That Anti-Midas Touch / January 30 2008
Nelson Galaxy has been writing on his blog about his adventures in pro-audio equipment annihilation while he was here at Christmas recording his album. He isn’t alone. In my experience, his unfortunate potential for localised destruction of expensive electronic apparatus is quite common.
I had to ban a young bass player called Joe who was inflicted with Tourette’s syndrome (much to the infantile amusement of his fellow band members) from the studio control room a few years ago. He was made to wait in the corridor while I and the rest of his band spent four days mixing several of their death-defyingly depressing atonal doom-metal tracks. On one occasion, he popped his head around the door to ask, ‘I say, can you turn me up in the mix a little, please? F*ck off, c*nts!’ and the Drawmer compressor I had across the stereo drum sub-mix actually exploded. It was quite a subtle explosion, I admit, but distinct none the less. The room was filled with the acrid stench of burning valves and resistors and it was at that point in the proceedings that I banished him from the building completely and made him wait outside in the car park.
The most dramatic occasion was when I was recording a nervous and beautiful Greek torch singer. As she reached a high C, a big bird of prey - a sparrow hawk, I believe – crashed into the main window in the live room that overlooked a small copse. It must have been diving for a mouse or perhaps a small Chinese child and wasn’t paying enough attention to the direction in which it was flying. Luckily, the window wasn’t broken and the bird, though embarrassed by its lack of aerial precision, appeared completely unharmed. I am a big fan of wildlife, especially of the avian variety, but I was immensely relieved that the studio’s newly-installed double-glazing proved successfully robust enough to prevent the majestic creature’s egress into the room.
The sound the bird made as it hit the window really startled the young vocalist. So much so, in fact, that she sent the warm and sticky contents of her coffee cup flying into the delicate workings of the Tac Magnum mixing desk thus rendering it useless for several days. On her return, she touched a Neumann U87 microphone in an effort to adjust its position and it fell from its stand, completely destroying the expensive diaphragm within.
Nelson needed have worried, though. As is usually the case in these situations, the equipment that he had so devastatingly cast his dark spell over inexplicably returned to perfect working order as soon as he had returned to London.
Filed under Audio Recording / Hardware / Nelson Galaxy / Pro Audio / Recording Studio
Comments
2 comments on “That Anti-Midas Touch”
Nelson Galaxy / January 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I’m glad it is working now Nap, I ain’t giving you no money dude. I can break things just by looking at them. It’s a shame I can’t break people, just expensive electrical items.
Napoleon Fantastic / January 30th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Don’t need no money, dude. Don’t want no nuthin’, man.
Leave a comment
