Pete Weiss interviews Pete Weiss interviews Pete Weiss: Bill Evans, Edgar Winter, and a 19/y/o Max Weinberg

Back in 2000, while on a session break, I got a call at the studio. It was a friendly voice with a subtle New York accent. 

"Zippah Studio..."

"Hello, I'm trying to reach Pete Weiss."

"That's me," I said.

"That's me too. I just searched for myself on the Internet and ran across your website. I was a recording engineer a while ago and I see that you are too. I figured I'd give you a call and see how business was going!"

The elder Pete had retired from recording engineering right around the time I took my first steps into that world. For many years, our Discogs.com production/engineering credits were accidentally merged (along with a THIRD Pete Weiss, the drummer from Thelonious Monster), making it look like there was a guy named Pete Weiss who had a shockingly long, steady, and weirdly eclectic career. The credits have since (mostly) been fixed, but at the time, anyone stumbling onto our listing would see a guy who apparently worked with everyone from Barbra Streisand to Chris Brokaw to Bill Evans to Bell X1 to Looking Glass ("Brandy") to Willard Grant Conspiracy to Red Hot Chili Peppers , etc. 

We had a nice chat. He had been very active as house engineer for Columbia Records , among others, in the 1960s and '70s before going freelance for a while in the early '80s and eventually changing his career path to tech and science writing/editing later in that decade. Pete and I found it interesting that, while we did a lot of the same things in the studio — mic placement, gear maintenance, session management, etc. — we had each taken different paths in our work. In the 60s and 70s, he had been employed by labels and studios in New York, whereas I took a more independent path, operating a fairly small but high quality indie studio in Boston, and eventually opening a larger, retreat-type studio in rural Vermont. 

He struck me as a very balanced, even-keeled guy — I was happy to hear from him. After our initial phone chat, we managed to stay in casual touch, dropping a "how's it going?" email to each other now and then. 

Finally, in late 2014, I got to meet "the elder" Pete Weiss in person. I was going to be in New York for a mastering session, so I arranged to go a day early and meet with Pete in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at Cowboy Technical Services , a studio run by Eric "Roscoe" Ambel  and Tim Hatfield . Eric and Tim were on hand for the interview, and I'm glad of it — not only were they lovely hosts, they also chimed in with some great insight, questions, and stories of their own. We had a nice few hours, chatting about the ever-changing New York studio scene of the 60s, the birth of the EV RE-20 microphone, marijuana, Max Weinberg's early years, how the recording industry itself has changed over the past 50 years, and of course rock's Zelig, Al Kooper.

(For this article, I'll refer to the elder (born in 1945) Pete Weiss as "PW1" and will call myself (born in 1966) "PW2." We are not related, that we know of.)

Younger Pete Weiss interviews elder Pete Weiss:

PW2: So, you were active for 18 years, you said...

PW1: Approximately, yeah. From about '65 to '83.

PW2: Eric was saying that his band did an album at Columbia in '82, right? 

EA: Well, when it was A&R, on Seventh Avenue. 

PW1: Oh right yeah, that was Studio A1.

EA: Former Columbia room.

PW1: Yup.

EA: In '83. That was back when they had those, like, you know before answering machines and all of that stuff? They had this thing, Radio Registry. And these phones were like hotline phones. And the session guys would call in, you know, this is Eric, what've you got? And they would send him to the next session. 

PW2: Oh, really?

EA: Yeah!

PW1: Yeah, almost every serious studio in Manhattan had a direct line to Radio Registry, 'cause that's where all the musicians got their gigs. There was no email, no cell phones, nothing back then. We're talkin', you know, pretty primitive stuff. And there was a restaurant on West 55th Street, it was originally called Jim and Andy's. One of two partners died, and then it became The Possible Twenty. Which is a phrase that the people that book musicians for jingle dates used. It's an hour with a possible twenty overtime. So the place was taken over by musicians who used to hang out there when it was Jim and Andy's. And every couple tables there was a direct line to Radio Registry. In the actual restaurant and bar.

EA: Yeah, these were like — literally, they looked like a hotline phone...

PW1: Yeah, just a handset, no dial...

PW2: Just a direct line. I had never heard about that, that's really cool. So, you could be on call, if you wanted to be?

PW1: Oh, everybody was on call. These studio guys back then, they were gunslingers. You know, there were guys who would get hired based on their reputation. Very often, especially for R&B dates, if you saw one guy from the rhythm section walk in, you already knew who the other players were gonna be. They moved in these groups.

PW2: Yeah... Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a blanket statement — but it sure seems that the musicianship in general was better a certain time ago. For a lot of my sessions, I find I'm doing a lot of damage control. [laughter from PW1] Turd polishing, or whatever. Fixing.

PW1: Turning up the talent? There's no fader marked talent, right?

EA: Yeah, and well, nowadays, I mean, everybody's got an MBox, like they know that they could jump up there and fix that bit, or something. Like, the bass player that makes one mistake, he's not even thinking about punching it in. Because right under that take is a better note. But — you know what really blows my mind? When I was a young guy, anybody that said they were from Berklee, I just went the other way, because they were all like, so like, Fusak [fusion Musak? -ed.], and they weren't playing the song. Their playing... it was like weightlifting. And that whole Berklee thing, like in the last ten years, I mean, I've seen some really great people. And I mean, creative, and not just playing, super playing, like, they're really song players.

PW2: Well, the new president of Berklee is apparently more like an anthropologist than like a... jazz... chops... guy. You know? I have a few friends that work there, and my understanding is that the guy has really pushed a combination of liberal arts with more of a songwriting kind of bigger picture sort of thing. And a lot of world music too, from what I understand. So maybe that's what you're hearing. That influence.

PW1: My former colleague, Don Puluse, who used to head up the production department up there, they had a studio, and Al Kooper  taught there for a while — you know who Al Kooper is? 

PW2: I actually interviewed him for Tape Op . [PW1 laughing] And he lives in Somerville, Mass.; he's a neighbor of mine. He's — well, you know, he's funny.

PW1: He's a laugh riot.

PW2: Yeah!

PW1: He dated my wife ...

PW2: He didn't tell me that.

PW1: Before she and I met! [laughing] And, it was right after the Royal Teens and right before the Blues Project. They dated for a little while, when he was in college in Connecticut, and he wanted to pin her, you know, fraternity pin, and she turned him down.

PW2: So they were young.

PW1: Oh yeah. 19, maybe? Cuz she and I met when we were 20. And were married at 21.

PW2: The first thing Al asked me when I walked in the door and we settled down for the interview — he was like, "You related to Pete Weiss, the engineer?" And I was like, "I know who he is, and I've been in touch with him, but I don't think we're related." 

PW1: You should've said, "I'm Pete Weiss the engineer!"

PW2: I did try to clarify that! He had great things to say about you. He got all serious for a second, and he said "He's one of the best, one of the greats."

PW1: Ah, that's really sweet. Yeah he's a good guy. We worked together on a project — he did a live gig down at the Cellar Door in Georgetown. This goes back, I wanna say 1970, maybe '71. Yeah '71.

PW2: So he was solo by then?

PW1: Oh yeah, he was solo. You know, he's a nice guy one on one, and you know, he and I go back quite a ways. But, to hear some other people tell it, he's kinda tough to get along with. 

PW2: After I interviewed him at his house in Somerville, he invited me to hang out for a bit. But I was running late, I had a another appointment and kind of had to go. But I was also like "I'm... I'm talking with Al Kooper! I don't want to leave..." and HE didn't want me to leave. He was like, "Let me show you my studio! I do demos and have my archives down there, let me play you a few outtakes!" So we sit down, he's playing me outtakes that only he has copies of — Dylan stuff. Very cool. He had every take of "Like A Rolling Stone." I hadn't realized that that was ALL live in the studio. I think take four was the keeper. He played me every single one, and they all sucked except for that one. [PW1 laughs] Later, he showed me a 2-inch master tape of a pretty famous session he had been involved in. It was just sitting there on a shelf in his damp New England basement, next to his washer and dryer. He said he "borrowed" it when he was having a feud with the label.

PW1: [Laughing] That sounds like Al Kooper.

PW2: I'm picturing the label... "Where is that multitrack? We need that for Guitar Hero or whatever." Anyway... He might have been messing with me, because he does that.

PW1: Well, I... I don't know. I'll tell you a quick Kooper story. Kooper wasn't there at the time. I was working for Regent Sound Studios, which is an independent studio on 56th Street in Manhattan. And upstairs was the office of Aaron Schroeder Music, a music publisher. And Schroder was publishing some of the originals that Blues Project did. And they were having trouble with this playback system. And the owner of Regent said, "Go up there, see what's going on." And I'm crawling around under the desk, and I think it was Steve Katz and someone else were talking to Schroeder. And the one sentence I remember, I think it was Katz who said, "You know Kooper? See the way his hair is? That's not because he takes drugs. Kooper's hair is like that because Kooper's mind is like that." I don't know if you remember what he looked like back then with the big hair...

[laughing]

PW2: That's good.

PW1: And that's, that's pretty much true, but he's mellowed some with age. The last time I saw him, was last year at BB King's. It was his 69th birthday, this was his 70th, and I couldn't make this one. But you know what, he was the creative engine for a lot of what went on with Dylan, Blues Project, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He can be a little prickly, a little spiky, but — and he kind of reveled in that, in being the creative engine. Um, his musicianship? Everybody's got their own opinion about that. But as far as him contributing creatively to those groups, he founded them. But, Katz told the story about when Blood Sweat & Tears was gonna play what became the Filmore East, and the management of the venue said "What are we gonna put up on the marquee?"  "You know, Blood, Sweat & Tears." When they pulled up, the marquee said "Al Kooper and Blood Sweat & Tears." That's the story, I never saw the marquee, so it's only hearsay.

EA: [Laughing] That always helps with the band dynamic.

PW2: Well, he was gone after the first album, right?

PW1: Well, they did Child Is Father to the Man ... I think that was the first album. Second Blood Sweat album...

EA: Was that the red one? 

PW1: Child Is Father is where they're holding little mini mes, each of them.

EA: I watched him one time, at the Bottom Line, I forget what it was, it was a benefit for somebody, and he was playing and he was rehearsing the band, and it was just awesome, you know, cuz he was just so much into the detail, and there was one, it was one of those songs, and there was this line where, "Dooo — doot n doo — dit n doo" but then he's going, "But, you realize that that note in between there, it's not there. It's an illusion! You don't play that note." And those guys were like... He was great. He was great. He played there a lot. I miss that place. There was a lot of great music there. 

PW1: I'll tell you a quick Bottom Line story. You know who Max Weinberg is? I've known Max since he was 19. He was a drummer for this bar band in New Jersey, that somehow got signed to Epic records. Max was 19. Max wanted nothing more in life than becoming a rock 'n' roll drummer. That's what he wanted to do. His family didn't quite see it that way. His father was an attorney. His father's father was an attorney. His father's father's father was an attorney. Max was going to law school, but no, Max wanted to be a rock 'n' roll drummer. The reason the label signed this band was the reason they signed many others, they wanted the songwriting talent of this lead guy, Tommy Flynn, who really was a good songwriter. That's why they signed the band. Epic released the record, the band broke up. I mean like 30 seconds after the record came out. Boom, the band's gone, Max is heartbroken. He and I hit it off, nice young guy. And so, I let Max hang out at the studio. This is at Columbia Records. Let him hang out at the studio, we became friends, he would come over to the apartment — we lived in Queens at the time — my wife took a motherly liking to him. And Max's big trick when he was at our place, was he could sit and make his palms sweat at will. [Laughing in the background] He would sit there, and you would see the perspiration gather in his palms. At will! You know, "Max, make your palms sweat," boom, he could do it.

PW2: He could just turn it on.

PW1: I think he even went out with one of my sisters once. But anyway. So, this goes on for a while, I got him a couple of auditions, one with the Edgar Winter Group, nothing happened there. He calls me one day, says "Hey, I saw this ad in the Village Voice , for a drummer audition, I'm gonna go check it out." I said, "Okay, good." And he calls me back, and he says, "It's some guy named Springsteen." I said, "Geez, Max, really? I just did an acoustic demo with Bruce Springsteen, up in New City. He sounded kinda like Dylan." It was just him and acoustic guitar, I said, "He sounded a little like Dylan? It's a little late for that, isn't it? But hey, go for it." So he calls me back a week later, he says, "I got it! I got the gig!" I said, "Great, Max, congratulations." Now I don't hear from Max for two months. Okay. He calls me back, he says, "Pete, this is the best band in rock 'n' roll." Said, "Max, come on. Who are you talking to?" He says, "I'm telling you. This is the best band in rock 'n' roll. There's this giant black guy that plays saxophone," I say, "Okay, Max." He says, "You and Elaine have to come down" — that's my wife — "You and Elaine have to come down to the Bottom Line. We're playing there." I said, "Okay, fine." So we went, naturally, we were blown away. Can you imagine, the E Street Band in the Bottom Line? It was just like, "Ahhhh!" You know that Maxell ad with the guy's hair blowing back? It was phenomenal. So, after that whenever they were touring locally, we'd go visit them. I remember going to the Forum in Philadelphia with my sons, and Max let my son the drummer sit on his drum throne. This was after the show, of course. And that was a big thrill for the guys.

PW2: That's pretty great.

EA: You read his book? Have you ever seen his book?

PW1: The Big Beat ? He's got some war stories in there, too.

EA: He talks with all the... You know, like, he's interviewing DJ Fontana, and he's asking him real stuff that no one ever asked him. You know? Or like, Johnny B. from Mitch Ryder. You know, all these guys that he interviewed, it was like he was speaking their language. It was out of print for a long time. What a terrific book.

PW2: How did you get your start, and your training, and what was your first big session? 

PW1: I actually started out in broadcasting. Because when I was younger, my voice was in much better shape. I had a really mellifluous type voice, you know. And someone said, "Hey, you know, you ought to go on the radio."  All right, sure, why not? But in high school, I was a science nerd, so — and also, at the time, we were trying to catch up to the Russians. So, the school district that I was in — Levittown on the island — offered a course in electronics. You had to take a test, like an aptitude test. Bunch of my buddies and I passed, and so we ended up in this, it was two periods a day of electronics. So by the time I graduated high school, I had a pretty good grounding in electronics, like at a technician's level. And I thought I wanted to go into electrical engineering, until I got to Brooklyn Polytechnic, and said, no, this is gonna be a little too heavy for me, you know, cuz it just wasn't fun. It was like high school with ashtrays. So, I left there, I went to Hofstra out on the island there. And Hofstra had a radio station! Oh... Okay. Well. I also spoke much differently back then. I sounded even more like a New Yorker. You know, they wouldn't let me on the air right away because of that. You had to record your voice, listen to it, change. I did eventually. But I also got a first class FCC license, which enabled you to operate the transmitter, etc. They referred to that as a "ticket." And the reason they called it a ticket was, even if you never touched the transmitter, having that license showed people that you were serious — it was almost like a degree, but not quite. And if you wanted to get a job in broadcasting, especially in small stations, they wanted you to do what's called combo, that is, speak, spin the records, and do the transmitter logs. And in order to do the transmitter logs, you had to have an FCC license, so that's why — in order to get a job. So, I did that for a while. Minimum wage, on-air personality, a buck and a quarter an hour. It was great. I was living at home — at my parents' house. But then, this guy that used to be at the Hofstra station called me and said, "You know, they're hiring for vacation relief at ABC radio. And so, if you want, I'll set you up with an interview." So he did, and I got the job. And it was ABC Radio network. But it only went from May to October, that was the vacation relief period. And it was a union gig. So that's how I got my start really engineering, getting my hands on a console, operating tape machines, and so forth. I did some of that at Hofstra as well. The most valuable skill I learned at Hofstra — and believe it or not, this is the one that got me the job at Columbia Records — was 1/4-inch tape. Remember the aluminum Editall blocks? And at Hofstra, we didn't even use grease pencils, we just grabbed — what was the old Ampex stack [asks for a reminder — EA says  "Was it a 350?"] — yeah, the 350, not the really old one, not the 300, the 300 was a big deck — the 350 was vertical in a rack, we just grabbed the side of the housing. Because the distance from the side of the housing to the play head was the same as that vertical to the angled slicer on the Editall block. For voice only, it was close enough. So, I did that for one vacation relief season. I went to NBC Radio Network for the next vacation relief season. And at the end of that, some of the guys at NBC were saying, "Look, what are you gonna do?" I said, "I don't know." They said, "Well, one of the guys who used to work here is working at this studio called Gotham Recording. Why don't you look him up?" And so I did. I remembered his name was Ted Frasco. Looked him up, I interviewed, I got the gig. But — what was the gig? Doing air checks for radio stations on Scully lathes, cutting either masters or dubs. And that's what I did — I recorded radio air checks on to these acetates.

PW2: Was it the big 16 inch ones, or...

PW1: There were some of those, those were transcriptions. But, no — these were just air checks. So sponsors could hear that their commercials went on, all that kind of stuff. And they were just filed away. They weren't terrific quality. And then, they had me do some voice-only recordings. For commercials. And then...

PW2: With your voice?

PW1: No, it was strictly engineering. I did the announcing thing for maybe eight months until I got the gig at ABC. It's funny — when I worked for a media company called CMP, who did events for CIOs, you know, computer nerds in suits, I was the voice of God. "Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your..."  So anyway — when they hired me at Gotham, they said, "Have you done any mixing?" I said, "Well, I did the Big Wilson show, he had a piano. So it was piano and voice. If you wanna call that mixing, yeah, I did some mixing." Everything was either 3- or 4-track then. And so I'd done some things, these voice only things on mono tape. Did some editing. And then this guy, Ed Rice, who was THE honcho at Gotham Recording, he did all the big music dates, he would invite me to come down, look over his shoulder, and check things out. And I began to learn, just by watching at first. Next thing I knew, Eddie Rice quit! He's gone! And there's nobody else around. They did not have a very deep bench, okay? This was it. And so, I got thrown in to the deep end of the pool. I think the first major date I did was some vocal overdubs with a guy named Chad Mitchell. He was the frontman for the Chad Mitchell Trio. I think they had a couple of novelty hits back in the '60s. And this, the title of the album was Chad Mitchell Himself . It was solo. But with, you know, lush orchestrations and stuff, and Walter Raim produced it. Mary Travers of  Peter, Paul and Mary, showed up for some of the sessions. And I ended up doing some of the vocal overdubs and mixing the whole album from a 4-track. Mixing from 4-track was not that big a deal, you know. Cuz it was only four faders.

PW2: Still a big responsibility, though.

PW1: Oh, yeah! Absolutely, but there weren't the kind of timed moves you'd have to make — this is before automation — there weren't the kind of timed moves you'd have to make with an 8- or a 16-track, punching things in or out, so... It went well. I don't know how well the album sold. I still have the vinyl copy of it. And then the next major act I worked with briefly was Leslie Gore. We did some vocal overdubs, I don't think I ended up mixing that, I think the tapes went somewhere else.

PW2: But that's your second gig.

PW1: Yeah. And then, Hugh Masakela was the next group that I worked with. Also some overdubs, instrumental overdubs, again, this is all 4-track. And some mixing. We were about halfway through mixing the album, and then the band just moved to California, took the tapes with them. And shortly thereafter, I got a job offer from a company in California. A recording studio in California, HR Studios. HR for Henry Russell. They wanted someone who had had a lot of jingle experience. And I had had some at Gotham. And so they hired me. I showed up in a three-piece suit. A three-piece suit in L.A.; what, are you kidding? Actually, it was in Hollywood. 

PW2: Oh dear...

PW1: Even so... they hired me. This was before Elaine and I got married. She was back here prepping for the wedding, so I missed all that, and I'm very glad of it. And then, I came back, we got married, went back to Hollywood, lived there for a few months, and said "Eh, this sucks. We're going back to New York. This is... Hollywood." I don't know if you've ever spent any time out there? But we're talking mid '60s Hollywood. Everything you've heard about Hollywood is true. So we packed it up and came back. We didn't know she was pregnant at the time, with the boys. So, I didn't have a job to come back to. And the first studio I worked for in Manhattan was called MiraSound and Bob Goldman. He and his wife owned and ran the studio. And I never got in the studio there, I was just cutting acetates in the back. I was itching to do some studio work, I'd done some nice work before. 

PW2: Yeah, well, you'd had a taste of it.

PW1: Yeah, but they were kinda like, "No." And I was back to just cleaning... I just quit. I got a pregnant wife. No job. I said, "Fuck this, I'm outta here." And the next place I ended up was Vanguard Records. I got hired at Vanguard Records. I literally went with the Yellow Pages door to door. Knocking on doors, looking for work, cuz clearly I needed work. And I stopped at this one guy... Mark... Obor? He had a mastering studio, had Neumann lathe. It was the first time I'd ever seen a Dolby box. Big grey Dolby boxes.

PW2:  So this was what, the late '60s now?

PW1: Let's see, my boys were born in '67. Yeah, so it was like, spring of '67. And he said, "No, I can't use anybody, but why don't you check with Vanguard Records? I understand they're looking for an engineer." So I went there, and I did some work that I really enjoyed. Country Joe and the Fish, I mixed Electric Music for the Mind and Body with 4-track tapes that came in from Berkeley. The band was too messed up on drugs; they were too paranoid to travel, so they just shipped the tape to this guy Sam Charters, who was the producer. I worked with a Chicago blues band, Siegel-Schwall. I think they're still kickin' around somewhere. So I recorded and mixed their stuff. And I recorded and mixed a band... The original name of the band was Lost Sea Dreamers. Get it? LSD. Jerry Jeff Walker was in that band. So, we recorded and mixed that. Then, Junior Wells, who's a fairly famous Chicago blues player. He was a harp player for Muddy Waters, and then formed his own band. And Buddy Guy played on a couple of those tracks. To me — based on my own personal music taste, that was like gold. 

EA: That was all in New York?

PW1: Yeah, that was Vanguard's 23rd Street studios, a former church. Great acoustics, but not for that kind of music, so you really had to bring it down to scale for the small combo. Then from Vanguard, cuz [Samuel] Charters and I had a falling out, I went to this place called Don Elliot Productions. Don Elliot was a jazz mellophone and vibes player. And he had an 8-track studio. I hit the big time. Mostly what he did was jingle dates, I would say 99% of the work there was jingle dates. But the guys that played on these jingle dates were the best jazz players in New York. Mel Lewis, Richard Davis, Eddie Gomez, Barry Galbraith... Joe Beck — not Jeff Beck — Zoot Sims, Lee Konitz; these guys were like... And he kept them eating, he kept them fed, and paid. And well, Mel Lewis and Richard Davis were doing okay because they had that steady gig at the Vanguard. But to work with these guys, like, every day? And these are like Tommy Tugboat commercials for Ideal Toys. The most disgusting stuff you'd ever want to hear. And the worst thing about jingles? They're 20 to 30 seconds long, so you have to hear them over. And over. And over, and I swore when I left that place, I would never do another jingle date in my life. But — one time, I look on the schedule, and the name Gerry Mulligan is written there. Gerry Mulligan.

EA: For a jingle?

PW1: As it turned out, yeah! I thought it was a record thing, no it was a jingle. He got the gig to do a jingle for AT&T Long Lines. So, who does he bring in, the regular raft of jazz players that we'd been working with all the time. And some horn players as well. Warren Covington on trombone, Clark Terry on trumpet, it was like the who's who of players in New York. For a 60 second AT&T commercial.  It was, I think, four notes. Played over and over and over again. So, after I left Don Elliot, I went to Regent Sound. And Regent — at Regent... I'm trying to remember if I worked with anybody... Yeah, the Blues Magoos at Regent.

PW2: Oh yeah, Geoff Daking  on drums... 

EA: We've got some of his compressors over here...

PW1:  Those guys were crazy back then. I mean, the trashing the studio kind of crazy. Not Geoff so much, but some of the other guys...

EA: So, Regent Sound, how long was that around? Was that around in the '80s still? 

TH: Where was Regent?

PW1: It was in a building that ran from 56th to 57th. Regent was on the fifth or sixth floor of that building. It was between 5th and 6th. And that's where I did a lot of R&B dates. JJ Jackson, I did a record with him, a single that never really did much. Did an instrumental album called "The Groovin' Strings and Things." They did Otis Redding tunes, and Sam & Dave tunes. There was rash of those records out. You know the Beach Boys Songbook, with the lush treatment... And the Beatles Songbook, and Four Seasons Songbook, and so they tried doing this for R&B. It was okay. You know. It was all right. 

EA: So at this point, were there many studios — did they have custom consoles that were built by the place? Like the Universal Audio, a lot of people had that one, or a lot of people had the Altec, but were a lot of them custom?

PW1: I don't remember seeing a brand name console until... There was an MCI somewhere, maybe Columbia Records after I had already left, which was in 1980. The one at Regent Sound had Neumann faders, big black Neumann faders. They were nice. There were two guys that ran the place; Bob Lifton and Hal Drebin. They were technically astute — Lifton in particular, so he put the console together. And, I think it was Langevin pre-amps, Gotham faders, and MacIntosh amps driving the speakers. And it was at Regent Sound that I saw my first [Electro-Voice] RE20 microphone. Now, if I were on a desert island, and I could use just one microphone for every application, that would be the one, the RE20.

PW2: How come?

PW1: Dynamic mics are considered not as precise as a condenser mic...

PW2: It's sort of a blunt instrument.

PW1: But the RE20 is different. For a dynamic microphone, it's probably got the best overall frequency response, and it's got a nice directional pattern — nice cardioid pattern, and it's got that sort of built-in pop filter, so you can use it for vocals fairly close. For Al Kooper's date down at the Cellar Door, I used RE20s overhead on the drums. And Kooper loved it. The drummer loved it. Loved the sound coming back.

PW2: I'm a big fan of the RE20, and I've fallen into the habit of just using it on a bass cabinet or a kick drum, floor tom, or like loud vocals for the screamer. But now that I hear this, I'll try it on some other stuff. 

EA: Well it's a large diaphragm. There aren't that many large diaphragm dynamics. And dynamics do get a — there are some of the new ones like the Heil where — it's almost like with an acoustic guitar, where these fancy builders all make Rosewood, but they're skipping over mahogany. Mahogany is great. And same thing, dynamic mics are great too. Just because a condenser costs more, has more electronics in there doesn't mean it's definitely better. The [Shure] SM7 is similar — in it's kind of a little more popular nowadays than the RE20. That large diaphragm dynamic is really something.

TH: I'm gonna start pulling that out again. I used to use it a lot on loud guitars.

PW1: There's no electronics to distort...

EA: It's got a rolloff too, doesn't it?

PW1: Yeah, it's got a bass rolloff switch on it. But yeah, when I say I was first introduced to the RE20, it hadn't been released for production yet. The way I found out about it was Lou Burroughs, the VP of Electro-Voice. He was in town for the Audio Engineering Society convention. And he had a prototype of the RE20. And like I said, he and the owner of — one of the co-owners of Regent, Bob Lifton, were tight. Lifton also did a lot of Broadway sound, so he used a lot of E-V stuff, and that helped the relationship. So he unpacks this thing, we were fooling around with it. And it was remarkable. We tried the directional pattern, and "p" popping. He (Burroughs) said, "Try to make it pop!" And then the other thing that I discovered at Regent Sound, which I carried with me thereafter, was the monitor speakers that Electro-Voice made, the Sentry Twos. And these were big guys. I still have a pair at home. Very simple bass reflex cabinet. What distinguished them in design from other speakers was that they crossed over pretty high, the horn was very small, the horn tweeter was about this big — a small throat, and it was crossed over very high. It was a ducted port, and a bass reflex kind of cabinet, and it weighed a ton! It was just solid, you hit that thing, it sounded like a brick. So there's very little resonance in the cabinet. And I decided at that point, I said, "Well okay, this is gonna be the test for a monitor speaker." Take a good condenser mic, open up a grand piano, put the condenser mic near the piano, have somebody play the piano, put your head where the condenser mic is, listen to the piano. Walk inside, open up the fader for the mic. No EQ, no nothing — if the piano sounds different, it's the speaker. So — the piano, if it sounds the same, then the speaker's okay. Now, a lot of guys were using 604s, and at Columbia Records they have Voice Of the Theaters, the A7s, you know, the size of a refrigerator? They sounded like shit! They were terrible! 604s to me sound like a big telephone, you know, kind of pinched. They had a horn, but they were crossed over low, so everything above 700 went into the horn. It sounded terrible! So these speakers, I convinced Columbia Records to get a couple pair. And I used 'em. Even when I went to other studios, I would schlep these beasts with me. They were the only speakers that passed that test. No EQ, none of that bullshit. Just the speakers. And, you know, MacIntosh. They don't make 'em anymore. E-V is now owned by a conglomerate. From then on, that was my requirement for monitor speakers. And they worked, they helped. You needed a standard of reference. We weren't normally doing audiophile type work, right? Well, I did two records with Bill Evans, the Bill Evans Trio album, and then another one that was the trio and an orchestra that George Russell put together. There you want to capture pretty much what's going on. Acoustics, the character, environment, the natural sound of the instruments... When you're making pop music, you're not doing audiophile... You're creating a sound. 

PW2: Manipulation...

PW1: Absolutely. Totally manipulated and controlled. Even though you're manufacturing a sound, you want to hear what was going on on tape. And guys would experiment with all kinds of things. At Columbia Records, which is where I went shortly after I left Regent, I worked briefly at a place called Juggy Sound. Juggy Murray was a producer. And I think I was there a month. I worked on one mix — Wilbert Harrison, the guy who did "Kansas City" — do you remember that 50's hit "Kansas City"? I mixed a single of his, but that was it. I left there, and got hired by Columbia.

PW2: Columbia was your biggest gig, right?

PW1: Yeah, I was there for 12 years.

PW2: So you were never officially a freelance, were you?

PW1: Briefly. You know the line in The Godfather , he said I tried to get out, but they pulled me back in? I hadn't left. I thought I'd left the industry pretty much entirely, but one of the lead guys in Edgar Winter's White Trash , this guy Jerry LaCroix was doing a record for the Mercury label. And a guy that I trained — kind of a long, convoluted story — but this guy Harvey Hoffman was the brother of one of Edgar's roadies, and his brother introduced me to him, he said, "My brother wants to become an engineer." So I said "All right he can hang out, no problem," this was still at Columbia Records. Harvey went on to do quite a bit of work. So Harvey called me and said,  "Jerry wants you to engineer this record. Would you do it?" Okay, we can work out some sort of deal. And that was it, pretty much. I think I did maybe one or two little dates. And then this guy and I managed a band together for a while.

PW2: Were you with Columbia when you were managing?

PW1: No. This was after.

PW2: I am curious how you... Was there some sort of straw that broke the camel's back? Where you got out of the industry? Cuz it kind of seems like you cut things off around 1983, and went into the science/tech industry, right?

PW1: Well, what happened was — it was actually earlier than that. The straw that broke the camel's back was Sly Stone. Yeah. This was in the late '70s already. And it was — how can I describe this? The music business in the '60s and '70s — we used to answer the phone at Columbia Records — "Drug Central." And ironically, that studio building, 49 East 52nd Street is now a Duane Reade drug store. Perfectly appropriate. So what really did it for me was, I was trying to raise a family, kids were getting older, and my wife is basically a straight-laced Queens girl, nice girl from Queens, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile living almost this sort of double life, living this rock 'n' roll life on the job, and then being a family guy on the weekend. And a friend of mine had gone back to school to become an architect. He had originally been a schoolteacher, and he said to fulfill his dream, he went back to school, to be an architect. And he came out, we talked, and he said, "If you're thinking of backing out of the music business, why don't you think about going back to school?" So I did. I went back to school on Columbia's dime. They had a very good tuition reimbursement program. I still worked for them.

PW2: So you were doing night classes and stuff?

PW1: Day classes, cuz I worked at night. So, day classes at Queens College, which was walking distance from where I lived. I would walk down the four blocks and up to Queens College. I took physics and math courses and all that. And that enabled me to transition out of the business. But the night that broke the camel's back was Sly Stone booked a session at 1 a.m., start at 1 a.m. At the 30th Street studio. Which was one of Columbia's prized rooms — beautiful place. I mean beautiful acoustically, it was ugly as hell. Former Church, again. Booked it at 1 a.m. And I went down there. And I'm waiting 'til 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody shows up. That's it. I'm done. And I went to the boss and I said, "Take me out of the studio. I don't want to do studio work anymore. I'll cut masters, I'll make tape copies, I'll do all the drudge work. I don't love the studio anymore." He said, "Okay."

PW2: I don't blame you.

PW1: It was brutal! I mean, I was putting in 80 — 90 hour weeks.

PW2: And to have that 1 a.m. — 3 a.m. chunk of your valuable time...

PW1: Just sitting! Waiting. And they never showed.

Elder Pete Weiss asks some questions of the younger:

PW2: I was basically self-taught, started as a hobbyist...

PW1: Well you were a musician too...

PW2: Yeah I was a musician. It was right around the time that the cassette four tracks came out — TEAC Portastudios — or even, the cheap one, the Fostex X-15.

PW1: I remember that, yeah! 

PW2: When I was in high school, my friend and I split the cost of one. We had a band — it was like, what were those, $300? Which in high school, that's a lot of money to get together. We split it, and we each did our own recording, he'd have it for a week, and I'd have it for a week, and then we'd work together on stuff. So we learned the limitations of bouncing a million times on four tracks and little tiny cassette. I mean, you can learn pretty quickly.

PW1: Oh, absolutely!

PW2: But I guess my point is, it's funny — by the time I went to college — I was an English major, and did an internship at a recording studio, a small, 8 track recording studio and learned the more official things, like what a balanced signal is, as opposed to a little RCA plug or whatever. What compression is, I had no idea until then. It was really helpful, filled in a lot of the gaps. But, by the time I got out of college — I had sort of a series of non-music jobs, and then started a very small studio with a friend in Boston. From the get-go it was always this kind of entrepreneurial, scrambling to just independently try to record bands. Like "Here's my card if you ever need to record," that kind of thing. And as I got better at it, the studio flourished. But it kind of coincided with the time the industry sort of started to fall apart.

PW1: Well, change...

PW2: Change, yeah. The big label days were just before I became active. Actually, the '90s there was still money and I had a few chances to get involved in some bigger records but they didn't quite pan out... Or, I worked on them, they were released on a major label or whatever, I had my points all set up, lookin' good, and then they sold like a thousand copies. And then the band got dropped. By the time the 2000's rolled around, there's very few real studios in Manhattan, really.

PW1: There is one that I visited. A buddy of mine, we're still trying to — we've known each other for 50 something years — he's out West, he's retired now, and he used to work for Sony, and one of his Sony colleagues, he tells me, manages a studio in Manhattan. I said "Really? Which one?" Well it used to be the Power Station — Tony Bongiovi, and I think he's still involved in that. Bongiovi and I never got along, but that's another story. So, when my buddy from California was visiting here, he arranged for us to take a tour of that. And it's a vintage studio. In other words, Neve console. And a whole array of vintage mics.

PW2: What's it called now? Avatar?

PW1: So there are a couple, but they're like oddities.

PW2:  Did you ever get into production, or did you stick pretty much with the engineering?

PW1: That's an interesting question — well yes I did, with that band that I co-managed.

PW2: Who was that, by the way?

PW1: A singer named Lili Añel. I was teaching a course in recording for the New School. Actually it was originally the Guitar Study Center, which was run by Eddie Simon, Paul Simon's brother, but then was bought by the New School. So, I was teaching this course, and this guy Barry Kornfeld, who had been a producer for Epic records, was involved with the Guitar Study Center, he was the one who got me to do the teaching. He says, "Hey listen, you know, you need a band for the class project, I have somebody that I'd like you to use." I said, "Yeah, sure." So it was this singer, six foot tall, Cuban lady. Singer-songwriter, and she did this song. And I grabbed Barry, he was in the control room at the time. I said, "Barry, this is a fuckin' hit record. I want this girl." And this guy that worked for a magazine called Modern Recording and Music , Hector LaTorre, was the editor. Hector wanted to be a producer. I called him, I said, "Hector. I've got the act. This is the one. Let's do it." So I got involved in that. But in working as an engineer... To call somebody a producer is just that simple. "Eh, he or she's the producer." Right? Mostly...

PW2: Convenient?

PW1: Right. And it did — in my experience, it was anything from calling the take numbers to actually getting involved in the production. Sometimes the producer left the production up to the musicians and the engineer. Not just in my case, but in lots... The producer was a guy that the band knew, didn't really have production chops, but they needed somebody outside the band to sort of run things. And then there were guys who were real producers. Who did the traditional producing job. So for me personally, it kind of went back and forth, depending on who was sitting at the talkback mic. For example, with Edgar Winter's White Trash , I got very involved in the production. Even to the extent of helping to choose the material. I went up to their house upstate, and stayed there for rehearsals, worked on deciding what material was gonna end up on the record. And in other cases, like the Bill Evans records, I did the engineering. Period. Didn't get much more involved than that. I mean, you have to get involved to a certain extent, just so you can work comfortably with people. But not in a production sense at all. 

PW2: Are you a musician at all?

PW1: No. Not really. I mean, I fool around with drums and guitar and keyboard and stuff. And I've even taken some lessons. But, no, I'm not a musician. I came into it from the technical side primarily. I have a love for music, always have since I was a little kid. But I also had an interest in audio, in records. I was fascinated by the idea that this piece of plastic — I used to have little Golden records as a kid — 78s, like that big, yellow plastic. I was fascinated by how that made music, made sound.  Where did that come from? So it was almost like an obsession that carried me through my teenage years, and into working in the business.

PW2: Yeah, I identify with that. I remember being a kid, and just thinking, a groove and a little diamond that wiggles — that's kind of a miracle. How is that possible?

PW1: I can't tell you how many records I ruined by taking a shoebox top, sticking a straight pin through it, and holding it, to see if I could get the sound off the record by doing that. At six, seven years old.

PW2: Reverb and ambience. I'm guessing you only really had access to plate reverb and echo chambers, and tape delay.

PW1: Yes. We had all of those. We had tape delay. We had EMT plates, which I liked, but you could always tell it was a plate and not a room. And Columbia, not at the 49 East facility, but at the 30th Street facility, had actual echo chambers. Hard-walled rooms with speakers and microphones.

PW2: So, that's a treat. I've only used one once, and it was just... By the time I started recording, my only viable options were digital reverb. 

PW1: Yeah, but some of them were really nice, some of them sounded as good as plates. To actually duplicate a room was tough.

PW2:  I actually got a plate, an Eccoplate, a few years ago. They became sort of affordable, if you could find space for them. My place in Vermont -- I just put it next to the garage! It changed everything. You should have heard my first few mixes. Really wet. Just so excited to use something not digital...

PW1: Hey, I bought it, I'm gonna use it!

PW2: This sounds great!

PW1: Oh, the EMTs were great. See that's the one thing about Columbia records studios... Regardless of what anybody else said about them, and like I said, we sort of broke through that stigma, the equipment that they had there... I mean, you walk into a studio, and it was a forest of these Starbird booms stands. Each of them with 67s, 47s, 49s, RE-20s, you name it, any microphone you could have dreamt of, they had. And if one you were working with, or a couple you were working with, weren't working they brought you another couple. We had 16 track Ampex machines built on the video tape deck format. And if you work at a Record Plant or a Hit Factory or something like that, which we did, because some of the acts would not work at Columbia. But because it was a union deal, the union guys had to go work at the outside studio. If their multitrack went down, the session was over. That was it. Columbia Records, they had three 16 tracks laid out in the hall, so if the one you were working on went down for some reason, they would wheel it out, wheel in another one. "Oh we'll just get another one." It was just amazing, the depth of technical support. There was always a maintenance guy on duty. So if anything went bad that had to be fixed, you call him, he was there.

PW2: So different now... I assume you guys are kind of similar to what I do, it's just, there's so much you gotta  just... [TH: Yeah] You're on your own. It's a lot of DIY.

PW1: Lot of praying!

TH: Yeah, most of this stuff, like Roscoe and I look at it, and it's kind of like this is our life savings. We take care of it like that. You know, there's a couple of things, like that Bryston needs to be fixed. And I have a guy who works at Electric Lady — he fixes stuff when need be.

PW2: But it's a constant chase.

TH: I started around the same time you finished. [PW1, laughing: Yeah.] We had maintenance guys 24/7 in the studio. Cuz I started at Media Sound. It was a former church. Studio A was a church and then there was B and C downstairs, C was very small. B was a bigger, standard size studio. It was mainly used to mix sound. You know I'd set up orchestras and things like that. They went out of business not too long after I started working there.

PW1: That was a nice room. Media was one of the nicer rooms in the city. The other thing about Columbia Records in the 49 East building — that building was built from the ground up to house studios. And the studios, they had suspended floors, they had variable reflective panels on the walls, and the entire place, the air conditioning system everything was built to accommodate studios.

PW2: From day one.

PW1: Yep. So acoustically, they worked really well. Studio E, the rock & roll studio, the smaller of the two in that building, was my favorite place to work. The console was a custom console. When I first started there, big black bakelite knobs, big black bakelite view meters bouncing around. If you needed to couple, if you needed to move three or four knobs, they had gears that you slipped in. There were gear teeth around the outside of the knobs, there were gears that you slipped in so if you turned one knob, they would all turn.

PW2: Oh wow. That's cool, like taping two faders together, but with knobs.

PW1: Yeah. But when they went to replace this stuff, they consulted with all the studio engineers. And they built the consoles in-house. I mean, from the sheet metal, everything, in-house, they consulted with us — what's your ideal console? And based on our input, they built these monster consoles. Quarter-inch aluminum plate... But they were great! They did everything we needed. You looked at the patch bay of this console, you could get into every little item on that console via the patch bay. The switches — you'd get in and out of the switch. So if something went down or you wanted to do something creative, you'd just patch cord around and it would work. So that was a tremendous advantage that those studios had over other places.

PW2: You were talking a little earlier about the difference between an audiophile recording, [PW1 is laughing] and pop music or rock music sort of manipulation. I have kind of a stock question. And, Tim, if you want to answer it too, it's always kinda fun to ask this. Briefly, what's your favorite album project you worked on, as far... What do you feel is the best sounding record you worked on? And then what do you feel is your personal favorite record that you worked on? And what was the most fun record that you worked on, independent of how good it is?

PW1: Wow. Okay, best sounding would have to be the Bill Evans Trio album .

PW2: And what's the name of that album?

PW1: The Bill Evans Album . It's got sort of a rippled metallic look on it, with a picture of Bill Evans. It got voted best engineered jazz album by Recording Engineer/Producer for that year. So I'm proud of that. Best sounding. My favorite?

PW2: Yeah, as an album, the end result. Not necessarily the process.

PW1: End result, and the most fun, I think has to be the White Trash album, Edgar Winter's White Trash album. I have an mp3 player, and I have a lot of music on my phone too, and I have stuff from that album on my mp3 player still.

PW2: You never got tired of it.

PW1: Never got tired of it, and the sessions themselves were somewhat bizarre, but a lot of fun . A lot of fun. And he was a great musical talent, and he had some talented guys in the band as well. Rick Derringer was the producer.

PW2: I was driving the other day, and "Free Ride" came on, and I hadn't heard it in a while. It's a good driving song! I hit the volume pretty hard.

PW1: Yeah, it's a good song for working out on the elliptical . That's mostly where I hear it. I recorded that. I recorded "Free Ride" — at that point it was no longer White Trash , it was the Edgar Winter Group and Dan Hartman. And their manager Steve Paul decided Edgar needed to go in a different direction, musically, and this guy Dan Hartman was a singer-songwriter and guitar player, multi-talented guy. He's gone now. So many people I worked with are dead... [exhale] And so, it was smaller group, I think Montrose was in it, and Derringer I think, played as well. I recorded the original tracks, and a lot of the overdubs — I think I took it just about short of mixing, pretty much — and then they decided to, in the middle of production — switch teams, and they went with Bill Szymczyk . He did the Eagles — Bill was a giant, in more ways than one, I think he's taller than I am. I had followed Bill around from studio to studio. Bill had worked at Regent right before I got there. But anyway, I recorded "Free Ride," then there was another single, another song on that same album, which is I think They Only Come Out at Night — "Frankenstein" was on that album too, and "We All Had a Real Good Time," sort of a take off on the "Mama Told Me Not To Come" theme. And I recorded tracks for that, and did all the overdubs for that too, and then Szymczyk took over.

PW2: Were you disappointed?

PW1: A little bit.

PW2: You probably knew it was still in good hands, but...

PW1: Oh yeah, no worries with Bill. But you know, I was disappointed. Because I had established a good relationship with the band, and with Edgar. We'd done two albums, we did the White Trash album and the Roadwork album. But, it was time to move on for everybody. And of course, Edgar's first big hit was "Free Ride." Although, he's only on it vocally and keyboard. I saw him not too long ago, he was gigging on Long Island, I went backstage. He and Derringer were on the same bill — they didn't play together though. So I went back and said hello.

PW2: Tim, I'm curious — the stock question. Favorite record, best sounding record, and most fun.

TH: I can't really answer the most fun part, because a lot of things have been fun. But if you just mean like, heavily involved with, or start to finish... I think the best sounding record I worked on — Keith Richards, Main Offender . It was just a lot of guitar and vocals overdubs — I didn't do the basic tracking, Don Smith and Joe Blaney did. Once a basic track was cut, a slave reel would be made and the master was put in storage until the mixing. And then there was a 24-track analog slave, and a digital slave for vocals and acoustic guitar. So in the end, there was up to like 80 tracks. For the final mixing we had like three machines. There was a lot to keep track of! It was also very much fun.

PW2: So, best sounding and most fun? Two birds with one stone.

TH: Well... That one... A lot of people still talk about the sound of that record. 

PW1: You know, you made me think about other projects that I've worked on that I really liked. Another one that I worked on that I still have — that I still listen to on a regular basis — was the album that I did with John Hammond Jr., called Source Point . It was a blues album, and I still love listening to that stuff. It's just great — we had a good time. He produced it himself. And his father was still working for Columbia Records at the time. You know, THE John Hammond, the guy who discovered Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith, and Springsteen, and Dylan...

PW2: He had a very long career.

PW1: Oh yeah, he was amazing. A little strange, but... No, he was a nice guy, and he of course was up there at the Newport Jazz festival, when I was recording up there. But anyway, that one. There were some cuts on that I sometimes listen to and just put on repeat and listen to it, I like it so much. It was a fun album to do. It wasn't a very long project. I think we did it in three days, mixed it in one.

PW2: Sometimes those are the best. Don't overthink it.

PW1: Yeah, exactly. And he brought some musicians up from New Orleans. And it was just him and the drummer and the bass player. But for one tune, he wanted a keyboard player, wanted somebody to play tack piano. And I wasn't competent to do that, but there was this young A&R intern, who was working there at the time, a guy named Ray Colcord who's still in the business, he's out West now. And so, he was a smoking buddy of mine. "Hey Ray, you wanna be on an album?" "Sure!" So, he's on it.

PW1: One other quick war story, then we'll wrap up. You familiar with a song called "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" [by Looking Glass]? I walk into the office at Columbia Records one night. I didn't think I was booked for anything that night — and I look, and " Oh shit, I'm on the schedule." I thought it was gonna be a night of doing tape copies and hanging out and... Now I've got to go to Olmstead Studios down on Bryant Park. And, what the hell is this, Looking Glass is the name of the act — I never heard of them. All right, fine, get back in the car, drive the ten blocks down. And the producer on the date was a guy named Sandy Linzer, whose claim to fame was he had written songs for the Four Seasons, and produced "Lover's Concerto," I think the group's name was The Toys, it was a girl group. He was on staff for Epic records. And these guys were signed to Epic. What I found out was, the reason Sandy and I got called in was, the band had a falling out with its original production team. The engineer of that production team was the owner of Regent Sound, Bob Lifton. Okay. So, Sandy and I are sitting there in the control room, at Olmstead studio, and everything's set up, and okay, let's run this song down, it's called "Brandy", and we had a scratch vocal mic set up — there were no charts. So — we open up the vocal fader, and simultaneously, Sandy and I turn to each other, I swear, simultaneously, and said, "That's a fuckin' hit record! Listen to this!" And sure enough. So, we recorded the tracks, we did some overdubs. And then they reconciled with their original production team, and that was it. That was the last I saw of them.

PW2: So they went back to them.

PW1: UNTIL... Five, six weeks later, I come walking into the office again, and the supervisor pulls me over and says "Hey you know, Don Meehan was supposed to do this mix date for the single, but he's not here." We're talking, no cell phones, no nothing. Okay, so — it's Looking Glass, and it's mixing "Brandy"! 

PW2: [Laughing] Hey guys!

PW1: And so I mixed the single version of Brandy.

PW2: It sounds great.

PW1: Well it's a nice arrangement, it's fairly straightforward, simple, and that guy's voice, he's like the Bing Crosby of pop.

PW2: Yeah, who is that guy?

PW1: His name is Elliot Lurie, and I have relatives named Lurie, but not related to him.

PW2: He's got that rich voice, yeah...

PW1: And he's doing movie scores out in Hollywood now. Writing them, not singing them. And I hear that song, it's like, everywhere.

PW2: Yeah, I remember it as a kid, but I would've been like ten or something when it was a hit. This is gonna sound bad, but my wife and I — at the very first beginnings of the '70s revival — there was a TV commercial that had a CD that was all one hit wonders of the '70s. And it had "Brandy" on it, it had a bunch of other stuff that we hadn't heard since we were kids. [PW1 is laughing] So, feeling nostalgic, we sent away and we got it, I still have it, I just loaded it on to my iPod. 

PW1: And that was originally done in '71, I think, or '72? Something like that.

PW2: It sounds great.

PW1: Olmstead was a nice room. Olmstead was one of those rooms that had a character, that you could use. 

PW2: The band themselves, too, they almost sound like studio musicians. 

PW1: Well...

PW2: Or did you have to work on that a little bit?

PW1: Yeah... Yeah. And they were good, they were perfectly competent. But remember, most of the character of that record, the rhythm section is not really prominent. But you know you have the strings, and all that sustaining stuff in the back, and then that guy's voice takes most of the attention away from anything else.

PW2: Another appeal of that song is the dynamic of it — it really builds, and comes down. It's dramatic. You know, the chorus is like, gets quite a bit louder and intense, and you don't hear that on records as much anymore — everything is so normalized and squashed...

PW1: Also, the lead guitar, has nice country-like licks.

PW2: That's true, yeah, I forgot about that. Now I want to hear "Brandy"! Well this was great! Now I think we're really done.

PW1: Wait, one more thing... who or what is Thelonious Monster? 

PW2: That is an '80s L.A. punk band... the drummer's name is Pete Weiss.

PW1: Are you serious?

PW2: Yeah! Now we've really come full circle... apparently Al Kooper produced a Thelonious Monster record.