Smash Studios B

8/8/2002

Trister Birthday show in Smash Studios, Studio B.

It was another long list of birthday shows, this time featuring the song selection and vocal stylings of Andy Trister.  We also had the drum stylings of John Bonham vis-a-vis Dave when he had the exhuberance to put forth.  It was core Deadstein, no Terez and no guests.  Trister seemed very tired as he is not used to a two-timing lifestysle.  Some how I'm used to it and felt pretty refreshed.

I was all prepared to do the recording thing and got into Studio B of Smash at six and got setup right away.  When I got in the studio at six the sun was blaring through the un-curtained western window over looking the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.  In addition, there was not air conditioning when I first got there, so it was a sweat box during my setup but was cool thereafter.

I was a nice easy recording setup and the quick CD I made for myself lastnight, and listened to on the way to work this morning sounded very good.  As much as Dave hates that drumset, the fact the kick drum mic has a hole to be place into coupled with a really good sounding dead room coupled with my use of the Shure SM57 on the snare and my mini-AKG on the toms made this a great sounding drum mix.  All this couple with the John Bonham attitude made for the snappiest drumming I have yet. 

The room also seemed to limit the amount of leakage into the vocal mics, so the recordings sound very good from that perspective also.  I also used the Senn heiser 421 on Kevin's bass, vs the AT 4033 I used last week on it and the 421 seems to be the way to go.  I liked the sound of it.  I just need another one of them cause I would also like that on the toms instead of the AKG.

There was lots of good stuff no matter how much Dave dislikes the Grateful Dead stuff.  I assume it was his poor round of golf that gave him thhe manic attitude betteen too much and too little.  nevertheless you might as well play the best that you can cause anything less is wasting time and effort.

I recording Rich's sound module in stereo and that also made a nice difference in enhancing the sound.  That's another plus of the sound of the night.   Finally, I think we played very well together with very few overt clunkers so there one for all of us.

Everyone got new CDs from 7-29-02, enjoy.  I filled up extra space with some good old Garcia stuff to listen to.  You'll notice the greatest What a Wonderful World World from 11-17-91 as well as selections from Providence 4-4-85 with a Brother Esau to listen to as well as a Sailor, Saint, Deal which is just unbelievable.   Enjoy it all and look foward to the next set of disks.

Till next Tuesday.