Solly Plays Heavy Metal

Back in the early eighties I was at Seth Snyder's db Studios in Miami, doing a Judas Priest album with Tom Allom producing. The drum tracks had been recorded in the drummer Dave Holland's studio in Ibizia Spain. There were no songs written when Dave recorded the tracks. Just hours of various intros, fills, verses and choruses. The guitarists and singer spent several months writing songs and riffs to the drum tracks. We would then make safeties of the drum parts on 2nd 24 trk and cut the songs together. We'd add bass, millions of guitars and vocals and Tom mixed the record at db.

Tom hated the drum sounds from Spain, so I came up with the idea to use Seth's mechanical/solenoid drum machine to replace the kick and snare. Seth had built a machine that would strike an actual snare drum with a stick and you could mic and record the new snare. You triggered the solenoid "arm" with a cue send from tape, the signal then passed through a big wooden box with different light bulbs wired as resistors. You changed the velocity of the hit with a different wattage bulb! He also had a seperate output wired to a bass drum beater and you did the same procedure to record a new kick....we don't need no stinking MIDI!

Pig Power

Chi-Pig, an Akron Ohio punk band, and myself recorded a spec album at Criteria in 1979 and 80. We did it during the evening hours, in various rooms with several different engineers, when there was some free studio time. As I recall I was working a double shift, engineering Julio Iglesias during the day and producing the Pigs during the night. 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. The Albert Bros. convinced Mack that it was cool to allow the project to happen.

The project was never picked up even though Chi-Pig had a strong regional following and made a big impact on the early Miami punk scene. Fast forward 25 years, Sue Schmidt Horning is doing her doctoral thesis on the beginnings of analogue recording technologies. She interviews me for the paper and casually mentions she has a tape of mixes of the songs recorded in Miami.
A CD is born. Check it out here

Punk Rock Patriot

While surfin' the web this morning, I discovered this lost Criteria gem.
A single I did with Robert Wuagneux after the USA beat Russia in hockey at the Olympics. Recorded in Studio C , it was"live" three piece with some background vocal overdubs. Paul Harris on bass and Bob Owens on guitar. I can't remember who the drummer was, but he was smoking. USA 423