A few years ago, Kissfaq.com stumbled upon these clippings from the Winnipeg Free Press in Manitoba Canada.

- From a local review: – “Two nights later, the scene shifted to the Centennial Concert Hall, where Kiss and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band raised the roof several times during the course of the evening. Kiss, New York’s glitter-rock sensation, received rather mixed reactions from a crowd of about of 1,500 people. Quite bluntly, you either like the group or despise it – there’s no room for indifference with this band. Kiss relies heavily on visuals such as the dry ice fog it turns loose during Firehouse and its standard closing number, Black Diamond, which finds drummer Peter Criss and his entire drum kit being elevated some six feet into the air while the rest of the group goes slightly crazy. There’s not one wasted motion in Kiss’s set. Every toss off the hair, every excruciating solo which lead guitarist Ace Frehley coaxes from his instrument serves a purpose. Even the outrageous attire and facial makeup sported by the group’s four member’s (bassist Gene Simmons looks like some sort of demented Raggedy Ann doll in drag) is there for a reason  to capture the audience’s attention. Many people probably didn’t like it but then that’s not my problem. As things turned out, the show proved to be a study in contrasts of a sort. Whereas Kiss relied so much on the visual impact of its performance, Manfred Mann’s all too brief set proved to be a terrific audio experience. As good as the Earth Band’s albums are, the group’s stage show manages to surpass many of its recorded accomplishments” (Andy Mellen, Winnipeg Free Press, 5/74).
– A Winnipeg press article from 6/8/74 notes: “Cable Channel 9 will feature videotape footage of Kiss’ recent performance, along with shots of the group arriving at Canadian Customs on a special midnight edition of Tea With Lee this Tuesday.” That would make the original broadcast date of whatever that footage was June 11, 1974… Some of this footage was probably rebroadcast on 10/10/74 on the same show.
– An earlier article details: “I’d recommend tuning in this Thursday’s special edition of Tea With Lee on cable Channel 9. The show, which is scheduled for 10:30 p.m., will feature some of the musical highlights of that particular concert, along with interviews with band members and some behind the scenes shots. I had an opportunity to view several hours of the unedited video tape for the show over the weekend, and I think it should make quite an interesting program once the proceedings have been edited into some sort of order. What I would really really like to get my hands on its a print of the film taken by photographer Pat Dundance just as Kiss’s limousine pulled into the Holiday Inn late Wednesday. The looks on some bystanders’ faces when the group trucked into the lobby in full makeup were simply priceless. To look at their expressions you would have thought that the end of civilization had arrived in the form of four normal New York City lads who jumped on the glitter-rock bandwagon to garner some notoriety and consequently a bit of the fame and fortune theirs for the grabbing in the rock and roll game” (Winnipeg Free Press, 5/21/74). That broadcast date would be 5/23.

So what’s an avid archivist like me to do but search endlessly for the existence of this concert film of Kiss on their first tour in 1974? I found some time this past February to devote towards scouring the planet, if not all of Manitoba, looking for it. Leads were few and far between. But I found the original scans of these articles online at newspaper archive.com .

Cable Channel 9 was the first public access channel in Winnipeg, and was totally run by a very eager and passionate group of people who wanted to learn and share their creativity with the local community. From rock concerts and puppet shows, to local public affairs and religious programming, Channel 9 was a melting pot of ideas. In the mid 1970s, channel 9 was switched over to channel 13, and the public access tradition of the channel carried on for another 2 decades. In 2001, Shaw cable bought the station and all of it’s assets including the video archive, and as so many wonderful corporations do, they threw EVERYTHING in the garbage. Some home archivists and aficionados who recognized the importance of the archive found the tapes in dumpsters and rescued as many as they could. Some government, educational, and private archives had old tapes and dubs from the Channel 9 and Channel 13 days as well. Sadly, after talking to pretty much every one of those archivists, the end result was nothing. The Tea With Lee episodes were not among those saved in any official or semi-official capacity.

Which led me to search for writer Andy Mellen, cameraman Pat Dundance, and Lee, whoever she was. One of those 3 people was bound to have the tapes I figured. As one crew member of the channel told me “Producers were encouraged to make archival copies of their episodes.”

Andy wrote a regular column called “Youthscene” for the paper, and not only did these Kiss concert articles reference the TV show Tea With Lee. Numerous other articles written by Andy did as well.  Doing a search around based on the articles above were actually going to lead nowhere. I found in other articles that Lee’s last name was Angelic. (either pronounced phonetically or as Angelique. I never figured out which it was. Some of the TV crew I later spoke to didn’t know either). The cameraman’s name was also misspelled in the article. When I did find the other articles that referenced Pat, his real name was spelled Dundas, and that’s when I discovered the saddest bit of news. Pat died in a motorcycle accident 2 months after this concert was filmed.

They actually showed the Kiss footage 3 times on Tea With Lee. Once during a normal episode. One was a special episode featuring just the Kiss footage and backstage / hotel / customs footage. And the final time was for the Pat Dundas memorial episode.

As far as I could find, there were no genealogy records linking Pat to any family. I couldn’t find anything. And at this point, maybe someone would say “Hey Nick, the guy passed away, maybe it’s bad juju to keep looking.” The other part of me said “Hey, I think this guy did some very important archival work, and it deserves to be seen and shown in his memory.” Hey, if I died young, I would like to know 40 years later someone remembered me and thought what I did was important. And Pat not only filmed the Kiss/Manfred Mann/Savoy Brown show, but others like Nazareth as well. Pat was a wild rock n roller, as evidence from other newspaper articles noting his brushes with the law ranging  from pot possession to speeding. The kid seemed to live the life, and he seemed to find something he was truly passionate about in filming concerts. Andy Mellen, in his tribute column to Pat, noted that Pat often showed up unexpectedly at Andy’s place to show Andy what he had just taped. In talking with the staff members that remembered Pat, his death was devastating to the entire crew, but most devastating to Andy and the show host Lee Angelic herself. It was a tragedy.

The only hope I had at this point was to find Andy Mellen. Maybe he kept the tapes since he and Pat were close. Maybe he would know how I could find Lee. There were no phone listings or email contact for him anywhere. But I did find out through the archives of the paper that he had managed a record store called Pepper Records after he retired from writing the “Youthscene” column. And through searching for anyone who may have worked alongside Andy at Pepper, I found a co-worker of his named Susan Hurrell. Finding Susan was like seeing the sun after 2 weeks in a cave. Until then, I couldn’t find anyone who even knew who Andy was. And not only did Susan know him, but she introduced me to numerous other people who also knew him though the Manitoba Music Museum Facebook group.

Turns out Andy is semi-retired and doesn’t really deal with anything music related these days. But someone got me his phone number, and I decided to give it a shot. Now, I will say that up until this point, I’ve never had so many pleasant experiences making “cold calls” in rapid succession. There is a reason Manitobans have a reputation for being friendly, and I can honestly say I’ve never talked with a group of people who were so eager to not only help me, but to talk to someone who was genuinely interested in the background behind this channel, this show, and the people who were involved in it. They were more than happy to share their stories, to tell me what it was like back then, what the shows were like, and they would often drop the names of other people I should try contacting.

And that’s when I talked to Andy. As soon as he answered the phone, it was almost as if I felt this dark cold vibe coming through the wires. He was pleasant, don’t get me wrong, but I just felt as if he didn’t want to talk to me. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk about this moment in his life. He said “I don’t remember anything about Lee, the show, or Youthscene. I don’t even remember the name of that kid. I don’t have any tapes or archives of anything. I don’t have anything.” And that was the end of that. After weeks of searching for Andy, I found him, and talked to him for less than a minute. He wanted nothing to do with it.

That was nearly the end of the road already, and I felt like I was just getting started on my search. And then in a moment of luck, one of the Manitoba Government archives wrote to say they found 6 issues from 1975 of the bimonthly newsletter called “Access”, which chronicled the going ons at the station, and would be happy to scan me pdf files for a small fee, payable to the Canadian Government. I said “Sure, how do i pay you?”. And they said “No worries, here’s your pdf files, we’ll bill you later.” Friendly indeed!!  When was the last time my government gave me something and told me they’d bill me later?!!?

When I received the issues, there wasn’t much to be found. Tea With Lee ended sometime in mid-1975. And Lee was never part of the station again. But in issue 2, there  it was – a photo of Lee Angelic!! She existed, and I also found the names of several other people who were there at the station at that time. One was a man named Richard Edwards, who ran the control board. Richard still lives in Manitoba. And upon google searching him, found that he runs a video and production company! This guy is still in the business! He might be able to help. The website for his business even listed his cell # and sure enough, as soon as i called it, another friendly Manitoban was on the other end of the phone talking with me for about 20 minutes.

Richard mentioned the portable decks they gave the camerapeople were color tape machines, and that if the Kiss footage still existed somewhere it would have been on 1 inch tape or 3/4″ U-Matic formats. But in any event, the concert would have been filmed in color. That was for sure. He also said if I ever found the tapes, he still had the machines to play them back. Then Richard gave me even more names of people to find.

And some of them were quite helpful as well. One of them said “You know, I think I found Lee’s # in the phonebook. This might be her. Try calling it.”

And for the second time, I couldn’t believe I found the person I was looking for. And for the second time, I felt that same cold vibe on the other end of the line. “That was a long time ago. I don’t remember anything. I didn’t keep any archives of my show or any records. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

And that was the end of my conversation with Lee. Odd how the two people who were closest to this show were the two people who couldn’t remember anything and didn’t want to talk about it. Shame.

So that’s it. I’m nearly the end of my search. See, there’s still 2 people who might have tapes that I have not been able to find. And I think if they don’t have anything, then this will be a closed case. These two people worked at the station during this time and may have kept some tapes.

John Parsons, who no longer lives in Manitoba I’m told. And Richard Nazerevich, who is supposedly in Vancouver now. If you know either of these people, or know anything else about the whereabouts of these films, please contact me.

I hope to update this column with good news in regards to the existence of these tapes, but for now, it’s pretty slim.

In the meantime, there’s still $18.50 that I owe the Canadian Government, so let me write that check before I forget. I wanna be able to come up there at some point and meet the good people who were so nice to help me on my quest to find the missing Tea with Lee tapes. Susan Hurrell, Richard Edwards, John Prentice, Andy Mellen, Lee Angelic come to mind, and there’s at least 15-20 others that I need to add to this thank you list. I need to go through my notes and find their names and add them here. I will do that soon.

Nick

The gear at the studio is now running at optimal levels. Here’s a list of the things I changed over the past 2 months:

ADDED:

API Lunchbox w/2 Helios Type 69 and 4 API VP26-gar2520 preamps
Sennheiser HD600 Mastering Headphones
Beyerdynamic m201 microphone

MODDED:

The Yamaha board has had the subgroup section completely bypassed, which means the sound is that much closer to the source.
The Teac 80-8 has been upgraded with NE5532 opamps
The M-Audio Profire 2626 has been upgraded with NE5532 and OPA2134 opamps
The Technics sl1200mk2 Turntable has been upgraded with a Denon DL-103r Cartridge, Zupreme headshell, and Harman Kardon XT3 Step-up Transfomers

Very excited about the next batch of records I’m going to make with this gear.

Remember when you wanna record to tape, there’s no better sounding option than Nick Vivid’s.

Reprinted from “Super Rock Awards” Magazine (The Kiss Diary Issue). Spring 1979

“The Kiss Caper”: Written by Michael Gross

Gotham City, hear midnight, December*31,1973, The Academy Of Music.
- Cold. No date on New Year’s…. Two tix for The Blue Oyster Cuit/Iggy Pop show at The Academy. Outside the theatre, the Jewish Defense League was picketing the Cult. Inside, Kiss (at least that’s what the logo over their heads said) was onstage – added to the already metallically stacked bill at the last moment. Can’t remember much. Simmons breathed fire, I think. That may have been the night he set his hair on fire which was noticed only from the
stench after the flames had been put out by a roadie. Iggy musta been high on ‘ludes or something. He fell in the photo pit a good five times. A photographer claimed Pop was not high, that Pop was in a murderous frame of mind. ROCK SINGER MAIMS NIKON. Wotta headline. Cult was ponderous. Max’s Kansas City was crowded, even on its last legs as Manhattan Rock’s flagship boite. The entire evening held the feeling of death. The bathrooms and backrooms reeked of indulgence. But it wasn’t death. It was the birth of Kiss.

Gotham City, near midnight, Summer, 1975, The Beacon Theatre.
Hot. No date for Kiss. Who in their right mind would want to go? But my agent friend’s agency had booked the date, someone from Casablanca Records had called and begged me to go. There was a party afterwards. Calling up memories of Kiss at the Academy, I could find nothing to recommend the trip uptown. Two hours later I was standing on my seat, going berserk with a crowd of urban
lemmings determined to prove that this was Liverpool, not Gotham; 1962, not 1975; The Beatles, not Kiss. From the first song, hysteria reigned. Next to me in the aisle, a dark, scrawny street urchin in army drag and battered Frye Boots was sticking PCP up his nose with a ramrod pinky. Every part of his body moved to the basic beat of the four devilish kids from Queens onstage. In the press section, a few of the more staid members of the as yet un-official- ized Rock-Crit-Estab stayed sitting. They could just catch the glow of the flashpots. They were never meant to understand. Least not so long as they wouldn’t stand. A joint got passed down the long orchestra aisle. I watched its progress. Some kids hit deeply and smiled. Others sipped, spat and passed it on. Angel Dust. The Kiss Army didn’t need no C-rations. They wore stripes on their brains
where the cells used to be. I passed the joint on and looked back at the stage just in time to get triple vision from a ceiling scorching flash of white light. All the kids standing on all the seats thatfilled the Beacon orchestra lifted off the ground with the fire. Several encores later, vision still blurred, I walked a half-block to the Kiss party, snookered two groupies past the officious and protective pub- licists at the door, and spent the rest of the night fending off the
advances of two homosexual waiters (Fags were as big that year as ‘ludes. Came dressed in white more often than not, too), trying to see that Thai in a cloud of more Angel Dust, wondering why Kiss came to the party still made up. I ttied to get laid, but the only seemingly willing woman wanted ‘ludes, Dust, or Paul Stanley. I had none of those things.

Gotham City, near noon, Summer, 1976, Park Avenue.
I was sitting in my office minding my own sweet time. It’s been a busy summer, but in this week of July Four nonsense, things had ground close to a halt. The Dead were scheduled to play a stadium date in New Jersey, but it had been cancelled by the city when, a week before, a twerp with a weapon decided to make somebody dead at a Yes show. Kiss were scheduled for a week after that. I was hoping for an excuse to go see them. Put ‘em on a magazine cover. Prove my fleeting teen credentials. Now Kiss seemed more than a kiss away, with only the bloody Jersey date scheduled in the New York area. Three writers were sitting by their phones, waiting to be given the go-ahead to get on the Kiss Case. I picked up my phone to call the first and cancel.
A female voice crackled through the receiver. She’d been connected
without so much as ringing my bell. Did I want to come to a Kiss dress rehearsal in the same airplane hanger The Stones had used before their last tour? Sure as shit.

Gotham City, 6pm, July 2,1976, Madison Avenue.
A long line of sleek limosines stood in front of the ofices of Aucoin Management. Upstairs, two writers and a photographer were already waiting. The lobby was torn to shreds, ready for re-decoration, but the office functioned as if the sleek Mad. Ave. decor was already installed. Only problem was, hushed conversations and quiet footfalls sounds like Screaming Lord Sutch and M-80s when the carpet and wallpaper aren’t doing their sound swallowing job. From around a glass and wood wall, I heard the female voice again. From around the corner came a familiar face, a favorite freelance PR gun for hire. Behind her: The Blonde.

The Blonde walked towards me and introduced herself. National Tour Coordinator for Casablanca Records.

I was boggled.

Suntanned. Sleek. With a smile that could turn a pimp’s head at 50 paces, a smile that could make a gay boy reconsider, make a jaded old rock writer forget Laurel Canyon and rediscover the thrills of electricity. If she’d asked me to write a rave review of The Carpenters, I’d have done it. A writer showed up and saved me from having to attempt speech.

On The Road To Newburgh, N.Y., later that night, Dav-El Livery’s Bullet.
As luck would have it, The Blonde was assigned to another car. I got the bullet, a long silver Lincoln, ace-photographer Waring Abbott, several writers and Alan Miller of Aucoin. They weren’t letting up. First they teased me. Then they gave me a taste. Then, boggled by the Casablanca California girl, my indoctrination began. Miller outlined the new Kiss show, dealed out a few anecdotes, charmed my careening psyche. Later that night, I’d dream him saying, “So, you don’t like PCP and Angel Dust, heh? Well we have ways of making you join the Kiss Army. We’ll start with a blonde. . . .” She sat next to me at the surt and turf dinner arranged for dress rehearsal rag guests. She sat next to me during the rehearsal. I lost my note pad. The batteries in my tape recorder died (not unusual, but who could say, under the circumstances?) She told me about the other bands she’d toured with, Parliament and Bootsy’s Rubber Band. Somewhere along the way, ten points slid onto the scoreboard next to her name; Under the Bacall exterior was a Bacall interior. Riding back to Gotham, I said a silent prayer that she was in the other car. Didn’t feel much like Bogart that night.

Gotham City, July 6-9,1976.
The tall ships, Jerry Ford, Bicentennial magazine covers, Todd Rundgren, fireworks and July 4th had passed. I watched it all with a bit of awe, surprised at my own innocence. Tuesday, in the office, I locked up the idea of a Kiss Special Issue, a’bit in awe, surprised at my own innocence. The Blonde called several times that week, and I saw her once or twice as I went up to Aucoin to pick pictures, learn about Kiss from Alan Miller, meet 1976′s answer to Shep Gordon (you remember Alice Cooper, don’t you?), Bill Aucoin, and arrange for Wes to speak to Gene and Paul and for me to go to the uncancelled Jersey stadium show. Everyone likes a magazine editor about to throw forty some-odd pages to one group. But of course, everyone at Aucoin knew I would do it. Was I paranoid? No. But I knew that they knew that I knew that they knew the power of The Blonde. Two PCP-esque lightning streaks were appearing on my prefrontal lobe. They looked suspiciously like the last half of the Kiss logo. Each day, they were burning deeper.

On The Road To Jersey, July 10, 1976
A Caravan For Kiss. Jimmy and I took over the last few rows of the bus. His friend Marilyn came on and sat with us, explaining, she and one other lady were to be our press bus Mothers. The other lady was The Blonde. She slid into the seat next to me, relentless. I rolled a joint and smoked it fast and hard. Marilyn, who belongs as much to Raymond Chandler as she does to Bill Aucoin, cracked wise, all the way to Jersey. When she and The Blonde began losing their grip on things, Jimmy and I took over as Bus Mamas, giving out the sangria, getting the press drunk before we hit the Jersey swamps. I didn’t need a drink. I was swooning on the smile. We got off the bus and Gene Simmons walked by. A girl fainted. Cute. Aucoin had arranged an Italian Feast and video screens backstage. A crew-member arranged some more interesting head food. You couldn’t see Kiss from the press bleachers, so I stuck with Blonde . So stuck I conspired to not see the show. But I had to see the show.

Baltimore, Md., July .13,1976,On The Road With Kiss.
The Baltimore audience was cute. Lotsa Lolitas. Lotsa heavy-metal derelicts. I can live without Baltimore, but so can most of the people stuck there with the Washington, D.C. detritus, Spiro Agnew and accused felon, Governor Marvin Mandel. The Metroliner arrived a half- hour before showtime, Lydia Criss (Peter’s wife), photographer Barry Levine and I jumped a cab, dumped our bags in our rooms, and ran across the street to the Civic Center. Lydia found Peter. Barry found the photo pit. I found The Blonde. Seven dates into The Kiss Tour
1976, she looked tired and boggled. Her tan was fading. Her magic wasn’t.
As the band prepared to walk onstage, we headed for the sound and light board, where, to the immense displeasure of the people sitting behind us, we watched the show. It would have been nice, sitting, but no one was sitting in the entire hall, all efforts to the contrary by the security gorillas going unheeded. Shit, motherfuckers, Kiss is onstage and they are rock and rolling all night! I remember “Shout It Out Loud,” far better onstage than on the record. “Flaming Youth,” the song that had driven the Beacon crowd crazy was out of the set for just that reason. “Rock And Roll All Night” was superb. Forced, for the first time to think about Kiss, I decided I really liked them. I liked them for being so unutterably and purposefully stupid. I liked them for having improved immeasurably in the year since I’d seen them. I liked them for getting off on
what they were doing, for bringing comic books and rock and roll to life. I liked them for never appearing without their makeup. I loved them for making me move my feet and stomp and cheer, three days before the birthday that told me I wqs really and trulyno longer in my teens. I n f act, Kiss made me f orget I was f ive years past my teens. They made me forget how bored I get with groups like Aerosmith and Bad Company and Kansas and sometimes even the rock and Rolling Stones. The only thing they didn’t make me forget was The Blonde, still burning those lightning streaks into my frontal lobes. I went into the photo pit for the encores. Got drenched with kerosene when Gene spit fire, had my shoulder bruised when Paul smashed his guitar and threw it at me, my ears permanently damaged when some asshole chucked an M-80 onstage led. note: Will you guys please cut it out with the firecrackers, already. That got tired when Edgar Winter stopped playing “Frankenstein”) and the lightning streaks burned in even more.

After the show, Levine, his assistant, The Blonde and I forced down some dogfood in The Holiday Inn Coffee Shop, while plainclothes Baltimore cops cleared kids away from the lobby, making it impossible for late breaking roadies to score some flesh. Gene and Paul were hidden in their rooms, apparently fucking their brains out. The doubleteam combination of a Devil, A True Star, has probably given more than one groupie-girl a thrill and a half in the hay. Ace and Peter joined The Blonde, Levine and I in Peter’s room, where, contrary to popular rumor, we all got very high. Ace had scored from a local: Mean Green-$25 an ounce and it comes already cleaned. Someone else in the room had Columbian. But Ace liked his better. The Columbian had helped erase the fact that the lightning streaks were now a permanent part of my grey-matter geography. The Mean Green burned them in even more. Peter played some tapes of new Kiss songs. They were superb. Gene stopped in before leaving for Knoxville on the crew bus. (He won’t fly.) Paul cruised the room in a short robe, listened to some of the tapes, and went back to whatever it was he was doing before. Ace cracked wise, time and a half. By 3:00 A.M. I’d had enough. The Blonde stayed. She had the next day off. She’d done her job on me. I had to be at my desk at 9 the next morning, back on Park Avenue in Gotham.

As I drifted to sleep, I remembered something she’d said to me at
Rooseveit that made a deep impression. Her commitment to the band was so real. Her smile so compelling. I’d listened to every word and eaten them up like peanuts at a Jimmy Carter party. I wallowed in them l1keaPCPdream. Drifted inthem. Believed them. “You know what I really like about this band?” she’d asked as we stood together in the massive infield of the Jersey stadium. -I looked at her quizzically. What, I wondered, could this professional brainwasher, this Mata Hari of rock and roll, find about Kiss to hold onto through an assignment on the road that began in June and wouldn’t end till December? What could she have to hold on to’ and keep her believing.
“The thing about Kiss,” The Blonde said, “is that they are sooooo ludicrous.”* RA

1. NEVER ask the audience to come closer to the stage. If they want to they will.

2. Hawking your CDs and your wares/facebook page is totally cool. Have some stickers to throw out with the plugs.

2b. Don’t tell people a song is new unless you have a reason to/story to go with it (i.e. “We’re recording this one next week, look for it soon”). All of your songs are probably new to them.

3. Don’t worry if the audience is enjoying the show. They probably are – otherwise they would have walked out. They’re just taking in the experience on their terms. Let them. Refer to #1.

3b. Don’t worry about a lack of applause or jubilance between songs in the set. Act as if they love you. Give them the show as if they were 20,000 screaming fans at Madison Square Garden. Do your show the way you want to. It’s your stage. Command it with confidence. Remember, act “As if”.

4. If something goes wrong, as they always do, never apologize. The saying “Shit Happens” applies here. Roll with the punches.

5. Have some fun up there Dammit! If you think you’re having an off night, fake it, and wait until the feedback afterwards. If you successfully pulled off #1-4, the audience will have had a great time and you’ll hear how awesome you were and how much fun they had. Happens every time. And that’s the point.

Compression has, in recent decades, become one of the biggest crutches of the recording industry. The concept being that one wants control over their mix before it ends up in the mastering process – where even more compression will undoubtedly be added.

I recently heard the new Rush album, Clockwork Angels, and I love the music and the sounds the guys came up with for this. But I hate – absolutely hate – the amount of compression used in the mixing and mastering process. They took an album that could have sounded as huge as the original US Vinyl pressing of Moving Pictures (and if you have that pressing – done by Capitol back in the day – you know how “big” it sounds) and made it sound “small”. My girlfriend works at a coffee shop (shoutout to Little Skips in Bushwick Brooklyn and the great Counter Culture coffee they serve). They sometimes will play her iPod, and my favorite sounding vinyl rips that I gave her sound quieter than the mp3s she acquired from iTunes. But ultimately, if you turn up the volume a few notches to “match” the sound of the “other” mp3s when playing the vinyl rips, you’ll notice how much more clarity there is in the recordings – how much more space and depth there is. You can hear the music moving. You can feel the rumble of the bass and the tone of the guitars and the drumset. You can focus on a drumset and really “see” the whole kit. (What Apple should have had in the initial design stage of the iPod was a compressor built in if you wanted to use it for such purposes as random playlists at coffee shops and left the original recordings alone).

Let’s take a look at what compression does, and the unwanted side effects. Compression is certainly control. People think compression tends to make things “bigger” or use buzz words like “slam” and “boost” but in the end when you compress, you make things “smaller”. That’s the purpose of compression. To make things smaller.

I’m currently recording a great NYC rock and roll band called “The Deafening” in the studio, and we wrapped on tracking drums this past weekend. They wanted (and so did I) a huge 1970′s sounding drumkit. I bought classic remo heads (Coated emperors for the tops and Ambassadors for the bottoms – the secret of the John Bonham sound) and used a variety of close and room mics to capture the kit on tape. Then I played back the tracks and without any EQ or compression it already sounded like a big loud punchy drumkit. I started playing with some compression VST plugs just to get an idea of a direction to take the kit in, and ultimately scrapped all the compression on the drums save for the kick (low end is a different story – it’s the hardest to control, and needs the highest amount of consistency – kick and bass needs that constant locking feel for my money). Time after time this is what I notice when working with the tracks. Try it sometime – add some compression to all the tracks on a drumset, and then take all the compression off after getting used to the compressed tracks, and you’ll notice how much livelier, full, and big your drums sound. They will also have more room “around” them to breathe.

We all need air and breathing room to live. Your recordings are no different.

At the end of the day, I let the preamps and tape take care of a lot of my sound control, and I only add compression when necessary. Kick drums, Bass guitars, and Vocals are typically the only areas where I’ll use any compression in the mixin stage. And then the SSL 2bus post mix mastering is used very slightly (maybe a 10:1 with a 10 attack and an auto release – we’re talking minor glue purposes only). So many people use these SSL comps on the drum set alone before they even mix. STOP IT! It sounds like shit! Just cause Rush did it, doesn’t mean you should. As a matter of fact they shouldn’t have. They ruined an amazing record with compression. And that’s the idea here. Don’t ruin good art and real music with things they taught you to do in music recording school. Get great pre-amps, great (even really good) converters (AD/DA is a whole other part of the story – which I’ll get into in the future), and use compression minimally. If the mindset of the industry was more akin to this, I’d enjoy more modern records than I do.

Bowery Boogie has profiled the studio – check out

http://www.boweryboogie.com/2012/06/nick-vivids-basement-recording-studio-at-166-orchard/

The Deafening begin work on their new album Friday at Nick Vivid’s!