DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Chuck forwarded a Mix Magazine article about the San Francisco recording scene in the 1990s. It takes only four sentences to note all the great facilities that went out of business during that decade — including Brilliant Studios, where JAR spent five days recording our debut CD, and Rocket Labs, where we mastered it.

The fact that JAR could even get studio time at Brilliant should suggest that their business was floundering. I think it wasn’t ever an A-list studio, like The Plant, but they definitely saw their share of bands people had actually heard of.

We mixed the album at Hyde Street Studios, which thanks to a long list of name-brand clients is still in business. We could only afford the swing shift; we arrived at 10pm or midnight armed with donuts and blank cassettes, mindful that anything we consumed that we hadn’t brought with us would end up on our final invoice. We couldn’t afford a “lock-out,” so we had to assume the board and all outboard gear would be reset during the day; this put pressure on us to complete anything we started within a single session, or risk having to start over the next night, potentially unable to recapture some amazing effects setting or vocal tone.

Hyde Street Studios is located in the Tenderloin, which in addition to their famous clients, great facility and staff explains how they survived the proliferation of digital recording tools — that is, their rent stayed sane. The Tenderloin is not a nice neighborhood, unless you’re looking for a crackwhore, in which case it’s perfect. In any case it’s not a place you want to hang around at night, e.g. from midnight to 8:00 AM. The first night, I rode my bicycle there and brought it inside the building. The next night I drove, but I parked five blocks away where I figured I’d have a chance of seeing the car again, whole, the next morning.

Our mixing engineer was Matt Kelley, who went on to fame and fortune (as noted in the Mix article) as a hip-hop engineer, due in no small part, I’m sure, to his credit on the JAR record. Ahem.

We mastered the record at Rocket Labs, which was located about 30 feet from my office window at the time. “I’m going to be across the street mastering my CD,” I wanted to announce haughtily to all my co-workers, but they were too engrossed in USENET or busy updating resumes… the programmer who sat nearest me was rumored to be running a private porn BBS off of his workstation. Needless to say, this company was even more doomed than all the recording studios listed by Mix Magazine. My brief absense was not remarkable.

Anyway, that’s my trip down spotty-memory lane.