Music Smarts

Here is a stiill frame from “Mark’s EXplosive Organ,” filmed with Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh on location at his Mutato Muzika studios in Hollywood.  Mark included this film in his 6-Volume collection of organ music.  Witness Mark’s explosive creativity as he strides into his music lab, warms up the electric organ, and whips up a tune that will rock your socks off!  Mark’s beloved pug, Fibi, makes a brief cameo appearance and occasionally barks on beat.

Mark is, of course, adept at composing music with the latest digital software and hardware for films, television, commercials, and for his band DEVO.  But here we step back in time to witness a live, no-edit, performance on this mighty instrument, an Elka EP-12, circa 1985.

To see the 3-minute short film click here.

CJ Vanston is one of the most gifted and diversified musicians I have met in my Hollywood decades.  He’s a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, engineer, producer, and he also knows where to find the best restaurants.

This year, Spinal Tap re-recorded their entire first album, This Is Spinal Tap, with additional new songs and a DVD, at The Village in Los Angeles, with Vanston producing and ace engineer Ed Cherney recording what must be one of the most anticipated juggernauts of comedy music mayhem ever conceived!  Back From the Dead is coming out June 16, 2009.

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Pictured (L-R) are CJ Vanston, David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls.

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BONZAI: What do you do for Spinal Tap?
VANSTON: I have multiple functions with Tap, ranging from being their producer, keyboard player, musical director, photographer and archivist, etc. I also find Chinese restaurants in each city that still use MSG. Hard to find these days, but the boys love their MSG.

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BONZAI: How do you get that huge Spinal Tap sound?
VANSTON: Well, we cut everything to 2-inch analog at +9. Which is fine. But the trick is this: engineer Ed Cherney and I transfer everything to ProTools and back to get that modern, hashy sound that the kids are used to with their MP3s and such.  Most of the old guys are out of touch with the quality of recorded music these days and make the mistake of making things too warm and rich. We live in a harsh world these days, and I believe the sound of the band should reflect that.

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Much more of this interview, as well as a chat with the members of Tap will appear in the June issue of Mix magazine.  We’ll also have a short filmed interview with Vanston and the Tap.  Stay tuned for details.

You can enjoy another excerpt from the interview at   www.MrBonzai.com

Greetings from Hollywood, Entertainment Capital of the World.  I actually live right under the HOLLYWOOD sign, which used to read: HOLLYWOODLAND, before the “LAND” fell down after repeated earthquakes.  It is the world’s first themed residential community and believe me, this city really rocks.  This week I’d like you to check out this BonzFire film we shot for you students in the virtual Berkleemusic classrooms.  Music was composed and recorded by one of your fellow students.  Everybody loves a winner…

Robin Goodchild, a Commercial Music Production graduate of England’s University of Manchester, and apprentice audio engineer at Ocean Way recording studios in Hollywood, recently completed his first online course with Berkleemusic, Music Theory 101.

“I was surprised at how much I learned—by the end of the course my confidence had grown immensely,” Robin says. “Music Theory crops up in everything that I do, and if I had known about this course a few years ago I think I would be a lot further along by now.”

Hollywood’s famed Ocean Way houses some of the best sounding large live rooms ever built. Constructed in 1958, the studios have been the site of an astonishing number of classic hit records which have sold in excess of a billion copies worldwide.

To view the film, click HERE.

Read down to the bottom for the free song.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting the enigmatic and unpredictable Bob Dylan, but I have met a number of musicians who have worked with him, including drummer Jim Keltner, who once told me, “Everybody’s got a story about Bob and a lot of them are about how cold he is.  I’ve heard people say that they worked for Dylan for 12 hours and he never said a word.  That always makes me laugh, because I’ve been in that situation, too — but I know the other side of him as well.”  Mr. Keltner was the drummer in the quiet supergroup, the  Traveling Wilburys, along with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison.

I recently spoke with singer/songwriter Mark Turnbull, who is by far the most knowledgeable and insightful Dylan scholar I know.  He told me that none of the many, many reviewers of the new album, Together Through Life, have noticed that it has a connecting conceptual storyline.  “It’s like a film,” Mark told me, “with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Very cinematic.”  The new Rolling Stone has a long and surprising interview with Mr. Dylan.

Here are some Dylan reflections from my new Berklee Press book, MUSIC SMARTS:

Meeting Heroes
“Bob Dylan spoke of the end of idolatry after he met Woodie Guthrie. By meeting them, it makes those artists not only human, but often less than human. You see that all the pieces don’t have to be there. That’s what can make them unique—their limitations.”
—David Was

Play in the Moment
“What I’ve seen as a producer is a small handful of guys like Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, and Bob Dylan, who know how to let go and play in the moment, and not think about it. They lose musical self-consciousness.”
—Don Was

Building the Wilburys
“At night, after we’d finish the sessions on George Harrison’s album, we’d have a drink and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have a group with anybody we want?’ That’s how it really came about. George said, ‘I’ll have Bob Dylan,” and I said, ‘Then I’ll have Roy Orbison.’ We’d both known Tom Petty, and I had been working with him, and Tom seemed the ideal person, and it all fitted together.
—Jeff Lynne

Revelations
The people that really blew my mind—that changed me radically and constantly—were Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, Van Morrison, and Joni Mitchell—writers who plumbed the depth of their experience and revealed things about all of our lives.
—Jackson Browne

David Bianco recorded and mixed the new album from Bob.   Courtesy of David’s manager, Frank McDonough, here’s a link — listen here to “Beyond Here Lies Nothing.”

If you’d like to find out more about the adventures of Mr. Bonzai, click HERE.

 For those of you who enjoy humor and music, this week we pull some words from the archives: a 1997 interview with “Weird Al” Yankovic.

BONZAI: Al, what is the first music that you remember hearing?
WEIRD AL: One of my earliest musical memories is a song called “Boa Constrictor” – sung by Johnny Cash and written by the brilliant Shel
Silverstein.  The recording ends with the boa constrictor belching — which to a five-year-old is, of course, the pinnacle of cerebral humor.
The first pop song I remember hearing was “These Boots Were Made For Walkin’” by Nancy Sinatra.  And even as a small child, I could play
that guitar solo.

BONZAI: What great truth did you learn from your grandfather, Blind Lemon Yankovic?
WEIRD AL: Grandpa Blind always told me, “Son – remember… you can pick your friends, and you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t keep
your eyes open while you’re sneezing.”  And I never forgot that.

BONZAI: Who were your heroes when you were getting started?
WEIRD AL: The artists that influenced me the most were Spike Jones, Allan Sherman, Stan Freberg,Tom Lehrer – people that I came to
appreciate through my weekly exposure to the Dr. Demento radio show.

BONZAI: How would you like to be remembered in the Encyclopedia Brittanica?
WEIRD AL: Well, I think I’d like to be remembered as the all-powerful master and ruler of the universe.

If you’d like to see what Mr. Yankovic is up to today, visit MrBonzai.com

If you’d like to make a comment, please do.  If you have a question for Al, go right ahead.  I will be seeing him soon during the mix sessions for his new songs.  I will try to get your answer…

Here is a bit of a very long interview with Kristofferson from 15 years ago, when he was one of The Highwaymen.  Only Willie and Kris are left now.  Kristofferson’s got a new album coming out this year, once again produced by Don Was.

BONZAI:  Was performing with The Highwayman a high point of your performing experience?

KRISTOFFERSON: It was definitely one of them.  When I look back on my life for some kind of perspective, it seems like something you would fantasize — seeing myself with Barbra Streisand, and looking next to myself onstage and seeing people who were my absolute heroes.  When I went to be a songwriter, I did it for the love and not for the money.  I loved everything about it and admired the people who were good at it, and Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson were right up there at the top.  And Waylon is the closest to a hero.

To be up there with them and singing along on these songs that are such a part of your soul because you grew up with them — it’s a wonderful thing.  I’m sure it drives ‘em crazy sometimes when I’m harmonizing. [laughs]  One time John said, “I don’t think there’s another person in the world who would have the nerve to sing harmony with me on “Folsom Prison.”  And I didn’t know how to take that! [laughs]  So, I didn’t do it for the next show, and then I guess he got to feeling bad about it and told me to start singing harmony again.

from my new Berklee book:

Due Diligence
“Paying the dues is learning how to believe in yourself, when all the evidence is to the contrary.”
—Kris Kristofferson

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
“Road Scholar” 1994

When Ed Cherney told me he was mixing Kris Kristofferson’s new album down at Brooklyn Recording, with Don Was producing, I immediately asked if I could drop by for “lunch.”   When I arrived, Ed was working on a mix, so I settled back into the sofa and heard a riff fly by a few times while he made some final adjustments.  The band was tight, the words were right and Kristofferson sounded confident, natural and never better.

Don Was, who must juggle a dozen records every day, was “running a little late.”  Kristofferson arrived, hands were shook all ‘round and Ed unveiled the mix.  Kristofferson hunkered down at the board, concentrating, nodding, then smiling, and finally just throwing his arms up and laughing with sheer joy.

When Don appeared in his signature “casual” wardrobe, he said, “Oh, Mr. Bonzai!  I’m sorry man, I forgot about the photos —  and here I am in my pajamas…” Someone wisecracked from the sidelines, “C’mon Don — you’re always in your pajamas.”

Don sat down at the Neve 8078 and offered a few suggestions for bringing out a guitar.  Ed described some frequency collision areas and together they worked on it a bit more, laid it down, popped it in a boom box just to make sure it was done, and Ed set up for the next mix.

Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, and moved to California in his teens.  While in college he was awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and continued his education at Oxford University during the late 50s.  It was here that he started writing songs, which continued during his days as an Army pilot, eventually landing a job as “studio set-up guy” in Nashville.  Songs such as “Help Me Make It Through The Night”, “Me And Bobby McGee,” and “For The Good Times” established him as a major writer and launched his hardworking career as a performer, recording artist, actor and outspoken spokeman for human rights.

BONZAI: What do you primarily think of yourself as?
KRISTOFFERSON: Songwriter.  I think that I can interpret my own material honestly and effectively, but I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t write it, because I haven’t got the tools — for my ears — to sing something I didn’t write.

MUSIC SMARTS features hundreds of quotations from a vast array of artists and industry gurus, reflecting on influences, heroes, integrity, performances, and many more critical aspects of being a music person. These gems of hard-won wisdom cover not only the highs of success, money, and fame, but also reveal the lows of missteps and rejection.

NEW REVIEW BY DAVID DAVIES FROM PRO SOUND NEWS EUROPE:  click here.

NEW REVIEW BY BARRY RUDOLPH FROM MUSIC CONNECTION: click here.

Drawn from 25 years of feature interviews by notorious studio insider, Mr. Bonzai, and edited by Mix magazine creator, David Schwartz, Music Smarts features razor-sharp insights from the music industry’s savviest artists, producers, technicians, and business execs, and showcases the brainpower that has made popular music the most influential force in modern culture. This handbook also includes a visual “who’s who” of the music biz with original portraits by Mr. Bonzai of the featured artists.

Look Inside the Book and order a dozen at Amazon.com

For more of Kris Kristofferson, visit:  www.MrBonzai.com

from my new Berklee book:

The Heart of the Matter      
“You have to love music for itself. If you get into it because it’s cool, or you want to be like whoever the current person is that year, then it won’tlast, and you’re taking up everybody else’s time.” —Suzanne Vega

Bonus Material from 1997:

Suzanne Vega has secured a place in the hearts and minds of music lovers around the world.  Born in Santa Monica, California, and raised in NYC’s Spanish Harlem, she projects grace, wisdom and curiosity.  After a decade of coffeehouses and troubadour tours, Suzanne gained worldwide recognition in 1987 with “Luka,” a song about an abused child.  She claimed her place as one of today’s leading singer/songwriters and has continued to fluorish and evolve with Neo-Folk flavors, inventive productions and provocative poetry.

BONZAI: You started performing at 16. Is it good to start so young?
VEGA: In fact it felt late to me, because I’d started writing songs when I was about 14.  I had been really interested in The Beatles and they were all massively famous by the time they were 18. I remember feeling that at 16 time was running out and I better get out there if I wanted to do anything with myself. I think 16 is a good time to start.

BONZAI: Had you been warming up?
VEGA: Yes, by the time I was 16 I had about seventy-five, a hundred
songs, so I was a very ambitious teenager. I was rejected in a lot of places because that was the 70s and folk music wasn’t exactly in vogue. But it’s good to be rejected, too, because you build character and you can take whatever life has to give you after that.

BONZAI: You have a degree in literature.  Would you advise songwriters to pursue an education in literature and poetry?
VEGA: No. [Laughs.] I wouldn’t. I learned more from just reading. I loved to read, and had loved to read since I was five or six years old. That’s really important – to read and figure out what you like for yourself. And working in the theater was very helpful. That probably helped me more than anything.

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Skip ahead to 2009: Suzanne has a very interesting blog with THE NEW YORK TIMES.  Check it out here.

NEW REVIEW BY DAVID DAVIES FROM PRO SOUND NEWS EUROPE:  click here.

NEW REVIEW BY BARRY RUDOLPH FROM MUSIC CONNECTION: click here.

Drawn from 25 years of feature interviews by notorious studio insider, Mr. Bonzai, and edited by Mix magazine creator, David Schwartz, Music Smarts features razor-sharp insights from the music industry’s savviest artists, producers, technicians, and business execs, and showcases the brainpower that has made popular music the most influential force in modern culture. This handbook also includes a visual “who’s who” of the music biz with original portraits by Mr. Bonzai of the featured artists.

Look Inside the Book and order a dozen at Amazon.com

For more of Suzanne Vega, visit my Berkleemusic Blog

There is such a Spinal Tap buzz these days, we just couldn’t resist giving you some more bonus material from the vaults, circa 2000.

(L-R) are Derek Smalls and David St. Hubbins.  Photo by Mr. Bonzai ©2000

BONZAI: What’s wrong with the Music Industry?
DAVID: Two things: the Music and the Industry.
DEREK: It’s an Industry — you just said it.  Shouldn’t be an Industry.  Should be the Music Collosus, or the Music Cooperative.  You can’t have a “Music Industry” — what do you call that?  It’s a moron.

BONZAI: What music would you like played at your funerals?
DAVID: Something of mine, so my estate will become more valuable.  My mum didn’t raise no fools…
DEREK: “Back From The Dead.”

BONZAI: What did you learn from Ozzy Osborne ?
DAVID: The location of the secret restroom at the Rainbow Bar & Grill.
DEREK: Don’t bite the heads off chickens — they’ll come home to roost.

Music Smarts features hundreds of quotations from a vast array of artists and industry gurus, reflecting on influences, heroes, integrity, performances, and many more critical aspects of being a music person. These gems of hard-won wisdom cover not only the highs of success, money, and fame, but also reveal the lows of missteps and rejection.

NEW REVIEW BY DAVID DAVIES FROM PRO SOUND NEWS EUROPE:  click here.

NEW REVIEW BY BARRY RUDOLPH FROM MUSIC CONNECTION: click here.

Drawn from 25 years of feature interviews by notorious studio insider, Mr. Bonzai, and edited by Mix magazine creator, David Schwartz, Music Smarts features razor-sharp insights from the music industry’s savviest artists, producers, technicians, and business execs, and showcases the brainpower that has made popular music the most influential force in modern culture. This handbook also includes a visual “who’s who” of the music biz with original portraits by Mr. Bonzai of the featured artists.

Look Inside the Book and order a dozen at Amazon.com

Find out more about Mr. Bonzai

Welcome to my distinguished Berkleemusic blog.  For starters, I’d like to introduce you to my new book MUSIC SMARTS.  Scroll down and you’ll get a taste of the quotes in the book, plus some bonus material from my 2000 interview with David. St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls.

Spinal Tip
“Be patient. Remember, they’re not going to like you automatically just because you do.”
—David St. Hubbins

BONZAI: What are your main recording tools?
DAVID: MIDI, ASCII, finger sandwiches and Napoleon brandy.
DEREK: ProTools — at least a couple of the Pro Tools, a good long cord, and you need a mic, and a nice long power cord as well.  I don’t mean a “power chord,” like what we play, but a splitter, AC.  That’s all I need.

BONZAI: If you could go back in time before the birth of recording, what would you like to hear?
DAVID: Al Jolson begging for work.
DEREK: I’d like to hear what it sounded like in Beethoven’s head after he went deaf.

Don’t Forget
“Ignore all advice.”

—Derek Smalls

Music Smarts features hundreds of quotations from a vast array of artists and industry gurus, reflecting on influences, heroes, integrity, performances, and many more critical aspects of being a music person. These gems of hard-won wisdom cover not only the highs of success, money, and fame, but also reveal the lows of missteps and rejection.

Drawn from 25 years of feature interviews by notorious studio insider, Mr. Bonzai, and edited by Mix magazine creator, David Schwartz, Music Smarts features razor-sharp insights from the music industry’s savviest artists, producers, technicians, and business execs, and showcases the brainpower that has made popular music the most influential force in modern culture. This handbook also includes a visual “who’s who” of the music biz with original portraits by Mr. Bonzai of the featured artists.

Look Inside the Book and order a dozen at Amazon.com

Find out more about Mr. Bonzai