Michael Fremer

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.

Buying stereo records issued by obscure labels during the 1960s was always a challenge. First of all, you had tofind them. Most of the local stores in my area only carried mono for “the kids,” so that meant a trip to The Green Acres Shopping Center in Valley Stream, Long Island to hit Sam Goody’s where there was a small but useful “stereo” section where you could find rock.

Sadly, during the early '60s Muddy Waters and other Chicago blues masters were better known to white English youth than to their American counterparts. Mick and Keith weren't alone in their fandom. Search YouTube and you'll find an amazing Howlin' Wolf performance before an adoring audience of well-scrubbed English white kids that was probably never repeated in America where blues was dubbed "race music" and relegated  to the ghettos.