NBC Parenthood

NBC recently filmed some scenes at Studio 880 for their upcoming series Parenthood. Here is a preview!

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Hey, it was warm the other day.

Had some nice weather recently.  Lots of big news I haven't really written about, since I haven't really had much time to write at all.

For a while now I've been the Engineer working in Studio 880's Studio C.  I'm getting my first major label credit on an album in a couple months for tracking I did on the new Government Mule.  We also had NBC come through on Tuesday to film a pilot for a new series.  That day was incredibly hot.  I believe weather.com said 94.  So believe me, with all those lights, it was a bit intense.  My day, by my own fault of showing up an hour too early, went for about 23 hours in the end.  But, I enjoyed it, got some food, met some new people.  All things considered, it was a cool experience.

We were hoping to head down to LA for the first to do some recording for Wal-Mart, but unfortunately those plans have been put off.  I'm sure there will be other times though.

Green Day had played many secret shows in the last couple of weeks, I was unable to go to them due to me having other commitments, but I was able to help someone else get into one so that felt good.

There's also BASS which has been rocking pretty hard.  Getting all kinds of bookings and live shows now.  It's really grown a lot and is becoming a very cool epicenter for music in the area.  New gear, new ideas, it's overflowing with positive energy.  It's very exciting to be a part of that.

I've been thinking I really need to get a camera at some point.  But of course, I've also been thinking I need an iPhone, to fix my bike, to get my car a tune-up, to replace the tubes in my amp, to setup my guitar, and to make more money.  So that's all kind of just in a pile on the floor of my brain.

Anyhow, there is a party tonight, and I ready myself for it now.

Lee out?

Acid tongues and happy days..

I don't buy music much anymore.  It's not that I don't enjoy listening to it, although I find a lack of inspiration in it these days.  The production all sounds the same, regardless of how hard they try to make it so unique.  The artists themselves sound bored and uninspired as it is, how am I suppose to have fun listening?

The last album I bought and really enjoyed was The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatorium.  It's a bit spacey, a bit jammy, a bit latin, and a bit rock with some great grooves in between.  I haven't listened to it much since the cd was scratched and some of my iTunes tracks show from it.  It took me a few listens to really get into, but I was hooked pretty quickly. With lyrics that didn't make any sense and exciting uses of rhythm and, well for a lack of a better term, melody, I found myself constantly picking it up.

But now I'm left wondering why it is that I haven't felt that same excitement for music since.  I think some of the fault is maybe my own.  I'm expecting other musicians to give me the excitement I seek in music instead of doing it for myself.  But, I believe some of the fault falls at the iPod.  I found I rarely listened to music on my iPod (Which officially died a few months ago) and would instead just click to the next song when I got bored.  I don't know what it is about an iPod that makes me want to do that, but I think it probably had to do with the 10,000 songs that were available to me at any moment.  I had the luxury of my whole library available by just hitting random and skipping around.  

One of the biggest problems is the lack of a musical revolution.  There just hasn't been one.  Yea sure The Killers are awesome and MGMT sounds amazing.  Whatever makes you happy, but there hasn't been any real shock to the music community worth talking about.  What happened?  Was the last big bang of popular music really in 1991?  Don't get me wrong, it last throughout the decade and some awesome stuff came out of it, but it's time for something new.

So I want to talk about my most recent music purchase.  I was at the Virgin Megastore in SF looking around trying to remember the albums that I wanted to get.  The problem was that while I wanted some new music and I had ideas of what I wanted, nothing excited me enough.  I was left going through several albums over and over completely unenthusiastic about the purchase.  But with some help from my friend Eleanor I came to choose the new album from Jenny Lewis.

Jenny Lewis is the singer and, at this point in the band's career, main songwriter for Rilo Kiley.  It is her second solo album.  It's different from her first, "Rabbit Fur Coat", which was very strongly router in southern folk and country with talk about God, gambling and love.  The new album isn't completely different, there's still a lot of talk of love -- lost and found.  But it's more similar to the last Rilo Kiley release "Under the Blacklight" which had heavy 70's roots.  "Acid Tongue" is very much a live band situation with many guest stars from Elvis Costello to M. Ward.  The problem is, it doesn't sound all that live.  It seems like modern production has taken away that feeling.  Regardless of how live the performance is, it still sound overproduced. I don't want to make it sound like I dislike the album because I very much enjoy it.  As always Jenny produces piercing lyrical content that can be hard to hear at times.  Songs such as "See Fernando", the nine-minute "The Next Messiah", "Carpetbaggers", "Trying My Best to Love You" and "Jack Killed Mom" are all excellent songs with gripping choruses.  The problem comes when you listen to a lot of the other tracks only to find they are all fairly similar.  Some piano chords played in a rhythmic fashion with Jenny's voice softly singing over them gets old a little too fast.  Which is a shame, because she is very enjoyable to listen to.

In the end, while I lay some blame at my own feet for my own lack of excitement in the current music scene, I also feel I have to lay some blame at the artists.  Yes Jenny I know, "Any idiot can play Greek for a day".  I don't want a hit though, I just want a bad-ass listening experience.  Is that too much to ask?  

I hope not.

The first.

So, this will be my first post.  I hope to use this space more as time goes on.  I'm a graduate from Ex'pression College in Emeryville, CA.  I have a BS in "Sound Arts" (aka an audio engineer with an awful degree title).

Things haven't been very easy for me for the last year.  I've had a lot of problems, many financial, many personal, but I'm trying to keep things going.  I have a great internship at Studio 880 in Oakland and I've been working as an assistant at Bay Area Sound Studios (BASS) in San Raphael.  Unfortunately I don't make any money at 880.  I don't have many options and the economy isn't all that great.  It leaves me with quite a bit of stress at times without anything I can really do about it.

I'm going to begin looking for more jobs again as soon as my spirits pick back up a bit, but all I can do is go with what I'm given.  And while I don't have very much, I'm used to it that way and I'll do what I have to.  

Hopefully it works out.  

Sorry this isn't a work of grammatical perfection, I just don't feel the urge to please a reader right now.