Notes from The Mix Room Guy: Red Rocks Video

desertangel · #1 11-04-2006, 09:52 PM

This is pretty funny stuff...

http://www.bobvogt.com/high_bias/the_mix_room_guy.htm

The Mix Room Guy

In the spring/summer of 1987, Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven on Earth", was going on for a couple of months. Rick Nowles (Dan called him Dick Nose) was the jerk producer and Shelly Yakus and Marc DeSisto mixed most of it in B. Shelly was in that "don't even change your underwear" mode after having a #1 with "Luka" by Suzanne Vega. A couple of songs were mixed in the Mix Room by Steve MacMillan and I assisted. He was at that time the only Ocean Way guy who had moved from 2nd to 1st chair. A&M and Ocean Way had a pretty healthy rivalry and Steve wasn't the greatest to work with because of it.
One day we did vocals in C, and it was the worst vocal I'd ever heard. I had to go in the machine room because I got goofy and started laughing. They made vocal slaves with a stereo mix and she would sing 20 tracks, then it was comp hell. Pretty bad!

The record had some big hits, a #1 "Heaven is a Place on Earth" and a #2 "I Get Weak" in the fall/winter of '87/'88. Not many people knew about a supposed lawsuit settled out of court (big bucks) for copyright infringement between "Heaven" and Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name". Dick Nose was a Jingle producer, So go figure!!!.

This was the beginning of the A&M problem where Shelly was getting the big bucks but the Marc (The Pitbull) was actually mixing the records. He padded his time sheets to get extra dough, but when the **** goes to #1, that just ain't good enough. This problem eventually led almost all of us to quit.

Before the Belinda record, Dan Nash and Shelly had a falling out of sorts, because Dan had gotten close to the Stevie Nicks clique and Shelly felt he was losing a client. Sometime during the fall we started a project from hell in the Mix Room, "Stevie Nicks - Live at Red Rocks". It was an hour long concert video with all the close-up's reshot after the fact because Stevie was looking pretty bad.

Dan and Waddy were trying to keep the ship going straight and I played SSL guy. The time consumer was because of the new close-ups, the sync was off, so we floated the vocal around with the Lynx's (talking subframes) for hours and hours. The session's were always all-nighters, and it went on forever. One night I unplugged the remote from the Mitsu 32 with the machine on and of course it died and stopped the gig. Dan made me tell Stevie, which wasn't a whole lot of fun.

The good part was the "girls" (i.e. backup singers) were always around which was easy on the eyes. Needless to say, I don't think I ever watched the video after it came out.

More gig's were Russell Hitchcock and Dirty Dancing records with Jimmy Ienner, Michael Lloyd, Carmine ("I think I'm gonna bail") Rubino, and Dan Nebenzal, their personal 2nd. It was pretty much a circus with Ienner sitting in the back of the room with a legal pad jotting down ****, and on the next pass would bark out stuff like "Now I want those strings a little louder right here". He was pretty intimidating on Lloyd and Rubino, and there were some tense moments where I left the room. We worked on an Air Supply Xmas record too, and Bill Medley showed up once.

Jimmy swore Zevon's "Reconsider Me" was a hit, and we did overdubs and a single remix with Roy Bittan from the E Street Band producing. Roy didn't have a clue on the SSL, which made it a little rough. He came in at 11 am clean shaven, and had a pretty good stubble by midnight. I've talked to a lot of people who really like the song, but radio didn't - it stiffed. Stevie Nicks has cut a version of it recently which is pretty cool.

We also did a Spanish version of "Leave My Monkey Alone" in C that was pretty funny. Warren didn't speak Spanish and we had this Latino guy as a coach with him at the mic, telling him what to sing. I was tape-op.

Niko did Melissa Etheridge's first record and we mixed it in the Mix Room and B in late November. Neke's wasn't much for the SSL, so it was mutes only all the time and we used all outboard gear. He used to call the SSL a "$300,000 monitor board". They'd tracked the record in about 4 days, after she did a complete "proper" record with Rob Fraboni that cost about 200 grand. Chris Balckwell heard it and said "That's not the girl I saw in a bar in Long Beach". Good Move!!

The record came out and it stiffed at first for about 9 months, but picked up after KMPC started playing some live cuts from a promo CD recorded at the Roxy which I can truthfully say I mixed and Niko rode the vocal. It became my claim to fame for a while as it broke her career.

LiquidBlue5000 · #2 11-05-2006, 12:24 AM

"Project from hell"

.. too funny

I'm sure it wasn't easy for them.. it's still amazing that concert was able to be released on video at all..

Thanks for posting this, very interesting..

Phoenix · #3 11-05-2006, 12:31 AM

You know, If they can salvage this, then why the hell can't they salvage the MSO THING!

(sorry, still bitter)
(and the otr/dreams "retake" on youtube kicks @$$ I LOVE THAT VERSION)
thanx 4 posting.

AliceLover · #4 11-05-2006, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phoenix

You know, If they can salvage this, then why the hell can't they salvage the MSO THING!

(sorry, still bitter)
(and the otr/dreams "retake" on youtube kicks @$$ I LOVE THAT VERSION)
thanx 4 posting.

That show absolutely blew. It would be a total mistake to release that on DVD. Out of all the Gold Dust/Dreams show on bootleg DVD, this one was byfar the worst.

Phoenix · #5 11-05-2006, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AliceLover

That show absolutely blew. It would be a total mistake to release that on DVD. Out of all the Gold Dust/Dreams show on bootleg DVD, this one was byfar the worst.

WOW! HOWS BIENG HARSH WHEN SOMEONE SAYS THAT THEY LOVE SOMETHING GOING?

Phoenix · #6 11-06-2006, 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AliceLover

That show absolutely blew. It would be a total mistake to release that on DVD. Out of all the Gold Dust/Dreams show on bootleg DVD, this one was byfar the worst.

I have NOT seen any of the other bootleg shows, and would not really even know where to look to find them. but the versions of the show on youtube are WAY better than the show I attended in phoenix where she was visably shaken up about her dad, and the show was kinda lacking,and the venue sucked. so, If I really like the versions of beautiful child & rhiannon
with the MSO, and the reshoot of otr/dreams, AND YOU THINK THEY BLEW,
then those other shows MUST BE REALLY DAMN GOOD!

SpyNote · #7 11-06-2006, 02:22 AM

Those engineers did an incredible job with the Red Rocks vid, considering what they had to work with. It's funny to watch the parts that are out of sync (Stand Back is a good example).

desertangel · #8 11-06-2006, 04:04 AM

That's what I thought was particularly endearing about the article. I love this video to bits. Even though their cut-ins are cheesy by today's standards, I understand why they had to do it. To learn how much work went into it and why some of the cut-ins were off is kinda cool, even better since it comes from the guy who was there doing it. For some morbid reason, I would love to see a copy of the uncut version because I'd like to see how bad "bad" really was. I'd probably be doing this...

and this

PS: I'd love it if some author would gather up a bunch of these type of anecdotes and put out a book.

desertangel · #9 11-06-2006, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LiquidBlue5000

"Project from hell"

.. too funny

I'm sure it wasn't easy for them.. it's still amazing that concert was able to be released on video at all..

Thanks for posting this, very interesting..

I got a good laugh out of "the project from hell" line too.

It's amazing to me they went to so much time and trouble for that video. I'm pretty sure you could say she was past the pinnacle of her career at that point. I guess the industry then was not the same as it is today.

AliceLover · #10 11-06-2006, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phoenix

I have NOT seen any of the other bootleg shows, and would not really even know where to look to find them. but the versions of the show on youtube are WAY better than the show I attended in phoenix where she was visably shaken up about her dad, and the show was kinda lacking,and the venue sucked. so, If I really like the versions of beautiful child & rhiannon
with the MSO, and the reshoot of otr/dreams, AND YOU THINK THEY BLEW,
then those other shows MUST BE REALLY DAMN GOOD!

IMO the reshoots of OTR and Dreams weren't even that great. Any of the bootleg DVD's matched it I thought. If i remember correctly she didn't even go high for the "whole wide world could ever replace me" part. Get Texas 7-17-06, LA 7-26-06, or Concord 7-30-06 because they are all better than the MSO show IMO.

nightbird89 · #11 11-10-2006, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phoenix

You know, If they can salvage this, then why the hell can't they salvage the MSO THING!

(sorry, still bitter)
(and the otr/dreams "retake" on youtube kicks @$$ I LOVE THAT VERSION)
thanx 4 posting.

EXCACTLY wat i was thinking!!! I cannot believe that concert came even CLOSE to surviving. i heard an audience recording of it, and she sounded SOO much diff and worse! no wonder they edited the vocals. tho it must have been kinda awkward screaming at the end of edge in the studio.