground Zero than musicians, and more welders than singers. Not being pop stars or famous movie actors, there seemed like little that we could do, except pray. Then, through the sheer effort and good will of so many kind people, a momentum started and we all found ourselves in a recording studio for one long day with an idea that we could help, and that we could do so by using our own modest talents... It’s the least we could do.

And at the time, it's all that I thought we could do.

'911' was originally posted in the old MP3.com site where it found a receptive audience, before CNET bought the domain name and dispensed with the assets circa December 2003.

In the beginning I also wanted to present 911 as a benefit song, and raise money for the American Red Cross. But in those days MP3.com priced all CDs, whether fully loaded or merely singles, at around $8.00 a unit. I tried to promote the music as best I could, but of course it was overpriced, and I was not experienced in other avenues of distribution. I personally bought one for everyone who participated, and I think our engineer's sister actually bought our only real sale. Naturally, for a couple of years after, I felt like our efforts, or rather mine specifically, amounted to little more than a well intentioned failure.

But then an amazing thing happened, around 2005, I started to get email from all over the world from people who wanted to catch up with me and tell me how much our song still continues to resonate for them.

And so today, I do feel believe that the 'Gotham Artists' tribute song actually did succeed in its mission of providing comfort and consolation, and that we did help a number of people get through that time, myself included, as it happens. For many, it turns out, this music served to make some sense of what once was and still is an incomprehensible thing. But then, that is what art does. Art provides context; it comforts the senses, and it puts one's brain and heart back into working order.

After that, a lot of what I was doing –producing music for TV commercials– seemed meaningless. And it took a while to bounce back. But I did, of course. The world didn't stop that day, and the city marches forward.

*

The Original September 11, 2001 Memorial Song '911' can currently be heard by clicking on the following link:

Gotham Artists – 911

*

These are the people who graciously gave their time, talent and resources in order to participate and performed under the auspices of 'Gotham Artists':

Drums: Joe Bonadio
Percussion: Erik Charlston
Electric Bass: Will Lee
Keyboards: Charles Giordano
Electric Guitar: Larry Saltzman
Strings: Sandra Park, Jungsun Yoo, Sarah Seiver, Eileen Moon, Krysztof Kuznik, Ann Kim
Singers: Craig Chang, Tod Cooper, Jo Davidson, Jenny Douglas-McRae, Tabitha Fair, Morley Kamen, Gary Morris, Jenni Muldaur, Jason Paige, Sophia Ramos, Eugene Ruffolo, Stephen Scarpulla
Singers contracted by Valerie W. Morris, Val's Artist Management
Strings and Orchestral Percussion contracted by Sandra Park.
Arranged by Tony Finno.
Engineered & Mixed by Michael Sweet/Blister Media
Asst. Engineer: Steve Schopp
Special Thanks to David Crafa who generously helped us with studio time and resources.

‘911’ was recorded and mixed 10/03/01 at The Cutting Room Recording Studios/NYC
Mastered by Larry Lachmann/Absolute Audio
CD Art & Promo Design by Quiet Man: Amy Taylor: Exec. Prod./Jason Sienkwicz: Designer†

†Special kudos to Design Creative Director, Amy Taylor, and Designer, Jason Sienkwicz, who's powerful design of the song title, '911', uses a sans serif font to create two translucent rectangles that reference the Towers as they once stood, and as I hope that they will continue to stand in our collective memory. The combination of the date, whose numerical result parallels the US emergency telephone number, and the twin tower iconography, all together, creates  a semiotic masterpiece which we are happy to employ as the logo for this music. Thanks Jason and Amy!

Update: The folks at Landor seem to think so, too:

 "Finding a balance between a compelling visual style and the proper tone and mood for the memorial was important. Combining the date with the building silhouettes creates an essential connection in people’s minds."

Iggy Pop @ The Continental

The rumors are everywhere. By the time you read this, maybe CBGB's is a faint memory of days gone by. Maybe it's a chain with a 'destination' store in Las Vegas. Ever since punk blossomed out of the scene birthed by Television, The Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie, I desperately wanted to play there.

Alas, no band, although I do still consider myself lucky to have played CB's Gallery stage in the basement two or three of times to an adoring empty room.

Well, of course I went there to enjoy the endless parade of black clad bands that did play. Unfortunately I didn't see anyone I could remotely say lived up to Punk's glory days, when, um, actually, punk was kind of melodic, and if you think about it, not entirely quite as minimal or cartoonish as The Ramones were.

Most memorable punk show I saw wasn't even at CB's but at The Continental, another legendary joint a couple blocks away, and probably not long for this world either. In the mid-nineties two friends of mine were playing in Iggy Pop's band – Eric Schermerhorn (Guitar) and Hal Cragin (Bass) – and they had let us in on a 'secret' performance. So, naturally, after wrapping things up at the studio, Chris Fosdick and I went downtown to be part of the scene.

Got there a little early and staked out our claim to two spots in the middle of the club. No seats mind you; we just stood there. By the time the show started, though, not only was the place packed, it was scary overcrowded. Women were standing on the bar, which could have been sexy, but they looked like they were reaching for oxygen rich air that perhaps floated nearer to the ceiling. As for where Chris and I stood, what seemed like great a vantage point before, now gave off a dread like vibe from the knowledge that we were in the inescapable midst of an insufferable death trap.

And then Iggy came out and he fookin' rocked, dude!

Ha!

Word got out; I guess some calls were made by concerned neighbors, and eventually the fire department came 'round and shut the show down, which was the right thing to do, and only added to Iggy's bad boy rep. In fact, it was such a strategic move, that I wouldn't be surprised if it was his manager having a Big Mac next door who placed the 911 call. Hell, I know the people sitting in Mickey D's saw the walls buckles as soon as Iggy hit the stage. The sound sucked of course. It was just one big roar punctuated by intermittent preening.

I think downtown hipsters will agree, something cool about it, tho'.


CBGB's, Iggy Pop

CBGB's 313 Sessions

April 4, 2005 was my final performance at CBGB's 313 Gallery. In my brief history with the venue, my repetoire included the following original material:

Things Fall Apart
Branded @ Birth
Deep Kiss Nine
Union City
The Lizard King
Love As It Ever Is
Right About Now
Cityscape
Trench Coat Mafia
Honest To Badness
Acid Rain

CBGB's, songwriter

Winning Awards with Collaboration and Conflict

During my tenure as the Senior Producer and Head of Production at Elias Arts, an especially productive relationship developed between our Creative Director, Alexander Lasarenko, and myself, whereby Alex considered each opportunity or commission to score a TV commercial primarily as cinematic art (i.e. a potentially entertaining experience in and of itself) –its intent as a vehicle for a brand message or marketing piece –and our budget, notwithstanding.

By contrast, my responsibility was to ensure our client's marketing and message mandate was appropriately represented in our musical and sonic compositions, –and internally, that our creative solutions were executed in a manner that left us with either a profit or a relationship that would produce one later. 

This meant when our Creative Director felt strongly about pursuing a creative thread that was not part of the original brief, he would have that conversation with me instead of ‘fighting for the idea’ with our clients, as had been the organization’s prior model. As a result we sometimes did take new ideas to the client, but only after any sense of  ‘fight’ had been eliminated from our mindset. In practice, though, now instead of fighting the clients we often fought each other.

-But as a direct result of this contrasting dynamic our ideas and our execution got better, and I think the subsequent award-winning results speak for themselves. -And I can't think of another music team that did it the way we did at the time, which turned out to be so successful, that it made us all feel we were invincible at the time.

And we were a pretty good team! Two years before we were nobodies or newbies. 

Now, a year and a half after my promotion to Senior Producer, Elias NY had become the toast of the North East, and was even drawing clients from the west coast and London. In 1996 we walked away with two of three AICP awards in the music category (Guess ‘Mambo’ (Schietroma) and ‘Levi’s Sensual’ (Jenkins)) and a Clio for a Marcus Nispel directed spot out of DDB, produced by Steve Amato, for the Digital Equipment Corp., called ‘Manifesto’.

What made that latter award all the more sweet was the fact that it had been a collaborative effort whose participants included several new composers working in tandem with Alex, Alton Delano, Fritz Doddy, and myself. The year after I left, several other awards rolled in for projects produced during my tenure, including AICP recognition for Levi’s ‘Primal’, composed by Kerry Smith.

Of the many awards the company’s staffers have earned over the years, I take great pride knowing that a creative team I recruited and assembled swept award shows in the mid to late nineties. For a time –when Jonathan Elias headed out west and Scott Elias stopped out to pursue other ventures– those of us who spearheaded the company’s flagship headquarters did a unprecedented job catapulting its capabilities back into national industry notice.

When I started my tenure, the company billed less than a quarter of what it reportedly billed during my last year with the company –according to publicly available records. We quadrupled profits in 24 months and made the Elias Brothers proud. But the awards were icing on the cake, because  more importantly, for a shy kid who didn't move to the United States until he was 13,  it was a good American dream to have lived, and to have lived it with so many generations and talented individuals.

Artists and Repertoire for Madison Avenue

Music and sound design production houses which specialize in the delivery of non-entertainment audio projects often draw a creative boundary between the composition and production departments.

The fact is, a music house is a post-production facility. Composers score tracks, and producers bridge the gap between project management and sales.

In fact, many 'music' producers in this environment are recruited from advertising agencies or other post houses, and their primary advantage to the music house is not their ability to produce a track, but to produce clients! Indeed, Executive Producers in post are generally leading sales efforts, not managing projects.

Obviously, you'll note how vivid the contrast in comparison to the entertainment model, whereby producers are artists themselves and often expected to be collaborators –an additional member of the band, per se.

As I worked up the ladder @ Elias, it was not simply my intention to develop a career as a project manager, or as someone who could 'run a creative company', but as someone who was also a creative resource. One key advantage I had, which was then unique to the company, was my youth spent growing up overseas, in the Caribbean, South America, Europe and the Mid East.

As it turned out, I had a very open ear, and as a result I was very good at discovering and directing talent, especially in the genre of what Americans then called 'world music'.

I also discovered in very short order that my 'casting' choices could influence the creative direction of a given track with great effect. It also helped that I enjoyed the casting process. Just like an A&R scout @ a record label, I recruited talent right out of clubs and bars. But I also found singers and musicians busking away in subway terminals and on sidewalks. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that in New York City, many curbside artists are conservatory trained virtuosos –and they arrive from all over the world.

Additionally, I never walked out of an ethnic restaurant that featured a live musical performance without taking every musician’s phone number. Need an Urdu player? I know a guy. I took a lot of pride introducing our composers to authentic players of every variety. When the Tourism Boards of Mexico and The Bahamas each required native talent to perform on their respective campaigns, which we we were commissioned to compose, I was the go-to global guy who connected with embassies and delivered.

I'm particularly proud of introducing our composers to the talents of musicians they may have already worked with about but hadn't fully exploited or explored, because they had never really talked to a specific musician or singer about what they 'really' did. Chris Botti was just another trumpet player in the rolodex until I found out –simply by asking what he did otherwise– that he toured with Sting and Paul Simon and therefore had an ear for improvising around almost any style of music. In short order, he moved from a horn player to our first call on anything we considered esoteric.

I have many stories like this. It's easy to put someone in a niche. But talk to them for a few minutes and a world opens up.

I've learned that the best talent doesn't always arrive on a demo tape with an accompanying electronic press kit. The best talent you discovered –in person– because you went out one day believing everyone has a  unique gift, and if you look for magic, you’ll find it.

Today, loops –short repeatable audio snippets– are frequently used in the construction of music. As early as 1991 Elias had a huge library of loops and samples. I myself had been working with loop based composition since 1985, the result of my youthful fascination with the Brian Eno and David Byrne collaboration, ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’. Nevertheless, I always fought hard for using live players and ‘rolling our own’ samples. Even one solo violinist, for instance, over dubbed on an otherwise sampled string section will communicate just enough fractal audio information to fool most human beings into thinking everything they're hearing is 'live'.

Yes, it's cheaper to do it all yourself and not work in the moment with live musicians. And that’s certainly the trend, but we lose something when we stop working together. Of course, maybe the next generation won’t miss it after it’s gone because they’ll never had the experience to compare it to in the first place.

But if you manage your budget properly, why fake push button to trigger a loop when you can have a famous Brazilian percussionist in your room laying down tracks with a world-renown fretless bass player from Kenya.

Real musicians and singers are also talents in themselves that can add magic to a track. Ask yourself, who would sound cool on that this? Sometimes the answer I can up with was a single member of the New York Philharmonic. I loved calling in David Bowie’s guitarist at the time, Eric Schermerhorn. A lot of guitarists can shred, but few have the fluid cinematic sense that Eric does. You see, it’s not what guitar will add, it’s what Eric will add. Big difference.

Among my few contributions to the company, one of my proudest is simply creating the database of hundreds of uniquely gifted musicians and singers with global talents, some of which were not even ‘professional session players’ until I heard them busking and recommended them to our composers.

Simply consider why a music producer would feel any pride for a track he or she did not compose. Maybe because he or she suggested something or someone to a composer or sound designer, and they acted on it,  resulting in an end product that evolved into more engaging experience than either of you could have imagined before.

And in that way, I’m convinced, we all win: clients, creatives, colleagues, culture, the work.

How to Build a Creative Team

With Jonathan Elias heading out west, and myself having made the transition from arts and office administrator to music producer, Scott Elias commissioned Alexander Lasarenko, our talented Creative Director, and myself to keep New York’s three studios operational. Our mission was two fold: staff up the studios with new talent and get work. In fact, we were told we had a year to demonstrate Billings that merited keeping the doors open, or we’d both be out of our jobs. 

It was scary and but I was also excited. And Alex and I shared a common desire to create an altogether different culture than the one that preceded us, and I think we both jumped at the opportunity to put our own personal stamps on what was already a legacy company. I certainly loved the organization to such an extent that I conducted myself as though I owned it, and at least a couple of clients, it turned out, haha, seemed to think I did. But I think anytime you find a really successful company, you’ll find its employees all feel personally vested in its success. 

By 1993 or 1994, however, after a series of departures,  the composition staff had dwindled down to two ‘night guys’. One was Fritz Doddy, a musical chameleon who came highly recommended by Doug Hall, but whose demo had nevertheless languished in a shoe box before I heard it and then spent the next six months championing his talent to my superiors. 'How long will it take before you hire this guy?' I wondered. But then, in my own case, I had first approached the company 4 years before they hired me, and then they only hired me after a solid campaign where I called the company every single day for six months.

Fritz himself had also already made several overtures to the creative department, but there were so many exceptional talents besides him that were also beating down our doors that anyone who was eventually hired there really required someone inside to evangelize their talents on their behalf. For me, it was Audrey Arbeeny, Hugh Barton, Sherman Foote, and Ray Foote who eventually brought me in.

In addition to Fritz Doddy, the other senior composer was even newer hire named Alton Brammer Delano. Alton was an inspirational and eclectic ahead-of-his-time composer–cum–sound designer that had come to Ray's attention by scoring the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and then despite his obvious upward trajectory, still agreed to start out as a studio assistant simply in order to get his foot in the door. That's how desirable a staff composer job at Elias was in those days (and may still be). 

A year later, Alton Delano and Fritz Doddy had formed a powerful musical partnership, combining two trends at the time, grunge rock and liturgical loops, and which Alex then synched to found footage of dolphins in the wild, of all things, and to such great effect, that it actually earned us several projects.

Another important part of the new configuration was Michael Sweet, who not only being one of Jonathan’s engineers was also an early creative technologist. And after Jonathan’s departure for LA, Michael’s role shifted to a lead interactive audio role, which put him in the position of an audio pioneer in those days.

To our core team we added a very effective sales rep, Debbie Maniscalco, with whom I collaborated on closing an astounding amount of sales over the next two years. In the music production community, a sales rep solicits projects from advertising agencies and film directors. The job requires the combined skill set of a socialite and a Soviet era Super Spy. That is, combined talents for people and analytics. Debbie was incredibly resourceful in this regard. Together we formed one of the most satisfying business partnerships of my career.

With the studio’s namesake, Jonathan Elias, now operating out of Los Angeles, however, the New York office required some kind of draw to separate us from our competitors, which now, ironically, included our own west coast office. So, Alex commissioned me with identifying promising young talent that we might develop into the new music stars of the advertising community. Who or what this talent should be, and how these talents would fit within the organization was not yet determined. So, apart from learning how to produce projects, I also had to learn how to manage a production company; promote its services; and recruit creative professionals, or young people who could develop into them.

Alex and I never sat down and made a plan; we simply trusted the other in the responsibilities assigned to them. And as team building goes, I actually did have a few specific ideas about how I wanted to accomplish this task.

The model I inherited from my predecessors was built on staffing each studio with a Synclavier Operator, essentially an electronic musician who works a recording studio in an equivalent way that many composers today construct music entirely by themselves using a laptop and sample libraries. It may be a successful model, but I had also observed that individual composers working separately often felt pitted against each other in competition for every project that came through the studio’s doors.

And I also noticed how composers sometimes took an adversarial stance with clients over small creative points; the idea as it was explained to me was that clients don't always know what they want, so you have to fight for great music. Unfortunately, some clients did not appreciate losing fights to the people they had hired.

So how might we change the model in a way that benefited our culture, our composers, and our clients?

Long before I heard the phrase 'strategic relationships', it was obvious to me that an ensemble of contrasting skill sets groomed to embrace collaborative partnerships –not competitors– would yield the maximum benefit to both the company and its many creative endeavors.

I'm sure I gained this ensemble mentality from my training as dancer. (I received a BFA in dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts). A dance company is, after all, a team of individual performing artists working together to present a simultaneously singular and collaborative work of art.

And if one looked at the entire production of a TV commercial, from storyboard to shoot to edit, score and finish –one easily saw it as a work of art executed by a team. So, within that, why couldn't the audio development process work the same way?

Consider the way a band or orchestra work together. In a band, ideally, each member simultaneously contains uniquely contrasting and complimentary gifts. That's how it should work, I thought. In a symphony, the french horns play with the violins; they aren't allowed to play whatever they want –which is the way our music company seemed to work, with individual craftsmen following their own muse quite apart from what anyone else was doing.

In short, I envisioned a team of collaborating composers, each with a distinct and different musical or technical ability.

I placed pre-Internet ads in the New York Times and The Village Voice and received about 300 resumes. I met about 30 candidates and culled those by half, introducing the most promising artists to Alex, Fritz and Alton. We hired several young people who appealed to the consensus. Among them: Matt Fletcher, a technologist who came to us from NYU’s music department; Kerry Smith, a rock guitar player who had been paying his bills by working at Kinko’s; Todd Schietroma, a conservatory trained master percussionist from Texas; GianCarlo Libertino, a classical guitarist who would go on win a small amount of fame whistling the theme for Comedy Central; and Mario Piazza, an engineer/composer whom I recruited from New York's legendary Hit Factory.

Add to this in leadership roles, Fritz Doddy's immense skills as a multi-instrumentalist, Alton Delano's uniquely impressionistic approach to music and sound design, and Alex Lasarenko's mastery of traditional symphonic scoring, and there wasn't much now that we couldn't collectively accomplish in house, especially if we all worked together towards a common goal.

There were several others –many others, actually– who also came along for the ride, if only briefly. (In the end, I was one of those, too, who hopped on and off the machine.) Whether they left for other careers or studios, had girlfriends or boyfriends on the west coast, or had family obligations, or were let go for one reason or another, there are still some whose contributions continue to inspire me and my own creative work. To mention just three, there were several young women –Jennifer McGee, Erika Horsey and Lane Lenhart– who were all hired as studio assistants, and who were all so particularly talented, that it would not surprise me to see any if their names surface on the national stage sometime in the future.

All in all, I sought recruits who not only possessed a distinct talent for composition, but who also demonstrated themselves as gifted musicians with little or no overlap in skill sets. This forced collaboration, and that was an important factor in creating a vibrant organizational culture in a creative industry. Further, I not only selected contrasting skill sets, but contrasting personalities, -we weren’t just hiring staffers, we were hiring talent to groom into industry stars and musical brands. Once hired, I thereafter impressed upon each the importance that every member contribute to each others' projects. My idea was to transform the culture of internal competition into a team effort striving for exceptionally high standard of creative excellence. I felt most proud, not necessarily when we won a new client, but when walking past the studios I noticed the composers working together in each others rooms.

Competition with one's external competitors, or even between divisions in one large company, may be productive, but in a boutique artistic climate, I think internal collaboration yields greater rewards for all, and improves both morale and the bottom line. Indeed, I think the best way to consider this formula is to insure internal collaborations are so efficient that they win external competitions.

To this end, I also attempted to create an environment where creatives did not feel like the necessity to keep 'trade secrets' from one another. Naturally, I didn't do it alone; Alex, Alton and Fritz all wanted to achieve the same ends. But Elias had long been a top down highly political organization, and it was difficult to initiate change from the creative side, especially since the composers were all essentially new employees. So, it really fell to production to challenge legacy processes and I did my best.

Each new composer/musician was expected to share their craft with the others. Their personal reward for contributing to an open work environment would be the knowledge returned to them when they learn something from his or her colleagues' own specialties. For instance a classically trained artist would learn studio processes and mixing techniques from someone more electronically inclined, than if they forged ahead in isolation (as I did on my own journey). Conversely, the technologists in the lot would find themselves improving their musicianship by working with traditional musicians.

Happily, this new paradigm for the company also proved an advantageous defense against the ongoing recession. Now, instead of hiring session musicians to simply bring to life synthesized tracks produced by engineers and electronic musicians, our new musically diverse staff, while professionally inexperienced, nevertheless possessed the talent (and enthusiasm) to enhance each other's compositions –from concept to console– and all in-house, thereby cutting production costs and talent expenditures significantly.

In fact, at the same time I was building a creative team, my boss, Scott Elias, had also commissioned me to cut production costs by 20%,  and I actually accomplished that by simply by hiring people who would work together!

So, how do you build a creative team? My answer circa 1993 - 1994 was to recruit the most talented people I could identify, and to insure that their talents aside, that they were also well liked by at least three other colleagues in the organization; and who relative to one another simultaneously represented Contrasting and Complimentary skill sets. And then, after they were hired, I worked very hard to cultivate in them a desire for working together in an open, collaborative environment, to convey the idea that this had always been the case in this organization, and to protect them from any influence that suggested otherwise. -that while the tracks may be in competition with each other, the people were not.

It was a great big experiment, actually, but it succeeded, and in the end, that team of music and sound design talents turned out to be one of the longest running, highest earning and cohesive creative teams in the history of the company.

Electro Art Jams with Philharmonic Strings

When I finally assumed something approximating a degree of professional and technical studio competence I began to collaborate on a number of sonic art projects with both Chris Fosdick and Michael Sweet (both of them assistants and engineers to record producer and film composer, Jonathan Elias).

For a song I wrote, called ‘Return to Zero’, I asked Michael to record me singing from Studio A where I was making a phone call back studio B, where the mix was running. I always loved the thin sound of trebly mono. Must have something to do with growing up with Panasonic cassette decks. Sure, you could dispense with the phone system and simply EQ a normal vocal take that way, but would it be half as fun as routing a call across the county before it cycled back to you to catch on Analog tape? No.

Experimenting with inventive recording techniques taught me a lot about practical hands-on music production. And it was on these personal musical projects that I tried and tested out techniques, singers, and new musical talent before introducing them or the Creative Director or to the compositional staff, which I might do by way of a recommendation for a commercial job. 

How did this sound in practice? I once walked into a room full of clients and creatives wracking their minds how to fill a few seconds of black with audio, and nothing was working. But, “Hey, I was recording 24 Buddhist monks chanting last night, and it was kind of cool. Why don’t we try that!” Cut to award winning TV commercial on air 3 weeks later featuring 24 monks (1 singer, 23 overdubs) voicing ‘OM’.

In the process, I became acquainted with the talents of –and made friends with– many of the session musicians and singers that I would work with throughout the rest of my career. Valerie Wilson Morris of Val's Artist Management and Sandra Park Tremante who played violin at the New York Philharmonic were early supporters, and they also gave me good career advice along the way, too.

So, although the experimental songs and sonic landscapes I created over many long nights never evolved beyond demos, they did much to increase my technical ability and inform my aesthetic approach. Today when I listen to those recordings I feel the same thrill now I did then, when I stood next to amazing musicians and colleagues lending their talents to my work in order to help me grow and and get better at my craft. 

To name a few: Doug Hall’s Hammond B-3 and Fritz Doddy’s funky bass kicking off ‘Outer Space’; Alexander Lasarenko’s ambient piano intro at the top of ‘Never Going Back To Earth’, and his lush harmonies throughout ‘The Strangest Boy’; Sandy Park’s psycho pizzicato and Valerie’s ethereal vocals floating just under the stoic sentiment of ‘Return to Zero’. Chip Jenkins, Chris Fosdick, Eric Schermerhorn, Kerry Smith, Ben Sher and Alton Delano all provided amazing guitar work throughout my entire repertoire.

I had a real penchant for space age themes back then, but the music was also always flavored with the terrestrial world rhythms that had served as the soundtrack to my childhood spent overseas.

While Brian Eno may be a human touchstone for many electronic musicians today, Jonathan Elias’ pop aesthetics were skewed somewhere between Peter Gabriel and Trevor Horn, which were closer to my own sensibilities, as well.

In retrospect, I think Elias attracted people who shared a similar taste, that is, drawn to global and technological hybrids, of which I was certainly one by virtue of my penchant for using computers to mix tribal percussion with pop harmonies –and that was probably one reason that our mutual composition professor (Joel Chadabe) sent me knocking on Jonathan's door in the first place.

While the world of polished music production for broadcast may not have been quite in sync with the American grunge zeitgeist of the time, those years at Elias Arts proved to be a great personal opportunity to seek out and work with global trend setters in music from Brazil and Kenya to China and the Caribbean, and certainly more interesting than, you know, well, just about everything.


I saw myself in motion pictures
Standing in the melting snow
If you believe in hallucinations
I'll give you some place to go

Return to, return to zero
I don't know, I don't know
If I can... 


Y'know, I'm just one man...

Return to Zero
(C)1994 by Terry O'Gara

Studio Rats in Chelsea

Elias Associates was the original name of the commercial music business later known as Elias Arts and Elias Music. But when I worked there, first as an intern, and subsequently as the head of production, the studios theoretically could be rented out under the auspices of 'Vision Arts' studios. In practice, though, Associates was so busy that they rarely were available, and then only to special customers, such as John Barry who dropped by on occasion to record the occasional film cue with Jonathan. 

In the early days I cared more about access than money, so when I was offered a full time job the summer of 1992 –after my graduation from NYU– for 13K a year, instead of asking for a bigger paycheck I had the gumption to ask for a copy of the keys to the studio. I think management quite liked the idea that I was willing to spend 24 hours/7 Days a week at the studio, because they fulfilled my request with so much as batting an eye. After that, most weeknights I’d go home after work, take a short nap, and then return @ 2 or 3AM in the morning. On a normal night, when I walked in, Jonathan Elias would usually be wrapping up a record session with Mercury Recording Artists, Dito Montiel and Gutterboy; Ian Lloyd, Bemshi, Robert Downey Jr. or any one of his 'Super Model' projects. 

In those days the studio was teaming with beautiful girls who wanted to get a record deal, or just hang out with ‘music guys’. Not that any one paid attention to me, and I liked it that way, because I was still learning how to operate studio hardware, and considered the circus around me a distraction.

Either way, when the studios finally emptied out, I settled into Studio B, and learned how to be a capable studio rat by trying to solve musical problems with technical solutions. Occasionally, Chris Fosdick or Michael Sweet would drop in on their way out and help me figure out why the damn Synclavier was not coming up on the mixing board. Billy Mallery would often arrive the next day at 8AM only to find me still trying to figure out how to patch a tone through a channel, or how to lay SMPTE to tape. I would be tearing my hair out; he would press a single small button or patch a cable and that would be it. Live and learn, and I lived like that for years, much to the detriment of my social life, which pretty much became nonexistent –along with my personality, no doubt. But it was tremendous fun; and living with one hand on an SSL and one on a Synclavier, -it’s what I wanted for myself at the time.

There are Stars in Those Demos

Elias Arts received hundreds of demos every year –by mail and messenger. When I first started the demos were audio cassettes. Later they were DATS. By the time I left no one was using cassettes anymore and everything arrived in CD form or VHS. Engineers who wanted a job in the studios sent some of the demos in. Session musicians, singers and aspiring composers sent in the rest. 

Early on, Exec Producer Ray Foote had identified in me a discerning ear for talent; and so it was my task to review each new box of unsolicited material. At first I was honored that my bosses thought me competent enough, even discriminating enough, to sift through this catalog of work, never mind allow me to make recommendations on it. However, no sooner had I begun the task then I had the sick and sudden realization that very probably –at record labels worldwide– the fates of thousands of talented musicians and bands were in the hands of a few inexperienced gnats like myself. That said, I really loved listening to demos, so much so that rather than hand the task over to interns and assistants that followed me, I held on to that responsibility until I left the company several years later (having by then risen through the ranks to Senior Producer). 

I still love discovering a new talent. The combined responsibility of production duty and talent scout wasn't much unlike an Artists & Repertoire role (A&R) at a record company. But finding talent for a music house is perhaps a little different than its entertainment counterpart because one's selections always had to possess true musical talent . Sorry, if that offends anyone, but the truth is, people become music stars for all sorts of reasons, some of them not having to do with musical talent. Since we weren't in the business of trying to get clients to work with us because we were beautiful or had great dance moves, the only thing left, was to be the best in the world at providing musical solutions to creative problems, and capable of executing their successful resolution. 

A producer can’t always claim a writing credit, but there is nevertheless some personal reward in recommending a singer, a musician, an engineer, sampled sounds, adding to an arrangement, or contributing any other component that sells a track and sends the client back to the agency with an enthusiastic smile. Of course, sometimes one's contributions are compositional in nature, but that's not often the case, and it wasn't the primary focus of my job, which when I defined as inspiring other people to do their best. 

At any rate, on the very first day of reviewing demos, I listened to maybe thirty or forty cassettes in all. There was one that Doug Hall, another one of our composers had brought in, of his friend, Fritz Doody. And it struck me as above and beyond all the others. I couldn’t believe it still just sat in this box with all the rest, and so I repeatedly lobbied Ray and Alex to have a listen. And six months after that Jonathan Elias hired Fritz, a Hungarian American Rocker from New Jersey who had the Prince-like capacity to play nearly any instrument he picked up. 

I wasn't yet high enough up the ladder to command 'signing power', but thereafter anytime we needed to find a specialized, world class talent, Ray entrusted me with the job of locating and securing the right person for a specific job. It's always fun to identify someone with an amazing gift that perhaps the whole world has overlooked. 

As for Fritz, we soon learned he had a great ear. Long before the advent of Auto-Tune he was a master of 'fixing' singers. I remember how he'd roll an entire vocal performance off 2” tape; dice it apart into individual words and syllables; then sample each phoneme into a Synclavier and re-pitch them –one by one– up or down with a pitch wheel. Then he'd sew the newly tuned performance back together again; and –presto! (hours and hours later)– he lay a perfect vocal back to tape. No doubt, that's as close to handmade as recording gets, and it's not easy work. But Fritz's results were so seamless that upon playback it made some people who really had no business singing, think that they were in fact great singers. Later, Fritz would go on to win a CLIO for scoring a ‘Got Milk’ TV commercial famous at the time for featuring the Trix cereal Rabbit.

RIP Vicki Sue Robinson

God bless Vicki Sue Robinson, who died on this day, April 27, 2000.

The world knew Vicki as the singer who demanded that the DJ turn the beat around. I was one of those fortunate to to know her. We became acquainted with each other while working on a variety of studio projects through the nineties. She lifted my spirits; made me laugh; made me sing and made me dance.

And her memory will always make me smile.

Thank you Vicki!

Assembling the Machine Head Dream Team

I spent nearly two jet set years operating as the Executive Producer and Creative Director of Machine Head, New York – and was charged with leading bicoastal operations for the legendary sound designer, Stephen Dewey.

I spent a week of nearly every month in LA, which I loved, enjoying creative work, tacos, daiquiris and KCRW with both Stephen and Patty Chow, both of whom I really liked. The trips out west also provided me some some surreal professional moments whereby I found myself taking meetings with The Dust Brothers and Anton Fier of The Golden Palominos; or producing the likes of Ralph Schuckett.–who co-produced Sophie B. Hawkins hit ‘Damn I wish I Was Your Lover’ with Rick Chertoff; and David Baerwald, an original member of the Tuesday Night Music Club. But here’s the deal with producing guys like that: They don’t need another expert in their lives; what they require is another expert ear to bounce ideas off of. If there's anything I know, it's how music should work with picture.

Machine Head hired me to extend the west coast presence to New York, but once he did so I wanted to kick down the doors, storm the Big Apple, and show him we could be also be kings.

Back in New York, I assembled a crack team of young composers, each possessing an amazing core competency in a different arena from the others, a formula that lent itself to collaboration; and none of them yet possessed a wide reputation in the industry.

[Initiate 'Mission Impossible' Theme in a new window before proceeding–]

Deniz Hughes had worked as an arranger for the feature film composer, Elliot Goldenthal. Her own music was playful, passionate and always wonderfully emotive. The first project we worked on together went straight to the Super Bowl and proved to be the highlight of the year.

Michael Sweet, a graduate of Berklee’s film composition department, started his career as an engineer for Jonathan Elias before emerging as the company’s technology guru. He left Elias at roughly the same time I did, in 1996, in order to become a free agent and did business composing music for electronic games as ‘Building Hal’.

Valerie Wilson Morris and Chris Botti recommended Georg Brandl Egloff to me, some years before, when I mentioned that I was looking for a lyricist. I’ve long forgotten what happened to the lyric project, but Georg’s music was super-contagious. Few swing like Egloff: Stick him in a room with a jazz trio and wait for the roof to blow off. I still owe Clinton Recording Studios damages to the ceiling in studio A.

My go-to rock guys were Eric Schermerhorn and Hal Cragin, whom I hired as a team on several spots. Representing two thirds of Iggy Pop’s former rhythm section, there was nothing the three of us couldn’t work out, lugging equipment, tape, guitars and chord charts all over New York and from disparate home grown analog studios in the East Village and Chelsea.

I hired other people along the way, too, for specific projects –notably Shari Feder, who always delivered world class goods, on time, on budget, and her work always sounded ready for broadcast. She came recommended by Mike Davis, who is perhaps most know for playing bone with The Rolling Stones. What I didn’t know at the time was that Mike and Shari are husband and wife. Whatever, the nepotism worked out great, so keep it coming. You got any kids, Mike? Do they play an instrument yet? Cause I got a project that needs a kid…

Rounding out the East Coast contingent was Bill Chesley, an artisan and a meticulous sound designer who was the only one of the bunch who had already carved out a reputation and had a fan base.

We made a big initial impression on several major advertising agencies, and thereafter it seemed like The Gods on Madison Avenue constantly fed us projects. For the first time in my career it seemed like I consistently had my finger exactly placed on the pulse of popular taste.

I usually pitched musical ideas by myself based on an initial review of sketches or storyboards. If I could get our clients invested in an idea, then I knew we’d have an easier time of it, if only because then everyone would be on the same page.

Then, during development I’d work with each individual composer on their presentation –as a record producer works with an artist– until I was no less than greatly enthusiastic about his or her work. Sell it to me and I'll sell it to America. Some clients thought I was being disingenuous when they asked me, which was my favorite demo, and I’d reply that I liked ‘All of them’.

But it was true: I never let myself walk into a meeting without a pocket full of hit tracks. I really believed that if I loved the work I was presenting, all of America would have to love it, too. Fortunately for me, this belief was confirmed by our frequent success.

Yes, I suffered a few miserable failures, too. One client asked for a ‘modern’, ‘edgy’ track making it perfectly clear that the agency would not accept an orchestral score. In my gut I knew the boards demanded a symphonic tonality. Nevertheless I gave him what he thought he wanted. He took the job to another house who of course delivered the orchestral track that I knew we should have given him in the first place. I still beat myself up over that one, but you live and learn: Give them what they want, but also give them what they need, and while you’re at it –and if you have the time– why not have some fun and give them what you want, too.

For a brief while in 1997 though 1998 my hand picked crew shone with the brightest of the bright, and they made me proud to be a member of their team.

It was –I think you can tell– a lot of fun while it lasted.


[Fade Music]


(Hey, was that possibly the first musical cue for a blog?)

Music Producer as a Talent Scout

As a Music Producer in the commercial arena, you may be in charge of staffing your production facility –without the benefits of a Human Resources department. In my experience, Human Resource professionals are useful staffing administration positions, but in order to fill creative positions, I had to assume the attitude of an A&R exec or talent scout, and go find what I was searching for. More often than not the best hires did not start out as a perfect match for a given position, but developed into a star performer.

You can find the people you need by simply placing ads and sifting through the responses that the ad generates. But I also went to a lot of clubs (someone has to do it); talked to a lot of university teachers; handed my card out to tons of buskers; and generally introduced myself to every musician, engineer and composer I met everywhere I went.

Here are some of the skills you need in order to scout & develop talent:

–First, you need good ears. Is this a lost art or what?
–Charm. Honestly, I don’t have a lot of this, but guess what: music is a people job. Learn to turn it on. How else will you develop and maintain relationships with artist management and talent agencies? Half your job is cultivating relationships with, and understand the individual strengths of a pool of freelance talent that includes musicians, singers, sound designers, engineers, composers, songwriters, DJs, audio producers and software programmers.
–As much as artists don't want to be to be pigeon holed, you'll need to do so to some extent in order to identify those most suited for working on any given project
–You also need to know how to solve human resource problems: You will necessarily be required to audition, hire and fire, –as much as the latter pains you.
–You must also possess a thorough understanding of the process and be a capable artist yourself, because invariably the day will come when you will need to teach someone what to do in order to accomplish an assignment.

The Silicon Chips

In the ninth grade, in Chapel Hill, circa 1979, during what has been called a Golden Age of Music In North Carolina, I started a band called The Silicon Chips. The Chips were a middle school punk band, whose name was a direct homage to The Boomtown Rats single, 'I Don't Like Mondays'. There were punk rock bands in North Carolina before the Chips, notably The Psuedes (which featured Sara Romweber), The Secret Service, Th' Cigarettes, the X-Teens and the Durham Dots –but the age range for those bands' members were mostly college kids or older, and not many of my peers even knew who they were. In fact, there didn't seem to be any Triangle bands under the age of 18, and certainly none tapped into the emerging new wave.

It was a pre-MTV era, when the three primary flavors of American popular music were Rock, Country and Disco. Everything else was relegated to late night new music transmissions from Chapel Hill's 89.3 FM, WXYC. I no sooner admitted my fascination with David Bowie one day at school than to instantly learn that mere admission to being a fan of any European act, especially a gender bending drag queen, charted me somewhere off-center a graph measuring normalcy. But it was into this venue that the Silicon Chips were born, and to other newly minted Triangle teen agers, we must have seemed downright bent combining rockabilly with European flavored, sexually ambiguous rock'n'roll.

The Silicon Chips were, in fact, an international band.

My songwriting partner and our deft lead guitarist Tony Scott,  was an American, as was our pseudonymous drummer, Zeke, and our pianist, Kevin. But our bassist, Lars Mage, was Danish, and our rhythm guitarist was a German kid named Klauss. I was myself fresh from two years in Mallorca, and a childhood in Puerto Rico before that. Needless to say, being out of the loop, I didn't quite understand yet that American kids didn't generally like The Sex Pistols and Giorgio Moroder, much less both at the same time. So, like refugees in small town, somehow we found each other, and together we formed a rockabilly flavored, Euro tinged, Socially conscious, New York Dolled up Jr. Highschool punk rock band. Not only were we determined to challenge small town American pubescents with our idea of Avante-garde music, but I was absolutely certain we were The Next Big Thing.

To that effort, The Silicon Chips performed our one and only show  at the 1980 Guy B. Phillips talent show, lighting up the beginning of each act with one original song: 'Ann', and 'Radio Men' (Scott/O'Gara).

'Ann' was written about (and for) three different girls actually –all of them named 'Ann'–and none of which I had the courage to speak to, but any one of which I thought would have made the perfect girlfriend. Hello, ladies, available rock star here, for the taking. Only thirteen; get me before the rehab and groupies show up. Didn't happen, though.

She's into being flexible
Keeps her freedom
It's tedious ecstacy
But it feels good

Oooh Ann–

Other performers that evening included two amazing drummers that would both go on to have notable careers: Rob Ladd and Martin Levi. In high school Rob would become a founding member of The Pressure Boys and then after that, go on to  play on Alanis Morissette's international hit album, Jagged Little Pill.  Marvin Levi became drummer for the way-ahead-of-their time band, The Veldt.

Anyway, after that gig, that was it. I would like to say that if you saw the Behind the Music documentary, you would already know by now that between the excesses of hedonism, failed relationships, band tensions, internal litigation and Tony constantly bringing his design school girlfriend to rehearsal, that we finally just decided to split our millions and call it quits. But of course it didn't happen that way.

Tony's parents, who were college professors, simply re-located to where, I never found out. One day he was there, and the next he was gone, like Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix.

Kevin, also, left town, returning to Wisconsin.

Didn't either of their parents understand what they had on their hands? Apparently not.

So, like every legendary band, we lived fast and died young –with out the speed or death part, of course.

For about ten years thereafter, all through the eighties, the Chips recordings increasingly sounded dated to me. But then punk came back repackaged as Seattle Grunge and when it did, it went wildly mainstream. And all of a sudden the Chips, too, sounded positively contemporary. In fact, I pretty much convinced myself that Nirvana stole our thunder.

In my head, I still have conversations that run like this:

"Dude, U2 is cool, but I wish you could have seen the Chips live."
"It's amazing how their music influenced just about everyone. It's like even the name of the band was prescient. Are any of the band members still alive?" 
"Well, just a rumor, but I read in Rolling Stone that O'Gara is living the Irie life in a shack in Jamaica, and Tony Scott writes movie reviews under another name for some Indy press."

Without a band to front, or another collaborator with whom I shared such artistically combustible chemistry, I bought a MiniMoog and began my high school reinvention as a solo electronic music artist. Indeed, when Tony left town forced me to stop thinking myself as only a lyricist and to get my own musical chops in order. While contemporaries like Dexter Romweber appeared as Flat Duo Jets and Michael Rank's ragged-around-the-edges Snatches of Pink came on the scene, I called myself Teri O. and performed with a microcomputer and a Radio Shack TRS-80. I think Teri O. probably sounded a lot like Brian Ferry by way of Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill.

In 1985 I also left Chapel Hill, finally landing in New York City, where I ended up producing music for TV commercials, radio and newly emerging interactive media.

This Silicon Chips had long fizzled but Mommy's little rocker had finally grown up and figured out how to fit into America.