Interviews

M.F.: I remember when we were working on "Tron" we were in London in the Royal Albert Hall, we had about 108 pieces waiting, and the guy's sitting up at the organ waiting, while a fight broke out between Wendy Carlos and her associate on one side, and a guy named John Mosley who we'd hired to supervise the recording sessions. And there was a copy of the score being pulled back and forth till it just about ripped in half, so that was a swell time.

S.M.:All about how it was gonna be done?

M.F.:How it was gonna be miked, and.....

S.M.:Yeah, you see that's not the time to have the discussion.

Back in December of 1986, I flew to Denver, Colorado to interview the great recording engineer Bill Porter. Part II of that interview has already been published on musicangle.com.divided into multiple parts If you search Porter’s name you’ll find it. Why was part II published before part I? Don't ask! As promised, here’s part I of part I— MF

Note: The intro that follows was written in 1986

Face it: Too many of today’s popular music recordings are garbage. I just slipped Bryan Adams’s new album Into The Fire on the Oracle. It’s a Bob Clearmountain co-production (with Bryan Adams). Although he’s responsible for popularizing the Yamaha NS 10M as a nearfield studio monitor (thereby earning him a place in my Hi-fi Villains’ Hall of Shame [along with Dr. Amar Bose]), Clearmountain also co-engineered (along with Rhett Davies) and mixed Roxy Music’s Avalon, a musical classic and one of the finest recordings in the modern rock ear. So I was hopeful.

Freedom is 73 minutes of prime 21st century Journey, whether it’s the affecting balladry that made the band a household name or the more adventurous, progressive-leaning epics that hearken back to the band’s early/mid-’70s roots. Founding guitarist Neal Schon speaks exclusively to AnalogPlanet about the challenges of sequencing Freedom for double vinyl, how listening to jazz and blues records growing up influenced his playing and arranging skills, and what vintage deep cut he’d like to pull out of the vaults to play during Journey’s upcoming 50th anniversary celebrations. Don’t stop readin’ . . .

All I want for Christmas is . . . more vinyl. Just ask Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken, who got his first real taste for wax during Christmas as a wee lad, when he received a literal cavalcade of 45s under the tree. In the spirit of the season, Smithereens vinyl fans can rejoice with the news that the four-man New Jersey-bred band’s October 2007 holiday-themed album Christmas With The Smithereens is out now in limited-edition 140g 1LP form, courtesy of Sunset Blvd. Records. Diken got on Zoom with AP editor Mike Mettler recently to discuss all those special 45s he got for Christmas back in 1962, the fine art of album sequencing, and why having Smithereens music on vinyl remains vitally important to the band’s legacy. . .