Steve,

"In the Aeroplane over the Sea" - great album, or the greatest album?

I happen to know for a fact he plays poker, since a former DC acquaintance of mine has played in his game a couple of times. By his responses, no reason to doubt him at all.

Will you be working with The Sadies again, down the road?

Also, having worked with The Wedding Present at the height of their powers, what are your thoughts on Take Fountain?

Thanks, best thread ever.

Is Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys really as good as Paul McCartney says it is?

i actually gotta say the best live concert i ever saw was a wilco show. but there were a few big confluent factors that went into that.

Do you have a good Kurt story that you could share?

Blll is a super funny guy and he makes great records. I wish i had the opportunity to work on more of them.

Was this refering to my post?

I don't think I've ever thought of the Mars Volta.

They are great friends and I will gladly work with them any time they ask.

Have you ever worked on a record that turned out so poor you asked for your name to be left out of the credits?

What were the Gub sessions like?

I know I've already asked two questions but this thread rocks.

1) If a hundred years from now people could only hear one album you worked on which would it be?
2) If you could create a dream band who would you select?

I am actually indifferent to being credited in any case. I make a lot of records, and a band putting my name on their record is inviting associations that they may not think are valid, and categorizing themselves in a way. I think it's nice that bands want to thank me for the work, but in most cases I think they'd be better off taking all the credit themselves and not mentioning me at all.

So no, I've never asked not to be mentioned, but I have a general preference for not being mentioned, in consideration of the band.

Pretty ad-hoc. The two drummers, Bill Reiflin and Martin Atkins, played on everything, but the rest of the music was dependent on who they invited to participate on a given track. A lot of it was improvised. It was a pretty loose way of working, and it could have been a disaster. A lot of things done that way are.

By the way, since I first read this thread I can't stop listening to my old Pixies, Urge Overkill and McLusky CDs.

For my own tastes, probably Goat by the Jesus Lizard. What an awesome band. They were just about perfect for their first five years.

That's a pretty meaningless question. Some musicians are terrific at one style or idiom of music, but clumsy at others. Some people have a distinctive style that they have developed a whole style of music around, but are not technically "good" in general terms. In particular, vocalists and guitarists can use abstract sound and timbre to great effect, without being particularly concerned about things like timing and pitch. In their own music, these effects can be perfect, but in any other setting, they would be ugly and inappropriate.

So, I have some favorite musicians, but they would probably make an awful band together.

Drummers: too many to count, all brilliant.
Bass: Tony Maimone, Barry Adamson, David Wm. Sims, Tracy Pew
Guitar: Also quite a few. Keith Levine, Wilco Johnson, Billy Gibbons, Malcolm Young, Andy Cohen, Robert Quine, Shannon Wright, Yanni Papadopoulos...

He's an awesome, inventive drummer, but he has been personally irresponsible and put some dear friends in harm's way, so I don't generally think highly of him. Incredible drummer though. He has invented techniques and effects for his playing that are distinctive and uniquely his. I have to respect that, regardless of what else he's done.

Had to do some research and cyphering. I think it's about a dozen.

At the same time?
Awesome!

Ok, seriously.
Do you have any favorite "toys" you're really digging right now? (Musicial or otherwise.)

I know you said upstream that you don't listen to a lot of music on your time off, but do you have any favorite music that would surprise us? like gamelan or something?

also, you worked with ken vandermark on a portastatic record, what do you think of him? thoughts about the chicago avant garde scene in general?

also, what do you think about jeff parker, and have you worked with him much? I really loved his playing on the new hamid drake/fred anderson record and had never heard of him before, that's why I'm asking.

Kevin from Electrical Guitar Company is making some incredible guitars right now. Beautiful workmanship, they sound incredible, and he'll custom make anything you ask for. There's a new low-power Orange guitar amp called the Tiny Terror that is great for recording and is really versatile. I'm still really into the David Josephson microphones, specifically the e22S (which we had a hand in designing) and the C700 (awesome vocalist microphone).

Recently I've been listening to the collected recordings of Washington Phillips. So beautiful. I've been a lifelong fan of Willie Nelson, and I probably listen to more mountain music than you would imagine. For "serious music," I love listening to Gorecky, Glenn Gould and Phillip Glass. I particularly like Gould's voice montage recordings like "the Idea of North." Other 20th Century egghead avant garde music I like, but is much more of an intellectual stimulation (rather than a passive listening experience): Christian Marclay, Alvin Lucier, Conlon Nancarrow and Iannis Xenakis being particlar favorites. For makeout music, you can't beat Bill Withers and Clarence Carter.

Bob Weston has worked with this scene a lot more than I have, but it's pretty ubiquitous here. There's a core of about 12 players who make up about 30 ensembles, depending on who booked the gig or who the guest soloist is. I don't mind improvised music, and some of the players are truly great (Hamid Drake is an astounding drummer, for example), but sometimes the whole avant Jazz scene seems like a race to see who can accumulate the most hours of stage time, and since the core of players is so familiar, it's hard to have a unique experience at one of these shows. These guys are also at their best when a visiting free music dignitary is in town and they're trying to impress him.

All of this sounds more flippant than it should, because these guys are dedicated to this music, but, like most things, either this is your scene and you like it already, or it isn't your scene and you're probably going to hate it.

Jeff is a great player, and he plays in the band Tortoise and several occasional outfits of the type I described.

few more questions I don't think have been asked already. you make a lot of records, how often do you know when a record you are making is going to be really effing great? any surprises, times you have thought the record sucked but heard it later and thought it was great? how often in general do you hear the records you've made after you're done?

sorry if this is too many questions, really cool that you are doing this thread.

Another very good question.

There is a sort of clinical distance I have to maintain as an engineer that precludes forming an opinion about the music I'm working on. If I'm getting wrapped up in the music like a fan, then I'm not paying proper attention to the technical side, the way the equipment is behaving, etc.

I've used this analogy before, but I like it, so I'll use it again: While the recording is underway, I'm like a gynecologist, and it would be inappropriate for me to be getting turned-on by the vagina I'm working on at the moment. I need to have a different relationship with the vagina.

Imagine for a moment that I did allow myself to harbor opinions about how good a record was while I was making it. Two bands come into the studio, one of which I really like, and one whose music I dislike. It wouldn't be fair to that second band for me to let my distaste for their music affect the job I did, and that would be inevitable.

Also, all records aren't being made (ought not to be made) to suit me alone. My tastes are really [censored] up, and if I tried to make records to suit myself, rather than the band's tastes, I would make a lot of freakish records that nobody liked and didn't suit the band.

So, in order to maintain a professional level of concentration on the task at hand, and to allow the band to make a record that represents them accurately, I try not to even think about whether or not I like the record. Having said that, sometimes everybody can tell that a record is going to be awesome anyway, and of the records I've worked on that ended up being really great, the majority of them showed their greatness in the first couple of hours of work.

If there is something unique and subtle about a band that makes them great, then sometimes it takes longer exposure to become aware of it, but in general everybody can tell right away.

I probably get to hear 10 percent of the records I work on after everything wraps. Usually they sound about like I remember them, but I have often been surprised that an opinion I held at the time of the session (the guitar is too loud, the vocals are too quiet, this song is a turkey...) end up being completely incorrect. For this reason I am not the least bit insistent when the band and I disagree on a matter of taste. I know for sure that I am fallible, and I know the band is more familiar with their own music than I am. When in doubt, do it their way.

I did an album in the 90s for the band Bush, after they had had a couple of big hits already. While we were working on their second album, they kept pursuing a particular song that I thought was a the weakest and most derivative of the whole set of songs we were working on. A complete dog. Whenever they asked my opinion, I would admit that this particular song struck me as disposable, and they should concentrate on other stuff.

In the end, they did a version they liked, which I still thought was a turkey, and the song "Swallowed" was released as the first single from the album.

It was also their first Number One hit single. I apparently know nothing about what makes for hit records.

Gavin Rossdale, singer of the band, forgave me enough to invite me to his wedding to Gwen Stefani, where my girlfriend was able to pocket all kinds of "Gwen&Gavin" monogrammed trinkets, none of which have yet made it to eBay.

Enough with the music. Post your graph for the year, and your pokertracker stats.

Very awesome thread. Thanks for finding 2p2 and doing this.