Posted by deadfoot There was no one there. We probably waited an hour until Monarch got pissed enough to want to leave. I know Frank was with us and am pretty sure Mark showed up too - buddies of ours that always helped out with the band. Just then a VW microbus showed up and out stumbled this hippy looking dude. It reminded me of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High stumbling out of the van filled with pot smoke. Or something out of a Cheech and Chong movie. This guy looked like he literally just got back from Woodstock. I know Frank made some kind of hippy comment. Even though the guy was pathetically late, he made it like it was a miracle that he was there at all! I think his name was Dennis. We got set up and Dennis was spending most of the time just waking up. I don't remember him really taking charge. We kept prompting him for what to do and making suggestions, and he kind of followed our lead unless there was something he was really sure about. During recording and mixdown, Bob wound up doing a fair amount of work on the board, and Dennis didn't object at all. We really didn't want Bob messing with the recording, but if he hadn't, it probably wouldn't have come out as passable as it did. Dennis had an assistant with him the whole time named "John". John was already in the house when we got inside as far as I remember. Why he didn't let us in initially I have no idea. He wasn't the brightest guy - he was like Forest Gump. Dennis didn't cut him any slack for it though. He was yelling at John most the time, to get this or that, or whatever. Dennis blurted out the infamous line "John, that fu(%in guy!" Frank was making his comments left and right, and it was funny as hell. These guys were way too easy to bust on. We wanted to be serious about our first real recording, but man it was tough with these guys being such easy prey for Frank. Monarch was frustrated because here we we were supposedly paying for "experts". Instead, Frank was having a field day! During mixdown we asked for some echo on the vocals at the end of a certain verse. Dennis proceeded to tell that he has no idea how to patch in the effect. Just then, this "mystery" effects guy comes wandering through the house. Dennis asks him for echo, and the guy grumbles something about he isn't supposed to be doing this - as if he's shown this to Dennis a million times already. We get the echo - the word "fought" gets echo'd a few times. The guy tells Dennis what he did and then disappears never to be seen again. A few minutes later we ask for the same echo on a later verse, and Dennis asks if we've seen the "effects" guy around. He asks John to go find him, but comes back later saying he can't find him. Dennis can't remember what the guy did so no more echo for us. I think we paid around $250 for about 4 hours of work and tapes. We knew we were never going back there pretty early on during the session. We realized much later just how bad it had gone down, after we went to the much more professionally run Island Sound Studios and recorded what became the Bootcamp EP.
Link: COMBAT
on 8/15/2005, 10:19 am, in reply to "Old hippies falling out of VW microbuses need not apply! "
199.43.48.87
The Hippy From Flying Z
Note: My memory sucks balls so I know some of the details are probably off.
The first studio recording COMBAT ever did was at Flying Z Studios in Islip, NY. When we got there we saw that it was a regular suburban house. Part of it had been converted into a 16-track analog studio.
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