Nov
2
Written by:
masterblogger
11/2/2010 3:48 AM
BY BOB KETCHUM
This incident happened several years ago here at
my studio. I had just earned a couple of gold
records working with Krokus (http://clients.oznet.com/cedarcrest/krokus.html) on Arista,
and received some album credits as well. A
guitarist in Los Angeles had somehow heard
about my studio, and wanted to come here to
Arkansas and cut some demos for a prospective
record company.
This guitarist had an enormous ego and upon
arriving at the studio, insisted that he be allowed
to engineer the session as well as produce it. In
cases like this I simply back off and let the client
do what they want. After all, it is what the studio
business is all about—making money.
Well, this control freak blew his entire budget
fooling around before he even had all the basic
tracks done, much less overdubs. It was painfully
obvious to the rest of the band that he didn’t know
the signal flow of my setup, but he refused any suggestions
on my part and waved me away whenever
I approached him. I finally shrugged my shoulders
and went back to the kitchen, where I spent
the rest of the session hanging with the band.
Every once in a while one of the guys would
show up in the kitchen with a real scared look
and tell some horrific new tale of Mr. Ego’s illfated
journey into engineering. I wandered into
the control room during mixdown and couldn’t
believe my ears. I had never heard something
sound so bad coming out of my facility. This guy
had EQ’ed all the guitars way off the scale! There
was not one channel strip that did not have the
EQ cranked all the way up in some fashion.
After the mixes were done, I informed the guy
that I would prefer the studio’s name not be
included anywhere on the tape box, citing that it
was “his project,” not mine. But I felt so sorry for
the rest of the band that I actually sat down after
they left and remixed the entire project (four
songs). I sent those mixes to the other guys in the
band with instructions that this was on me and
not to tell Mr. Ego. I received several grateful letters
of thanks from California about a week later.
Needless to say, Mr. Ego did not get the
record deal.