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'.
Advertisement for then state-of-art microcomputer based Computer Music Instrument, The New England Digital Synclavier II – From the back pages of the Computer Music Journal, Volume 7, No. 1, Spring 1983.
In November of 2008 we had chosen a name for our fledgling audio company, settling at last on Blister Media, a nod to the Silicon Alley clients we were hoping to align ourselves with, and as a way of distinguishing ourselves from our competitors who were still modeled on a traditional music house paradigm.
Our first choice, however, was not Blister Media, but all our first picks were already used by other companies in the music and entertainment space.
Among thee our favored choices were:
Process
Gray People
Floating World
As we ticked off ideas and discovered they were taken, it became immediately apparent that we were not always as original as we thought we were. But that fact merely offered a challenge to be increasingly more distinct in our services and identity.
After conducting yet another trademark search (7 in all), our lawyer finally reported back that Blister Media was available in our category, and so we then began concepting a tagline.
Here's a list of selected possibilities:
Blister Tag Line Concepting
Applied Audio
Audio Artisans
Audio Artistry
Audio Branding
Biology. Psychology. Technology.
Broadcast Music Production
Custom Music and Sound design
Hot Music + Cool Sound Design = Blistering Media
Human Audio Stimulus
Interactive Audio + Broadcast Music Production
Music + Brains. A New Approach.
Music.Noise.Code.
Provoke Your Senses
React to This
Saving the World with Sound
Slammin’ Audio
Smashing Audio
Sonic Arts
Sonic Branding
Sonic Identity
Stimulate your Senses.
Strategic Thinking for Sound
The Science of Sound
Working Towards a Better Sounding Planet
Your ears are hungry. Feed them music.
Yeah, not all of them were great, obviously. In fact, most of them are awful.
'Hot Music + Cool Sound Design'?
Ugh, I'm embarrassed to admit that actually came out of my brain. but that's why you peel off a hundred of these things before choosing one you'll live with, and which perfectly captures the message you want to convey about yourself to your customers.
In the end, we presented ourselves to the world as:
Blister Media
Music..> Noise..> Code..>
And thereby established ourselves, I'm proud to say, as the first audio production company that offered music, sound design and audio specific programming.
If I recall correctly, after a year interning I began my professional career ten years ago today. My first job was making folder tabs for the production department. I had already been interning for the company for a year. They brought me on as a Production Assistant at 13K a year. That meant I worked 80 hour weeks and did everything from make dubs (cassettes, DATs, 1/4") to answering phones. I loved it.
In the last decade I have worked with hundreds of musicians and singers, and with a number of extremely talented composers and sound designers. I tried to keep a running list of the projects I worked on, but the first two or three years are basically lost to me –It's all just one big spot. By the time I gained some seniority I had my act together and started to keep closer tab on the many projects that I worked on by keeping a professional journal, something I recommend to just about everyone.
Still, over the years I was commissioned to produce what now seems like innumerable sessions. I'm sure I produced nearly every style of music known to man: Rock, Jazz, Techno –and every little sub genre or trend buried within. Even World Music, from all over the world: Bulgaria, Africa, India, France, Scotland, Mexico –you name it, and often using musicians indigenous to those countries.
I always liked giving a chart to a jazz trio or quartet and hearing what they could kick out.
I always loved a big orchestral session.
And how I loved Gospel sessions –Heaven on earth, burn it to a hard drive.
And I always loved every chance we had to mix it all up.
Friends, I hope we all have a chance to cross paths again when we can enjoy the playback of all those magical performances. I lived for those moments.
I worked 361 days of the preceding twelve months before I resigned from the commercial music, sound and audio identity firm Elias Associates, now named Elias Music.
For the previous two years my typical workday started at 8AM and ended between 10PM and midnight. We were so busy and being a one man production department, it was simply the only way I could singularly produce both day and night shifts. Before that, I spent three years taking a nap at 8pm so that I could return to the studio at 2AM, to learn the technology and work on my own projects.
I had attempted to hire an assistant in the past, but after a training period of about six months, one young woman added up the hours and told me in no uncertain terms, "I don't want your job." –And then she quit!
We had four rooms in the New York office alone, three of them running two back-to-back, 12-hour shifts, resulting in at least one national spot going final every 2 or 3 days, -and one room devoted to early interactive audio projects where sound for games and theme park attractions was created.
It was, as '80's retail icon Crazy Eddie liked to say, "INSANE!"
In retrospect I was extremely lucky to make new strategic relationships and enjoy similarly inspiring working collaborations after my departure from Elias, but if I hadn’t, those few years would have made the rest worth it.
I'm especially proud of having had the opportunity to play an executive leadership role as part of a management team that essentially quadrupled revenues over a three year span, and evolved during my watch from an old economy music production house into the leading U.S. Sonic Branding and Sound Identity firm of its time.
Along the way I established Standard Operating Procedures for both New York and West Coast offices; promoted and managed collaborations with Machine Head, a west coast-based sound design company; repaired and normalized relationships with both the American Federation of Musicians and the Screen Actor's Guild unions; and I played a significant role in the a transformation of the company culture by actively and consciously recruiting new creative talent with contrasting talent and skill sets – developing a new paradigm of talent development within the company.
The result was that instead of a having a staff of composers who worked in relative competitive isolation from one another, as had been the case in the past, the company now enjoyed a sense that each project was open for collaboration.
It felt more like a band than a music house, and the diverse artistic perspectives and processes also contributed to the general development of the company's brand image as a creative solution provider, and not just a jingle factory.
Among the new team I scouted and either recommended for hire, or hired directly, were composers Fritz Doddy, Matt Fletcher, Todd Schietroma, Rich Nappi and Kerry Smith; also sales rep Debra Maniscalco, associate producer Jonathan Nanberg, studio manager Jennifer McGee, recording engineer Mario Piazza, and producer Keith Haluska.
I also developed and forged important external strategic creative relationships with many of New York's hottest upcoming young performers then bubbling up under the radar. Among these relationships, notable mentions for their contributions to our creative output must include: Trumpeter Chris Botti, guitarist Eric Schermerhorn, New York Philharmonic violinist Sandra Park, orchestrators Deniz Hughes and Tony Finno, and newly established vocal management firm, Val's Artist Management (aka VAMNATION).
I eventually found my own replacement in a young producer I had worked with a year or two before on a NEC job. Keith Haluska immediately impressed me with how much he loved music, –and the business of music– and so he struck me as a good fit for the company. He started in June '96, dovetailing my final departure by three months.
I suspect the relatively brief time I spent with Keith didn't actually make his job appreciably easier. One hopes, but you can’t wrap up an old role like a holiday package and give it to someone without part of the puzzle missing. All you can do is give them a few of the pieces, and hope they can make something out of it –their own thing. If you can accomplish that, then I think you can finally move away from the stage, back into the wings, out the back door, and into the street, where life awaits, ready to pick up where you left off, and where hopefully it has remained, waiting patiently to tease you with the next big thing.
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.
Ten years ago –in June of 1991– I began my career in audio production at Elias Associates. I started as an intern. Two school chums, Jim Nichols and Josh Kirsch –both Elias alum, but then working for JSM– had advised me to apply for an entry-level job at Elias Associates, which in those days was known to be as dog-eat-dog as it gets. If one survived the competitive culture and Investment Banker/Medical Resident hours, one was supposed to emerge a world-class audio talent.
The only other facilities I knew of that shared a similarly rigorous reputation were The Hit Factory and The Power Station (now Avatar) Naturally, I took their advice with great enthusiasm, but it still took six months pestering the receptionist to get an appointment, and a month after that to get hired.
I arrived with high recommendations from Joel Chadabe, with whom I had studied Computer Music Programming with Jim and Josh. Joel had also been a mentor to Jonathan Elias.
In fact, it was through Joel that I first heard of Jonathan, and then another prior student of his –and Elias composer– Sherman Foote.
Sherman had a real impish sense of humor about him. When I was an assistant he'd at times advocate my contributions to the Production Department or to the Creative Director, a gesture that I really welcomed and appreciated. But as an intern undergoing the usual hazing, I could never tell if he was angry at me, sometimes, or just pulling my leg. He would usually just start to laugh and let you in on the joke –right before you were about to cry.
Of course I wanted to impress him, anyway possible.
Early on, before I really knew what I was doing, I remember ‘normaling’ a console –essentially returning all the knobs and buttons on a mixing board to their zero position. Not including buttons, there are over a thousand knobs on a professional console. I left one knob at the 8’o’clock position instead of where it normally zeroed out at 7 o’clock. Sherman –with almost superhuman ability– walked in the room and immediately pointed at the one button I had missed. He quietly but sternly warned me never to leave the console in such an unusable condition again.
That’s how ‘buttoned’ up you had to be: You wanted to work with the best? Not one button in a thousand could be left out of place, not even by a degree. Good morning and where’s my coffee?
My initial duties were split between serving the needs of the Scott and Jonathan Elias; the Creative Director, Alexander Lasarenko; and the Head of Production, Ray Foote.
Additionally, I often worked with Audrey Arbeeny on ‘special projects’.
Audrey had been the first member of the organization to recommend me to the others. We sat in the conference room, her back to a wall of sunlit CLIO’s, which cast a regal glow around her. I was suitably impressed.
I showed up my first day at work wearing khaki’s, a tie and a white button down oxford shirt. I thought a professional look was required of me. Management was outfitted in solid black Japanese couture clothing or rock star ripped jeans and cowboy boots.
The first thing Jonathan Elias did when he met me was to bend over and rip a hole in my pants, from my thigh to just above my knee –while I was still wearing them! At first, I thought:
‘My God, I’ve gone to work for freaks.’
Strangely enough, though, I soon felt like I was fast becoming one of them. Whether or not the genetic mutation occurred before or after my arrival, I’ll never know, but before long my entire wardrobe was a hipster’s shade of East Village Black, and my ears –while honed before– were getting increasingly sensitive to the subtlest of background noise, hiss and awkwardly placed pitches.
I once had a teacher who delivered a summation of 20th century world history as the culmination of advances in contraceptive techniques. Depending on one’s interest, history may be described through the varying disciplines of politics, war, religion, art, or gender relations –to name but a few choices.
So setting aside the lasting effects of World War II, the subsequent cold war, the nuclear arms race, the space race, the civil rights movement, feminism, the invention of the automobile and interstate, the development of capitalism, communism, globalism, and the increasingly widespread distribution of fresh water, electricity and human rights across the globe, apparently one may dispense with all that and rather convincingly argue that the story of all human achievement may be summed within the story of The Pill.
But I only mention this in passing because this blog examines life through a different filter than one is usually accustom: It is an examination of life connected by distinctly appreciable and audible moments, though not necessarily in chronological order –We live in a non-linear age after all. For now, let us imagine the first gasp of breath to the last, and all the music in between.
I think that even those without a proclivity for music must have a deep, biological connection to sound. What else accounts for the murmur of nostalgia? –Soft but present critical noise –like whispers– though barely detectable they nonetheless endure in memory.
You were born and you cried, and would like to believe that though that cry is now many years distant, it too still exists. That, indeed, it will even out live you, that sound waves never die. That instead, they continue to spread across the universe, growing thinner, and ever fainter, ever fainter, but never ending. And that though some lives are quieter than others, I believe that –like jets– every life produces and leaves in its wake a sonic boom.
