Speaker 1: Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Yo Yo Yo,
Speaker 1: what's up?
Speaker 2: This is Fante Fantigolo tapping in with another QLs classic.
Speaker 1: This week, were gonna take it back. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: it all the way back. This is almost our first episode.
Speaker 2: This is episode number two from September fourteen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: with none other than the legendary producer, engineer, and musician
Speaker 2: Bob Power.
Speaker 1: Bob talks about.
Speaker 2: Working with stats Sosonic, the Angelo, a tribe called quest
Speaker 2: and none other than our fearless cult leader and sweet
Speaker 2: tea drink Questlove along with the Roots travel back to
Speaker 2: one of the episodes that started it all on QLs.
Speaker 1: It's Fontigulo. Yeah. Here we are.
Speaker 3: Supremo, so supremo who call sopremo some some supremo role
Speaker 3: called suprema. So some supremo role called suprema. So some
Speaker 3: suprema role called.
Speaker 1: My name is Questo?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am, yeah, this is my show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Love Suprema Supremo something so supremo ro called suprema
Speaker 3: something son Supremo.
Speaker 5: Roll call I am Mantika. Yeah, can't you tell Yeah,
Speaker 5: go order some food, Yeah, something hungry.
Speaker 3: Hey call Supremo, some some Supremo, role called Supremo, Sun
Speaker 3: Son Supremo.
Speaker 6: Vol call Uh yeah, uh Steve, Yeah, chicken palm Yeah,
Speaker 6: roll call.
Speaker 3: Supremo, son something Supremo, roll call Suprema something something Supremo.
Speaker 1: Voe come.
Speaker 7: My name is Bill, Yeah, I was the first guest. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and now I'm on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah with quest go Supremo, Son Son Supremo, ro called Supremo,
Speaker 3: some son Supremo, roll call.
Speaker 1: My name is Bill, Yeah yeah, some Alumnama, demon Lumma,
Speaker 1: some of them Yeah, some of.
Speaker 3: No call s Primo, son son Supremo, roll called Supremo,
Speaker 3: some some Supremo.
Speaker 8: Ro call my name is Bob, Yeah, I ain't no jokie.
Speaker 1: Yeah is Bob? Yeah? Hi sure my monkey, roll call.
Speaker 3: Suprema Son Son Supremo, ro called Supremo, son Son Supremo.
Speaker 3: Roll call Supremo, son Son Supremo, roll call Supremo, Son
Speaker 3: Son Supremo, roll call Supremo, Son Supremo, ro call Supremo,
Speaker 3: some Supremo, roll Supremo Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll. Ladies and gentlemen, Ladies and gentlemen. This is questlove
Speaker 1: and this is quest Love Supreme. Welcome to our show.
Speaker 1: How did I get here? I do not know, but
Speaker 1: they asked me, and I'm here and I'm here for you.
Speaker 1: Bart a few friends with me to help me explore art, culture, music, food.
Speaker 1: So my my co host with the co most is
Speaker 1: Sir Fon Tigelow.
Speaker 5: What's going on?
Speaker 7: Of course?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Formerly of Little Brother, currently of The Foreign Exchange. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite cats ever, Like more than any book,
Speaker 1: Your your your Instagram or your Instagram, and your your
Speaker 1: your Twitter, uh musings and and your wisdom is some
Speaker 1: of the best reading toilet seat reading.
Speaker 7: I've ever done.
Speaker 1: Hey, I got to keep Hey bro, Hey, look I
Speaker 1: gotta keep it.
Speaker 7: Really a good book.
Speaker 2: Maybe back up the nineties it was Blacktail, but now
Speaker 2: it's Frantic and my I g I would think about
Speaker 2: that when I'm crafting my next tweet, I'm like.
Speaker 5: This, should I maybe I write this next my tweets.
Speaker 5: I'm honor to be here, man.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Frante is like one of my favorite thinking cats
Speaker 1: of of of all time. So I'm extremely honest that
Speaker 1: he's here.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 1: Next to Frante is uh Steve a k A sugar Steve.
Speaker 1: How you doing bruh, I'm not feeling well.
Speaker 7: But hello, Steve.
Speaker 1: I've known for about near twenty years.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Steve was an assistant engineer at Electric Ladies Studios uh
Speaker 1: and has worked on practically every record that I did
Speaker 1: in that building. Voodoo by the Angelo, like Water for Chocolate,
Speaker 1: Common Mom's Gone with Eric abaddu uh oh part and
Speaker 1: the diabetes the mythology. So I stole the legends that
Speaker 1: I stole Steve from Electric Lady Studios to be my
Speaker 1: full time engineer. And so when he moved to Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: he kind of that my diet. And at the time,
Speaker 1: three times a day. There was a church that had
Speaker 1: Sunday dinners for sale all throughout the weekday. It's called
Speaker 1: the the House of Prayer. Come yeah, House of Prayer?
Speaker 1: Is there everyone in North Carolina?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 5: Because the House of Prayer like the House of Prayer
Speaker 5: that was the bread they grew up.
Speaker 1: The house. Yeah, the House of Bread.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You need?
Speaker 5: So the House of Prayer, it was on Market Street.
Speaker 5: It was on the corner Market in Dudley. And the
Speaker 5: leader of that House of Prayer was Daddy Grace.
Speaker 1: Yeah that daddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Daddy Grace, so you could go to the House
Speaker 2: of Prayer on the on the you know, they tell
Speaker 2: plates and you could get like some mother pork chop.
Speaker 5: Dams and macaron cheese for like five dollars or guess what.
Speaker 1: Guess So the legend, the legend is a legend. I
Speaker 1: said about I did about three weeks straight like this.
Speaker 1: This is when I was working. What's the first thing
Speaker 1: we did together in Philly the Farrell record. We work
Speaker 1: on Farrell and the Yes Sirs. So every break we'd
Speaker 1: head to the church, bust a grub, buy two grubs
Speaker 1: so we have a midnight snack too. So wow, we
Speaker 1: doubled down on those grubs here. And then like two
Speaker 1: months later Steve was like, yo, man, Bill Sermon a
Speaker 1: k A. Willie White, William White. Bill is my boss
Speaker 1: at Sesame Wait do I still work at Sesamet only
Speaker 1: wrote like one song.
Speaker 7: We can change that.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Bill, Bill is the new Joe Roposo. Who's Joe
Speaker 1: rop Joe Riposo is the god of children's songs. He
Speaker 1: wrote many a classic at Sesame Street. Bill's now at
Speaker 1: Sesame Street. But we met because he's one of the
Speaker 1: seven UH producers for the Hamilton cast out. You also
Speaker 1: are Grammy Ward Antony Ward winner for in the Heights.
Speaker 1: You're a producer of many uh acts. He's a real
Speaker 1: big shot.
Speaker 10: White for nothing deal. Do not have the white corner.
Speaker 10: You don't have the sugars, right, I don't have the
Speaker 10: sugar Yet we hang out working on it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, I'm honored to be here. Last, but not.
Speaker 1: Least, are our boss man, our producer Bill DJ Brainchild?
Speaker 1: Am I allowed to call you by your government anymore?
Speaker 1: I guess okay, I'll call you DJ Brainchild?
Speaker 7: Or I.
Speaker 9: Are you gonna edit this part? I'm gonna leave it
Speaker 9: all right? Did you just call it a podcast? I'm
Speaker 9: gonna edit that out on this radio show?
Speaker 1: Is this on ladies and gentlemen? I'm not four, I'm
Speaker 1: not supposed to.
Speaker 7: Call this is not a podcast. This is a radio show.
Speaker 1: A Miro was me five dollars every time he calls
Speaker 1: the show a podcast? Should we just have a.
Speaker 7: Podcast?
Speaker 1: Jar right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm gonna be rich by yo.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 2: I thought about y'all the other day, man, I thought
Speaker 2: about Steve. I thought about y'all days we were talking about,
Speaker 2: like the diabetes and stuff. I heard probably the most sad, hilarious,
Speaker 2: most like tragic shit ever. And this is a real story.
Speaker 2: I won't name the guy's name. I can't, I don't,
Speaker 2: but it's a friend of a friend of mine. This
Speaker 2: really happened in real life. This is recent homeboy mind well,
Speaker 2: he's not my homeboy, but my friend of mine. It's
Speaker 2: her homeboy.
Speaker 5: Play cousin.
Speaker 1: Shit.
Speaker 5: Homie like needed a kidney, right, It's like he was
Speaker 5: fucked up and I guess he got like God betes
Speaker 5: or something like that. He needed a kidney. No, no, bullshit,
Speaker 5: need a kidney.
Speaker 2: And he was touring at one point with like a
Speaker 2: major artist, okay, and so this major artist got behind
Speaker 2: him and was like, Yo, we need to get my
Speaker 2: man a kidney, like started to go fund me and
Speaker 2: all this shit, you know what I'm saying, got him
Speaker 2: on the go fundme.
Speaker 5: People gave all this money. So Homie gets on the
Speaker 5: donor list for the kidney. Like, he gets on the list.
Speaker 2: So now all of a sudden, like you know, he's
Speaker 2: like praising God and everything. So then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: we just his like Facebook post change and it's like,
Speaker 2: oh man, the devil trying to steal my joy Uh,
Speaker 2: they the devil is a liar like all this, you know,
Speaker 2: all like the ship that gospel nigga say when they're mad.
Speaker 2: So it's like, so we're like, what the fuck happened?
Speaker 2: They took him off the donor list. So then we're like, okay,
Speaker 2: well why so we go to his instagram.
Speaker 11: Ah, check what I had for dinner tonight, whitebread fried fish,
Speaker 11: and it's like days and days of funk shit and like,
Speaker 11: and so they determined like, look, we're not gonna you're
Speaker 11: not living a lifestyle that is whatever.
Speaker 5: So I just thought that was amazing.
Speaker 2: I've never heard I've heard I've never heard of a
Speaker 2: motherfucker ig and yourself off the donor list. How the
Speaker 2: fuck you tweeted yourself off the goddamn dost dude, and
Speaker 2: like and then if you look at his ig, all
Speaker 2: the meals like it's it's all bad, Like it's all
Speaker 2: like whitebread, refine, sugars, fried this.
Speaker 1: So the hospital was following him.
Speaker 5: Hey brother, it's a new game.
Speaker 7: That was a really great story.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Yeah, dude, he.
Speaker 5: Like his Instagram took him off the fucking Donald list.
Speaker 5: That is some of the most.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 7: I like a quest of Instagram rands where like you
Speaker 7: think it's gonna be like a paragraph and then you
Speaker 7: like what like, whoa, I didn't know you? Whoa you
Speaker 7: had some time, which is rare to ship to say.
Speaker 9: Toilet the reason why he doesn't have time because he
Speaker 9: was writing something. I mean like like, that's a lot
Speaker 9: of little ship happening. Impressed by you, the tom sam
Speaker 9: like I try to keep my emails that I ride
Speaker 9: on my phone like five words, yeah, toilet.
Speaker 7: Stool music, so it's Fante's tweets and then like really
Speaker 7: long and right right then as soon as you stand up,
Speaker 7: Oh man, ain't that ship the worst?
Speaker 1: Yo?
Speaker 5: Like you stand up, ship be sleep you gotta shake
Speaker 5: it out, stank leg.
Speaker 1: But the part sleep is in the shape for whatever
Speaker 1: the yeah, right right right, and it ain't the worst
Speaker 1: ship ever.
Speaker 5: Like when you go to a like because I because
Speaker 5: I have a thing. It's like when you go to
Speaker 5: a real clean I went to my dealership.
Speaker 2: They just work on my car, and they had a
Speaker 2: it's a new dealership and they got built a new
Speaker 2: men's bathroom.
Speaker 5: And the ship is gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Oh, it has its own little like private joint, a
Speaker 2: pristine joint, or if you go the handicapped joining handicap to.
Speaker 5: And like not in the airport, but like in the
Speaker 5: dealership it was so nice. I was like, man, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna go wrong on this.
Speaker 8: So I was like, I need to put the seat down.
Speaker 5: I was like, man, I'm gonna you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: it's like you fear, It's like how you yeah whatever, you.
Speaker 4: Ever live your way in the handicap that little private room,
Speaker 4: the handicap in the airport, like just in case, like
Speaker 4: right right right, you limp and then you get down.
Speaker 4: But the worst feeling though, is like when you sit
Speaker 4: down and it's a warm toilet seet. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: that ship is like it's like a s is terrible.
Speaker 4: I like the cold the cold toilet seat on on
Speaker 4: the on the bottom.
Speaker 7: Have a heatd toilet seat in my house?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 7: Yeah? When I moved into this house, it was the
Speaker 7: one number one reason I moved in the house. Not
Speaker 7: only was is it heated? But has his panel over
Speaker 7: here all right? That like does all kinds of crazy
Speaker 7: ship like it'll yeah, it'll spoid water up that. I
Speaker 7: gotta get a drive. Have you been in Japan? I've
Speaker 7: been years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Game Changer so I keep hearing about that. Dude, I'll
Speaker 7: tell you what, and I'm pistol.
Speaker 10: Can I say I thought outside of the thing, I
Speaker 10: was like, I'm gonna have to get I was like,
Speaker 10: oh no, I was taking the ship Amazon, and how
Speaker 10: much the toilet seat ship costs?
Speaker 7: When I moved, I could buy one. And all you
Speaker 7: know is that's it's like three grand for like the thing. Man.
Speaker 7: But I will tell you what it is. You can
Speaker 7: buy like you can, but that's not the same thing,
Speaker 7: producer Bill, I'll.
Speaker 1: Tell you that maybe sixty or seventy percent of all
Speaker 1: the exchanges between Rich and I or mometa toilet stool exchanges.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, all my lists, all my thank yous, oh,
Speaker 1: all the roots, thank yous, toilet like I have a desk. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's too much, Yes, let's wait for that. So we
Speaker 1: are very honored to have uh the great Bob Power
Speaker 1: in the studio. Give it up. Thank you.
Speaker 8: They're my My mother has been chilling well for me,
Speaker 8: and she talked to you into this. I know, you know,
Speaker 8: just like she gave for all twenty bucks to say
Speaker 8: that thing about me.
Speaker 7: Right, so exactly.
Speaker 8: Okay, So she's running out her doll, though I might
Speaker 8: trouble she get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gave you the money, so I you know
Speaker 1: you are. For those that don't know Bob Power's role
Speaker 1: in music, especially in the realm of classic hip hop,
Speaker 1: I'll say that you are up there with all of
Speaker 1: the great creators beyond engineer. I mean, I consider you
Speaker 1: the fourth beatle. In a try call Quest and.
Speaker 8: In De La Soul and the Vinnia called me the
Speaker 8: den mother. I thought that was real cool.
Speaker 1: You were definitely the demon.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, I'd like to get stuff done and
Speaker 8: everybody's just hanging out. It's like, okay, what are we
Speaker 8: doing now?
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm not saying that I'm the most
Speaker 1: disciplined human beyond earth. Actually I'm the least disciplined human
Speaker 1: being on Earth, but I disagree. But probably the one
Speaker 1: thing that I learned in studio mixing with songs is
Speaker 1: the absolute concentration that the engineer needs UH to to
Speaker 1: complete such a task. And you never let me live
Speaker 1: that down either.
Speaker 8: I know, all those little things on the credit I
Speaker 8: used to Bob, could you guys please go in the
Speaker 8: back Power I mean, yeah, so I mean.
Speaker 1: To run off your resume if you are a classic
Speaker 1: hip hop fan. This this this man as has pretty
Speaker 1: much engineered and steered uh A mighty ship of of
Speaker 1: classic records from uh three. Well you did on Fire
Speaker 1: by the stets of Sonic? Did you do him full gear?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: That was my first big thing. Yeah, on fire, on fire, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to hear it, to hear. Q Tip described when he
Speaker 1: first heard ghost Stetsa in a nightclub. He said, that
Speaker 1: was that was a that was a moment for him
Speaker 1: where he stopped in his tracks and it was amazed
Speaker 1: at how clear the drum sounded and said, this is
Speaker 1: what I want to sound like. So are you serious?
Speaker 1: I never heard that, man, Yeah, because I asked like,
Speaker 1: how did you How did Bob enter the sphere? And
Speaker 1: he's like, ilsy the club a night and and I
Speaker 1: heard ghosts and I was like shocked, and I was
Speaker 1: like he worked on that. But then I figured, like
Speaker 1: all the all the Calliope Foster people had to have
Speaker 1: been from Tommy Boyd.
Speaker 8: You know, yeah, there was I believe that Shane Favor
Speaker 8: went away for two weeks on vacation and I filled
Speaker 8: in and we got along.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, Shane never should have left, man. So
Speaker 1: oh after that then you sort of eased.
Speaker 8: In and it wasn't my own doing. I had nothing
Speaker 8: to do with it. They said show up. I said, okay.
Speaker 1: So when Shane came back and everybody wanted to roll
Speaker 1: with you and.
Speaker 8: Shad, well not really. I mean Shane and I split
Speaker 8: that first record, and it's funny. I just remastered that
Speaker 8: for the twenty fifth anniversary release last year. Man, I
Speaker 8: had no idea what I was doing back then. It
Speaker 8: was scary to hear that stuff.
Speaker 1: But it was funny. So you cringe when you're in
Speaker 1: your mistress now or.
Speaker 8: Only stuff from that far back. I actually sometimes I
Speaker 8: catch myself. I'll hear a song and I say, you know.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty good. Wow, that's cool, and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: I mixed that.
Speaker 8: Oh Man, don't you forget tracks that you've done, Like.
Speaker 1: I have a I have a cardinal rule to not uh.
Speaker 1: I will obsessively listen to uh whatever record I'm working
Speaker 1: on for maybe three months after it comes out, and
Speaker 1: then I never ever go back. Right.
Speaker 8: But like I'm in a clothes store or something, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 8: I know that song. Oh yeah, I mixed that.
Speaker 1: That happens, that happens yesterday I heard a song that
Speaker 1: I was on. I just amed it and I was
Speaker 1: disappointed when I found out that I didn't know that
Speaker 1: you were on it. I was on that I was
Speaker 1: on that song anyway, So you did h on Fire
Speaker 1: by Statsu Sonic.
Speaker 2: That was the first that Sonic song I ever heard,
Speaker 2: honestly on Fire because I was I bought it.
Speaker 1: This was god. I was like, seven, did you buy it?
Speaker 1: I actually, yeah, I didn't steal. I didn't steal it.
Speaker 1: Last week we was talking about like a month ago,
Speaker 1: right on the last episode.
Speaker 8: I don't think I did that whole record, but if
Speaker 8: I remember on Fire, then I did that song.
Speaker 2: Noah, I had that one that was on I remember
Speaker 2: that one because that was on a K Tail Records compilation.
Speaker 1: Then I bought from k Mart.
Speaker 8: And like straight up and that was the last song
Speaker 8: on side one, so that that was a three cent
Speaker 8: royalty check I got a couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: It might be it was a K Tale because it
Speaker 1: also you said Tangerine Records. Then I really would have
Speaker 1: just walked down the wall.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 5: It was k Tel and that was the last song
Speaker 5: on side one, and uh it also had I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you remember mister X and mister Z drink O Gold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that was on there too.
Speaker 2: That it wasn't even the compilation though, like rap Hits
Speaker 2: or some ship. It was something like corny like and
Speaker 2: he was like, I gotta have this. It was that
Speaker 2: was all I could afford because it was in like
Speaker 2: the bargain box.
Speaker 1: So it might have been like three.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it was like three.
Speaker 1: I know those takes very.
Speaker 2: Cream colored tapes, like the cream you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like if it was like the white tape, the cream color,
Speaker 2: you knew it was some bullshit.
Speaker 1: Actually, you know something, my first Boy Power cassette I stole. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's appropriate. Appropriate. The reason why I was hesitating to
Speaker 1: say I was wanted to make sure that the grace
Speaker 1: period had passed before Sam Goodie presses charges.
Speaker 8: I have some good news for you. Sam Goody is
Speaker 8: no more So I beat the man.
Speaker 1: No. I used to work at Sam Goodie's after school,
Speaker 1: and when I had that that moment when I heard three,
Speaker 1: the same way that I felt when I heard Nation
Speaker 1: of Millions, I was like, Yo, these guys are talking
Speaker 1: directly to me. So I stole the the only copy
Speaker 1: in the store and I think, yeah, I got fired,
Speaker 1: but not a week after that, right, I think I
Speaker 1: think they knew I stole.
Speaker 8: It, so they were throwing your ass in jail, man,
Speaker 8: Come on, would just be fired?
Speaker 1: Well, no, I got fired. You know. I like to
Speaker 1: think it was you know, the Christmas rush was over
Speaker 1: and they didn't need me in January. But I think
Speaker 1: they I think they knew that I did that. So anyway,
Speaker 1: three ft and Rising days Souls dead low in theory.
Speaker 1: You did people's instinctive travels. You did the first try.
Speaker 8: Record half of it? Yeah, I did not do uh
Speaker 8: three feet high?
Speaker 7: Who?
Speaker 8: A couple other people there did that. I did a
Speaker 8: session or two, but I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I did not go. So you came dead Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and blue mind state stakes.
Speaker 8: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 8: You know, I got really busy as a producer. And
Speaker 8: then when I said people yeah, and people said, got
Speaker 8: really pissed.
Speaker 1: You know, of course tip they were territory hip. Got
Speaker 1: really pissed. But it's okay, we're over it now. He
Speaker 1: was territorial. Let's drop that one.
Speaker 5: You know, why are you giving up?
Speaker 1: I love the man and I really do as you do.
Speaker 1: You know, come on, man, Yeah no, because my first
Speaker 1: week in working with you, I think I maybe that's
Speaker 1: why you you had the quiet rule, because I think
Speaker 1: I asked you more about tried mixes than I was
Speaker 1: concerned about my own mixes.
Speaker 8: So I thank god that's part of the twenty year period.
Speaker 8: That's a big blur to me because I don't remember
Speaker 8: a thing.
Speaker 1: Well, I would that's what we were going to ask you,
Speaker 1: So I guess I should ask you. Did you Did
Speaker 1: you come into the saying I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: pioneering engineer or was it like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: your beginnings, Like what were you you know, in your.
Speaker 8: Totally backed into engineering? I uh, you really want to
Speaker 8: start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 8: I played trombone in fourth grade because it was cool
Speaker 8: because I could hit the kid in the back of
Speaker 8: the head in front of me with the slide. That's
Speaker 8: exactly why I picked it up. They also told me
Speaker 8: my lips were too big to play trumpet, and I
Speaker 8: was like, okay, thank you. That's really nice to tell
Speaker 8: a kid, you know. Anyway, played bad rock guitar by
Speaker 8: ear in high school, went away to college at a
Speaker 8: place Webster University. They had a conservatory, and I didn't
Speaker 8: know enough to be scared. It was a classical conservatory.
Speaker 8: I had no background in it became a classical theory
Speaker 8: and composition major.
Speaker 1: They never would have let me in. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they let me in, but they did.
Speaker 7: What year was this?
Speaker 8: Nineteen seventy So during the four years that I was
Speaker 8: there and studying classical theory and composition, I was playing
Speaker 8: a sort of chilllin circuit in Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: And I played an R and B bands and cover
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, yeah, you're my favorite pussy, you know, Funkadelic,
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, and temptation stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 8: I killed Papa was a rolling stone man, you know
Speaker 8: those little ridges on the rubber on the wah wah
Speaker 8: pedals and keep your foot there.
Speaker 1: My shit is worn out. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: And left Saint Louis in seventy five, did some recording
Speaker 8: there with different people.
Speaker 1: I mean, what were your aspirations in the seventies. I
Speaker 1: want to be a rock star, man, Come on, guess
Speaker 1: what you are? A rock star? Come on.
Speaker 8: Anyway, moved to San Francisco in seventy five, and this
Speaker 8: is weird. I ended up getting my masters in jazz.
Speaker 8: But it's a long story that I really can't tell
Speaker 8: on the air. It's a sort of checkered story the
Speaker 8: reason that I got into graduate school.
Speaker 1: But we'll leave it at that.
Speaker 8: I had let's just say, I had to be on
Speaker 8: my best behavior for a while and got into TV scoring.
Speaker 8: While I was there, my dad was a television producer
Speaker 8: and he hooked me up with some people. So I
Speaker 8: scored TV like three or four months out of the
Speaker 8: year for seven years and subsidize my jazz career. What
Speaker 8: shows did you There was a show on PBS called
Speaker 8: over Easy. I did a bunch of stuff for Disney,
Speaker 8: a couple other things, a couple of specials for PBS,
Speaker 8: and it was cool.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: That was a day's premitty where you had to like
Speaker 8: score stuff out on score paper and go into the session,
Speaker 8: lay down the charts and it had to be right.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: There was no you know, because payroll runs when you
Speaker 8: have a lot of people on the floor.
Speaker 1: There were union dates, so it was cool. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. I wouldn't have made it in
Speaker 1: the seventies, man it you know, that.
Speaker 8: Was premitty, so things were way way different then. So anyway,
Speaker 8: I wanted to be Bobby Broom or somebody you know,
Speaker 8: great jazz guitar player.
Speaker 1: Was just okay.
Speaker 8: Now we're going to get calls people say he was terrible.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just okay, And like, did you come close
Speaker 1: to a a career in being like I was? I
Speaker 1: was a journeyman.
Speaker 7: No, no, no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 8: I was playing weddings in Mezvas, wedding at Best. I
Speaker 8: haven't got guys, I haven't gotten to the part about
Speaker 8: the Mafia weddings in Flatbush for for seventy five dollars.
Speaker 1: But I'll get there.
Speaker 8: And in nineteen eighty two, you know, I had a
Speaker 8: nice life there. My cash flow is okay because of
Speaker 8: the scoring work. But I knew I had to have
Speaker 8: moved to LA or New York. So all my friends
Speaker 8: were here, had some people in some friends in advertising
Speaker 8: and corporate communications.
Speaker 1: So came back started you really want to hear this?
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, okay, already, No, I'm not that's a problem.
Speaker 8: I came back to New York, took every gig playing
Speaker 8: I could. I got really good at sixteenth note octaves
Speaker 8: because I played on a lot of bad dance records.
Speaker 1: Check records. Oh man, I don't remember. I really don't.
Speaker 7: That's the twenty years stad.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. They weren't Union. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: You know, I got paid in cash. I left.
Speaker 8: And was doing every kind of weird club date gig
Speaker 8: I could, like I said, mafia weddings out in Flatbush,
Speaker 8: taking the subway home in a tuxedo with my guitar
Speaker 8: and my amp at two point thirty in the morning
Speaker 8: from the junction.
Speaker 7: You guys know what.
Speaker 1: This was late eighties. It got stolen what I was
Speaker 1: waiting for the no no, no, no no.
Speaker 8: But I was producing stuff overnight at Calliope because it
Speaker 8: was the cheapest hours, and I was doing industrials for
Speaker 8: my friends, you know, big corporate communications shows, and the
Speaker 8: money was great and you got to do really big productions,
Speaker 8: and stuff just started getting into jingles. And I was
Speaker 8: working overnight at Calliope, and Chris, you remember Chris Irwin,
Speaker 8: the guy who wanted to another name, fell asleep at
Speaker 8: the console. So I finished up and he woke up.
Speaker 8: He said, Oh, Bob Colter, the guy who engineered for
Speaker 8: me all the time, is going away for two weeks.
Speaker 8: Would you like to fill in and I was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know how to do that.
Speaker 8: I knew how to press record on the tape ma sheet.
Speaker 8: You know, I'd always asked a lot of questions. I
Speaker 8: was fascinated by engineering. So this was about eighty five
Speaker 8: and it was Calliope.
Speaker 1: So you know what happened there.
Speaker 8: At the same time that I got a following as
Speaker 8: an engineer there, I got real successful doing jingles, so
Speaker 8: I was trying to do You remember, I was trying
Speaker 8: to do jingles during the day and records at night,
Speaker 8: and it was killing me. And I got a lot
Speaker 8: of good stuff I was doing, like the postal service,
Speaker 8: chef boarder d you know, a lot of BMW Mercedes.
Speaker 8: They didn't give me a car. And then so about
Speaker 8: I think it was ninety one ninety two, I said,
Speaker 8: you know, I was dying and I just realized that
Speaker 8: I had to give one up. So I said, okay,
Speaker 8: I got to make as much money in the record
Speaker 8: business as I was doing in jingles, which is great
Speaker 8: money when when you get finals.
Speaker 1: Really oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The writing fees are decent.
Speaker 8: Plus they're all Union days, so you know, you pa,
Speaker 8: you know, kids, stuff runs for years. I did a
Speaker 8: thing for chef boyd d sharks, you know, little pasta
Speaker 8: shaped like sharks. That ship ran for like three or
Speaker 8: four years, so I was getting checks that whole time.
Speaker 1: It was great. Can I ask my producer, are we
Speaker 1: allowed to play that song?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 7: No, no, we can sing it?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 8: In fact, I think you're going But it was, you know,
Speaker 8: it was cool. We had to do everything. I did
Speaker 8: the music, I did the engineering, I did a lot
Speaker 8: of the playing, and it was just about when they
Speaker 8: expected the music houses to do sound design as well,
Speaker 8: so I had to make the sound of the shark.
Speaker 8: It was animated of the shark fin cutting back and
Speaker 8: forth through the water. So this was the really early
Speaker 8: days of sampling, and samplers didn't have a lot of memory,
Speaker 8: so I think I did. I got a circular saw,
Speaker 8: ripped a piece of bellcrow and did a zipper like
Speaker 8: a zip, and then put them all together and I thought,
Speaker 8: you know, that was really cool, man. It really sounds
Speaker 8: like the shark is cutting up the water. And the
Speaker 8: agency says, that's much too scary.
Speaker 1: We can't use that. So anyway, so.
Speaker 8: By the early nineties I was just doing records. I
Speaker 8: was just engineering and then producing records.
Speaker 1: So that's about what So you're saying that your side hustle,
Speaker 1: you're you're you know, make some engineers engineer like that
Speaker 1: was just an afterthought to you, but you're like changing lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, shit works funny, man, But I don't
Speaker 1: think you realized you were changing lives as you were
Speaker 1: doing it.
Speaker 8: You know what, man, I wasn't changing lives. The artist
Speaker 8: working with were changing lives. I was helping them do
Speaker 8: their thing. I really believe in that. But I read
Speaker 8: you know, that's important to me honestly, as a as
Speaker 8: an engineer or producer. It's really important because it is
Speaker 8: all about the artist, and people lose sight of that,
Speaker 8: especially engineers, you know, guys who get in and say,
Speaker 8: oh no, no, no, that wasn't right.
Speaker 1: We have to set that up again.
Speaker 7: I used to do that.
Speaker 1: Oh you you were that sort of stupid yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: And then I really, you know, it's really about the artists,
Speaker 8: the artist when you're making a record. You know this, man,
Speaker 8: you got to just go there with the artists because
Speaker 8: that's what makes them special. And if they don't have
Speaker 8: anything the special to say, you shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me that a lot of us
Speaker 1: and a lot of people I meet, especially in the
Speaker 1: music industry, they they wind up in their glory period
Speaker 1: kind of by accident and it's never by design. Like
Speaker 1: I never like people people stop me all the time like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like you're there, apparent to Doc Severson,
Speaker 1: I never like you've all people know that. I never
Speaker 1: was like, you know, Bob, I really want to be
Speaker 1: late night. He had good hot chops. Man. No, No,
Speaker 1: I love Doc.
Speaker 8: I played with him, funny ties.
Speaker 1: With him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he sat in DOCA in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got down with this. But I'm just saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of this wasn't planned at all,
Speaker 1: and it was never by design. And to hear you
Speaker 1: say it like engineering was just like it was another gig.
Speaker 1: But in hindsight, you do recognize that it was historically
Speaker 1: important that you did this stuff right.
Speaker 8: You know, did you guys see Zella, the Woody Ellen
Speaker 8: movie where he kind of shows up in all these historical.
Speaker 12: Yes, yes, which jew are you asking because this quarter
Speaker 12: says yeah, yeah, so you know, I was just there.
Speaker 1: That's a weird car.
Speaker 7: That was a car.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's you know, that's one of my favorite records.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, wa wah Watson, that's everything is him
Speaker 8: on that Okay, but you know, things happened in strange words. Man,
Speaker 8: I see well, and I am passionate about what I do.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm waving my head up and down.
Speaker 7: But I have a quo.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure if I missed. Why Why did you
Speaker 6: choose making records over advertising? Advertisements?
Speaker 1: Off? More much cooler.
Speaker 8: That's what I wanted to do since I was a kid.
Speaker 8: You know, I used to sit in my room and
Speaker 8: early on when headphones first came around, like in sixty
Speaker 8: four or I got a headphone in sixty four, I
Speaker 8: used to sit and listen to these records and I
Speaker 8: look on the back of the records and I said
Speaker 8: producer and they called mixers remixers at that point, and uh,
Speaker 8: you know, I said, I had no idea what it was,
Speaker 8: but I said, oh.
Speaker 1: That looks really cool because I really like this record.
Speaker 1: So that's that's where I got started.
Speaker 6: Really, I had almost this exact similar situation. I was interning.
Speaker 6: When I first started, I was interning at JSM. It
Speaker 6: was a jingle house, huge, yeah, like and it was
Speaker 6: beautiful and you've been in there, mm hmm, Like the
Speaker 6: facilities were great, everything. Everybody dressed nice and smelled good
Speaker 6: and made a lot of money. And I was also
Speaker 6: interning at Electricallyity at the same exact time to totally.
Speaker 1: You know, there must have been killing you man.
Speaker 6: Well not really, I mean it was.
Speaker 1: It was more.
Speaker 6: Eventually they both wanted to hire me. I had to
Speaker 6: literally decide the same decision like advertising or Jingles versus
Speaker 6: rock and roll essentially, and you know, the he chose.
Speaker 6: I was like, it's it's sort of a When I
Speaker 6: was doing the pros and cons of it, you know,
Speaker 6: everything said Jingles. You know, of course hours, the money.
Speaker 1: The money, the money, the money, yea, and all the
Speaker 1: opportunity to write as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, But then you know, I just chose Electrically
Speaker 6: because I wanted to make records.
Speaker 1: It's all the same stuff.
Speaker 8: The problem with doing after a while it is, i mean,
Speaker 8: everybody thinks, oh, must really rob your soul. And I
Speaker 8: used to say, fuck, you know, I'm a professional. I
Speaker 8: just do this shit, and I'm really crazy about it.
Speaker 8: When I'm doing it, I love it. I'd put two
Speaker 8: hundred percent into it. But after a while I realized
Speaker 8: it did start to rob My soul, because you just
Speaker 8: put all this stuff out there and people send it
Speaker 8: back and say, oh, no it's too green, you know,
Speaker 8: come on, or we really need it by Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 8: We got to have it by Thursday afternoon. It's really important.
Speaker 1: So you stay up all night.
Speaker 8: Man, you're really dying for it. So you wait till Monday,
Speaker 8: just to be cool, and you call them me and say, hey, Bill,
Speaker 8: did everything work on okay with the track? Oh, it's
Speaker 8: on my desk here somewhere. Let me get to it
Speaker 8: and I'll call you back. Oh all the time, man,
Speaker 8: you know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that happens to us right even now as we speak, Bob,
Speaker 1: I have to say that you're as you say. The
Speaker 1: token white Guy stick was always like one of my
Speaker 1: favorite moments whenever you would do these little skits with
Speaker 1: Dayla and Tribe and everything. First of all, I mean,
Speaker 1: would they would you volunteer these services? And they just
Speaker 1: say go in the studio, go in.
Speaker 8: The think the token white guy was me. I must
Speaker 8: have been out of my mind. You know, everybody was
Speaker 8: doing bad stuff back then. I think that they did
Speaker 8: a whole bunch of fake radio ideas or something like that.
Speaker 8: So I just said, oh, let me go in, let
Speaker 8: me go in and do it, never thinking that it
Speaker 8: would really see the light of day.
Speaker 2: When you were making that stuff, you know, I guess
Speaker 2: like a record like Balloon and just even the Tribe stuff.
Speaker 2: Did you have any idea of where it would go?
Speaker 2: I read an interview This was a couple of days
Speaker 2: ago on Waxweatics. They interviewed Cecil and Margleff. They were
Speaker 2: all the Stevie's stuff and everything, and they were talking
Speaker 2: about how after they did the Stevie stuff they got
Speaker 2: hired to do Osley Brothers and it was just you know,
Speaker 2: regular gig or whatever. And he said they were just
Speaker 2: doing just doing what they did, and they didn't think anything.
Speaker 2: They had no idea the songs we get plate forty
Speaker 2: years later. All right, did you have moments?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 7: No, no, no.
Speaker 8: I think most normal people when they're working on a record,
Speaker 8: you love what's in front of you. It's I don't
Speaker 8: take this the wrong way. That's why you get paid with.
Speaker 8: What I mean is that's why you're there, whether you're
Speaker 8: the artist or engineer or mixing. It's the coolest thing
Speaker 8: in the world for the time that you're working on it.
Speaker 8: It has to be you gotta love it to death.
Speaker 8: So number one, that's the prime directive. Like Star Trek
Speaker 8: and No. I get asked that a lot people say,
Speaker 8: did you know you were making a classic? It's like, no,
Speaker 8: we were having fun, trying to finish.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, I think in order for you
Speaker 1: to produce the results that you did produce, I feel
Speaker 1: as though one has to submit to I guess the
Speaker 1: ongoing battle or conflict with a lot of people, especially
Speaker 1: that early.
Speaker 8: In the game between eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety ninety
Speaker 8: one was actually admitting that hip hop was an art
Speaker 8: form and not just a fat, an extra check in
Speaker 8: that sort of thing. You know, man, it took the
Speaker 8: record business. When the record business really got on board
Speaker 8: was when they said, holy shit, there's a lot of
Speaker 8: money in this. I mean, you know, come on, I'm
Speaker 8: not justing anybody. That's just the way, That's exactly. And
Speaker 8: my thing was, I like to make great music with
Speaker 8: great people. I don't care what form that takes. I
Speaker 8: like big band, you know, there's a lot of things
Speaker 8: I like. I make jazz records, and I really liked
Speaker 8: the people I was working with, so.
Speaker 7: There was.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you ran into this, but there
Speaker 8: was some pushback in the engineering in the studio community
Speaker 8: in New York because until hip hop came along, the
Speaker 8: studios were fairly integrated, but it was a jazz scene,
Speaker 8: and because hip hop was a completely new cultural thing
Speaker 8: coming up in the streets within a different way of talking,
Speaker 8: different way of dressing, different way of walking, different way
Speaker 8: of making music, that even people who were used to
Speaker 8: working in integrated situations in the studio. The studio establishment
Speaker 8: back then and still is to a certain degree of
Speaker 8: white male boys club.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just the people that drift into it,
Speaker 1: not by design, but.
Speaker 8: So there were a lot of people who just sort
Speaker 8: of saw a bunch of eighteen year old kids coming
Speaker 8: in the door with dress like they'd never seen people
Speaker 8: dressed before, and having fun because they're eighteen year old kids,
Speaker 8: and they got freaked. I think, that's what I think.
Speaker 8: And I was like, hey, guys, what do you want
Speaker 8: to do? Because I was learning at the same time,
Speaker 8: so it was like, Wow, this is really fascinating.
Speaker 7: I like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, since you brought it up, is there a
Speaker 1: client that you had to say no to that you
Speaker 1: kind of regret? That. Damn. Maybe I should have did
Speaker 1: that for historical purpose.
Speaker 8: Oh man, you have no idea the stuff I've had
Speaker 8: to turn down. And because I'm I was like really busy.
Speaker 8: It wasn't because I like, I don't like what can
Speaker 8: I really talk? I usually don't like to talk about
Speaker 8: that kind of stuff. Yeah, oh yeah, Prince. Wait, okay,
Speaker 8: this is a good one.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 8: So, so I got married in ninety four, and you know,
Speaker 8: I was working all the time, and I was burned out.
Speaker 8: That's one of the reasons that Richard got mad at
Speaker 8: me at a certain point because I was so burned out.
Speaker 8: I'd had a vacation plan for like months and months,
Speaker 8: a lot of money into a European vacation and I said, no,
Speaker 8: I'm going on vacation.
Speaker 1: Richard flipped.
Speaker 8: But that's okay, that's Richard. And so I was really
Speaker 8: burned out. I was working like ninety hour weeks a lot.
Speaker 8: I had one Friday night home with my new wife
Speaker 8: and we cooked dinner. I love to cook. I cooked dinner.
Speaker 8: I had a bottle keyantie. I'm in my robe nine
Speaker 8: on a Friday night. I had to do it, I'm saying, And.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was afterwards, Man, that's what we're here for,
Speaker 1: all right. Let it.
Speaker 7: No work.
Speaker 8: So I'm home. I'm down for the count after some wine,
Speaker 8: probably smoked, you know. So the phone rings and it's battery.
Speaker 8: And I worked a lot with and I still do
Speaker 8: work a lot with Michelle and Deochella, who's a lovely
Speaker 8: person and a dear friend. And the phone rings and Bob,
Speaker 8: this is battery. The studio, I said, yeah, they go listen.
Speaker 8: Prince is coming in with Michelle tonight and they want
Speaker 8: you to do the session. So I was like, I
Speaker 8: was so excited, and I kind of called myself and
Speaker 8: I said, let me call you back, and I hung up,
Speaker 8: and I was like, you know, I'm a little loaded.
Speaker 1: I'm really fucking tired.
Speaker 7: I just got out of the shower.
Speaker 8: Do I want to go in and work all night
Speaker 8: with some guy that won't talk directly to me? You know,
Speaker 8: it wasn't guys, It wasn't that literal. I was burned out.
Speaker 8: It could have been anybody. It could have been the Beatles,
Speaker 8: and I would have said the same thing. So I said, no, Wow, yeah, yeah, do.
Speaker 7: You know what day that I know what day that
Speaker 7: that that session took place?
Speaker 1: Are you sure?
Speaker 8: Yeah, Okay, here it comes come out?
Speaker 1: Said it up? Literally it was it was almost literally
Speaker 1: twenty years ago today today.
Speaker 7: How do you know?
Speaker 1: It was July third, nineteen ninety six. I looked at
Speaker 1: up on what song was it? What's email from the
Speaker 1: Emancipation album?
Speaker 7: Ah?
Speaker 1: Oh she was supposed to be on that. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: recorded an instrumental. They recorded an instrumental that night. Uh,
Speaker 1: like I think he went back and re re recorded.
Speaker 1: Of course he did.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they did that.
Speaker 8: So that's one.
Speaker 1: Uh, there's some others I can wait, can we at
Speaker 1: this moment? Prince Dork he no music door.
Speaker 7: This is why each the guy's calmed down.
Speaker 1: Each person in this room has has a weird super
Speaker 1: uh kind of ability to recall stuff like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So Prince Yeah.
Speaker 8: And there's another one. I'm not gonna I can't name
Speaker 8: names because it's bad. There's the people are still around.
Speaker 8: A really huge star of the last fifteen years, I
Speaker 8: mean really really huge and uh the A and R
Speaker 8: person who I'd known for a long time, who's real
Speaker 8: big geese now really big cheese, called me and said,
Speaker 8: you know, we have blah blah blah, we want you
Speaker 8: to mix the first record, and I listened to it
Speaker 8: and I called him back and I said blank, because
Speaker 8: I'm not gonna say his name was, No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Going to say it.
Speaker 8: Yeah right, well this record me. So I said, you know,
Speaker 8: do you really think this record's ready? Because it didn't
Speaker 8: sound ready to me. It sounded like you know, demos
Speaker 8: with the drum machine and stuff, and it was like huge, huge,
Speaker 8: huge career that goes on to these days this day
Speaker 8: and you know that.
Speaker 1: I mean, can I talk about an active career? Oh, extremely,
Speaker 1: top of the heap, top of the heap, talking about
Speaker 1: what didn't sound what constitutes because I believe.
Speaker 8: Your feeling towards Brown Sugar as well. When you heard
Speaker 8: the demos, Oh no, no, these demos were killing. We
Speaker 8: chased the demos on that we chased. We chased the
Speaker 8: demos on that we chased the demos on Michelle's first record.
Speaker 1: They were ferocious.
Speaker 8: Chased the demos on Erica's record, but it didn't quite
Speaker 8: sound like a record, you know, And I think that
Speaker 8: at that point. You know now, because there's certain big
Speaker 8: figures I'm not going to name names. You know, kind
Speaker 8: of scratchy and thin and small sounding is kind of
Speaker 8: okay again, but at that point people I didn't think
Speaker 8: people wanted that, you know, so so yeah, anyway, there's a.
Speaker 1: Bunch of stuff.
Speaker 8: You know. I had to turn down that thing recently
Speaker 8: because of school, and it really the H word. It
Speaker 8: hurt me more than anything I've actually had to say
Speaker 8: no to.
Speaker 1: But I teach it. I want you now.
Speaker 8: So it turns out that your crunch week was the
Speaker 8: first week of school, and uh, the children they signed
Speaker 8: me first.
Speaker 7: You know, I mean, we could talk about it.
Speaker 1: I so wanted to do that. I begged Bob to
Speaker 1: kind of take the load off Tim Latham because Tim
Speaker 1: was also uh engineered the Hamilton record, and Bob and
Speaker 1: Tim worked on I mean, they were in my mind,
Speaker 1: you guys were like great tag team partners. Fricking crack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys did try together in the roots together.
Speaker 8: It was a Jewish Irish comedy to him. Yeah, and
Speaker 8: Tim is a funny guy.
Speaker 1: He is.
Speaker 7: Yes, I took over the jew part of that, I think, Bob.
Speaker 7: All right, man, thank you for represent.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's slide Let's slide it back to
Speaker 1: the beginning because I know that Q Tip in his
Speaker 1: excitement over the ghostets of record. That was a moment
Speaker 1: for him, and I have to admit, like, those are
Speaker 1: four nineteen eighty six. Those were some loud ass drums,
Speaker 1: which I have a problem. What's that problem is that? Man?
Speaker 8: You know, I mixed stuff and then I listened to
Speaker 8: it two weeks later when it's too late to change,
Speaker 8: and I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my god, what did I do?
Speaker 8: And I just somehow I hear the drums being real
Speaker 8: loud your first record. Man, When I listened to it
Speaker 8: after it came out, I said, oh my.
Speaker 1: God, I really fucked this up. I can't believe I
Speaker 1: did that.
Speaker 7: No, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, no, drum I listen.
Speaker 8: If I listened like, if I listened like a listener,
Speaker 8: it's like, wow, that's really rocking. But if I listened
Speaker 8: like a mixer, I'm like, what did you do?
Speaker 7: See?
Speaker 1: But that's what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the best I remember hearing thistatic and
Speaker 2: like und like nothing else that will.
Speaker 8: Guys and still do exactly the same thing as you should,
Speaker 8: And two weeks after I still say, oh my god,
Speaker 8: what did I do? But yeah, Jewish exactly.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that, especially with before we
Speaker 1: started working with you on the organics records like whenever
Speaker 1: I would do these rough mixes and I would have
Speaker 1: the drums up ungodly loud, you know, band members and
Speaker 1: everybody just think like, oh, you're ego Mania. You just
Speaker 1: want to hear drums loud and turn everything else down.
Speaker 1: And so I kind of felt relieved that you were
Speaker 1: enforcing and saw a world in which the music could
Speaker 1: be just as loud as you know, the vocals. There
Speaker 1: was one time when Prince actually came to a session
Speaker 1: that was working on with Common and he said, Yo,
Speaker 1: turn all the music down and just turn the vocals up,
Speaker 1: like in his world. And I guess modern pop, the
Speaker 1: voice has to be the loudest thing in the forefront,
Speaker 1: and the music's the kind of the afterthought.
Speaker 8: The voice is the center of the record. Everything you
Speaker 8: do on a record should be there to support the vocal.
Speaker 8: But still you can have the drums loud and if
Speaker 8: you know no, I'm serious, if you know what you're doing,
Speaker 8: you can make room for everything at the same time.
Speaker 8: So yeah, I mean it just it's one of those things.
Speaker 8: David Gampson, who's a producer and writer out in la
Speaker 8: is a real good friend of mine and we have
Speaker 8: this thing because we've done a bunch of records together
Speaker 8: that once you put the drums up to a certain level,
Speaker 8: even if they're too loud, if you pull them down,
Speaker 8: everything kind of falls apart and it gets really limbed,
Speaker 8: so you got to put.
Speaker 1: Them back up again. You're right about that, Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: still right. So I mean, not like it was a
Speaker 1: scientific thing, but he said it changed his life. And
Speaker 1: basically like this guy has to engineer our stuff. So
Speaker 1: I mean, what were the can you go into the
Speaker 1: early days of working with tribe and.
Speaker 8: You know, you have to remember that technology was really
Speaker 8: primitive then, and.
Speaker 1: Wait before you start, and did you track these records
Speaker 1: or did you try Did you track an engineer or
Speaker 1: did you just engineer? No? Both both.
Speaker 8: I tracked him, mixed a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Now, the stories I hear from most engineers that I
Speaker 1: that I ask these questions, they often say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe like Eric Sadler, Public Enemy. They would always praise
Speaker 1: him for going past page six in the Sampler's Manual,
Speaker 1: whereas everyone just be like, how do you turn it on?
Speaker 1: How you sample it? Or just give it to the
Speaker 1: side engineer and he'll loop everything up for you, Like.
Speaker 8: Well that was that was Actually that's really interesting because
Speaker 8: back in those days, the quickest.
Speaker 1: Way to move ahead was if you really had you
Speaker 1: been MIDI shit together.
Speaker 8: For those people who don't know, MIDI is the computer
Speaker 8: languages that computers and synthesizers you used to speak to
Speaker 8: each other, and no one it was a wild West.
Speaker 8: Number one, shit didn't work the way it was supposed to.
Speaker 8: Number two, nobody knew how to use the stuff. So
Speaker 8: if you knew how to use the stuff, especially assistance,
Speaker 8: you could move up really quickly.
Speaker 1: The SBX eighty yeah, I mean, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: a nightmare a sink box.
Speaker 8: So yeah, and I you know, I've always been sort
Speaker 8: of a tech geek. I really am fascinated looking under
Speaker 8: the hood on stuff. So it helped, you know, problems.
Speaker 1: Would they walk in like these records, like all right,
Speaker 1: Bob loop this up?
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, And but you know, both Tip and Ali
Speaker 8: early on sort of started figuring it out, and the
Speaker 8: large professor hip Tip to the SP twelve I'll leave
Speaker 8: was one of the first person people I know to
Speaker 8: carry around a little uh mac, you know, the all
Speaker 8: in one things with the little tiny screen.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 8: And he used op code and so they would come
Speaker 8: in after a while, they would come in pretty prepared.
Speaker 8: Sometimes I would take this stuff in the other room
Speaker 8: in logic, the room in the back, yeah, and kind
Speaker 8: of just slip it around a little bit and hopefully
Speaker 8: not take the funk out of it. But in the
Speaker 8: beginning it was so primitive. I mean, samplers didn't have
Speaker 8: a lot of sampling time. So if you had twenty
Speaker 8: four track on tape, and you had one track two
Speaker 8: tracks taken up by the sink tone and the guide
Speaker 8: band guard band, if you wanted to lay down like
Speaker 8: a complete sort of two bar phrase, you had to
Speaker 8: do it in really tiny little pieces deck. Okay, let's
Speaker 8: take the next pass. So you listen to and you
Speaker 8: record deck and you put them together. What Yeah, I'm serious, man,
Speaker 8: you'd had to You had to do the beat, little
Speaker 8: tiny pieces at a time, you know, technology a recent
Speaker 8: track record. You had to no, no early on okay early?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you do any hip hop before Stetsosnic.
Speaker 8: Maybe at Calliope, I don't know, I don't know, maybe okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I would hear of these primitive sampling techniques, especially
Speaker 1: like with the deaf sand people at Chunk King, where
Speaker 1: they would what's the process where you take the tape
Speaker 1: and get a pencil and you loop? Yeah, you make
Speaker 1: a tape loop. Can you describe that process?
Speaker 8: Because what you do is record your two bars that
Speaker 8: you like, don't boom, don't go, and you cut it
Speaker 8: and you you splice it together and make a tape loop. Now,
Speaker 8: obviously that loop's going to be at about twelve feet long,
Speaker 8: much too big to fit on the tape machine. So
Speaker 8: you stand back with pencils emulating tape guides and you
Speaker 8: hold them so you have the proper tension on it.
Speaker 8: And you're standing like twelve or fifteen feet away from
Speaker 8: the machine with like two pencils that are acting like
Speaker 8: rollers or tape guides. And yeah, yeah, it was primitive, man,
Speaker 8: But you know that was sort of You had people
Speaker 8: before that. You had eight a Way drum machines like Stets.
Speaker 8: So Sonic was the end. And I'm not a hip
Speaker 8: hop historian, but I just know the stuff I've worked on,
Speaker 8: But Stet's was the end of the eight away. You
Speaker 8: either had that or you had amazing DJs cutting back
Speaker 8: and forth between two records and going for four minutes
Speaker 8: in perfect tempo the first time I saw that man completely.
Speaker 8: I said, you want to do what? I said, okay,
Speaker 8: well I'll set it up, and I'm like, they're never gonna.
Speaker 1: Be able to do this, and they did it perfectly.
Speaker 8: God, yeah, let's kill it.
Speaker 1: Let's kill her.
Speaker 8: So yeah, at first, when sampling happened right after that
Speaker 8: first wave of hip hop, when we first started hearing
Speaker 8: samples on records, the sampling time was like a second
Speaker 8: and a half maybe on the sp one or the twelve. No,
Speaker 8: the Achai six twelve was actually the first one we used,
Speaker 8: and it had these little quick discs of proprietary sort
Speaker 8: of mini floppy format that you saved the stuff on.
Speaker 8: I think it had seven to nine tenths of a
Speaker 8: second of sampling, so you basically you'd lay down the
Speaker 8: kick drum by itself, then you'd lay down the snare.
Speaker 1: Drum by itself.
Speaker 8: Chris at Calliope used to use an electro Harmonics one
Speaker 8: shot and when you unplugged it, that was gone. Forever
Speaker 8: you would sample something, you got it on the tape.
Speaker 8: There was no way of saying saving it. You unplugged
Speaker 8: it and you just did something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're sick. Okay, so you're saying, now, when
Speaker 1: we did Melon, my man, the first time we worked
Speaker 1: together and we engineered at Mello, my man says, Took,
Speaker 1: I know that we started at twelve in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and you were very disciplined. You were out of there
Speaker 1: like seven seven pm. So no, maybe you start at
Speaker 1: ten in the morning.
Speaker 8: I probably had another session, man, I don't know.
Speaker 1: No, no, it was Christmas. It was Christmas Eve, but
Speaker 1: like home getting his robe.
Speaker 7: But I do, but.
Speaker 1: I do remember that. Okay. So I was told by
Speaker 1: other people that yeah, you know, you can mix two
Speaker 1: songs in a day. So it's like, wow, we're mixing
Speaker 1: one song a day.
Speaker 8: And he's very meticulous on you know, each track, Like
Speaker 8: each track he spends a good twenty to maybe forty
Speaker 8: five minutes. Like yeah, and that's so wrong.
Speaker 7: I don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: But go ahead, well, because you know, we have technology
Speaker 1: now that speeds up the process, like we did phrenology.
Speaker 8: Record time, I know what I'm doing. Was Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 8: I'm serious, man.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, really got to get this right.
Speaker 1: So you're Jedi mind trigging me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, okay, now see I thought you're just a mad
Speaker 8: genius that no I'm believe a microwave mixing, and you
Speaker 8: wanted to slate it was I was really into it.
Speaker 8: I work in concentric circles now. I don't like to
Speaker 8: get bogged down on any one thing. I'll go through
Speaker 8: everything on a real cursory level and then go back
Speaker 8: and spend a little more time. But I don't work
Speaker 8: in a linear fashion. Ward, the kick drums got to
Speaker 8: be perfect, the snare drums got to be perfect because
Speaker 8: you lose the context.
Speaker 1: You know that. What yeah, okay, well it sound a
Speaker 1: little revisionous to me because.
Speaker 8: No concentric circles.
Speaker 1: Man, you were the most disciplined engineer I've ever known.
Speaker 1: I was out of my mind. Man, what can I say? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I think you're doing false honesty. I don't think the
Speaker 1: CD baby. My whole point was that if you were
Speaker 1: tracking on primitive stuff and it had to sound perfect,
Speaker 1: then that took a lot of time.
Speaker 8: So you say, nah, now you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 8: You know, when you set up a session, my thing
Speaker 8: I tell my students you get it sounding pretty good
Speaker 8: really fast, you know, because the energy of the people
Speaker 8: sitting on the floor is the most important thing.
Speaker 1: This is what I want to know the special things
Speaker 1: about the Native Tongue Records, the Tribe, the Daylight, Jungle Brothers.
Speaker 1: Did you do okay?
Speaker 8: You did this straight up the jungle before some of
Speaker 8: the early stuff, and then one really bad one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I just want to say he took Alan smithe or
Speaker 8: one of the last you were Robert Powers, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, he took he took Alan Smithy. Uh. JB's
Speaker 1: with them. You know something, though, I went back to
Speaker 1: that record, it wasn't as bad as it maybe seventeen
Speaker 1: eighteen years later and it was. It was kind of
Speaker 1: rezid ish like it was. It could have worked in
Speaker 1: the right year.
Speaker 8: I just don't it could have been an okay record
Speaker 8: in the right year, because apparently.
Speaker 2: That was the one that that wasn't even the record
Speaker 2: they wanted to put out. Apparently it was crazy. But
Speaker 2: I feel like you put the record out that you
Speaker 2: want to put out.
Speaker 8: It's like, uh yeah, if you're if you're big cheese,
Speaker 8: you know the other than that, the record company says, no,
Speaker 8: that's not good enough.
Speaker 1: We don't hear any So the record company just took
Speaker 1: the record and said this is what it is. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what happened on that. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they did remixes to what they did videos, so I
Speaker 1: didn't see any committed to her. Yeah, and you made
Speaker 1: the record, yeah that she ain't make it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's going to be an interesting I have a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about Mike. He actually lived not too
Speaker 1: far from me though.
Speaker 8: Mike's a good guy.
Speaker 1: Both good guys. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I talked to Africa once every ten or twelve years.
Speaker 8: It seems like somehow, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, the one thing that people rarely mentioned about these
Speaker 1: records is how I mean they're really three dimensional. And
Speaker 1: you know, because hip hop is so full of caricatures,
Speaker 1: you rarely get to see the flesh and blood of people.
Speaker 1: And I felt with the skits that were on these records,
Speaker 1: it kind of just armed the listener because they really
Speaker 1: showed that these guys had goofy sense of humor. But
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know because it always sounded so
Speaker 1: spontaneous and so fun and so of the moment. I mean,
Speaker 1: where they're just live mics everywhere and were tapes and
Speaker 1: cassettes constantly running in case an idea came.
Speaker 8: Up and no, but there were mics open because we
Speaker 8: were doing rhymes and stuff, and you know, somebody says,
Speaker 8: I want to get on the mic your press record.
Speaker 1: You know, it just always felt like a reality show,
Speaker 1: where like, you know, that's good artists at work. Serious seriously,
Speaker 1: So how do you, I guess as a well, two questions.
Speaker 2: One, where does the line? Where's the line for you
Speaker 2: between producer and engineer.
Speaker 8: If I'm engineering, I'm just there to make it sound
Speaker 8: really good and help the momentum of the session move forward.
Speaker 1: That's the line.
Speaker 8: I don't offer artistic ideas, That's not why I'm there.
Speaker 8: And then when you're producing, it's you know, man, it's producing.
Speaker 8: Every artist is different. You know, some artists, some artists
Speaker 8: who you guys know me for working with you try
Speaker 8: to set the table right and get the fuck out
Speaker 8: of the way and let them do their thing because
Speaker 8: they're so incredibly dope, and you try to corral it
Speaker 8: a little bit so it sounds like a record. And
Speaker 8: then other people, you know, you gotta build the car
Speaker 8: from the wheels up. You know, it's just always different.
Speaker 2: So with the corraling, because that was my that was
Speaker 2: as my next question. I mean, a regular Dayla Sola
Speaker 2: did that I mean, I love, I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of people love.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite record. That's my favorite Daylight record too.
Speaker 2: But like something like Johnny's Dead, which is fucking hilarious,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, But something like that could
Speaker 2: never happened on a hip hop LP, now you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 1: So like, how do you needs to come back?
Speaker 8: But you know that was Paul and Pass okay and
Speaker 8: Dave also, that was them.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, like how the moments like that get
Speaker 1: captured where it's not like, okay, guys recording and roll
Speaker 1: in the same way that.
Speaker 8: When you do a take, it doesn't sound like you're
Speaker 8: playing to a clip. You know, it's just what they do, man,
Speaker 8: So just happened to be Yeah. Also, that was a
Speaker 8: much more innocent time, which is why people got away
Speaker 8: with those skits, is because the whole gun thing, the
Speaker 8: whole violence thing, hadn't really gotten big yet. It was
Speaker 8: a much more innocent time. People were just out of
Speaker 8: high school.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 1: You also worked. The unique thing about your work is
Speaker 1: that you work with groups. I mean, now we're in
Speaker 1: a system in which, you know, the solo artist is
Speaker 1: celebrated can only be one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: And I thought about that, man, that's right? So I
Speaker 1: know hip hop groups anymore barely, So how did you right?
Speaker 7: Right? Singers?
Speaker 1: I mean there's hardly any his personalities, but.
Speaker 6: How Klezmer music has no groups now either.
Speaker 8: But all that said, Earth Winding, Fire Lips, that's all
Speaker 8: I can say.
Speaker 7: No, how how uh? How these?
Speaker 1: I mean who would know where their place was and
Speaker 1: who would be the alpha and who would well you
Speaker 1: know that, and I'm certain that you've had conflicts of
Speaker 1: especially when you're a group and there's multiple.
Speaker 8: Producers, and well that's when I say, you know, does
Speaker 8: someone sneak up to you and say, yo, turn that?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I can't do that, man. I gotta be honest with everybody,
Speaker 1: So I don't do that. So have you had situations
Speaker 1: where someone comes up to you and is like, yo.
Speaker 8: Man, I'd say, we need to talk about this with
Speaker 8: everybody and I haven't?
Speaker 1: Or does it come with you from you first? And
Speaker 1: sort of an anonymous like no, Well, if it needs
Speaker 1: you have to play doctor Phil.
Speaker 8: You've seen me in the sessions, you know, sometimes stop
Speaker 8: and say, guys, listen, you know we were talking about
Speaker 8: maybe turning the high hat.
Speaker 1: Up on this part or whatever or losing it ride
Speaker 1: in there. What do you guys think?
Speaker 8: And then I stand back and get out of the way.
Speaker 8: You know, that's not That's not what I'm there for.
Speaker 8: I just try to keep things moving forward.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 8: It comes from paying for studio time myself and not
Speaker 8: having enough money. You know, you learn to keep things
Speaker 8: moving forward.
Speaker 1: In the studio.
Speaker 8: In retrospect, the forward motion of a session is like everything,
Speaker 8: It's ninety percent of whether stuff comes out of good
Speaker 8: or not is the momentum of the session.
Speaker 1: I think, okay, so the low end theory which I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get something out of this. I'm gonna get some
Speaker 1: blood out of the stone, dammit. I mean what was
Speaker 1: the typical session, like like when songs take a day
Speaker 1: or like for me, it's like, okay, we jam on something,
Speaker 1: jam something, Oh, here's an idea, and then we track
Speaker 1: it Like I mean, how are records made back then?
Speaker 1: Like would they come in pre production and say this
Speaker 1: is what I want to do?
Speaker 8: By then, Tip and Only we're doing programming on their own.
Speaker 8: So Tip Pat and SP twelve and Ali had his
Speaker 8: computer and S nine hundred, so they would come in
Speaker 8: with stuff. The technology still wasn't that great that we
Speaker 8: didn't have to mess with it just a little bit.
Speaker 1: You couldn't slip tracks.
Speaker 8: At that point, you know, move tracks back and forth
Speaker 8: in time. So if you sampled something and it wasn't
Speaker 8: quite the feel you wanted, you had to do a
Speaker 8: few tricks.
Speaker 1: To get that to happen. You taught me that sometimes
Speaker 1: you put it through a delay. Well at the time thing.
Speaker 8: You know, now in a computer you can say to
Speaker 8: the snare, I want the snare to be you know,
Speaker 8: thirty milliseconds back or whatever.
Speaker 1: Back then we used to fake it.
Speaker 8: And again this was Chris Irwin who was brilliant. You
Speaker 8: would synchronize to Simpty on the tape to a timecode.
Speaker 6: Can I guess the lynxes?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 1: Almost, but you'd you'd synchronize.
Speaker 8: No, you'd synchronize the SP twelve to simptly because the
Speaker 8: SP twelve was one of the first things to read
Speaker 8: it and spit out many clock and you'd feed the
Speaker 8: Simpty through a fifty millisecond delay, so everything that got
Speaker 8: printed on the record, if it was printed at zero,
Speaker 8: was actually fifty milliseconds behind the Simpty. And then if
Speaker 8: you were printing, say a snare, and you say I want.
Speaker 1: To pull this up in the field.
Speaker 8: You just lower the delay time on the delay and
Speaker 8: the snare would move a little.
Speaker 1: Bit forward in the field. But yeah, there me a
Speaker 1: few times.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very soon thereafter you could slip could slip traps
Speaker 8: in a computer. You know. That's everything now, that's that's yeah,
Speaker 8: I see move you know for people who don't know,
Speaker 8: move traps backward and forward in time. So it's funkier.
Speaker 7: When did when did it?
Speaker 1: When did it turn? Like? When did the technology? Early nineties?
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, do you remember the first record that
Speaker 2: you did completely in the box?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 8: See, because I use microphones, I can't you know, get
Speaker 8: with that in the box. And I still mix even
Speaker 8: though I mostly in the box. I still have a
Speaker 8: two bus chain. The stereo mix comes out through some
Speaker 8: really nice stuff. But the technology is there. I can
Speaker 8: mix in all in the box and it'll be fine.
Speaker 8: The technology is absolutely there now, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just got to use it. So uh, would
Speaker 1: you say that brown Sugar was your first foray into
Speaker 1: First of all, when you were a prochanity welcome to
Speaker 1: was when you were approached. I was assuming that Kadar
Speaker 1: came to you to do Brown Sugar Did he just
Speaker 1: want you to engineer it first? No? No, did you
Speaker 1: say I want to produce this? You know, I went
Speaker 1: to the truth.
Speaker 8: I don't remember. I don't remember, but uh yeah, I
Speaker 8: really don't remember. But as you know, with D you
Speaker 8: played you the music firston Yeah, of course, moving stuff
Speaker 8: along is half the battle. I still have the four
Speaker 8: track assats his demos.
Speaker 6: That's what I was gonna ask. Do you don't Do
Speaker 6: you have those the demos from Brown Sugar?
Speaker 1: I think Bill does.
Speaker 8: I had a fire and most of the stuff got destroyed,
Speaker 8: but I may still have those.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you had a fire. Yeah, my home,
Speaker 1: my home in New York was destroyed by a fire
Speaker 1: about six years ago.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, listen, No, it's good. If it had been
Speaker 8: my studio with all my gear, I would have jumped
Speaker 8: off the roof. But the worst thing that happened, I mean,
Speaker 8: it was bad. It was a couple of years fighting
Speaker 8: with the insurance company, but no one was hurt. And
Speaker 8: I lost a sixty five Telly Sunburst with white binding, one.
Speaker 1: Of the original ones.
Speaker 7: But then you use that on IM I don't know.
Speaker 1: I used to use it a lot. Yeah, that's your
Speaker 1: IMIB guitar.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so you know, Dia is one of those artists,
Speaker 8: and I was learning as I went along. But as
Speaker 8: you know, Dia is an artist where you got to
Speaker 8: let him do his thing because that's where the good
Speaker 8: stuff happens.
Speaker 1: It's getting him to do his thing. You said it,
Speaker 1: I didn't. Well, I mean compared to the other two records.
Speaker 1: I mean, you made Brown Sugar record time you started
Speaker 1: what ninety three?
Speaker 8: Yeah, but I also made half that record, and I just, oh,
Speaker 8: you know how to say this? I mean, the world
Speaker 8: knows it's not You're in a unique situation. I do
Speaker 8: love d the same way you do, but I just
Speaker 8: couldn't wait around anymore.
Speaker 1: And I also know that he wanted to do it himself.
Speaker 8: You know, so, so explain chasing the demo for those
Speaker 8: chasing the demo is when someone makes demonstration recording of
Speaker 8: the song, which is not a full on version of
Speaker 8: the song because they don't have the resources.
Speaker 1: But it's just an outline for the song.
Speaker 8: But when the demo is like really incredibly cool, you
Speaker 8: end up making the real thing. But then it's too
Speaker 8: good and it doesn't sounds cool for a demo, but
Speaker 8: the demo itself and then people say, well, why don't
Speaker 8: you just use the demo for a record, because it's
Speaker 8: too messed up.
Speaker 1: It's just you can't quite do it.
Speaker 8: But actually, with him and with Michelle on her first record,
Speaker 8: I would pull stuff off the demos.
Speaker 1: If there were multi tracks and there were parts that
Speaker 1: were really, really cool, I pulled them off the demos.
Speaker 1: How would you line them up? It was hard, It
Speaker 1: was really hard. Wait, by this point you had pro
Speaker 1: tools though, right.
Speaker 8: I had a rolling DMAD and the protols sounded horrible
Speaker 8: at the beginning, and it really didn't work. I had
Speaker 8: a rollin hard disrecorder. There was also enough sampling time.
Speaker 8: I could fly shit in, you know, from one tape
Speaker 8: machine to another and kind of keep punching in and
Speaker 8: get it right.
Speaker 1: You know, just got to work. Yeah, I'll say that
Speaker 1: Dreaming Eyes of Mine definitely. I remember calling you when
Speaker 1: it came out and asking, like I thought there was
Speaker 1: just a discrepancy glitch in the drum programming.
Speaker 8: That's so funny, you say that, man, because because everything
Speaker 8: you know, listen, musicians talk about people's feel and you know,
Speaker 8: to get things to sit comfortably, you always want to
Speaker 8: keep the back beat sort of behind the beat, and
Speaker 8: you want your rhymes to be behind the beat, and
Speaker 8: jazz playing is behind the beat.
Speaker 1: D is in last week.
Speaker 8: You know, he's so behind the beat's two weeks ago.
Speaker 8: So it's funny. When I was flying the vocals with
Speaker 8: my rolling hard disc recorder, you do it by a
Speaker 8: temple map, so it's you know, it's going to be
Speaker 8: correct when you put it in the second verse, it's
Speaker 8: going to be in exactly the same place it was
Speaker 8: in the first verse. And it was his background vocals
Speaker 8: were so back in that I was sure that the
Speaker 8: gear was fucking up because they were so behind the
Speaker 8: beating and stuff. You know, that's me on guitar in
Speaker 8: that song too.
Speaker 1: When you're approached. Let's say, like for Michelle's record, which
Speaker 1: wasn't a out of the box platinum album, but in
Speaker 1: an artistic achievement, that's my favorite Michelle album. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I know, well yeah, both of them. Yeah like that
Speaker 1: one and then I like Bitter too, bit it was
Speaker 1: really dope. But do you take when you take these
Speaker 1: projects on how many of her albums you did?
Speaker 8: The first three, I've mixed almost everything. I produced two
Speaker 8: or three cuts on the first one, and then mixed
Speaker 8: a lot of other stuff.
Speaker 1: David Gampson did.
Speaker 8: Most of that stuff, and Michelle did it. You know,
Speaker 8: there's not a lot of people I know a lot
Speaker 8: of great musicians.
Speaker 1: I know know a lot of artists.
Speaker 8: Michelle is one of the deepest artists I know in
Speaker 8: what way? Come on, man, do I have to explain that? Yes,
Speaker 8: she is one of those people that just does things
Speaker 8: really differently from other people and it always comes out
Speaker 8: really pretty dope. Provision is is way different than other
Speaker 8: people's way way different. I mean plantation, lullabies, like the
Speaker 8: way that record is constructed, the way that record sounds,
Speaker 8: and the parts. It was sort of like hip hop
Speaker 8: from Mars meets R and B meets Anger.
Speaker 1: You know, it was cool. It was cool. You did
Speaker 1: Bitter as well? Correct, No, that was damn yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 8: I mixed a comfort Woman too, guys. Comfort Woman's great record.
Speaker 8: It's a great sounding record too. We did that down at.
Speaker 1: Chrun King.
Speaker 8: It's a really good sounding record too, and I've done
Speaker 8: a couple with her since then.
Speaker 1: Is probably my favorite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, Okay, I got all of them,
Speaker 2: the credits. Sometimes that's dope.
Speaker 1: So when you make when you make these records, what's
Speaker 1: your grand achievement, especially when you're not dealing with an
Speaker 1: artist that I'm certain that Maverick would love her to
Speaker 1: have had one foot in platinum status and the other
Speaker 1: foot and artistic achievement. So I'm pretty sure you've had
Speaker 1: a earful from the A and R people, not back then,
Speaker 1: not back then.
Speaker 8: You know, I only did a couple of cuts on
Speaker 8: the first record, so not back then they had two
Speaker 8: lonely hearts or no, what was the sexy one?
Speaker 1: Dreadlocks?
Speaker 8: You know, but that was also I mean, did you.
Speaker 1: Do all Night?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 1: Wait, why y'all have like that song Don't Exist? That
Speaker 1: was a top ten hit. There's a connect that was
Speaker 1: a melon camp.
Speaker 8: There's a disconnect between Michelle and the pop music juggernaut.
Speaker 8: You know, she's definitely in our that deserves to be
Speaker 8: out there and everybody needs to hear her and resources
Speaker 8: have to be put behind her. She is not necessarily
Speaker 8: the artists that you expect to play, you know on
Speaker 8: Hot ninety five, you know I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna keep it that way too. No, no, make it
Speaker 1: hot ninety five.
Speaker 7: That's just three.
Speaker 8: That's a great middle finger. Okay, christ loves Supremeka Hot
Speaker 8: ninety five.
Speaker 7: Keeping it.
Speaker 8: But no, you know that it's like record companies. If
Speaker 8: there was an economy of scale, which there is now,
Speaker 8: that allowed artists to make records, and that the company
Speaker 8: didn't need to sell millions of records to recoup or
Speaker 8: keep their doors open, it'd be cool. But there's not
Speaker 8: a lot of places like that. They need to keep
Speaker 8: the scale that they run. Those he's on they need
Speaker 8: mega hits. You know, I'm not telling you anything you
Speaker 8: don't know.
Speaker 1: So, did you ever have a client in which, like,
Speaker 1: you know, once the mixers went home, then suddenly.
Speaker 8: Yes, And I've heard and our people say to artists
Speaker 8: after you know, kissing their ass up and down for
Speaker 8: two years, sending the limos for them, Champagne, go into
Speaker 8: the office, I don't hear any hits, go back and
Speaker 8: write me some hits, which is like the most crippling
Speaker 8: thing you could ever say to anybody. You're not good enough.
Speaker 8: Go back and make yourself good enough. Oh that's helpful,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 1: Jesus. Yeah, you've heard that, man, Come on.
Speaker 2: So, but I think the same thing could be said.
Speaker 2: I remember you saying one time the zach obviously can
Speaker 2: be true. Like when y'all signed with their Jam and
Speaker 2: Jay was like.
Speaker 1: Yes, don't make it, don't That was even bigger problem.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh god, now we gotta get eight
Speaker 1: and Pitchfork. No.
Speaker 8: But that's a good situation when they know who you
Speaker 8: are and sign you because of who you are.
Speaker 1: But I don't want them to use that as an
Speaker 1: excuse to not to want to promote us.
Speaker 7: You know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So it's like this is that that's a kind of
Speaker 8: reverse bizarre paradigm work. Yeah, don't make any hits whither
Speaker 8: or away in obscurity.
Speaker 1: I'm the champion. You're so successful, all right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: well your your production and chasing demos and seeing the
Speaker 1: product through and Erica as well. We're doing bad duism.
Speaker 1: I mean, did you the way the way you sold
Speaker 1: me to d I have to mit and I always
Speaker 1: tell the story, well you wanted me to play on ship,
Speaker 1: damn motherfucker. And this before Ron Carter had a change
Speaker 1: your heart.
Speaker 8: And he had no change your heart. He closed the
Speaker 8: door really fast on that one.
Speaker 1: It's like, what's the song called No, I'm not doing it? Yeah?
Speaker 8: I called him. And Ron's actually a good guy. He's
Speaker 8: you know, he's prickly, but he's a good guy and
Speaker 8: he's a musician. And I called him and I told
Speaker 8: him all about this stuff, and I said, blah blah
Speaker 8: blah blah blah, he's a really great artist, really unusual
Speaker 8: blah blah blah around By the way, you have to
Speaker 8: let me explain, and I will explain after I tell you.
Speaker 1: But the title of the song is shit damn motherfucker. No,
Speaker 1: you just had to do that, didn't you.
Speaker 8: And no, I didn't want to mess with him, you know,
Speaker 8: and have him come in for that. And I tried
Speaker 8: to explain, I don't know what he is, but he
Speaker 8: said in nobody's book? Is that a good phrase to me? Motherfucker?
Speaker 8: So no, and I tried to explain to him. I mean,
Speaker 8: it's it's sort of a woe is Me thing. It's
Speaker 8: somebody with their head in their hands saying, oh.
Speaker 1: No, how did this happen to me?
Speaker 8: He's not calling anybody else that, But it didn't matter.
Speaker 8: He's on smooth though, right, No, Larry Grenadier, He's fantastic,
Speaker 8: is unsmooth?
Speaker 1: Hmm? Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, I love that song.
Speaker 7: Nobody.
Speaker 1: You know, people sleep on that song I love smooth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that song on that record. No it's not,
Speaker 1: it's not it's great.
Speaker 7: I uh, I shouldn't tell.
Speaker 1: I'll wait till Dee gets here to tell the when
Speaker 1: we get by story? Did I reveal that on the board?
Speaker 1: Hold on hold, if we're gonna get d in here,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like twenty already booked him, all already
Speaker 1: already booked him.
Speaker 8: He booked him three years ago. Show up next month?
Speaker 7: No, sorry, we love you, D. What were you saying?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 7: Steve oh So?
Speaker 6: Who ended up playing bass on ship?
Speaker 7: Damn?
Speaker 1: I just thought of that.
Speaker 6: I didn't actually have a question.
Speaker 8: It might have been Larry Grenadier. It might have been
Speaker 8: D's sample bass, because he was really good at that.
Speaker 8: I mean the stuff he got out of the EPs
Speaker 8: sixteen was really good.
Speaker 1: It sounded great. You know something, what still has the
Speaker 1: same He still fixes it? Who fixes it? Ben? You
Speaker 1: know we did a show? Still has the same floppy discs?
Speaker 8: He has such a technophone?
Speaker 1: Man, Wow, not really, I mean he has new stuff,
Speaker 1: especially like flip phone. He has an iPhone.
Speaker 6: Wait, you're talking about as R ten? What did what
Speaker 6: did you say? E?
Speaker 8: P E P S sixteen it was precursor. But but
Speaker 8: the architecture is the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that was before the ASR.
Speaker 1: He has a he has the same brown sugar stuff
Speaker 1: in his apartment right now. Yeah, like the same flop.
Speaker 7: Guys.
Speaker 1: That's the mark of a great artist.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: They can sing Mary had a little lamb and you go,
Speaker 8: oh my god. You know, it doesn't matter what they have.
Speaker 8: There's such they have such a strong stamp as an
Speaker 8: artist that they could use the most primitive thing in
Speaker 8: the world and you go, my god, that's so cool.
Speaker 9: It's like all those times I used to say, you know,
Speaker 9: listen to Luther Vandel sing the Telephone Book, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: What did the road sound come from?
Speaker 8: It?
Speaker 3: On?
Speaker 7: That sounds like it's underwater.
Speaker 2: It was mostly out of his EPs we called we
Speaker 2: called the flying jet patch.
Speaker 7: We uh, we we use some we.
Speaker 8: Use some live roads. And also if you put the
Speaker 8: roads in they used to be called.
Speaker 1: A pant scan.
Speaker 8: It was actually an analog piece of gear that pants
Speaker 8: something back and forth really fast. You can do it
Speaker 8: in the box now too, and it gives a road
Speaker 8: kind of like a watery kind of sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still has it. Yeah, it's like a dripping water sound. Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1: He calls it flying V. Okay, he calls it his
Speaker 1: flying V. Why be like guitar flying V? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's always and he's flying put up a
Speaker 1: fly patch, you know?
Speaker 6: So did he create that patch himself or is that
Speaker 6: a sound.
Speaker 1: In the boat.
Speaker 8: He did a lot of editing the stock sounds. Yeah,
Speaker 8: but again, I mean he could take anything. He could
Speaker 8: take the most primitive, silly sounding thing and do something
Speaker 8: incredibly cool makes it.
Speaker 7: You know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm my witness to that. Wait, wait, while we're
Speaker 1: on this subjec I got I got a phone call
Speaker 1: last week that was painful to get, which was yet
Speaker 1: another illustrious New York City studio is shutting down and
Speaker 1: MS yeah, I keep moving my equipment from studio to studios,
Speaker 1: studio to studio, and.
Speaker 7: Even where do we do at Hamilton Avatar? I was
Speaker 7: at Avatar and heard about I'm.
Speaker 1: Sorry, and Avatar is shutting down to.
Speaker 7: Avatar is selling.
Speaker 8: They're waiting to They're waiting to find a person who
Speaker 8: has enough money to keep it a studio. You know,
Speaker 8: the footprint of the building is worth you know, fifty
Speaker 8: times as much as it is as a building now
Speaker 8: in the studio.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well my question is you know now that studios
Speaker 1: are becoming a relic of yesteryear. I mean, to work
Speaker 1: with you is to you know, to see you send
Speaker 1: these massive cases to the studio, like working on commons,
Speaker 1: like order for chocolate record, like you'd send these giant
Speaker 1: property property of Bob.
Speaker 8: Power, like like my cartage was five hundred bucks just
Speaker 8: to get the stuff there. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you you were carrying a lot of
Speaker 1: outboard gear. Yep.
Speaker 7: But I guess.
Speaker 1: In the middle of the decade, did you eventually just
Speaker 1: start doing pro tools and pro tools only or No.
Speaker 8: I made a commitment to becoming a veteran in the
Speaker 8: box mixer about eight or nine years ago, and not
Speaker 8: because of commerce, because that actually that's why I should
Speaker 8: have done it, because I saw what was going on.
Speaker 8: I just saw what technology was becoming and realized that
Speaker 8: did I want to be in step with technology or not?
Speaker 8: And I love technology?
Speaker 1: So you had to learn all over?
Speaker 8: No, No, no, I just said you can be I've
Speaker 8: been mixing on consoles for years. I did that, okay,
Speaker 8: I said I could be a better in the box mixer.
Speaker 8: So I just started, and I love it. I wouldn't
Speaker 8: look back. I'm in my own room all the time.
Speaker 8: I almost never see my clients like a mirror. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Where's your room? You have a room? Oh yeah yeah?
Speaker 8: Steve a Dabo Shelter Island Sound has a medium sized
Speaker 8: room on twenty seventh Street.
Speaker 1: I have the other side of the floor. We found
Speaker 1: the floor together.
Speaker 8: He did a lot of early Suzanne began shown Colvin
Speaker 8: and stuff. So I have my own room and anything
Speaker 8: I record with one microphone. I got a great microphone collection,
Speaker 8: I got great microres. We put up the microphone in
Speaker 8: the room going headphones, and I'm really really happy or
Speaker 8: as a practitioner now than I've ever been.
Speaker 1: If I never set foot in a big studio again,
Speaker 1: it's fine. I know it sounds weird. You don't miss
Speaker 1: it at all?
Speaker 8: No, not the fruit plates in the you know what's funny.
Speaker 8: I always made jokes about that. When I first got
Speaker 8: really comfortable my own place. The first thing I would
Speaker 8: say to people, I said, you know what I thought
Speaker 8: I'd missed the fruit fruit basket?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but do you know what it means that?
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 6: The fruit basket is yeah, but he can bring in
Speaker 6: his own fruit, you know, to his to his room.
Speaker 1: But it's almost like it's it's like a minute from
Speaker 1: a hotel.
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly, it's like somebody else's clean towels. It's really nice.
Speaker 8: But my mixing situation, my speakers and I sit in
Speaker 8: exactly the same position every day.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't have to move from studio to studio.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 1: My results, my work is better than ever man.
Speaker 8: And I still use an analogue chain on my stereo
Speaker 8: mix but all the individual things, no inserts, just pro tools.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how did you decide to, you know, bring
Speaker 1: teaching into.
Speaker 7: The fora like?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 8: NYU approached me about eight or nine years ago, and
Speaker 8: I started out as an adjunct teaching class here and there,
Speaker 8: and again my mother gets around.
Speaker 1: They must have talked to my mother.
Speaker 8: No, not like that, man, No, not like that.
Speaker 1: I knew, I knew you were going to go there.
Speaker 7: I just feel like your mom should be the next guest.
Speaker 7: She's a shill.
Speaker 8: She's a shill for me. But they made me a
Speaker 8: professor a couple of years ago, and you know, I'm
Speaker 8: still working on the outside of about thirty forty percent
Speaker 8: of my work is still mixing.
Speaker 1: Now what are you teaching that? Everything? Production?
Speaker 8: I consider myself a utility infielder, Like if they need
Speaker 8: me a third base, I can do it. I teach
Speaker 8: the sophomore production class with my associate and boss, Nick Sensano,
Speaker 8: who's great he's been doing he worked with Public.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's my next guy that and.
Speaker 8: It's really great. I mean, imagine, after a lifetime in
Speaker 8: the record business to be in a position where the
Speaker 8: only reason you're there is to help people, that's all.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, you don't get paid more if you
Speaker 1: do better, you know, it's or if you have a hit.
Speaker 1: So it's great, but are they interested in the level
Speaker 1: of production that you are? Is your forte the the
Speaker 1: non microwave production.
Speaker 8: The yeah, well because now kids are just using like
Speaker 8: fruity loops and right and able to But yeah, that's right, guys,
Speaker 8: the same principles whole true. It doesn't matter how you get,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 1: I teach. They have me in positions teaching.
Speaker 8: The things that I know how to do, analog recording,
Speaker 8: all things recording, mixing. I teach an arranging class that
Speaker 8: I develop, which is fantastic because as you know, The
Speaker 8: biggest problem in most people's records is bad arranging chops.
Speaker 1: So it's great, it's great.
Speaker 8: Range, man, I need to enter this class. Well, you know,
Speaker 8: guys as a grooves are great, but no as a mixer.
Speaker 8: You know, if the records well arranged, it's great to mix.
Speaker 8: If it's badly arranged, you're just fighting that the whole time.
Speaker 8: And in the modern world, the arrangement is as much
Speaker 8: your choice of instrument and the timber that instrument as
Speaker 8: it is departure plane. I mean, it's not nineteen sixty
Speaker 8: two anymore. We do things really differently. There was a
Speaker 8: girl I was watching the thing you did. We bought
Speaker 8: Forarelli and had them right into Maggie Rogers.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh yeah, Maggie is also one of my star students. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's great. She's fucking dope.
Speaker 8: You know, the world has completely flipped for Maggie. I mean,
Speaker 8: the hits are off the charts. There's a feeding frenzy
Speaker 8: going on right now trying to.
Speaker 1: Get her signed. And Maggie's has a real good head.
Speaker 8: On her shoulders, and she won't be swayed by all
Speaker 8: that stupid shit that comes her way. She's and you
Speaker 8: know what, I have to say that there's any number
Speaker 8: of students that are just as cool as that. We
Speaker 8: have people doing just the coolest thing. There's something that
Speaker 8: people heard in Maggie's voice. You know, she almost sounds
Speaker 8: like Joni Mitchell singing over electronica.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and it just sounded like her.
Speaker 2: I really liked what for Real said and since that
Speaker 2: it was singular, like he couldn't even give notes on
Speaker 2: it because.
Speaker 8: It didn't sound like anything else, nothing else.
Speaker 1: It was really her own world.
Speaker 8: But I have to say a lot of students there
Speaker 8: are doing incredibly cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this is the first year in which I
Speaker 1: felt intimidated by some of my students, Like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: need to learn from you, Like I'm taking this job
Speaker 1: so you can teach me stuff that I don't know.
Speaker 8: Listen, that's part.
Speaker 7: Do they do that you sometimes?
Speaker 1: No, they don't test me. I mean like do they
Speaker 1: know about your history and that stuff?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, And the classroom to me, and I'm really serious
Speaker 8: about this is a three hundred and sixty degree thing.
Speaker 8: The information flows both ways, and if both parties aren't
Speaker 8: super engaged while we're in there, what a fucking waste
Speaker 8: of time, you know, not just a waste of my time,
Speaker 8: wasted their time.
Speaker 1: So it's great.
Speaker 8: The students are great, the people I work with are fantastic.
Speaker 8: First real job I've ever had, first time I've ever
Speaker 8: gotten a paid regular paycheck from any company other than
Speaker 8: my own. And uh yeah, I still get to work,
Speaker 8: and they actually tisch the arts division at n YU
Speaker 8: wants you to stay active in the field, so I
Speaker 8: I need to work and I still enjoy working. But uh,
Speaker 8: just because it's school and in theory, I'm full time there.
Speaker 1: That's my first responsibility. Do they make you turn in
Speaker 1: a massive syllabus at the top of the year. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had to red and the player.
Speaker 8: And it's the weirdest word in the world to say,
Speaker 8: you feel like you're silibi. Yeah, okay, I thought that
Speaker 8: was just like me to make sure that I knew
Speaker 8: I knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2: No, my health teacher in uh In college used it.
Speaker 2: That was first place I heard it. It was right
Speaker 2: after he was discussing gon aha.
Speaker 8: It was in my human health And wait a minute, man,
Speaker 8: my ship is it's.
Speaker 7: I think syphilis cyphilized letter totally.
Speaker 1: So what is your goal when you what is your
Speaker 1: mission to when you do teach this class, because the
Speaker 1: thing I I enjoyed about teaching is.
Speaker 8: The enlightening part of things, and it's the small things
Speaker 8: that enlighten them the most and really engage them.
Speaker 1: But you know, I hate the whole idea of like
Speaker 1: I have to quiz.
Speaker 8: Them on this and know the finals and that's bullshit.
Speaker 8: And I said the first day, Look, you know, I
Speaker 8: don't believe in grades, but this is ny U. So
Speaker 8: we got to do things a certain way. If you're
Speaker 8: not here because you really want to engage with this material,
Speaker 8: you're spending a lot of money. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't dis people or anything or blow them up,
Speaker 8: but that's I I believe really in that we're all discovering.
Speaker 1: This stuff together. It sounds, I know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: I was from the sixties, and I am.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: I love the process of you know, discovering things with them,
Speaker 8: you know, I yeah, I believe the same thing. But
Speaker 8: you still have to give grades. Yeah, and that's I'm
Speaker 8: not even going to get into that. I try to
Speaker 8: be really objective about it. I try to take what
Speaker 8: I like and don't like out of the equation. So
Speaker 8: I have this big spreadsheet. It's just based really on
Speaker 8: you know, whether they show up, whether they participate, whether
Speaker 8: they finish the assignments, whether they did this, did that,
Speaker 8: And it's totally by the numbers.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you, what, so, what is
Speaker 2: the difference between you know, someone like a Maggie that
Speaker 2: like shines and then just those kids that kind of
Speaker 2: flame out?
Speaker 1: Like what what do you see? There is no difference.
Speaker 8: You know, some people the most almost all of the
Speaker 8: students that are there do something that's really really cool,
Speaker 8: as you know, having the perseverance to stick it out
Speaker 8: for the long run.
Speaker 1: I get sidetracked, you know.
Speaker 7: Are you aware of the effect that you have on
Speaker 7: them as like a mentor, because I find that I have.
Speaker 7: I don't know how you feel about this, but like
Speaker 7: I had teachers, two of them, particularly when I was
Speaker 7: in high school, that were totally instrumental in my life.
Speaker 7: I feel like teaching, once it gets down to it,
Speaker 7: is one of the most important things people like us
Speaker 7: can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I tend to sort of not think too much of myself,
Speaker 8: so I try to keep that thing out of it.
Speaker 8: But no, listen, if there's one thing, If there's one thing.
Speaker 8: If there's two things.
Speaker 1: I can teach them is be a decent human being
Speaker 1: and engage engaged with what you do.
Speaker 8: I won't say be serious. I say, if you're here
Speaker 8: and you're doing it, engage. It's like playing music. You know,
Speaker 8: you're not sitting there playing the chart like this. You
Speaker 8: got to engage with the music. So that those are
Speaker 8: the things that What about the decent human being part?
Speaker 8: Can that be optional?
Speaker 1: Listen? Do you really want to be in this class?
Speaker 8: Do you tell them and encourage them to mix very quietly?
Speaker 8: Because I believe it or not, I do that now.
Speaker 8: I tell them to mix at reasonable volumes. You know,
Speaker 8: your ears do really funky things when you listen to
Speaker 8: a loud music for a long time.
Speaker 7: And they lie to you.
Speaker 1: So if you can mix at volumes, I turn it
Speaker 1: up every once in a while to check ship. I
Speaker 1: gotta sell.
Speaker 8: I checked the bottom. I'm mastering now, so I got to.
Speaker 1: If you can you master your own stuff. Isn't that
Speaker 1: dangerous though?
Speaker 8: Sometimes, but most of the time it's good. I've gotten
Speaker 8: really good. You don't think you need fresh airs to
Speaker 8: Sometimes I do, but but you know, people want to deal.
Speaker 7: Can get her name?
Speaker 1: I cut it all in.
Speaker 7: Wait, did you think of Joe.
Speaker 1: Bill also is the Joe Raposo of Sesame Street. So
Speaker 1: and I always put you up Joe Reposo's name, So
Speaker 1: film a school micer was who I was. Refra was
Speaker 1: brilliant guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, but I encourage them to mix that volumes
Speaker 8: sort of like you're talking to somebody from two feet away.
Speaker 8: That's where your speakers are gonna be the most accurate.
Speaker 8: And the biggest part of it is you obviate the
Speaker 8: negative effects of the room. If the speakers aren't very loud,
Speaker 8: the back of the room is not going to be
Speaker 8: bouncing around at you.
Speaker 1: So that's a big deal. So what Bob and are
Speaker 1: explaining to you, of course, a love of supremers that
Speaker 1: are like scratching your head right now is uh.
Speaker 8: If you look on discogs dot com and you turn
Speaker 8: up look up Bob Power's name, you'll see a lot
Speaker 8: of variations of nicknames that I've given them on various
Speaker 8: roots albums, such as Mixed by Bob.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 8: I really can't hear the mix, guys, Bob guys, I
Speaker 8: really really need to hear this, guys.
Speaker 1: And Bob it's bad enough that it's now five forty
Speaker 1: six am. I do do I have to put off
Speaker 1: with the talking guys power anyway, My point is he
Speaker 1: left out to shut the fuck up. Bob taught me
Speaker 1: that the best mixes if if your mix sounds awesome
Speaker 1: on shitty speakers. I mean, that's why studios speakers like
Speaker 1: Jenolis or Yamaha NS tens they were there to give you.
Speaker 1: Even Thriller was last minute mixed on like a clock
Speaker 1: radio speakers. Billy Jean was done like on the cheapest
Speaker 1: speaker that Bruce Foro Dean could could get, because if
Speaker 1: it sounds great on bad speakers, that don't sound awesome
Speaker 1: once you have it on speaks.
Speaker 8: One of the early engineers I worked with when I
Speaker 8: was scoring TV, we always talk about what's a good mix?
Speaker 1: What's a good mix?
Speaker 8: And he's now a nuclear physicist by the way, he
Speaker 8: got smart, but he said he said the best thing
Speaker 8: I've ever heard anybody say. It said, a good mix
Speaker 8: is something that doesn't sound too terrible anywhere.
Speaker 1: Right, You're right, Well, there's a generation now. I mean,
Speaker 1: I won't throw him under the bus, but I've had
Speaker 1: a few conversations with Kanye's people about their engineering tactics,
Speaker 1: which you know, I feel like his music. I feel
Speaker 1: like his music is made for no. This is my point.
Speaker 1: When I saw the Yeaser show at MSG and I
Speaker 1: happened to be within twenty feet of the speakers, then
Speaker 1: I realized, Oh, all these songs were created with this
Speaker 1: being the end game the concert. The near colonic level
Speaker 1: of how the low end was rumbling my stomach, and
Speaker 1: I got it. And I also imagine, so you know,
Speaker 1: I would ask him like, when you guys mix this stuff,
Speaker 1: do you ma?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 1: The guys would shake their heads like you won't imagine
Speaker 1: the level of loudness that he makes the speakers when
Speaker 1: he's engineering in the studios. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: always thought you were supposed to make it quiet. And
Speaker 1: especially because most of us consume our music now on
Speaker 1: MacBook pros and these, you know, tiny computer speakers, you
Speaker 1: would think that whenever I listen to you know, his
Speaker 1: stuff on the iPods or my computer, I'm indifferent to
Speaker 1: the music and it affects how I perceive that record.
Speaker 1: But then when I hear it on big as speakers,
Speaker 1: then I'm like, oh damn, I might like this.
Speaker 8: Listen just about anything sounds good when you crack it.
Speaker 7: Didn't you just say that loved musical? Your ears will
Speaker 7: lie to you.
Speaker 1: Your ears lied to you.
Speaker 8: And also, you know, a really good mix should hold
Speaker 8: up at a bunch of different volume. The musical balances,
Speaker 8: internal balances should stay somewhat the same. Looking at it
Speaker 8: like they want to shoot, They all like you, sucker,
Speaker 8: And I'm just saying.
Speaker 9: You know, if if, if, when you play music loud
Speaker 9: and you start playing tricks on, you kind of explains
Speaker 9: the last fifteen years of clippings.
Speaker 1: Nah, that's real. Well, yeah, I assume that nowadays people
Speaker 1: just mix it loud and don't give a regard to
Speaker 1: it's just gonna get played in the club inferior, which
Speaker 1: you would think that most people would mix for their iPhones,
Speaker 1: their cheap car systems.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but also if somebody says to me, I really
Speaker 8: want this to pop on the radio, I'll go a
Speaker 8: certain direction with it. You know, it's just but again,
Speaker 8: in a perfect world, you want something that sounds pretty
Speaker 8: good everywhere.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, do you still not hardpan your base?
Speaker 1: That's another lesson you taught me. You said that the
Speaker 1: groove and the record will skip.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's an old record thing. You'd never put anything
Speaker 8: with a lot of bottom on one side because when
Speaker 8: the needle has to make the big excursion, it'll pop
Speaker 8: over into the next groove.
Speaker 1: That's an old school thing. Same thing with sibilants. You know.
Speaker 8: The biggest issue, one of the biggest issue in modern
Speaker 8: records to me mixing is people don't DS enough. The
Speaker 8: fucking essays on the vocals will take the enamel off
Speaker 8: your teeth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stuff like that. You know whatever, any one thing
Speaker 1: in the tom inks right now?
Speaker 7: Is there a.
Speaker 6: Did they have a DS plug in?
Speaker 8: Pretty serious? Yeah, there's a gazillion of them. And the
Speaker 8: cool thing is you can make them do anything you want.
Speaker 1: I love the digital world, man.
Speaker 8: I you know, people say you missed the way things
Speaker 8: used to be. I said, yeah, I missed the budgets,
Speaker 8: that's all. I miss everything. You can get so much
Speaker 8: closer to what you want to hear?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 1: Am I allowed to ask you what was your moment?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 7: What was your.
Speaker 1: Oh, how much my biggest payday? Yeah? Like I don't
Speaker 1: mean the exact amount, but like, what was your We really.
Speaker 7: Want you to do this record?
Speaker 1: Bop out?
Speaker 8: You know, I have management for all that time and
Speaker 8: he was just making my deals. So but you know,
Speaker 8: as a producer, you know, and this is one of
Speaker 8: the things I teach my students is that you don't
Speaker 8: get paid a cent. I mean, you get paid advances,
Speaker 8: but until the record company makes their money back, you
Speaker 8: don't get paid your royalties. But say they make their
Speaker 8: money back after they sell one hundred and fifty thousand records. Well,
Speaker 8: one of the things you want your contract is that
Speaker 8: you get paid from record one. You know, you don't
Speaker 8: want to get paid from record one hundred and fifteen
Speaker 8: thousand one. So the first check is always big. Oh
Speaker 8: come on, man, you know what Bob the reason why
Speaker 8: I have said, I know he never touches his own money.
Speaker 8: He says, I never look at my own money. I
Speaker 8: have people around me to do.
Speaker 7: That for me.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, well yes, and I know, seriously, I
Speaker 1: never touched my record money because non, it's like paper money.
Speaker 1: I mean, we sell respectively.
Speaker 8: But I don't know if it's a good thing that
Speaker 8: DJ Questlove is monetarily more valuable then Quest Love has ever.
Speaker 1: Been as a studio musician or a producer or drummer.
Speaker 7: You know, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't mean Carlturally speaking, I'm just saying that I
Speaker 1: kind of live in life now where like my value is,
Speaker 1: my monetary value is in places other than where you thought,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a mind fucker, which is made
Speaker 1: me the the equivalent of Bob Power Engineers. I was
Speaker 1: about to say, that's like the story for everybody.
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, that's that's my thing. Hits is not a
Speaker 2: lot of times. It's not the thing that you think
Speaker 2: or that you may even thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1: But do you resistant or do you embrace it?
Speaker 8: No, wanting to make a lot of money is not
Speaker 8: a reasonable objective, I think. No. Honestly, being able to
Speaker 8: live decently and decently and do.
Speaker 1: What you love with people you really like, that's payoff.
Speaker 1: That's real. You just turn it back to Kumba moment.
Speaker 8: What is what is your favorite funk out of man?
Speaker 8: I played that kombay A?
Speaker 7: You have ever what's your thing?
Speaker 8: Which you've seen that Jacket Wilson thing when he's live
Speaker 8: on television? You guys ever seen live clips at Jackie Wilson.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, because he's saying stuff that's kind of
Speaker 8: like Kumbaya. But he is so incredible, not like kombay a.
Speaker 1: But I will now look at it.
Speaker 8: Your love keeps lifting me. You gotta see this clip.
Speaker 8: He's doing it live on television. You could have made
Speaker 8: a record out of it.
Speaker 1: It would have been great. I'm on it. I will look.
Speaker 1: I gotta know what is your your own personal desert
Speaker 1: island disc Like, if when all's said and done, what
Speaker 1: is your artistic crowning achievement? I'm by power and I did.
Speaker 1: It would be one of my own records.
Speaker 8: Man, it wouldn't be one of my own records, it
Speaker 8: would It would be Lewis Armstrong and the Elephantzgerald Duet's no.
Speaker 1: No, no, no no. I mean as far as your achievement,
Speaker 1: your achievement is concerned, like what are you most proud
Speaker 1: of having done the last day of whatever session?
Speaker 8: It was proud of being a decent human being and
Speaker 8: doing decent work.
Speaker 1: I always just got there positively.
Speaker 8: Know what's really going on? You know he's really did,
Speaker 8: but he's trying to save it now he's trying.
Speaker 1: To save it.
Speaker 7: But what a dick.
Speaker 1: I don't want the bad stories, but I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a crowning achievement, like Okay, I.
Speaker 8: Did that there's a lot of Man, every record I've
Speaker 8: ever worked with I love worked on I love.
Speaker 1: I'm serious. It's like your favorite bread the Roots, every
Speaker 1: roots record. Dude, I wasn't even hinting. I forgot you
Speaker 1: worked on the Roots.
Speaker 8: Sure you did.
Speaker 7: Man, No, I'm thinking like what.
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, I honest to god, I love every record I've.
Speaker 2: Ever Well, what's the record? Okay, maybe what's the record?
Speaker 2: I'm curious to know what's the record?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 2: And hell, maybe all of them go follow this category
Speaker 2: like something that you finished that maybe you didn't think
Speaker 2: you're gonna fish like something that the process.
Speaker 1: Was really say that, Sugar, Can we move on now?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 9: Maybe maybe maybe this might clear up of me this
Speaker 9: question better. If you had to listen to one song
Speaker 9: that you worked on right now, which one would you choose?
Speaker 9: Like a gun to your head, Bob, you have to
Speaker 9: play one of your songs right.
Speaker 8: The song from Comfort Woman that Chris Dave plays on
Speaker 8: Love song number is that it where the drums start
Speaker 8: out really far away and then they come towards you.
Speaker 8: It's like an up tempo reggae thing.
Speaker 7: Okay, opening so.
Speaker 1: Really reggae flavor.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know, I can't think of the name because
Speaker 8: the names on the love song Umber one, that's the
Speaker 8: one I'm trying to get. So you're your Michelle work
Speaker 8: is your No, I'm serious, man, I like the friends
Speaker 8: that do with everybody, all right.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: You work on that that got deep six and should
Speaker 1: have came out. I can't name names, Prince.
Speaker 8: I've had records that people have redone, which is no.
Speaker 8: You know, anybody as a producer knows that sometimes you
Speaker 8: make a record, sometimes people don't like it and they
Speaker 8: redo it.
Speaker 1: You gotta live with it. It's like being a musician.
Speaker 8: But I've had records that have been redone where the
Speaker 8: redone one was really bad.
Speaker 1: Not a remix, but no, no, just you mean one
Speaker 1: of those iTunes.
Speaker 5: And gag records.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I tuned like a like a playover, like oh my god, yo, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you'll go to heat Wave and then like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like they re recorded this. I felt for Black
Speaker 1: like Black Ivory redid they did and it's fucking horrible.
Speaker 1: But I bought the album. Yeah, I brought the bad
Speaker 1: version was spinning in concerts like how come tips version
Speaker 1: don't sound like this? But it seems like yo, that
Speaker 1: that's not the verse that he redid it like I
Speaker 1: fell for that ship.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about real Desert Island any records I wanted
Speaker 8: to earth Winding Fire's greatest hits in the super Fly soundtrack.
Speaker 8: It does not get any better than Freddy's Dad is
Speaker 8: like possibly one of the pinnacles of music.
Speaker 1: That scares me, having heard Freddy's Dead when I was two.
Speaker 1: When the modulation goes to the horn thing, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: scares of I can't detect say nothing.
Speaker 7: I want.
Speaker 1: I want to see the mission statement that says I'm
Speaker 1: now I'll just sing on my own goddamn radio shows,
Speaker 1: as opposed to it's not a contract, Bill be coming
Speaker 1: off like the principal and back to the future Alphae
Speaker 1: is a slacker. When I was a kid, that that
Speaker 1: modulation used to always scariest modulations, always kid, right, what
Speaker 1: about the what's going on?
Speaker 8: They go like to a tritone away if.
Speaker 1: It modulated and not Golden Lady by Stevie, but like,
Speaker 1: and that's the one thing they cut out of my
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech when I inducted
Speaker 1: Hall of Notes, was you know the end of Sea's
Speaker 1: going We're just stays in there's now and then it
Speaker 1: goes here point under the blankets.
Speaker 8: That's some Hollywood ship right there. You know, that's the
Speaker 8: cheap shot. You know, go up a half staff each
Speaker 8: time in the out course.
Speaker 1: That's like a harp glist.
Speaker 8: Going into a new section. Well what I call the
Speaker 8: sucker punch of orchestration.
Speaker 1: I would turneth whenever Sea's Going came on. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I turned on all the lights.
Speaker 7: I never thought that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed to touch my dad's radio, so you know,
Speaker 1: I never knew that modulations.
Speaker 7: All the time.
Speaker 8: You know what else scares me? And I know Bill
Speaker 8: Steve wants me and tell the story. You ever watched
Speaker 8: Tiktac dough tick tech dough now a long time.
Speaker 1: I remember there's a game show. There's a call television.
Speaker 1: There's a game show called tik Tac though, I remember that, okay,
Speaker 1: speaking well, whenever you pick the center square, they give
Speaker 1: you a two part question and then sort of scary
Speaker 1: Jeopardy music to give you thirty seconds to think it over. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: scared Jesus, I remember that. I remember that, guys.
Speaker 8: I got to tell you about this building my dad
Speaker 8: was a television producer in the fifties and sixties, and
Speaker 8: we moved from Chicago when I was four, in like
Speaker 8: fifty three or four and fifty five, and I was
Speaker 8: in one of the studios here because he did Mister Wizard.
Speaker 8: You guys don't remember, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know mister Wizard, but don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 1: I remember mister Martindale.
Speaker 5: I remember now what it was, this the mister Wizard that.
Speaker 7: Was on what you call it?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 7: How we were there?
Speaker 1: Well, you know the villains from What's Happening, But you
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 5: I probably know if I see it.
Speaker 1: I just remember mister Wizard because like mister Wizz, I
Speaker 1: will watch.
Speaker 2: It and he would do experiments and stuff and it
Speaker 2: was just like well, and I would try to do it,
Speaker 2: but I never had none of the ship.
Speaker 5: Did you need it?
Speaker 7: Anyway?
Speaker 8: I was in this building in the studio when I
Speaker 8: was five years old and I got kicked out because
Speaker 8: I had a cold and I kept kept coughing. My
Speaker 8: mother had to take me out of the studio. So
Speaker 8: this is my triumphant return the studio.
Speaker 7: Mom.
Speaker 6: In reading your wiki page, Bob, just the things like
Speaker 6: studied classical composition and uh, a master's degree in jazz.
Speaker 6: Now when when you started working that was awesome? Eat
Speaker 6: a Chinese peanut.
Speaker 1: Or something, discussion seaweed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So like this this knowledge of classical music and
Speaker 6: jazz and then and then suddenly you're in the world
Speaker 6: of samplers and tribe cald Quests and day La soul
Speaker 6: and and so now I watched I watched Quest sampling
Speaker 6: a lot, and he's tuning his samples. So now did
Speaker 6: you bring a lot of that stuff to hip hop?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 6: And no, making sampling more musical, yes.
Speaker 8: When we had to, But no, because I also realized
Speaker 8: that the ethic was often contrary to that, and I
Speaker 8: didn't want to suck it up. But the low end theory,
Speaker 8: I mean, we spent a lot, a lot of time
Speaker 8: on stuff like that, like tuning and timing and things
Speaker 8: like that.
Speaker 6: My my more general question though, is like how did
Speaker 6: you apply your real world classical and jazz experience to
Speaker 6: those projects.
Speaker 8: There's different gigs, man. If you're on a jazz gig,
Speaker 8: you play jazz. If you're on a poka gig, you
Speaker 8: play the poka.
Speaker 1: So you didn't so you No.
Speaker 8: I wanted to help the people realize their vision it
Speaker 8: was not about me.
Speaker 6: I guess I'm asking if you applied that stuff to
Speaker 6: the world of sam you.
Speaker 8: I think everybody, every practitioner in the world, applies everything
Speaker 8: they've ever ever seen to everything they do.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 8: There was no direct line, There wasn't any straight lines.
Speaker 8: But of course, yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 6: So, because they were using a lot of jazz samples.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, it's musical sensibilities, that's all, which is
Speaker 8: why the drums are always so loud.
Speaker 6: But they were then the stuff they were bringing to
Speaker 6: you that they were bringing to the sessions that they
Speaker 6: had done prior. Did you find that that stuff was
Speaker 6: already the way they wanted it?
Speaker 8: Sometimes, so we had to work, you know, early on,
Speaker 8: especially before technology caught up, we had to tweak things
Speaker 8: a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, emir, like the.
Speaker 6: In a lot of hip hop'tensional clashing going on, right
Speaker 6: and then and then there's this whole idea of tuning
Speaker 6: the samples so that they make more musical sense.
Speaker 7: So where is that that was?
Speaker 1: I believe that's Bob's entry now with uh Nix Susanna
Speaker 1: who works with Bob at n Yu.
Speaker 7: Being the.
Speaker 1: Works, he's my boss. Okay, what a preck.
Speaker 8: Nick love your guy.
Speaker 7: I was like, clean that up.
Speaker 1: No. Yeah, So Nick the Santo's uh you know, his
Speaker 1: his his the beauty and in his work was it
Speaker 1: was like throw everything on the wall and see what happens.
Speaker 1: And you know, Nick did practically every Bomb Squad associated
Speaker 1: album from Nation to Millions to Fear of a Black
Speaker 1: Planet to America Yes he dies, Unberser and Black Teenagers.
Speaker 1: And a side note, Nick said that they would.
Speaker 8: Pre sequence all their things like they did no fading
Speaker 8: and no cuts, nothing was automated, so everything was pre programmed.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 1: And I got to see the note production note sheets
Speaker 1: from Nation to Millions and like, I mean they were
Speaker 1: literally like at four minutes and thirty two point five seconds,
Speaker 1: here comes the one, two, three, four, five six kick
Speaker 1: it from base Heads to Like they pre programmed everything
Speaker 1: so as you heard it, that's how it was. Like.
Speaker 1: So that's why Eric Sadler gets a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of praise there. But yeah, I mean your entry
Speaker 1: was basically to strip it down and to bring it forth,
Speaker 1: and it made it louder.
Speaker 8: I guess the less elements you have now, Knicks mixes
Speaker 8: are crowded and noisier, but everything's compressed and small. But
Speaker 8: that's also pe you know. Like, guys, what I do
Speaker 8: is exactly like being a musician. And you play the gig.
Speaker 8: You don't play your chops. You play the gig, you
Speaker 8: get there what the music is playing, and you play
Speaker 8: the music. You don't play your own shit.
Speaker 1: You know. So you never had scratched once, like when
Speaker 1: you first a lot. I'll let you relaxations like where's
Speaker 1: the fourth bar? A lot A lot. But you know
Speaker 1: that's part of learning, man.
Speaker 8: It's incumbent upon one as a practitioner to kind of
Speaker 8: understand the ethic of.
Speaker 1: The music that's going on. You don't make it come
Speaker 1: to you. You have to go to it. Such a
Speaker 1: wise man. Okay, another thing, Bob, Bob, do you have
Speaker 1: the cane out there? Did I live?
Speaker 7: It's next to your walker? That no, Bob?
Speaker 1: When you worked on loew In theory, that was awesome. Okay, Bob,
Speaker 1: you could. I could keep you for another twelve hours,
Speaker 1: but let's come back and do it again. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: save something for three years from now.
Speaker 7: Bob.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you very much. I appreciate everything
Speaker 1: that you've done for music, for me, and for the culture.
Speaker 1: Hashtag for the culture.
Speaker 8: I can say exactly the same about you. Thank you man,
Speaker 8: I appreciate it all right.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: I always feel the need to end these shows with lessons.
Speaker 1: What do we learn from Bob Power? We learned that
Speaker 1: we will never hear any conflict stories of none of
Speaker 1: his artist ever.
Speaker 7: Never.
Speaker 1: If you work with Bob Power, I think your reputation
Speaker 1: is safe. Well, he won't allow you to do anything
Speaker 1: salacious in his studio sessions anyway. So you know, I
Speaker 1: was hoping to get like one, you know, leaders of
Speaker 1: the New School tribe fight story or something, but that
Speaker 1: that wasn't happening. Classic class act is protect class and
Speaker 1: is my mom as well. Uh yeah, so shout out
Speaker 1: to uh. I've learned that Bob Power uh protects all
Speaker 1: of his clients and loves them very very much. What
Speaker 1: else did we learn?
Speaker 6: He also gives them most of all the credit for
Speaker 6: all the work. You know, really kept emphasizing that, Yeah.
Speaker 1: He kind of made me feel important when I knew
Speaker 1: good and well that you know Bob was making on
Speaker 1: Like Bob would never let you touch a button, like
Speaker 1: you would have to present a case, get a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Just to add a little, just to add a little.
Speaker 7: Reverb to a song.
Speaker 1: It was like, I don't know if it calls for
Speaker 1: that dam here anyway. This is a Questlove of Quest
Speaker 1: Love Supreme. Be safe, ladies and gentlemen. I hope to
Speaker 1: see you now. Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode. It was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.