(shannon)Howdy howdy howdy!

Monday night I had the rare pleasure of hearing the Parisii Quartet perform the modern classical works of four composers, among them our own Arif Mardin, producer of Reel Life and part of New Dream. The performance was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in an acoustically satisfying music hall, where from the fifth row I was able to watch the four musicians with all their physical intensities and quirks as they played Arif's exquisite, sometimes angular, wistful pieces, called Three Sketches for String Quartet. Arif was very pleased with the interpretation, and was, as usual, his lively and lovely self.

Which brings me back around to New Dream. George and I promised to tell more about those recordings and (gasp!) have not gotten back to it since October. My head spins over the great leaps time makes while I am looking the other way. So let's see...New Dream was in some ways a new approach to recording for us, in that we went for an even bigger sound than on Reel Life, multiplying the synth layers as well as the vocal tiers. This was recorded in 1990 when an expansive sound was still on the ascendant, shortly before music headed into the more guitar/ band/ voice oriented sounds inspired by Seattle's own Nirvana and others. I guess if music tracks had gotten much bigger they would have exploded, hence the pendulum swing back toward simplicity thereafter.

Arif Mardin's son, Joe Mardin worked on the production with George, and I have this comical vision of the two of them dwarfed behind stacks of keyboards and towers of outboard gear, squinting at screens, tweaking knobs and dials on panels of blinking lights. It can only be likened to a spaceship control panel, and the lift off was just as ultimate. We went for a tougher, more aggressive sound for the synths on much of this album, with a more brash vocal approach to match. I'm thinking of the songs New Dream, and Be True, If Things Were Different. On Flying The Cosmos, keyboardist CJ Vanston had an actual sample of the Navy's super-secret SR71 Blackbird taking off, so we used it at the front of the song to depict the blast-off of a launch to space, and the sound is large~ you almost need to duck your head so as not to get scalped in the flyby.(headphones, baby!) This song is a reflection on losing perspective and needing to draw far back from the earth, in order to regain an appreciation for the beauty and discord we live amongst, and the difficulty of keeping the sense of wonder upon reentry into daily life. To my ear, George's voice gets lost in the mix, and I would like to hear it up front, but otherwise I love the song and the sentiment. (note from Geo- I found a 'vocal up' mix while remastering the CD)

Have I already written about this one? Bootsy Collins, and his pals Gradual Taylor and Trey Stone drove all the way to Venice, California from Ohio in a brown panel van, pulling up in our driveway not quite short of the garage door, a humorous announcement of their arrival. They stayed a few days and recorded I Love This World with us in our garage studio. It would be hard to match the all out funk of the Bootzilla Orchestra any other way, and we had a fabulous time in our unlikely collaboration. One memorable afternoon George and I made high tea, complete with scones, jam and little sandwiches, and we sat with Phil Ramone, Bootsy & crew and feasted, with our less than delicate manners. Very funny. I seem to recall Bootsy, Trey and Gradual speeding off to Aunt Kizzy's Back Porch that evening for some real food! Our time recording with them was a definite highlight in our lives.

One day George discovered the anagrams program on the computer, compelling us to promptly rename ourselves accordingly, with minimal editing. Phil Ramone thus became Mr. Pain Hole, George morphed into Eerie Egg Roll, our engineer, Joey Wolpert became known as Holster Jew Pop, and I succumbed to Chinamen Buns, and so began the hilarious, irreverent, and very politically incorrect namecalling. As you can tell, recording an album entails months of time spent working together intensively, passionately and in close quarters, engendering a dormlike, or even frathouselike, atmosphere at times. And truly, nothing compares because at the same time, you are making music, which has got to be ONE of the most satisfying expressions one could ever participate in. I'd love to peek in on astronaut training...

Thanks for traipsing through a corner of my cobwebbed memory bank with me! More later.

All you need is love.. bum ba ba ba ba ( the Beatles). Shannon