Sometimes it’s all in the attitude. Where something is done strictly because it was a vision and has nothing to do with the quality of how it was done. Last night I was invited to a dinner function for AES by a buddy of mine. The dinner was fun, I met a few guys – no surprise there, lots of guys in audio not so many girls. When asked what I do I started replying with different odd jobs. Obviously these guys don’t do much joking, so I’m not sure if they thought I was an asshole or not. What I really do finally was revealed, so all was right.
The event was to showcase a massive book about how the Beatles did their recordings. It’s called Recording the Beatles. If you have any inclination on learning about the process they went through, I’d highly recommend the book. It’s fascinating. The really amazing thing is the tidbit about how no one at Abbey Studios really wanted to work with the Beatles in the studio because they’d work in the middle of the night and would often be late to their own sessions.
The real thing that was interesting was listening to how they would manipulate the media they recorded on. Meaning that often they didn’t have the skills to play things at the tempo they wanted. So they’d play it much slower and speed up the tape later to make it sound totally different. It’s also how they achieved playing things there were/are virtually impossible without studio trickery. I think the real reason they pulled it off is because the songs were really damn good. If an artist did that with material that sucked it would have failed miserably.
Which brings me to today’s choice. It’s about that attitude. It’s not a perfect recording by any stretch. But it reminds me of the attitude that you’d hear in something from an era such as the mid 80’s rock. Bands like Cheap Trick, or Talking Heads. Unlike Cheap Trick, I’m not overly hooked on the vocals – since they’re not in key for lots of little things in the song, but what redeems this somehow is the attitude. There’s some quality in the song that just makes me like this.
Smartly Career Club used it as the opener on their disc. While several of the other songs I heard didn’t grab me, this one did. What got me was the attitude. Pure and simple. ‘Nuff said. Now go get it.