Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

today is our daughter's brigid 1st b-day! by far, she was the best thing about this past year. yes, i am still feeling sorry for myself about the howard project dying! but things are looking up, as i am an optimist by nature. actually, doesn't EVERYBODY say that?

ok, i haven't talked about politics in a while here on the blog, and since there's nothing really new to report on the music front (though i may have a new song coming out on a japeanese comp. soon. i'll let you know when i have more info...) i have to talk about the CLEARLY illegal wire-tapping the Bush administration is using. ask yourself this question, dear reader; why would Bush not go to a court that has only rejected 4 gov. requests in over 4,000? it's starting to come out in some media that despite what the Bush said, they have monitored purely domestic calls. in other words, calls that are not coming in the the USA from outside or from the USA to other countries but rather, inside the USA calls! that's why they didn't go to a rubber stamp court for approval. because they knew even the FISA court wouldn't approve spying on domestic calls! and then it comes out that the FBI is spying on a whole bunch of groups that have one thing in common; they are on the other side of the poltical fence from republicans!!

this is the nixon admin. all over again except these guys are even more arrogant.

let me just leave you these two quotes and think about what this all REALLY means:

Sen. John Cornyn(R): "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."
Sen. Russ Feingold's(D) retort: "Give me liberty or give me death."

The Winter of My Discontent

well, things are not going well for your old narrator here...

the john howard/witch hazel sound album is kaput. non-payment by the label is the main reason for it's death but it's also a little bit of back-stabbing by the various parties involved who are NOT members of the WHS. i think you will be able to figure it out...and yes, this marks ANOTHER project that looks like it won't be released, joining a Bill Fox
record i recorded back in '96 and the Laura Watling sessions from a couple of years ago...such is this business...


btw, i would also ask any of you who may not have already ordered the french version of the last WHS album, please DO NOT do so now. the record co. who put it out has changed management and i am not on good terms with them at all, so please boycott that release...

the good news is i am still at work on a new Orange Cake Mix album, supplying my usual over-blown arrangements on his songs. it's going quite well, actually and just a few days ago we added some great backing vocals to one of the songs. the singer was a new participant in the kevin coral universe by the name of Elizabeth Kelly. she's a VERY talented vocalist and keyboard player and we have just begun working together on
this project and have tenative plans to work on more things in the future for my Torrey Canyon collective. i'll keep you posted...

The Chamber Strings project has sort of taken on some new life lately, as kevin junior is back in the states and has expressed a desire to re-start the album sessions with me. things have been moving at a stop and start pace on this one but i will keep you updated. watch this spot, as they say...

happy holidays to everyone and here's hoping the new year is better for yours truly! ha! how's THAT for a self-serving greeting?!

-kevin

Why i hate the music biz, chapter 742

oh, good god! why, oh, why does the music biz suck soooo badly? look at this story at the huffington post!!

so, the record companies don't have any production costs, except the cost of recording the album- and let's remember that on 'greatest hits' collections there is absolutely NO cost- and now they want to charge as much as they do for cd?? oh, how i wish the indies and itunes would get together and have albums for $9.99 and itunes will just tell the majors to go to hell! then the majors would all go to their own download systems and charge more per album and they would fail miserably! we must destroy this system/paradigm. it screws the artist and it screws the consumer and smarter people than i need to come up with a new model and put these bastards out of buisness...and the record co.'s wonder why people do something wrong like download music! when they do wrong to both artists and consumers. and yeah, sure, 2 (or 3) wrongs don't make a right but damn, i can understand while people do it!

working in the studio today some more on the john howard album. i really hope this record comes out soon and gets some good distribution because john's songs are great and people who've heard the rough mixes, including john himself, have been really over-the-top in their praise. and, since i'm not feeling humble today, i'll say that it's my best production overall; if for no other reason than the songs and arrangements are so varied...from glam rock (like bowie not like poison) to pure pop to electro-avant stuff... and i owe a lot to people like craig lisik, henry james and jason richardson for their help along the way of the recording of this album.

anyway back to work... oh yeah, i changed the settings so now you don't have to be a registered user to leave a commnet. so let the flaming begin!

-kevin

TEMPUS FUGIT

i'm fairly sure no one is reading this blog, but on the off-chance someone is, i apologize for not posting in a month. it's gotten crazier than usual around here recently...

sent john howard new rough mixes and he loved them, so we're 75% done with that album. there has been some record co. weirdness as of late, so i don't have anything to tell you about a possible release date, but watch this space for further updates...

also, the chamber strings project seems to be back on after kevin junior has now returned from europe. he had been over there for almost a year, intially playing with nikki sudden on some dates, then doing his own shows in germany and italy and then meeting a girl, etc. but he is back now and ready to re-start our work on his new album. we had done some demos last fall that neither of us we're super-thrilled with; the songs are very good, it's just the performances weren't quite what we'd hoped. but hopefully we can get cracking on it soon. again, watch this space.

i've been reading this book on the brill building writers called "Always Magic in the Air : The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era and it's pretty good but not all that well written. it's not bad but doesn't have much flow...anyway, i was reading it last night and was struck by how cool gene pitney was. this a guy who wrote 'he's a rebel' for phil spector, sang many hits written by bacharach and david ( one of which, 'the foolkiller,' is a totally under-rated gem) and hung out and played with the stones back in the 60's. what a cool dude..

speaking of brill building stuff and spector, i have been listening to a new compilation called Phil's Spectre II: Another Wall of Soundalikes and it's pretty cool. i think i liked the first volume a little better but this one has some great stuff like: No Room to Cry - Dobie Gray,Habit of Lovin' You Baby - April Stevens, Nino Tempo and You Gave Me Somebody to Love - The Dreamlovers. the funniest thing about this comp. is how many people tried to rip off the righteous bros. and 'you've lost that lovin' feelin!' there's one song by a group call kane and abel that is complete knock-off of '...lovin' feelin'

ok, that's all for now but i'll be posting again soon so keep on checkin' back!

ciao!

Old Stuff

well, we finally have got some of our equipment listed on the website (www.torreycanyon.net). it's a list of some of our cooler pre-amps first.

and that brings me to today's topic, old stuff. a great deal of our equipment at the studio is 30 years old and older. so, the internet has been an invaluable resource for finding out info about a lot of this stuff. in fact, thanks to newsgroups and forums, you can even talk to the people who worked with this stuff back in the day!

anyway, while reading things and in some instances, actually talking to these 'old-timers,' we have been struck by how dismissive they were of most of this old equipment. and that struck me because i've seen this tendency from other people of the pre-baby boomer generations. my parents have been antique collectors and dealers for over 30 years and they too have run cross this dismissive attitude towards 'old stuff.' well, we've come up with a generalized opinion that that is because they lived through the full-bloom of the 'space age,'so they were conditioned to get rid of the old and celebrate the new. now, all generations suffer from this to varying degress but it is most pronounced in the 'greatest generation,'IMHO...

so anyway, that my dime store psych study for today, kiddies! and yes, i maybe completely full of shite...

oh, the one thing that always seems to come up when talking to old-timers about this equipment is how come those records they made with this 'crap' sounded GREAT?? i get different answers to this one, as you might imagine...oh yeah, and my favorite dismissive comment about a piece of gear was a guy describing an EQ as 'the ringy type liked by people who read Tape Op.' haha! i loved that one...

Wingnut judges and new studio stuff

ok, check this out about Bush's new supreme court nominee.

this is from the CNN site and the great blog, Dailykos.com:

"In Doe v. Groody, Alito agued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home."

isn't that great? i can't wait for more of the republican's vision for america. how 'bout you?? please learn more about this guy and tell your friends, famliy and neighbors so they'll learn about what this white house and their wingnut friends are doing!!

on the plus side, we've bought a new pre amp for the studio. it's a early 70's vintage mic pre/eq made by audix. audix was a company formed by ex-neve employees in the late 60's. the designs were VERY neve-like. so this is a great new 'color' for us to add to our projects! if you don't know who neve were, well, they are about the most respected and used gear label in the audio world.

we've had people asking for pics of the studio and such and were working on that but it'll be a little while as we are doing some remodeling to the control room. but soon we'll have some shots!!

Random Stuff

wow, the vice-prez's chief of staff just got indicted on 5 counts and has resigned! woohoo!!!

i guess rove is still in trouble, too...

and dig this from a fox news(!) poll: Of those that say they voted for Bush in the election, 86 percent say they would still vote for him today and 6 percent would switch their vote to Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry .

that means, of course, that kerry would've won quite easily...

but i think this might turn out for the best, though it's hard to say that when 2,000 u.s. soldiers and countless iraqi citizens have been killed...

staying on the downer tip, i was reading Uncut (www.uncut.co.uk) last night and it had a big cover story about the murder of john lennon. and in the article they had many musicians' memories of that fateful day. it's amazing how many of them said they cried. i was 12 then and i remember the night very vividly. my father was a HUGE beatles fan and i grew up hearing them and believing them, esp. john, to be heroes. my dad just listened to his music on WMMS all night. even at 12, i remember thinking the world had changed. i also remember how excited my dad was about 'double fantasy' coming out and how john was back in the charts and radio. it boggles the mind to think about the beatles and their impact...sorry i don't have anything profound to say. i think it would probably come off as trite, anyway...

TGIF!!!! hehehe...

cheers,

kevin

Oblique Strategies

here's a cool link to you MAC users out there. http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/oblique.html

it's a freeware program of all of brian eno's 'oblique strategies' card decks. an ingenious idea, really!

if you don't know about these cards, they were designed to be used by a musician or producer when they've reached a deadspot during recording or mixing, etc. so, to jumpstart the session again, one would pick a card out the deck and follow the 'strategy' written on it. it's really great but in my experience, most artists/producers don't usually have the guts to follow the first card they choose! hehehe...

but either way it can be a really good little tool to use around the studio.

Welcome to our silly blog!!

hi folks,

this is the blog of the studio we like to call the endless summer institute of sound. we're a personal studio in lovely kent, oh. if you're here and reading this, you probably know us anyway, so let's move on...

this picture is of our lastest addition to the studio, a early 70's vintage helios mic pre/eq module. these babies are rare. helios was the name of a console company started by dick swettenham who worked at abbey road, then built a console for olympic studios (rolling stones, beatles, hendrix, etc) and then started to build consoles for other UK studios and then started to branch out the the U.S. each console was custom built!

for more of the helios story go to:http://www.helios-electronics.com/The_Story/the_story.html

so, anyway, we're so thrilled to add this 'weapon' to our already pretty damn good arsenal of vintage gear. we'll start talking about our other gear and post pics here too in the next few weeks. jason, my partner in the studio, will also post here as well. this blog will be mainly about what's goin' on at the studio but might also be about music, politics, etc. we hope you enjoy it...

cheers,

kevin

www.torreycanyon.net