In case anyone missed it, Statik posted a couple of weeks of throwback memories the past couple of weeks on Facebook. Statik recalls his early career in music leading up to the beginnings of Collide, and up to the release of Chasing the Ghost. It’s a bit of a read, so sit back.
Also…we are working on new music, so no one fret.
Continuing with Statik throwback week, we 're now up to 1981. This shows me playing trumpet in one of the many school bands I was in. At this point I had already been playing trumpet for about 5 years. My parents bought a used coronet at a yard sale to keep me busy the summer before 5th grade, and I stuck with it throughout high school.
At this point, I'm listening to Queen News of the World and Jazz, Adam and the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier and Prince Charming, and Devo Are We Not Men, Gary Numan Replicas, and The Pleasure Principle.
Making music wasn't on my radar yet, although I had a home computer, and spent hours programming on it, giving me a bit of a leg up for later.
Day 3 of Statik throwback week.
We move ahead 4 years since yesterdays picture. This picture shows me as drum major, leading our high school band in a marching competition. I still like a the sound of a great drum and horn section. (Fleetwood Macs "Tusk" was obviously one of my picks on our These Eyes Before album).
I still played the trumpet, but also played some other brass instruments, like french horn and baritone.
At home, I had built special shelves in my bedroom to display all of my records, like trophies they were. My walkman never left me, and my musical taste was all over the place. I loved Laurie Anderson "Big Science", The Residents "Duck Stab", Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams", Depeche Mode "Construction Time Again", Fear "The Record", The Flying Lizards, Gary Numan "Berserker", Jean Michael Jarre, "Zoolook", Nina Hagen "Fearless", Peter Gabriel "Melt" & "Security", Synergy "Chords", Thomas Dolby, Trio, The Art of Noise, and Prince "Around the World in a Day". (If you would have told me then, that in just 8 years, I'd be hired by Prince, and and move to Minneapolis I would have told you you were crazy!)
I was a geek. I liked school, computers and video games. I liked creative writing, and went to a creative writing class/camp at some point during the year. I liked tennis and was tennis captain. I got a business scholarship and flew to Atlanta with my creative writing teacher for the nation-wide finals in the scholarship. I had still planned to go into computer programming for a job.
Even with my love for music, and playing in school bands for 8 years, though, I never thought that would be something you would do as a job.
Day 4 of Statik throwback week. Today moves us ahead 2 years from yesterdays post to 1987.
Sometimes life just slaps you in the face and you have to pivot. Still believing I was going to get a degree in computer science, I attended the University of Washington. I took some more advanced computer programming classes...great! But it was also at that time that I discovered you had to take a bunch of math classes as well to graduate in computers. My nemesis at the time was Calculus. I think I dropped it the first time I took it...retook it and maybe got a D, and then took it a 3rd time and got a C. It just wasn't sinking in, and I had to rethink what was happening.
In the meantime, I was no longer playing in any bands, but I knew someone that had a 4 track cassette recorder, and I made the jump into electronic music and bought a Korg sampler keyboard. (in hindsight I wish I had got an Emax...but oh well). I started messing around with sequencing and sampling, and really enjoyed the whole electronic/sampling thing that was starting to happen.
Industrial music was really taking off, and I remember seeing Skinny Puppy, and was blown away by the show. Ministry's Twitch was in heavy rotation, and I still think of it as a masterpiece to this day. Also in my list was Front 242, and anything that Adrian Sherwood touched.
In a great coincidence at the time, I ran into a friend of a friend who said he was going to go to a music school in California.--the Dick Grove School of Music. He was going into the Composing Program, but I found out they also had a program in (studio) Engineering. It seemed like a perfect fit for me, with the music and technical aspect, so I moved to Los Angeles and started school there that same year.
The person I moved down with (and ending up sharing an apartment with,) had a bit of a home studio. He had an 8 track recorder AND a Korg sampling drum machine as well as an Akai AX-60 and AX-80. Not bad for a home studio at the time. Everything was just getting started.
Day 5 of Statik throwback week brings us forward a year to 1988.
As I continued to work out songs in my home studio...it turned out the my roommate, (we'll call him H.B.), wanted to be a record exec...and brought up the idea of releasing my music?!
That's when I came up with the name Statik, for a group name. My first official release! Only four songs, but it was still exciting. We got the vinyl pressed, and sent it out to a bunch of indie record stores, and clubs on the West Coast. We even sent it to a big radio station (KROQ) in L.A., and Rodney on the Roq played it on his show one week.
Helping out with some of the drum sounds was a friend Doug DeForest. I ran into him during a local Ministry show. Evidently Doug had played with Ministry during their With Sympathy days. Doug had built his own drum rig, complete with drum triggers running to samplers and triggering small sequences. It was pretty advanced for the time.
To showcase Statik, and a couple of other bands H.B. was working with, he booked the Moore Theater in Seattle, and we played our one and only show. I remember that besides the 4 songs that were on the E.P., I needed more songs to fill up the live set, and I was working on them right up until the show happened. I was still writing lyrics on the flight up to Seattle. The show was supposed to be recorded (to DAT), but I think by the time we went on, the DAT was full, and the sound guy didn't have another one...and so it will just have to live in my memory that it sounded much better than it probably did.
Day 6 of Statik throwback week. We are getting closer to the beginnings of Collide, and this brings us up to 1990.
After graduating from Grove, I got a job from L.A. producer, Steve Lindsey, who had a personal studio in The Village Recorders in Santa Monica. Steve would do guest speaking at the school, and I responded to and ad he put up. I started out as a "runner", which meant getting lunch for people, and keeping the studio clean. It was my first real job in the music industry.
I was there for two years. The studio was used for projects Steve was producing, and people would rent it out as well. It was a great studio for me to get more studio time under my belt. It had all kinds of great gear.. Roland Jupiter 8, Roland MKS-80, Oberheim Xpander, Akai MPC-60, Akai S-1000, YamahaTX816, Enconiq VFX, and a bunch of other things I can't remember. We worked on an Sony 2" tape machine, which I had to align before sessions. (tape machine aligning...do not miss it!).
By the end of my two years there, I was engineering most sessions that came through. I had made and organized sample libraries for all of the gear, and kept everything running smoothly. There is nothing like being in a working studio. I learned a lot about vocal comping and recording, and just what went into making an album. It was also a great opportunity to see most of L.A. best studio musicians....people who had worked on 1,000's of albums.
We worked on a lot of RnB and pop projects. My favorite though, and one of my first album credits, was Leonard Cohen's "The Future". I wasn't really familiar with his work at the time, but he was great, and exactly like you would think he would be.
In studio downtime, I was able to use it to continue to work on my own music. (Most of which I added to the Statik Machines (Plus More Machines), download on our store. I never really thought of myself of a vocalist, so that part of songwriting was tough.
I did get to put in a lot of hours in the studio though, and it really was the perfect place for me to learn more about recording.
Day 7 of Statik throwback week brings us ahead 2 years to the end of 1992. It's a long read today, so sit back...
Midway through 1991 a client came into Steve Lindsey's studio where I was working. It was Keith Cohen. Keith had done mixing and production for Paula Abdul's giant album Forever Your Girl. At that time he was so busy, he essentially had has own room that he would mix at, at Larrabee Studios. When he was working there, he would have an assistant that worked for the studio do all of the mix assistant work, but he was tired of getting different people in and out of the position, (one of which was Sylvia Massy), and he asked me if I wanted to work for the studio and get the position full time. It wasn't an easy decision, because it was a bit of a pay cut, going down to mix assistant, but I ended up taking it. I wanted to have more mixing experience, and Larrabee was a state of the art studio.
Everything was still being mixed from 2" tape, and mixing to 1/2" tape (with DAT backups). We were using an SSL console which was probably around 96 inputs, with automation, so that was a great thing to learn. All of the other state of the art, (and vintage gear) was there, so just to see how it was all used and put together was eye opening. A lot of remixes and edits were done by cutting and editing the 1/2" master tape, such a difference that how things are done now.
Besides setting up mixes, taking recall notes, and running the tape machines, and everything else a mix assistant would do, the main reason Keith hired me was to also run all of the midi gear. When doing mixes, we'd be replacing drums, adding different keyboards, and drum loops, etc. This was (obviously) before Pro Tools, so there was still a lot to get right technical-wise. I had also been building up my own sound library, so I brought that to the table, and I was able to easily find the sounds that I liked and knew. Speed was key, and I was fast in getting things running, and knowing how everything worked, and finding the right sounds.
From the day I started, 90% of the projects that we worked on were from Prince...Prince songs, Prince productions, Prince remixes. The first album I worked on there was when Prince was producing Carmen Elektra. Prince would usually come at the end of the day, after the clubs closed and check out the mix. Sometimes, if he wanted to change a sound or add keyboards or something, that's where I came in.
For the end of 1991, and a good chunk of 1992, we were working on Prince's "The Symbol Album", (the most memorable track was probably "My Name is Prince"). Besides just working on the album tracks, we would do remixes and extended versions, radio cuts, and tons of versions for each song. I had been a Prince fan forever, but I think he, and probably most people at the studio liked the fact that I was quiet, and kept to myself, and just got the job at hand done.
A lot of days at the studio were 12 to 16 hour days, with the occasional day going for more than 24 hours when we were on a deadline. It was a tiring, but rewarding time. When I did have time, I was also doing some outside work as well. I got a call from Sylvia to do a bit of programming for a little known band she was producing, Tool. I helped out on one song, "Disgustipated". She recorded the band destroying a piano (to a click track). I took the raw recordings, and organized it into the rhythm track for the song. Sylvia and I have continued to work on albums together, including Machines of Loving Grace, Love and Rockets, Econoline Crush, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Powerman 5000, and a bunch of other bands.
It was a super busy year for sure, and that brings us up to the start of Collide!! which I'll get to tomorrow.
Day 8 of Statik throwback week. OK…I know this is more than a week, but people seem interested, so I’ll keep going a bit more. Today’s throwback actually takes us BACK a bit from yesterday’s post to mid 1991. Normally, I like to keep things moving forward, but there’s a reason for going back today.
Especially during the late 80’s, L.A. had a lot of great alternative clubs that would play goth and industrial music, and when I had time, I would frequent these clubs…Scream, Club Lingerie, Club Fetish, Coven 13, Sin-a-matic, Das Bunker, Helter Skelter, Stigmata, Happy Haus, Bar Sinister, Kontrol Factory, and a bunch of others that I know I’m forgetting, but there were lots! I didn’t have a lot of time to go “clubbing” once I started working at Larrabee, but as luck would have it, I went to Kontrol Factory the week before my hours at the new studio got crazy.
kaRIN and I met there that night. I just happened to be next in line, in front of her at the bar, when she asked me to get her a glass of water, (so that she could add it to the liquor that she had snuck in). We didn’t actually talk much while we were in line. She later said that she thought I was a bit stand off-ish…which is probably kind of true…I’m just not a big talker, so being quiet, some people can take it different ways. Later on that night though, I actually asked her to dance. (Who asks someone to dance at these clubs??!! No one—that’s who!! What a dork I was!) Anyway…I asked her to dance, she said yes, and we did end up talking a bit, and I got her number.
Like I wrote in yesterday’s post, my hours were crazy, and 16 hour days were pretty frequent, so I didn’t have a lot of free time…and starting a (new) band definitely wasn’t something I was thinking about. At some point, and I’m not exactly sure when, I heard kaRIN playing her acoustic guitar and singing. The more I heard her, the more I thought….she really has a great voice! Besides all of the electronic music I was into, some of my favorite albums are Kate Bush “The Hounds of Love”, and Cocteau Twins “Treasure” & “Heaven and Las Vegas”. I’m really a fan of female vocals, like Kate Bush, Elizabeth Frazier, Laurie Anderson, Toni Halliday, Alison Goldfrapp... and kaRIN really reminded me of those voices…but it was really unique, and I thought…she can really sing! I think there are some people who try to be singers, and some people who are natural singers, and I just thought…she is a natural singer!—and exactly what I needed. My “singing” was never going to cut it no matter what effects I used.
There were some new “Statik” songs that I was working on, and I asked her if she wanted to sing on one of them. That was at some point in the middle of 1992. I bought a reel of 2” tape, and was able to use the studio in the off hours, and we tracked a version of “Dreams & Illusions”, that would appear four years later on Beneath the Skin. I suppose that was the beginning of Collide, but we didn’t even come up with the name then, or even really think of ourselves as a band until sometime a couple of years later.
Day 9 of Statik throwback. Today brings us another 2 years forward to the end of 1994. (Another long read, but there was a lot going on)
Near the end of 1992, I had been working at Larrabee with Prince for more than a year. During that time he had been in the studio with me enough, to be comfortable around me, and to really know what I was doing. Out of the blue one day, he asked me if I wanted to go to Paisley Park to work for him. I think the next day I got a call from someone official from his offices about it. I think most people would have said yes right away, but I didn’t. My thoughts were that I was working at a great studio in L.A., and meeting more and more people in the industry…and if I were to go to Minneapolis, that would be it….no more contacts. kaRIN and I were just getting started working on music as well, so I didn’t want that to stop. So, I told them no. I don’t think Prince was used to people telling him no, and he probably wasn’t expecting it from me. This was another one of those big decisions, like when I left the first studio I worked at, and I wasn’t really ready to leave. Well, some days go by, and I get another call from Prince’s people, and they made me another offer…and I turned them down again! Looking back now, it was pretty balls-y. Anyway…I’m sure that for the most part, Prince gets what Prince wants, so they called a 3rd time, and it was at that point I couldn’t say no. I was only 25, and I just couldn’t turn it down.
I ended up signing a one year contract to work for “The Purple One” at the beginning of 1993, and agin for another year at the start of 1994. I packed up all of my things, and moved to Minneapolis during the middle of winter in the beginning of 1993. This was before cell phones, so all of the studio people, including me, had pagers. You were on call 24 hours.—whenever Prince wanted to work, or wanted you to work. It might be 2am, or 7am, or a holiday. It didn’t matter. It might be before he got there, while he was there, or when he got done rehearsing with his band. I don’t want to say that my two years there were a blur, but it was a bit of a blur. I wasn’t part of his live crew, I was a studio guy. In the studio, there would usually just be me, and the two engineers that he had at the time, Ray Hahnfeldt, and Dave Friedlander. You would always be working on something, but you never really knew what it was for, what he had planned for it, or when or if it would come out.
A big part of what I would do while I was there is to work on “grooves” for him. I would bring in my ever expanding sound library, and I would program sort of “rudimentary songs”, on my own. These were typically drum grooves, with some keyboards or other sounds, but not really full on songs. I’d give him a cassette with like 10 “grooves” on it, and he would pick out the ones he liked…#2, #5, and #7…etc., and I’d track those on to 2” tape, and then he would work on them by himself, and sometimes later with the band, and turn them into songs. In other times though, he’d come in with a song idea that he had worked out beforehand on piano, or just in his head, and and we’d work on that. We’d also work on old songs that he had started years ago. He’d tell us to get some song from the vault (that maybe never got released or finished), and we’d do parts, or do new programming on it.
During these years, the albums that I worked on (that were released) were “Come”, “The Gold Experience”, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” EP, an album for his N.P.G. “2Gether”, a compilation for his label of various artists, “1-800-New Funk”, as well as songs that would later appear on “Crystal Ball” and “The Hits/The B-Sides”. I know there were tons of other songs that I worked on that were still in the vault when I left, so who knows when or if more will come out some day.
One of my favorite memories was one day when he asked me to try a remix on “Erotic City”. (It wasn’t a full on “remix” like I would do now, but I added some new tracks and gave him a cassette after I was done.) Those familiar with the song know that it came out as a B Side to “Let’s Go Crazy”. I LOVED that song. I was sitting in the studio that night, by myself, with the original 2” tape, listening to the raw tracks. The remix was never released, but it was surreal that I was there, and that I got to work on it.
(A side note for the time, for else was happening in the world musically then)…we were working at The Record Plant in L.A., and Nine Inch Nails happened to be mixing The Downward Spiral there at the same time. We didn’t cross paths with the NIN crew too many times, but one night I did get to hear “Eraser” coming straight out of the console, and check out all of the gear that they were using. I was a fan of Pretty Hate Machine, so, it was just another cool experience from that time…side note over.
What was happening with Collide during this time? (or Collide before there was officially Collide). As my time in Minneapolis continued, I was able to begin to build up my own studio. I bought a 32 channel Mackie mixer, some outboard gear, and a couple of new state-of-the-art (for the average musician) 8 channel digital ADAT recording decks. A breakthrough at the time! My time in the Paisley Park Studio was erratic, so there would be a lot of working hours, and then a fair bit of downtime, (while Prince was out of town, or touring, or working with his band), so I was able to keep working on new music of my own. Prince and the studio crew (myself included) would often go between working in Minneapolis and L.A., so I would still get a chance to see kaRIN, every few months or so. To keep the music moving forward, I bought her, her own ADAT, and small Roland Mixer. I’d work on music, give her a stereo track, and she would work out vocals on her own time. (which really isn’t much different that we work now!) Being in two different cities wasn’t the fastest way of working, but we weren’t in any hurry. By the end of 1994 though, we had decent mixes of 8 of our songs which would later appear on Beneath the Skin, and were getting a cassette version of “The Crimson Trial” copied to send out. As our music progressed, we both thought that Statik wasn’t the right fit for our new group. We had a huge list of names going for a couple of months, but we ultimately decided on Collide, to represent how different we came together musically, and I kept the name Statik as my professional name.
There is another story from those years that I have to share: Prince wanted a change of pace from Minneapolis and L.A, and booked a studio in Paris for us to work at. I had never been to Paris, so I was really looking forward to seeing the city. kaRIN had never been there either, so we planned on making it a trip, and I was able to fly her out for the same dates we were set to work. As it turned out, Prince didn’t show up for almost a week after we both got there, so we had a fair bit of time to see the sites. Once he did arrive, it was work as usual. One day Lenny Kravitz came in to work on a new song with Prince. Lenny played guitar, and Prince played drums! Cool. lol…Another day we were working on some song which was more of a dance thing, and Prince was really liking it. He turns to me and asks if I want to go to a club that night, where he was going to give the song to the DJ to play…kind of a test run. This is way out of left field, because I’m really just a guy in the studio, and we weren’t normally just “hanging out” like he might with Lenny Kravitz, but of course I said yes. He said he’d send a car for me later on at my hotel. kaRIN was still there, so we both went. I’m sure this was some super exclusive, expensive club. My thinking is—we get there, stand around, and at some point, I’ll hear the song, and leave, but it turned out to be so much better. His driver was a huge guy, (built like a football linebacker)…he leads us into the packed club, and then clears a path for us through the crowd to where Prince and Mayte were already seated behind a little roped off section). Prince and Mayte at one little table, and kaRIN and myself at another little table, and that was it! We chit chatted a bit, and then the DJ played the song. He asked what I thought about how it sounded. It sounded great.…yes, life was good that day.
Day 10 of Statik throwback takes us to 1995
I moved back to Los Angeles from Minneapolis at the very end of 1994, and just as I thought back in 1993, I didn’t have a lot of contacts for work. I thought that someone might be interested in hiring me for programming, having spent the better part of the last 3 years working for Prince, but that just wasn’t the case. I suppose I was a bit of a hard sell. I wasn’t really a “mixer”, or “tracking engineer”, or “producer”, “remixer” or even a “session keyboard player”. I did what I did, which was mostly drum programming, and other keyboard programming…anything that would make a song better. Maybe I was too specialized?
I got a manager early in the year, but nothing really came of it. At some point, I think I put together a demo reel to work on an album with George Michael, but that didn’t happen. I did get a call from Zoo (label) to do a remix for The Replicants, which was Paul D’Amours band. Paul had been the bassist in Tool, and this was a new project for him since he left the group. Also, luckily, I did get a call from Sylvia (Massy) to work on a Machines of Loving Grace album (Gilt) that she was producing. We went out to Arizona and worked on that for a few weeks, but other than that, it was the least amount of work that I had done for other people in the last 5 years.
On the bright side, we (Collide) had 8 songs that were mostly finished. We made cassette demos and sent them out cold. We didn’t have any contacts of anyone to send them to, and mostly, we just never heard anything back. I think we actually got three physical rejection letters from Virgin, Giant, and Projekt. We really didn’t know what we were doing. We’d get copies of music magazines, and just go through them, and try to pick out labels that we thought might be interested.
We finally lucked out when we sent our tape to Re-Constriction. Re-Constriction was a small label (and division of Cargo Records), which was based in San Diego and run by a guy named Chase. It was sort of a mini Wax Trax type label that specialized in “Cyberpunk”. Chase was very enthusiastic about our music, and he really got us. He had a really great, odd, and sometimes dark sense of humor (that we appreciated), and was great about promotion to press and radio. It was a big step for us, (obviously). It was a record deal!! (and although not huge, money-wise), we were super excited that we’d be able to actually release our first album the following year.
Looking back, it was probably just as well that I didn’t have very much work then, as the rest of the year was spent finishing off final vocals on all of the songs, and recording some additional guitar, and finalizing all of the programming and mixing. We also added two more songs to the demos we had going: “Pandora’s Box”, and “95 & 7”.
Day 11 of Statik throwback takes us to 1996.
1996 turned out to be quite a bit busier for me than 1995 was for Collide and for my studio work Our first album, Beneath the Skin was released! Before it came out, Chase was able to get the album licensed in Europe to a new division of Offbeat Records, called Nightshade. Nightshade was supposed to specialize in groups with female vocals?, or something like that if memory serves. Offbeat was headed by Stefan Herwig. Between Stefan and Chase, it was decided that we should have a couple of “bonus remix” tracks on the album. Chase got Wade Alin, of the band Christ Analogue, who was also signed to Re-Constriction to do a remix — (he did a spectacular industrial/noise mix of the song “Deep”, and would continue to contribute to our remix albums over the years). Stefan asked us for a list of people who we would want. One of the people was cEvin Key, and Stefan was able to make it happen . cEvin was still living in Vancouver, B.C, at the time, and we never got a chance to meet or talk with him then, but being a huge admirer of Skinny Puppy, we were stoked, and super excited to have his remix on the album.
Stefan also had the idea to release an EP as well, for the song “Beneath the Skin”, and it was aptly titled just “Skin”. He was able to get some artists that were more well known in Germany to do remixes, including Bigod 20, Das Ich, and Philip Boa, as well as Regenerator, (who were friends of ours).
Before releasing the album, we had a lot to do (and learn), about putting together album artwork, and doing photo shoots. kaRIN was actually friends with a photographer named Jack Pedota, and we did our first official photo shoot with him. Jack was one of the most talented photographers that, to this day, we got a chance to work with. He definitely had a look and feel all of his own, (which few photographers have). Some of his best known work was with the cast of the Tim Burton Batman movie. It was a great way to start doing official “photo shoots” for sure.
After the album was released, Chase would frequently send us copies of radio playlists that we were on, and all of these small magazines, and fanzines that had articles about us! We were doing interviews! We weren’t a live band, so we weren’t doing any shows or tours, and really the whole “live aspect” never really crossed our minds. At some point in the year, we did do a video for “Beneath the Skin”, which was filmed at a local art gallery. It never got finished…or we never remember it being finished. Both of us remember seeing some footage of what was shot, and thought it was cheesy, so it was just as well that it never saw the light of day.
Work-wise, I did some remixes for some of the bands that were on Re-Con…Waiting for God, (where kaRIN added some additional vocals) and Diatribe, as well as Christ Analogue (returning the remix favor), for a track called “Cold Magnetic Sun”. I really loved how that particular remix turned out, and it’s still one of my favorites to this day.
That year, I was fortunate enough to Sylvia Massy call me again for a couple of other projects she was producing. I did programming on a Love and Rockets song “Sweet Lover Hangover” that was on their album Sweet F.A. Who wasn’t a Love and Rockets fan??? It was just one song, but I was happy to be have been able to work on it. We also did a track with The Red Hot Chili Peppers, for their cover of “Love Rollercoaster”, that was going to go on the Beavis and Butthead Do America Soundtrack. What was there to say about that?? Totally fun.
I have two other stories from the year that I have to write about. When I was working at Larrabee, Dave Way was mixing a lot of the time in the studio next to ours, so I was lucky enough to have met him from my time at the studio. Dave is a super talented mixer and producer, who has worked with Fiona Apple, Pink, Sheryl Crow, Macy Gray, Ringo Star, Shakira, Eric Clapton, and a ton of other people..too many to name. Anyway, Dave called me to do programming on an album he was working on for this new girl group. We were working at Larrabee north. I did my programming on a couple of songs, and afterward we were talking, and he said, this group is going to be big..they have a huge budget for just hair and makeup, etc,..just you wait and see…and he played me another song that he was working on. kaRIN had just stopped by the studio as we were finishing up, so she got to hear it too. It was “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls. I think kaRIN and I both sort of laughed at the song…”tell you what you want…zig-a-zig ah??”” lol… It wasn’t until later in the year, when we heard the song on MTV, and were like…hey! It’s that group!! I guess when Dave said they were going to be a big deal, we should have taken him seriously.
That same year (somehow?) I got contacted about the possibility of doing some work for Trevor Horn. He was going to be producing some songs for Tina Turner. (Looking back now, it was a big year for her, and her label was really pushing her with some big names that she was working with. She had the theme song for the 007 movie “Golden Eye”, that year, which was produced by Bono, and The Edge, and The Pet Shop Boys were also involved in the production. Anyway, for those that don’t know, Trevor Horn was like a god of a producer. He was of part of The Art of Noise, but was also part of the band Yes, (as a band member and producer), and of course The Buggles (which started MTV), and he had produced some of the slickest sounding albums in the 80’s, like ABC “Lexicon of Love”, Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Welcome to the Pleasuredome”, Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, Grace Jones, Propaganda “A Secret Wish” (I played that album to death!!), Pet Shop Boys, Seal “Crazy”…I mean, he was definitely on my dream list of producers to work for!! I had a meeting at his house in L.A., and I guess I said something right, because I got the gig. He was going to be working on the songs in London, where he had another house, so I would be flying there to do the work. I don’t remember exactly how many songs I worked on…it might have been 3 or 4? I don’t think I was there for more than a few days, but I remember unfortunately, just not being able to really “get into the songs”. To do my best work, I have a good connection to the songs, and to feel them, and somehow see where it can go, and how the song could be better, but for some reason, it just wasn’t happening. I really wanted to make an impression, but I kind of new at the time that what I was doing probably wasn’t going to be as good as I wanted it to be. I don’t think any of my work appeared on the released versions, except for one song, which came out on a B-side to a single. Trevor couldn’t have been nicer though, and after working in the studio, in the lower half of his house one day, we went up to eat dinner with his family. After dinner, he took his dog for a walk, asked me if I wanted to go along. He was super down to earth and friendly. I think we talked about my background a bit, but then he talked about his time in The Buggles, his early bass playing, and how he was working on The Art of Noise, and how that came out of bits and samples that he was using when he was working on the Yes 90125 album. Seriously, my mind was exploding…and I wish I could have recorded it. Unfortunately, I was never able to work with him again, but it was one of my favorite work experiences.
Day 12 of Statik throwback takes us to 1997-1998
During this time in Collide we were spending a lot of time doing songs for compilations and finalizing remixes that would appear on our remix album, Distort, which was released in early 1998.
In 1997, before Distort came out, we were busy recording cover songs, and doing all that we could to get our name out. We did a cover or “Whip It” for the Newer Wave compilation, which came out on the 21st Century Label. We also recorded a cover of “Felix the Cat”, that Chase was putting out for an album called TV Terror, and a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover of “Obsession” for a Through the Looking Glass album that Cleopatra Records was putting out.
We also did a cover of “Son of a Preacherman” for another compilation that Chase put out at the end of 1998. It was for a release he was doing called CyberPunk Fiction, which was going to feature songs from the movie “Pulp Fiction”. Chase really wanted us to do that particular song, but I couldn’t get into the original version musically. I had some other new song idea that I was working on, and basically we kept that, and kaRIN added the original song lyrics to it. The first version of the song came out on a CD Sampler that Chase made to send out to radio, called “Got Moose”. Again…he was great about press, and radio, and just trying to get the word out there about all of the artists that were on the label. He always had something going on release-wise. He must have been pretty excited about the song, because he convinced us to do a video for it. This would be our first “real” video. Somehow we got hooked up with director Kevin McVey. Kevin and I butted heads a few times throughout the years, but he always dreamed big for our projects, and I have to totally applaud him for that. (Kevin would later go on to direct our other videos for “Euphoria”, “Mind Games”, and our concert DVD “Like the Hunted”). This video was a pretty big risk for us money-wise though, and it wasn’t like we had a video budget from the label. There would be 2 full days of shooting, and the whole thing was going to be done on film, (not digital). There were lighting people, directors of photography, extras…the whole shebang!
Kevin was super professional about the video. He had written out a couple of “treatments” for it before the final one, and had a whole binder made up with directions for the cast and crew, and everything anyone who was part of the crew would need to know about doing the video. The first day of the shoot was going to be at a local soundstage. Kevin had this industrial type jail cell built for us, where there was water on the floor. We knew nothing about making a video. Kevin seemed like a pro though. He had these tricks of filming while kaRIN was lip syncing to the song at a slow speed, which would ultimately look frantic and fast in the final cut. I was super excited by the fist day of filming…everything looked great—with all of the water and mood that he had created. I was also happy that none of the overhead lights fell into the water, and we weren’t electrocuted.
Video fun fact…Ronnie Wilkins was one of the original WRITERS of the song, and happened to be a neighbor of one of our friends. He said that the song had been covered about 1,000 times, but ours was one of his favorites. He agreed to be in the video, and appears as one of the cowboys.
I remember seeing the video treatment for the second day, and I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world. It had cowboys, cheerleaders, people dressed up like fruit, and stuffed animals. I was so set against it that I didn’t even go, although kaRIN did. Kevin was pretty adamant about his vision, but I wasn’t having any of it. kaRIN convinced me that whatever happened with the second day of filming, we’d have the first day to fall back on and work with. The second day was filmed at a little chapel that was off of the 405 and Wilshire here in L.A. Once the video was finished though, we loved it. I think I even love it more today than I did at the time. If you haven’t watched it in a while, go watch it again. The cowboys and the fruit and animals all fighting are just the best. The video ended up getting nominated for the best video in the Los Angles Music Awards in 1999. https://youtu.be/e932dv-9DaE
When Distort came out, we included all of the cover songs that we had done for the different compilations, as well as remixes from groups that Chase had hooked up. We didn’t really know most of the people that he had picked to do the remixes, but it was our first attempt at doing that kind of an album, and it was another learning experience.
Work-wise, it was another busy year. I got asked to do a remix for Front Line Assembly for their remix album Rewind, for their song “Predator”. Like we did for the Waiting for God remix, kaRIN contributed vocals. I heard the band liked the remix quite a bit, and I was supposed to work with them again at some point in the future, but for some reason, that didn’t happen. Especially with kaRIN adding vocals, the remix turned out more like a Collide song than a Front Line song. We were glad later (in 2004) when we got permission to put it on our Vortex album.
Sylvia Massy and I continued to work together. We worked on a band from Canada called Econoline Crush, on their album The Devil You Know. Sylvia was producing and mixing, and I did a lot of programming on the album, and thought it turned out great. The band was super nice, and Trevor, the lead singer had a great voice. It was one of the first non-Collide albums whereI felt like I could really hear more of my sound coming through. The album went platinum in Canada.
Another cool session that i got asked to do was a bit of programming for, was System of a Down. Rick Rubin was producing it from the studio at his house. It was only for one day, and it was the only time I got to work with Rick. I think I got credited with “noises”. At the time, I had never heard of System of a Down, (it was their first album). It’s always weird doing studio work— 99% of the time, I never got a copy of the album or songs that I worked on, and I never knew how many (or few) of my parts were used, or if the album even came out at all. I look back at a lot of the bands and sessions I worked on and have no idea what happened with them. I guess it’s just part of what being a studio musician, or programmer, or what ever I was at the time.
In the beginning of 1997, I had another great turn of luck. Keith Cohen, (who I was working for at Larrabee) (see day 7 of this throwback series), had long since replaced me with a new assistant. As (my) luck would have it, his new assistant was out of town, and Keith asked me if I could fill in. Keith was going to be mixing for Michael Jackson. It was for a song called “Morphine”, that would appear on Michael’s remix album “Blood on the Dance Floor”. I did my normal programming thing. Of course, I’m coming from this sort of ”industrial/electronic background”, and I’m given free-range to pretty much do whatever I want, so I added some harder drums and metal sounds, etc.. At the end of the session, Michael comes in to listen to the song and he loves it, especially the parts that I added.
On a bit of a side note…a lot of people have asked me what he was like as a person. I honestly don’t know what was going on with anything in his personal life, but in the studio, he was super nice, and very personable. After the session that day, he thanked all of the people in the studio, and shook everyone’s hands…more like you would want someone in his position to be, unlike Prince, who could be very..umm…whatever the opposite of that is.
So…evidently Michael liked the song and the programming enough, that a while later, someone called me from his offices. He wanted to have a meeting with me. When he was in town, he would stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that’s where the meeting was going to be. I got there, and had to wait a bit…he had bodyguards outside, but I finally got sent in without much of a fuss. He couldn’t have been nicer, and told me how he wanted ME to help him work on songs and do more programming, and maybe even write songs with him!! He said he wanted to hear sounds that no one had heard before! He was all about wanting to be innovative, and wanted to make his music really new and cutting edge. In a lot of the work that I did, I was always trying to push the songs towards a more “alternative” edge when I could, so of course, I was all for it. Anyway, it wasn’t a long meeting, but still pretty mind blowing. At the time, I didn’t really think of myself as much of a “songwriter”, (which is weird, considering I was in a band), let alone a songwriter writing songs for Michael Jackson! I didn’t have any manager to figure out how the whole thing was going to work. I never got points or back end on any of the albums that i worked on, (except for obviously Collide), but it was still a great opportunity. With Michael, I wasn’t hired by his record company or some exec., so it was always a little up in the air of what I was going to be working on, and, (kind of like Prince), I never never knew when, or if the songs I was working on would eventually even come out.
The first few years I worked with him, I even got to borrow a few pieces of studio gear (that he must have had as extras?) to use in my own studio. I don’t even remember what brand it was, but it was one of his vintage compressors that I recorded guitars through on “Son of a PreacherMan”, and was able to get the super crunchy guitar sound that happens at the end of the song. I was lucky enough to continue working with him on and off for 8 years, up until 2004.
Day 13 of this Statik throwback series takes us to 1999-2000. (I think this will be the last one of these throwbacks, at least for a little while)
For most of this time, we were working on writing material for Chasing the Ghost. I had started listening a bit less to industrial music, and that came out in our songs. I was listening a lot to Dead Can Dance, (and we saw them at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Hollywood). Spiritchaser had come out not too long before, and I love their Toward the Within album. I think I was also listening to a lot of Sneaker Pimps Becoming X, and bands like that, so there was that whole aspect coming in as well.
After Distort was released, and as we were looking forward, we definitely thought more and more about releasing our next album on our own. Cargo had stopped paying us royalties, or giving us statements, and we were buying copies of our own albums (from them) to sell on our own webisite. We were actually paying them more for our own cds than they were paying us. We also never got paid for turning in Distort. We didn’t blame Chase, but we were unhappy. Around that same time, we became pretty good friends with the band Faith and the Muse, and they were releasing their music on their own label. William and Monica were both very helpful and forthcoming in a lot of the knowledge and information that would come into play when we ultimately released Chasing the Ghost on our own label, Noiseplus Music on Halloween in 2000.
Gear-wise, a lot of the songs started while I was using a mac, with Studio Vision, and and Audiomedia III card. Midway through working on the album, I was able to upgrade my computer, and got my first pro tools system, complete with some 888 24’s. The difference in being able to record and move everything around in the computer (as opposed to the ADATS we were used to) really changed the possibilities of what we could do, and I remember pushing that computer to everything that it could do. For anyone that remembers…it was still a pain in the butt, (compared with today)—you’d have to deal with SCSI cards, and hard drive SCSI ID numbers, and have to have 4 hard drives connected to the computer with audio spread between all of them in order for the computer to get the information off fast enough. I had also upgraded to an Akai S-6000 sampler, and a purchased a Studio Electronics SE-1, (which was sort of like a rack mount mini moog). I had some other new outboard gear as well, but the Akai and pro tools were really my “main instruments”.
I remember being out at the El Rey theater 1999 for some event, standing on the balcony, and hearing the original version of “White Rabbit”. I don’t know why it particularly struck me right then that we should do a cover of it, but it did, and it was a definite “lightning moment”. As it turned out, it was probably responsible for helping us find a whole new wave of listeners, when in 2007, it got used in movie Resident Evil Extinction.
At the end of 1999, we started getting ready for the album release, by doing a new photo shoot. kaRIN had a friend Dan Santoni, who was a photographer that she had met at one of the local clubs, and we ended up doing promo shots and the pictures with him that would ultimately be used in the album artwork. We thought the shoot turned out particularly good…Dan was using actual film at the time (instead of digital), and was really good at doing some “experimental” lighting. (We also worked with Dan again on some of our photo shoots for Two Headed Monster).
To help with the clothing for the photo shoot, (I needed all of the help I could get), kaRIN asked her best friend Terri King for some clothing. Terri, at the time, had her own clothing store on Melrose, and had worked with a whos who list of rock royalty…everyone from Aerosmith to Cyndi Lauper, to Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie. Terri was getting ready for a fashion show, and had a particularly cool dress that kaRIN borrowed for the shoot. It was made out of 100’s of razor blades, each one hand dulled. Terri also provided our clothing for our Son of a Preacherman video, as well as the other videos that we would later do. kaRIN was able to borrow the dress for our short tour that we did in 2008, and wore it for a show we did in San Francisco. It was one of those seriously dangerous dresses that you had to be careful not to cut yourself or someone else.
For the musicians that appeared on the album, we got Monica Richards (of Faith and the Muse) to a bit of guest vocals on one song, and William Faith to do guitar on “Dreamsleep” and “White Rabbit”. Tim Pierce also contributed guitar, and was a studio musician that i had met a few times during my session work, and had played on songs for a ton of bands. He did additional guitars on “Transfer”, “Razor Sharp”, and “Dreamsleep”. (I noticed recently that he was voted one of the top 10 studio guitar players in the world, so we were lucky to get him!) Also appearing on the album was Chris Candelaria, (who essentially wrote “Deep” with kaRIN from Beneath the Skin), and Fritz Heede, who was another great musician we knew, who specialized in a lot of different middle eastern instruments and percussion. He was also the only person we knew who played sitar!!
When I got my pro-tools system going, I ended up getting more work than ever, and started doing drum and guitar editing as well as programming. I worked on albums for Eve 6, Fishbone, Trapt, and Damn Yankees?! At one point I got a call to do work on a song from some new singer—Christina Aguilera. No one knew her at the time, and it was just for one song, but it just one of those things…who knew??!! I also did some programming on a Brian Setzer cover of “Pennsylvania 6-5000”. I must have been on some list somewhere, or I had really good word of mouth. I honestly don’t know how I got all of the work, but I was glad to get it. I still remember having to load my 1,000 pound rack in and out of my truck though, and probably did permanent damage to my back in the process. I didn’t have people or any helpers…it was just me.
Sylvia Massy and i also continued to work on quite a few more albums… Virgos, Insolence, Second Coming, Loudermilk, Suction, and Powerman 5000. It was at least 6 albums during those years. I was not lacking in things to do, and still find time to work on new Collide songs!
It was also at that time that we met cEvin Key at an event that was being hosted by Cleopatra Records. Even though he had done a remix for us on Beneath the Skin, we never met or talked at the time. We became friends after he moved to L.A. from Vancouver, and kaRIN ended up doing some guest vocals on on his Plateau album, on the songs “Super Silver Haze”, and “Creature”. We’ve continued our friendship since that time, and today, I consider cEvin one of my best friends. He and I would never actually work on anything musically together until 2004 with The Skinny Puppy Greater Wrong of the Right album.
Meanwhile, I was continuing to do work for Michael Jackson. It was sporadic, and varied, and sometimes I might not hear from him for months at a time. On a few occasions, he actually called me on the phone, and would sort of sing/beatbox an idea he that had, and I would have to replicate it with actual drums, etc. Sometimes, I would go to a studio he had booked, or to his music directors home studio, but I did most of the work at my own home studio. It was much like my work with Prince. I’d contribute to songs that he was already working on, and when I had time, I would send him new grooves, in hopes that he would turn them into a song. As far as doing any songwriting with him, like he brought up in our initial meeting, I don’t think I could wrap my mind around actually trying to write a Michael Jackson song…and I certainly couldn’t come up with what the lyrics or singing should be, but he was fine with me giving him grooves, and that’s what I did.
My one regret at the time, is when he asked me to bring my setup to Neverland Ranch and set up in his dance studio, and I said no. The zoo…the animals, the rides…come on!! I should have gone. The fact that he didn’t have a studio there was pretty unbelievable, but it was true! I was pretty comfortable with my home work environment, and I would have had to bring my mixer, speakers, my computer, samplers, and everything else I used.., basically my whole set up. It was just going to be too much…so I told him that i’d be able to do better work at home.
At some point, a few years later, Sony kind of reigned him in with a budget, and hired a producer (other than Michael) to get his never ending album finished. Some songs I worked on made it out, and a lot did not. Some that did, (eventually), were “(I Like) The Way You Love Me, “Monster”, “Cry”, “People of the World”, “In the Back”, and “Blue Gangsta”. Sometimes, my work wasn’t always groundbreaking, sound-wise, but it was about trying to make him happy, and trying to do what the song called for. Besides a bunch of untitled songs, I also worked on a song that he was working on for the band Hanson, and something he was making for Siegfried & Roy. Again…I would never know if any of the songs we were working on were going to make it to the light of day, or if my parts were going to get used. I’d get a song titled “Siegfried & Roy”—for anyone else, it might have seemed weird, but it was Michael Jackson! What did you expect??!!
The best story of that time wast when I was working on some new grooves to give to him, and kaRIN happen to hear what I was working on, and was like—hold on….I like those 2, we should keep those..don’t give them to him. Those 2 grooves eventually turned into “Razor Sharp”, and “Wings of Steel”. How happy I am that she told me to keep them.