QLS Classic: Bob Power

Legendary producer, mixer and engineer Bob Power talks about what it was like to make some of the most iconic hip hop albums of our time.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Yo Yo Yo,
what's up?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is Fante Fantigolo tapping in with another QLs classic.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
This week, were gonna take it back. We're gonna take
it all the way back. This is almost our first episode.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is episode number two from September fourteen, twenty sixteen,
with none other than the legendary producer, engineer, and musician
Bob Power.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Bob talks about.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Working with stats Sosonic, the Angelo, a tribe called quest
and none other than our fearless cult leader and sweet
tea drink Questlove along with the Roots travel back to
one of the episodes that started it all on QLs.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
It's Fontigulo. Yeah. Here we are.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Supremo, so supremo who call sopremo some some supremo role
called suprema. So some supremo role called suprema. So some
suprema role called.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
My name is Questo?

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Yeah, I am, yeah, this is my show.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, Love Suprema Supremo something so supremo ro called suprema
something son Supremo.

Speaker 5 (01:25):
Roll call I am Mantika. Yeah, can't you tell Yeah,
go order some food, Yeah, something hungry.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Hey call Supremo, some some Supremo, role called Supremo, Sun
Son Supremo.

Speaker 6 (01:41):
Vol call Uh yeah, uh Steve, Yeah, chicken palm Yeah,
roll call.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Supremo, son something Supremo, roll call Suprema something something Supremo.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Voe come.

Speaker 7 (01:58):
My name is Bill, Yeah, I was the first guest. Yeah,
and now I'm on the show.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah with quest go Supremo, Son Son Supremo, ro called Supremo,
some son Supremo, roll call.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
My name is Bill, Yeah yeah, some Alumnama, demon Lumma,
some of them Yeah, some of.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
No call s Primo, son son Supremo, roll called Supremo,
some some Supremo.

Speaker 8 (02:29):
Ro call my name is Bob, Yeah, I ain't no jokie.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah is Bob? Yeah? Hi sure my monkey, roll call.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Suprema Son Son Supremo, ro called Supremo, son Son Supremo.
Roll call Supremo, son Son Supremo, roll call Supremo, Son
Son Supremo, roll call Supremo, Son Supremo, ro call Supremo,

(03:03):
some Supremo, roll Supremo Supremo.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Roll. Ladies and gentlemen, Ladies and gentlemen. This is questlove
and this is quest Love Supreme. Welcome to our show.
How did I get here? I do not know, but
they asked me, and I'm here and I'm here for you.
Bart a few friends with me to help me explore art, culture, music, food.

(03:33):
So my my co host with the co most is
Sir Fon Tigelow.

Speaker 5 (03:38):
What's going on?

Speaker 7 (03:40):
Of course?

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Formerly of Little Brother, currently of The Foreign Exchange. One
of my favorite cats ever, Like more than any book,
Your your your Instagram or your Instagram, and your your
your Twitter, uh musings and and your wisdom is some
of the best reading toilet seat reading.

Speaker 7 (04:03):
I've ever done.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Hey, I got to keep Hey bro, Hey, look I
gotta keep it.

Speaker 7 (04:08):
Really a good book.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Maybe back up the nineties it was Blacktail, but now
it's Frantic and my I g I would think about
that when I'm crafting my next tweet, I'm like.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
This, should I maybe I write this next my tweets.
I'm honor to be here, man.

Speaker 7 (04:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah. Frante is like one of my favorite thinking cats
of of of all time. So I'm extremely honest that
he's here.

Speaker 9 (04:42):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Next to Frante is uh Steve a k A sugar Steve.
How you doing bruh, I'm not feeling well.

Speaker 7 (04:51):
But hello, Steve.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
I've known for about near twenty years.

Speaker 7 (05:00):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Steve was an assistant engineer at Electric Ladies Studios uh
and has worked on practically every record that I did
in that building. Voodoo by the Angelo, like Water for Chocolate,
Common Mom's Gone with Eric abaddu uh oh part and

(05:22):
the diabetes the mythology. So I stole the legends that
I stole Steve from Electric Lady Studios to be my
full time engineer. And so when he moved to Philadelphia,
he kind of that my diet. And at the time,
three times a day. There was a church that had

(05:43):
Sunday dinners for sale all throughout the weekday. It's called
the the House of Prayer. Come yeah, House of Prayer?
Is there everyone in North Carolina?

Speaker 8 (05:52):
What?

Speaker 5 (05:53):
Because the House of Prayer like the House of Prayer
that was the bread they grew up.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
The house. Yeah, the House of Bread.

Speaker 5 (06:00):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
You need?

Speaker 5 (06:02):
So the House of Prayer, it was on Market Street.
It was on the corner Market in Dudley. And the
leader of that House of Prayer was Daddy Grace.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah that daddy.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, Daddy Grace, so you could go to the House
of Prayer on the on the you know, they tell
plates and you could get like some mother pork chop.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
Dams and macaron cheese for like five dollars or guess what.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Guess So the legend, the legend is a legend. I
said about I did about three weeks straight like this.
This is when I was working. What's the first thing
we did together in Philly the Farrell record. We work
on Farrell and the Yes Sirs. So every break we'd
head to the church, bust a grub, buy two grubs

(06:44):
so we have a midnight snack too. So wow, we
doubled down on those grubs here. And then like two
months later Steve was like, yo, man, Bill Sermon a
k A. Willie White, William White. Bill is my boss

(07:09):
at Sesame Wait do I still work at Sesamet only
wrote like one song.

Speaker 7 (07:13):
We can change that.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Anyway, Bill, Bill is the new Joe Roposo. Who's Joe
rop Joe Riposo is the god of children's songs. He
wrote many a classic at Sesame Street. Bill's now at
Sesame Street. But we met because he's one of the
seven UH producers for the Hamilton cast out. You also

(07:40):
are Grammy Ward Antony Ward winner for in the Heights.
You're a producer of many uh acts. He's a real
big shot.

Speaker 10 (07:54):
White for nothing deal. Do not have the white corner.
You don't have the sugars, right, I don't have the
sugar Yet we hang out working on it.

Speaker 7 (08:05):
Yeah, okay, I'm honored to be here. Last, but not.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Least, are our boss man, our producer Bill DJ Brainchild?
Am I allowed to call you by your government anymore?
I guess okay, I'll call you DJ Brainchild?

Speaker 7 (08:21):
Or I.

Speaker 9 (08:25):
Are you gonna edit this part? I'm gonna leave it
all right? Did you just call it a podcast? I'm
gonna edit that out on this radio show?

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Is this on ladies and gentlemen? I'm not four, I'm
not supposed to.

Speaker 7 (08:37):
Call this is not a podcast. This is a radio show.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
A Miro was me five dollars every time he calls
the show a podcast? Should we just have a.

Speaker 7 (08:48):
Podcast?

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Jar right?

Speaker 5 (08:49):
Yeah, I'm gonna be rich by yo.

Speaker 7 (08:53):
Man.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I thought about y'all the other day, man, I thought
about Steve. I thought about y'all days we were talking about,
like the diabetes and stuff. I heard probably the most sad, hilarious,
most like tragic shit ever. And this is a real story.
I won't name the guy's name. I can't, I don't,
but it's a friend of a friend of mine. This
really happened in real life. This is recent homeboy mind well,

(09:13):
he's not my homeboy, but my friend of mine. It's
her homeboy.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
Play cousin.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Shit.

Speaker 5 (09:19):
Homie like needed a kidney, right, It's like he was
fucked up and I guess he got like God betes
or something like that. He needed a kidney. No, no, bullshit,
need a kidney.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
And he was touring at one point with like a
major artist, okay, and so this major artist got behind
him and was like, Yo, we need to get my
man a kidney, like started to go fund me and
all this shit, you know what I'm saying, got him
on the go fundme.

Speaker 5 (09:45):
People gave all this money. So Homie gets on the
donor list for the kidney. Like, he gets on the list.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
So now all of a sudden, like you know, he's
like praising God and everything. So then all of a sudden,
we just his like Facebook post change and it's like,
oh man, the devil trying to steal my joy Uh,
they the devil is a liar like all this, you know,
all like the ship that gospel nigga say when they're mad.
So it's like, so we're like, what the fuck happened?

(10:15):
They took him off the donor list. So then we're like, okay,
well why so we go to his instagram.

Speaker 11 (10:21):
Ah, check what I had for dinner tonight, whitebread fried fish,
and it's like days and days of funk shit and like,
and so they determined like, look, we're not gonna you're
not living a lifestyle that is whatever.

Speaker 5 (10:36):
So I just thought that was amazing.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
I've never heard I've heard I've never heard of a
motherfucker ig and yourself off the donor list. How the
fuck you tweeted yourself off the goddamn dost dude, and
like and then if you look at his ig, all
the meals like it's it's all bad, Like it's all
like whitebread, refine, sugars, fried this.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
So the hospital was following him.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
Hey brother, it's a new game.

Speaker 7 (11:05):
That was a really great story.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Oh man, Yeah, dude, he.

Speaker 5 (11:08):
Like his Instagram took him off the fucking Donald list.
That is some of the most.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Man.

Speaker 7 (11:14):
I like a quest of Instagram rands where like you
think it's gonna be like a paragraph and then you
like what like, whoa, I didn't know you? Whoa you
had some time, which is rare to ship to say.

Speaker 9 (11:28):
Toilet the reason why he doesn't have time because he
was writing something. I mean like like, that's a lot
of little ship happening. Impressed by you, the tom sam
like I try to keep my emails that I ride
on my phone like five words, yeah, toilet.

Speaker 7 (11:42):
Stool music, so it's Fante's tweets and then like really
long and right right then as soon as you stand up,
Oh man, ain't that ship the worst?

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yo?

Speaker 5 (11:52):
Like you stand up, ship be sleep you gotta shake
it out, stank leg.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
But the part sleep is in the shape for whatever
the yeah, right right right, and it ain't the worst
ship ever.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
Like when you go to a like because I because
I have a thing. It's like when you go to
a real clean I went to my dealership.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
They just work on my car, and they had a
it's a new dealership and they got built a new
men's bathroom.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
And the ship is gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Oh, it has its own little like private joint, a
pristine joint, or if you go the handicapped joining handicap to.

Speaker 5 (12:24):
And like not in the airport, but like in the
dealership it was so nice. I was like, man, I'm
gonna go wrong on this.

Speaker 8 (12:29):
So I was like, I need to put the seat down.

Speaker 5 (12:31):
I was like, man, I'm gonna you know what I mean,
it's like you fear, It's like how you yeah whatever, you.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
Ever live your way in the handicap that little private room,
the handicap in the airport, like just in case, like
right right right, you limp and then you get down.
But the worst feeling though, is like when you sit
down and it's a warm toilet seet. Oh my god,
that ship is like it's like a s is terrible.

(12:59):
I like the cold the cold toilet seat on on
the on the bottom.

Speaker 7 (13:03):
Have a heatd toilet seat in my house?

Speaker 3 (13:05):
What?

Speaker 7 (13:05):
Yeah? When I moved into this house, it was the
one number one reason I moved in the house. Not
only was is it heated? But has his panel over
here all right? That like does all kinds of crazy
ship like it'll yeah, it'll spoid water up that. I
gotta get a drive. Have you been in Japan? I've
been years ago.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (13:27):
Game Changer so I keep hearing about that. Dude, I'll
tell you what, and I'm pistol.

Speaker 10 (13:34):
Can I say I thought outside of the thing, I
was like, I'm gonna have to get I was like,
oh no, I was taking the ship Amazon, and how
much the toilet seat ship costs?

Speaker 7 (13:46):
When I moved, I could buy one. And all you
know is that's it's like three grand for like the thing. Man.
But I will tell you what it is. You can
buy like you can, but that's not the same thing,
producer Bill, I'll.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Tell you that maybe sixty or seventy percent of all
the exchanges between Rich and I or mometa toilet stool exchanges.
Matter of fact, all my lists, all my thank yous, oh,
all the roots, thank yous, toilet like I have a desk. Wait,

(14:21):
that's too much, Yes, let's wait for that. So we
are very honored to have uh the great Bob Power
in the studio. Give it up. Thank you.

Speaker 8 (14:38):
They're my My mother has been chilling well for me,
and she talked to you into this. I know, you know,
just like she gave for all twenty bucks to say
that thing about me.

Speaker 7 (14:48):
Right, so exactly.

Speaker 8 (14:50):
Okay, So she's running out her doll, though I might
trouble she get.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, I gave you the money, so I you know
you are. For those that don't know Bob Power's role
in music, especially in the realm of classic hip hop,
I'll say that you are up there with all of

(15:17):
the great creators beyond engineer. I mean, I consider you
the fourth beatle. In a try call Quest and.

Speaker 8 (15:26):
In De La Soul and the Vinnia called me the
den mother. I thought that was real cool.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
You were definitely the demon.

Speaker 8 (15:31):
Well, you know, I'd like to get stuff done and
everybody's just hanging out. It's like, okay, what are we
doing now?

Speaker 1 (15:36):
So you know, I'm not saying that I'm the most
disciplined human beyond earth. Actually I'm the least disciplined human
being on Earth, but I disagree. But probably the one
thing that I learned in studio mixing with songs is
the absolute concentration that the engineer needs UH to to

(16:01):
complete such a task. And you never let me live
that down either.

Speaker 8 (16:05):
I know, all those little things on the credit I
used to Bob, could you guys please go in the
back Power I mean, yeah, so I mean.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
To run off your resume if you are a classic
hip hop fan. This this this man as has pretty
much engineered and steered uh A mighty ship of of
classic records from uh three. Well you did on Fire
by the stets of Sonic? Did you do him full gear?

Speaker 3 (16:34):
No?

Speaker 1 (16:34):
That was my first big thing. Yeah, on fire, on fire, Yeah,
to hear it, to hear. Q Tip described when he
first heard ghost Stetsa in a nightclub. He said, that
was that was a that was a moment for him
where he stopped in his tracks and it was amazed
at how clear the drum sounded and said, this is

(16:55):
what I want to sound like. So are you serious?
I never heard that, man, Yeah, because I asked like,
how did you How did Bob enter the sphere? And
he's like, ilsy the club a night and and I
heard ghosts and I was like shocked, and I was
like he worked on that. But then I figured, like
all the all the Calliope Foster people had to have
been from Tommy Boyd.

Speaker 8 (17:15):
You know, yeah, there was I believe that Shane Favor
went away for two weeks on vacation and I filled
in and we got along.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
You know, Okay, Shane never should have left, man. So
oh after that then you sort of eased.

Speaker 8 (17:29):
In and it wasn't my own doing. I had nothing
to do with it. They said show up. I said, okay.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
So when Shane came back and everybody wanted to roll
with you and.

Speaker 8 (17:36):
Shad, well not really. I mean Shane and I split
that first record, and it's funny. I just remastered that
for the twenty fifth anniversary release last year. Man, I
had no idea what I was doing back then. It
was scary to hear that stuff.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
But it was funny. So you cringe when you're in
your mistress now or.

Speaker 8 (17:54):
Only stuff from that far back. I actually sometimes I
catch myself. I'll hear a song and I say, you know.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
That sounds pretty good. Wow, that's cool, and it's like, wow,
I mixed that.

Speaker 8 (18:03):
Oh Man, don't you forget tracks that you've done, Like.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
I have a I have a cardinal rule to not uh.
I will obsessively listen to uh whatever record I'm working
on for maybe three months after it comes out, and
then I never ever go back. Right.

Speaker 8 (18:24):
But like I'm in a clothes store or something, I'm like, wow,
I know that song. Oh yeah, I mixed that.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
That happens, that happens yesterday I heard a song that
I was on. I just amed it and I was
disappointed when I found out that I didn't know that
you were on it. I was on that I was
on that song anyway, So you did h on Fire
by Statsu Sonic.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
That was the first that Sonic song I ever heard,
honestly on Fire because I was I bought it.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
This was god. I was like, seven, did you buy it?
I actually, yeah, I didn't steal. I didn't steal it.
Last week we was talking about like a month ago,
right on the last episode.

Speaker 8 (19:03):
I don't think I did that whole record, but if
I remember on Fire, then I did that song.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Noah, I had that one that was on I remember
that one because that was on a K Tail Records compilation.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Then I bought from k Mart.

Speaker 8 (19:17):
And like straight up and that was the last song
on side one, so that that was a three cent
royalty check I got a couple of months ago.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
It might be it was a K Tale because it
also you said Tangerine Records. Then I really would have
just walked down the wall.

Speaker 7 (19:35):
It was.

Speaker 5 (19:35):
It was k Tel and that was the last song
on side one, and uh it also had I don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
If you remember mister X and mister Z drink O Gold. Yeah,
it was that was on there too.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
That it wasn't even the compilation though, like rap Hits
or some ship. It was something like corny like and
he was like, I gotta have this. It was that
was all I could afford because it was in like
the bargain box.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
So it might have been like three.

Speaker 7 (19:57):
Yeah, yeah, it was like three.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
I know those takes very.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Cream colored tapes, like the cream you know what I mean,
Like if it was like the white tape, the cream color,
you knew it was some bullshit.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Actually, you know something, my first Boy Power cassette I stole. Okay,
that's appropriate. Appropriate. The reason why I was hesitating to
say I was wanted to make sure that the grace
period had passed before Sam Goodie presses charges.

Speaker 8 (20:26):
I have some good news for you. Sam Goody is
no more So I beat the man.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
No. I used to work at Sam Goodie's after school,
and when I had that that moment when I heard three,
the same way that I felt when I heard Nation
of Millions, I was like, Yo, these guys are talking
directly to me. So I stole the the only copy

(20:53):
in the store and I think, yeah, I got fired,
but not a week after that, right, I think I
think they knew I stole.

Speaker 8 (21:02):
It, so they were throwing your ass in jail, man,
Come on, would just be fired?

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Well, no, I got fired. You know. I like to
think it was you know, the Christmas rush was over
and they didn't need me in January. But I think
they I think they knew that I did that. So anyway,
three ft and Rising days Souls dead low in theory.
You did people's instinctive travels. You did the first try.

Speaker 8 (21:26):
Record half of it? Yeah, I did not do uh
three feet high?

Speaker 7 (21:31):
Who?

Speaker 8 (21:32):
A couple other people there did that. I did a
session or two, but I wasn't.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
I did not go. So you came dead Yeah, okay,
and blue mind state stakes.

Speaker 8 (21:44):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
I don't think so.

Speaker 8 (21:46):
You know, I got really busy as a producer. And
then when I said people yeah, and people said, got
really pissed.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
You know, of course tip they were territory hip. Got
really pissed. But it's okay, we're over it now. He
was territorial. Let's drop that one.

Speaker 5 (22:04):
You know, why are you giving up?

Speaker 1 (22:06):
I love the man and I really do as you do.
You know, come on, man, Yeah no, because my first
week in working with you, I think I maybe that's
why you you had the quiet rule, because I think
I asked you more about tried mixes than I was
concerned about my own mixes.

Speaker 8 (22:27):
So I thank god that's part of the twenty year period.
That's a big blur to me because I don't remember
a thing.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well, I would that's what we were going to ask you,
So I guess I should ask you. Did you Did
you come into the saying I'm going to be a
pioneering engineer or was it like no, no, no, no,
your beginnings, Like what were you you know, in your.

Speaker 8 (22:50):
Totally backed into engineering? I uh, you really want to
start at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 8 (22:57):
I played trombone in fourth grade because it was cool
because I could hit the kid in the back of
the head in front of me with the slide. That's
exactly why I picked it up. They also told me
my lips were too big to play trumpet, and I
was like, okay, thank you. That's really nice to tell
a kid, you know. Anyway, played bad rock guitar by
ear in high school, went away to college at a

(23:20):
place Webster University. They had a conservatory, and I didn't
know enough to be scared. It was a classical conservatory.
I had no background in it became a classical theory
and composition major.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
They never would have let me in. I don't know
how they let me in, but they did.

Speaker 7 (23:36):
What year was this?

Speaker 8 (23:37):
Nineteen seventy So during the four years that I was
there and studying classical theory and composition, I was playing
a sort of chilllin circuit in Saint Louis.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
And I played an R and B bands and cover
the day.

Speaker 8 (23:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, you're my favorite pussy, you know, Funkadelic,
Yeah yeah, and temptation stuff.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
You know.

Speaker 8 (24:01):
I killed Papa was a rolling stone man, you know
those little ridges on the rubber on the wah wah
pedals and keep your foot there.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
My shit is worn out. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 8 (24:12):
And left Saint Louis in seventy five, did some recording
there with different people.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
I mean, what were your aspirations in the seventies. I
want to be a rock star, man, Come on, guess
what you are? A rock star? Come on.

Speaker 8 (24:26):
Anyway, moved to San Francisco in seventy five, and this
is weird. I ended up getting my masters in jazz.
But it's a long story that I really can't tell
on the air. It's a sort of checkered story the
reason that I got into graduate school.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
But we'll leave it at that.

Speaker 8 (24:43):
I had let's just say, I had to be on
my best behavior for a while and got into TV scoring.
While I was there, my dad was a television producer
and he hooked me up with some people. So I
scored TV like three or four months out of the
year for seven years and subsidize my jazz career. What

(25:04):
shows did you There was a show on PBS called
over Easy. I did a bunch of stuff for Disney,
a couple other things, a couple of specials for PBS,
and it was cool.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
You know.

Speaker 8 (25:16):
That was a day's premitty where you had to like
score stuff out on score paper and go into the session,
lay down the charts and it had to be right.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
You know.

Speaker 8 (25:24):
There was no you know, because payroll runs when you
have a lot of people on the floor.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
There were union dates, so it was cool. It was
a lot of fun. I wouldn't have made it in
the seventies, man it you know, that.

Speaker 8 (25:37):
Was premitty, so things were way way different then. So anyway,
I wanted to be Bobby Broom or somebody you know,
great jazz guitar player.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Was just okay.

Speaker 8 (25:50):
Now we're going to get calls people say he was terrible.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
He wasn't just okay, And like, did you come close
to a a career in being like I was? I
was a journeyman.

Speaker 7 (26:07):
No, no, no, no, no, no no no.

Speaker 8 (26:09):
I was playing weddings in Mezvas, wedding at Best. I
haven't got guys, I haven't gotten to the part about
the Mafia weddings in Flatbush for for seventy five dollars.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
But I'll get there.

Speaker 8 (26:27):
And in nineteen eighty two, you know, I had a
nice life there. My cash flow is okay because of
the scoring work. But I knew I had to have
moved to LA or New York. So all my friends
were here, had some people in some friends in advertising
and corporate communications.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
So came back started you really want to hear this?

Speaker 8 (26:47):
Yes, yeah, okay, already, No, I'm not that's a problem.
I came back to New York, took every gig playing
I could. I got really good at sixteenth note octaves
because I played on a lot of bad dance records.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Check records. Oh man, I don't remember. I really don't.

Speaker 7 (27:07):
That's the twenty years stad.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
I don't remember. They weren't Union. I have no idea.
You know, I got paid in cash. I left.

Speaker 8 (27:15):
And was doing every kind of weird club date gig
I could, like I said, mafia weddings out in Flatbush,
taking the subway home in a tuxedo with my guitar
and my amp at two point thirty in the morning
from the junction.

Speaker 7 (27:28):
You guys know what.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
This was late eighties. It got stolen what I was
waiting for the no no, no, no no.

Speaker 8 (27:37):
But I was producing stuff overnight at Calliope because it
was the cheapest hours, and I was doing industrials for
my friends, you know, big corporate communications shows, and the
money was great and you got to do really big productions,
and stuff just started getting into jingles. And I was
working overnight at Calliope, and Chris, you remember Chris Irwin,

(28:00):
the guy who wanted to another name, fell asleep at
the console. So I finished up and he woke up.
He said, Oh, Bob Colter, the guy who engineered for
me all the time, is going away for two weeks.
Would you like to fill in and I was like.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah, I know how to do that.

Speaker 8 (28:19):
I knew how to press record on the tape ma sheet.
You know, I'd always asked a lot of questions. I
was fascinated by engineering. So this was about eighty five
and it was Calliope.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
So you know what happened there.

Speaker 8 (28:31):
At the same time that I got a following as
an engineer there, I got real successful doing jingles, so
I was trying to do You remember, I was trying
to do jingles during the day and records at night,
and it was killing me. And I got a lot
of good stuff I was doing, like the postal service,
chef boarder d you know, a lot of BMW Mercedes.

(28:52):
They didn't give me a car. And then so about
I think it was ninety one ninety two, I said,
you know, I was dying and I just realized that
I had to give one up. So I said, okay,
I got to make as much money in the record
business as I was doing in jingles, which is great
money when when you get finals.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Really oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The writing fees are decent.

Speaker 8 (29:17):
Plus they're all Union days, so you know, you pa,
you know, kids, stuff runs for years. I did a
thing for chef boyd d sharks, you know, little pasta
shaped like sharks. That ship ran for like three or
four years, so I was getting checks that whole time.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
It was great. Can I ask my producer, are we
allowed to play that song?

Speaker 8 (29:33):
No?

Speaker 7 (29:35):
No, no, we can sing it?

Speaker 1 (29:39):
No.

Speaker 8 (29:39):
In fact, I think you're going But it was, you know,
it was cool. We had to do everything. I did
the music, I did the engineering, I did a lot
of the playing, and it was just about when they
expected the music houses to do sound design as well,
so I had to make the sound of the shark.
It was animated of the shark fin cutting back and
forth through the water. So this was the really early

(30:03):
days of sampling, and samplers didn't have a lot of memory,
so I think I did. I got a circular saw,
ripped a piece of bellcrow and did a zipper like
a zip, and then put them all together and I thought,
you know, that was really cool, man. It really sounds
like the shark is cutting up the water. And the
agency says, that's much too scary.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
We can't use that. So anyway, so.

Speaker 8 (30:29):
By the early nineties I was just doing records. I
was just engineering and then producing records.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
So that's about what So you're saying that your side hustle,
you're you're you know, make some engineers engineer like that
was just an afterthought to you, but you're like changing lives. Yeah,
but you know, shit works funny, man, But I don't
think you realized you were changing lives as you were

(30:56):
doing it.

Speaker 8 (30:57):
You know what, man, I wasn't changing lives. The artist
working with were changing lives. I was helping them do
their thing. I really believe in that. But I read
you know, that's important to me honestly, as a as
an engineer or producer. It's really important because it is
all about the artist, and people lose sight of that,
especially engineers, you know, guys who get in and say,
oh no, no, no, that wasn't right.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
We have to set that up again.

Speaker 7 (31:19):
I used to do that.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Oh you you were that sort of stupid yeah yeah.

Speaker 8 (31:27):
And then I really, you know, it's really about the artists,
the artist when you're making a record. You know this, man,
you got to just go there with the artists because
that's what makes them special. And if they don't have
anything the special to say, you shouldn't be there.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
But it seems to me that a lot of us
and a lot of people I meet, especially in the
music industry, they they wind up in their glory period
kind of by accident and it's never by design. Like
I never like people people stop me all the time like,
oh my god, like you're there, apparent to Doc Severson,

(32:02):
I never like you've all people know that. I never
was like, you know, Bob, I really want to be
late night. He had good hot chops. Man. No, No,
I love Doc.

Speaker 8 (32:11):
I played with him, funny ties.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
With him.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
Yeah, he sat in DOCA in Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah, he got down with this. But I'm just saying that,
you know, I kind of this wasn't planned at all,
and it was never by design. And to hear you
say it like engineering was just like it was another gig.
But in hindsight, you do recognize that it was historically

(32:40):
important that you did this stuff right.

Speaker 8 (32:42):
You know, did you guys see Zella, the Woody Ellen
movie where he kind of shows up in all these historical.

Speaker 12 (32:47):
Yes, yes, which jew are you asking because this quarter
says yeah, yeah, so you know, I was just there.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's a weird car.

Speaker 7 (32:59):
That was a car.

Speaker 8 (33:00):
Yeah, that's you know, that's one of my favorite records.
Oh my god, wa wah Watson, that's everything is him
on that Okay, but you know, things happened in strange words. Man,
I see well, and I am passionate about what I do.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
You know, I'm waving my head up and down.

Speaker 7 (33:22):
But I have a quo.

Speaker 6 (33:24):
I'm not sure if I missed. Why Why did you
choose making records over advertising? Advertisements?

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Off? More much cooler.

Speaker 8 (33:30):
That's what I wanted to do since I was a kid.
You know, I used to sit in my room and
early on when headphones first came around, like in sixty
four or I got a headphone in sixty four, I
used to sit and listen to these records and I
look on the back of the records and I said
producer and they called mixers remixers at that point, and uh,
you know, I said, I had no idea what it was,

(33:52):
but I said, oh.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
That looks really cool because I really like this record.
So that's that's where I got started.

Speaker 6 (33:59):
Really, I had almost this exact similar situation. I was interning.
When I first started, I was interning at JSM. It
was a jingle house, huge, yeah, like and it was
beautiful and you've been in there, mm hmm, Like the
facilities were great, everything. Everybody dressed nice and smelled good
and made a lot of money. And I was also
interning at Electricallyity at the same exact time to totally.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
You know, there must have been killing you man.

Speaker 6 (34:24):
Well not really, I mean it was.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
It was more.

Speaker 6 (34:27):
Eventually they both wanted to hire me. I had to
literally decide the same decision like advertising or Jingles versus
rock and roll essentially, and you know, the he chose.
I was like, it's it's sort of a When I
was doing the pros and cons of it, you know,
everything said Jingles. You know, of course hours, the money.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
The money, the money, the money, yea, and all the
opportunity to write as well.

Speaker 6 (34:51):
Yeah yeah, But then you know, I just chose Electrically
because I wanted to make records.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
It's all the same stuff.

Speaker 8 (34:58):
The problem with doing after a while it is, i mean,
everybody thinks, oh, must really rob your soul. And I
used to say, fuck, you know, I'm a professional. I
just do this shit, and I'm really crazy about it.
When I'm doing it, I love it. I'd put two
hundred percent into it. But after a while I realized
it did start to rob My soul, because you just
put all this stuff out there and people send it
back and say, oh, no it's too green, you know,

(35:20):
come on, or we really need it by Thursday afternoon.
We got to have it by Thursday afternoon. It's really important.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
So you stay up all night.

Speaker 8 (35:28):
Man, you're really dying for it. So you wait till Monday,
just to be cool, and you call them me and say, hey, Bill,
did everything work on okay with the track? Oh, it's
on my desk here somewhere. Let me get to it
and I'll call you back. Oh all the time, man,
you know that.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, that happens to us right even now as we speak, Bob,
I have to say that you're as you say. The
token white Guy stick was always like one of my
favorite moments whenever you would do these little skits with
Dayla and Tribe and everything. First of all, I mean,

(36:04):
would they would you volunteer these services? And they just
say go in the studio, go in.

Speaker 8 (36:09):
The think the token white guy was me. I must
have been out of my mind. You know, everybody was
doing bad stuff back then. I think that they did
a whole bunch of fake radio ideas or something like that.
So I just said, oh, let me go in, let
me go in and do it, never thinking that it
would really see the light of day.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
When you were making that stuff, you know, I guess
like a record like Balloon and just even the Tribe stuff.
Did you have any idea of where it would go?
I read an interview This was a couple of days
ago on Waxweatics. They interviewed Cecil and Margleff. They were
all the Stevie's stuff and everything, and they were talking
about how after they did the Stevie stuff they got

(36:49):
hired to do Osley Brothers and it was just you know,
regular gig or whatever. And he said they were just
doing just doing what they did, and they didn't think anything.
They had no idea the songs we get plate forty
years later. All right, did you have moments?

Speaker 1 (37:03):
No?

Speaker 7 (37:03):
No, no, no.

Speaker 8 (37:04):
I think most normal people when they're working on a record,
you love what's in front of you. It's I don't
take this the wrong way. That's why you get paid with.
What I mean is that's why you're there, whether you're
the artist or engineer or mixing. It's the coolest thing
in the world for the time that you're working on it.
It has to be you gotta love it to death.

(37:26):
So number one, that's the prime directive. Like Star Trek
and No. I get asked that a lot people say,
did you know you were making a classic? It's like, no,
we were having fun, trying to finish.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Here's the thing, though, I think in order for you
to produce the results that you did produce, I feel
as though one has to submit to I guess the
ongoing battle or conflict with a lot of people, especially

(38:01):
that early.

Speaker 8 (38:01):
In the game between eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety ninety
one was actually admitting that hip hop was an art
form and not just a fat, an extra check in
that sort of thing. You know, man, it took the
record business. When the record business really got on board
was when they said, holy shit, there's a lot of
money in this. I mean, you know, come on, I'm

(38:22):
not justing anybody. That's just the way, That's exactly. And
my thing was, I like to make great music with
great people. I don't care what form that takes. I
like big band, you know, there's a lot of things
I like. I make jazz records, and I really liked
the people I was working with, so.

Speaker 7 (38:40):
There was.

Speaker 8 (38:42):
I don't know if you ran into this, but there
was some pushback in the engineering in the studio community
in New York because until hip hop came along, the
studios were fairly integrated, but it was a jazz scene,
and because hip hop was a completely new cultural thing
coming up in the streets within a different way of talking,
different way of dressing, different way of walking, different way

(39:04):
of making music, that even people who were used to
working in integrated situations in the studio. The studio establishment
back then and still is to a certain degree of
white male boys club.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
I mean, that's just the people that drift into it,
not by design, but.

Speaker 8 (39:21):
So there were a lot of people who just sort
of saw a bunch of eighteen year old kids coming
in the door with dress like they'd never seen people
dressed before, and having fun because they're eighteen year old kids,
and they got freaked. I think, that's what I think.
And I was like, hey, guys, what do you want
to do? Because I was learning at the same time,
so it was like, Wow, this is really fascinating.

Speaker 7 (39:43):
I like this.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, Well, since you brought it up, is there a
client that you had to say no to that you
kind of regret? That. Damn. Maybe I should have did
that for historical purpose.

Speaker 8 (39:54):
Oh man, you have no idea the stuff I've had
to turn down. And because I'm I was like really busy.
It wasn't because I like, I don't like what can
I really talk? I usually don't like to talk about
that kind of stuff. Yeah, oh yeah, Prince. Wait, okay,
this is a good one.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Guys.

Speaker 8 (40:16):
So, so I got married in ninety four, and you know,
I was working all the time, and I was burned out.
That's one of the reasons that Richard got mad at
me at a certain point because I was so burned out.
I'd had a vacation plan for like months and months,
a lot of money into a European vacation and I said, no,
I'm going on vacation.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Richard flipped.

Speaker 8 (40:35):
But that's okay, that's Richard. And so I was really
burned out. I was working like ninety hour weeks a lot.
I had one Friday night home with my new wife
and we cooked dinner. I love to cook. I cooked dinner.
I had a bottle keyantie. I'm in my robe nine
on a Friday night. I had to do it, I'm saying, And.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, yeah, that was afterwards, Man, that's what we're here for,
all right. Let it.

Speaker 7 (41:10):
No work.

Speaker 8 (41:15):
So I'm home. I'm down for the count after some wine,
probably smoked, you know. So the phone rings and it's battery.
And I worked a lot with and I still do
work a lot with Michelle and Deochella, who's a lovely
person and a dear friend. And the phone rings and Bob,
this is battery. The studio, I said, yeah, they go listen.

(41:35):
Prince is coming in with Michelle tonight and they want
you to do the session. So I was like, I
was so excited, and I kind of called myself and
I said, let me call you back, and I hung up,
and I was like, you know, I'm a little loaded.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
I'm really fucking tired.

Speaker 7 (41:54):
I just got out of the shower.

Speaker 8 (41:55):
Do I want to go in and work all night
with some guy that won't talk directly to me? You know,
it wasn't guys, It wasn't that literal. I was burned out.
It could have been anybody. It could have been the Beatles,
and I would have said the same thing. So I said, no, Wow, yeah, yeah, do.

Speaker 7 (42:10):
You know what day that I know what day that
that that session took place?

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Are you sure?

Speaker 8 (42:14):
Yeah, Okay, here it comes come out?

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Said it up? Literally it was it was almost literally
twenty years ago today today.

Speaker 7 (42:21):
How do you know?

Speaker 1 (42:21):
It was July third, nineteen ninety six. I looked at
up on what song was it? What's email from the
Emancipation album?

Speaker 7 (42:27):
Ah?

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Oh she was supposed to be on that. Yeah, they
recorded an instrumental. They recorded an instrumental that night. Uh,
like I think he went back and re re recorded.
Of course he did.

Speaker 7 (42:37):
Yeah, they did that.

Speaker 8 (42:40):
So that's one.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Uh, there's some others I can wait, can we at
this moment? Prince Dork he no music door.

Speaker 7 (42:48):
This is why each the guy's calmed down.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Each person in this room has has a weird super
uh kind of ability to recall stuff like that. Anyway,
So Prince Yeah.

Speaker 8 (43:02):
And there's another one. I'm not gonna I can't name
names because it's bad. There's the people are still around.
A really huge star of the last fifteen years, I
mean really really huge and uh the A and R
person who I'd known for a long time, who's real
big geese now really big cheese, called me and said,

(43:24):
you know, we have blah blah blah, we want you
to mix the first record, and I listened to it
and I called him back and I said blank, because
I'm not gonna say his name was, No, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Going to say it.

Speaker 8 (43:40):
Yeah right, well this record me. So I said, you know,
do you really think this record's ready? Because it didn't
sound ready to me. It sounded like you know, demos
with the drum machine and stuff, and it was like huge, huge,

(44:01):
huge career that goes on to these days this day
and you know that.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
I mean, can I talk about an active career? Oh, extremely,
top of the heap, top of the heap, talking about
what didn't sound what constitutes because I believe.

Speaker 8 (44:18):
Your feeling towards Brown Sugar as well. When you heard
the demos, Oh no, no, these demos were killing. We
chased the demos on that we chased. We chased the
demos on that we chased the demos on Michelle's first record.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
They were ferocious.

Speaker 8 (44:31):
Chased the demos on Erica's record, but it didn't quite
sound like a record, you know, And I think that
at that point. You know now, because there's certain big
figures I'm not going to name names. You know, kind
of scratchy and thin and small sounding is kind of
okay again, but at that point people I didn't think
people wanted that, you know, so so yeah, anyway, there's a.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Bunch of stuff.

Speaker 8 (44:57):
You know. I had to turn down that thing recently
because of school, and it really the H word. It
hurt me more than anything I've actually had to say
no to.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
But I teach it. I want you now.

Speaker 8 (45:08):
So it turns out that your crunch week was the
first week of school, and uh, the children they signed
me first.

Speaker 7 (45:17):
You know, I mean, we could talk about it.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
I so wanted to do that. I begged Bob to
kind of take the load off Tim Latham because Tim
was also uh engineered the Hamilton record, and Bob and
Tim worked on I mean, they were in my mind,
you guys were like great tag team partners. Fricking crack. Yeah,
you guys did try together in the roots together.

Speaker 8 (45:40):
It was a Jewish Irish comedy to him. Yeah, and
Tim is a funny guy.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
He is.

Speaker 7 (45:45):
Yes, I took over the jew part of that, I think, Bob.
All right, man, thank you for represent.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
All right, So let's slide Let's slide it back to
the beginning because I know that Q Tip in his
excitement over the ghostets of record. That was a moment
for him, and I have to admit, like, those are
four nineteen eighty six. Those were some loud ass drums,

(46:13):
which I have a problem. What's that problem is that? Man?

Speaker 8 (46:19):
You know, I mixed stuff and then I listened to
it two weeks later when it's too late to change,
and I'm.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Like, oh my god, what did I do?

Speaker 8 (46:27):
And I just somehow I hear the drums being real
loud your first record. Man, When I listened to it
after it came out, I said, oh my.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
God, I really fucked this up. I can't believe I
did that.

Speaker 7 (46:37):
No, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
I mean, no, drum I listen.

Speaker 8 (46:44):
If I listened like, if I listened like a listener,
it's like, wow, that's really rocking. But if I listened
like a mixer, I'm like, what did you do?

Speaker 7 (46:51):
See?

Speaker 1 (46:52):
But that's what?

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, that was the best I remember hearing thistatic and
like und like nothing else that will.

Speaker 8 (47:00):
Guys and still do exactly the same thing as you should,
And two weeks after I still say, oh my god,
what did I do? But yeah, Jewish exactly.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
But the thing is is that, especially with before we
started working with you on the organics records like whenever
I would do these rough mixes and I would have
the drums up ungodly loud, you know, band members and
everybody just think like, oh, you're ego Mania. You just
want to hear drums loud and turn everything else down.
And so I kind of felt relieved that you were

(47:30):
enforcing and saw a world in which the music could
be just as loud as you know, the vocals. There
was one time when Prince actually came to a session
that was working on with Common and he said, Yo,
turn all the music down and just turn the vocals up,
like in his world. And I guess modern pop, the

(47:52):
voice has to be the loudest thing in the forefront,
and the music's the kind of the afterthought.

Speaker 8 (47:58):
The voice is the center of the record. Everything you
do on a record should be there to support the vocal.
But still you can have the drums loud and if
you know no, I'm serious, if you know what you're doing,
you can make room for everything at the same time.
So yeah, I mean it just it's one of those things.
David Gampson, who's a producer and writer out in la
is a real good friend of mine and we have

(48:18):
this thing because we've done a bunch of records together
that once you put the drums up to a certain level,
even if they're too loud, if you pull them down,
everything kind of falls apart and it gets really limbed,
so you got to put.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Them back up again. You're right about that, Yeah, you're
still right. So I mean, not like it was a
scientific thing, but he said it changed his life. And
basically like this guy has to engineer our stuff. So
I mean, what were the can you go into the
early days of working with tribe and.

Speaker 8 (48:50):
You know, you have to remember that technology was really
primitive then, and.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Wait before you start, and did you track these records
or did you try Did you track an engineer or
did you just engineer? No? Both both.

Speaker 8 (49:03):
I tracked him, mixed a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Now, the stories I hear from most engineers that I
that I ask these questions, they often say, like, you know,
maybe like Eric Sadler, Public Enemy. They would always praise
him for going past page six in the Sampler's Manual,
whereas everyone just be like, how do you turn it on?
How you sample it? Or just give it to the

(49:25):
side engineer and he'll loop everything up for you, Like.

Speaker 8 (49:29):
Well that was that was Actually that's really interesting because
back in those days, the quickest.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Way to move ahead was if you really had you
been MIDI shit together.

Speaker 8 (49:36):
For those people who don't know, MIDI is the computer
languages that computers and synthesizers you used to speak to
each other, and no one it was a wild West.
Number one, shit didn't work the way it was supposed to.
Number two, nobody knew how to use the stuff. So
if you knew how to use the stuff, especially assistance,
you could move up really quickly.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
The SBX eighty yeah, I mean, oh my god, what
a nightmare a sink box.

Speaker 8 (50:00):
So yeah, and I you know, I've always been sort
of a tech geek. I really am fascinated looking under
the hood on stuff. So it helped, you know, problems.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Would they walk in like these records, like all right,
Bob loop this up?

Speaker 8 (50:11):
Yeah yeah, And but you know, both Tip and Ali
early on sort of started figuring it out, and the
large professor hip Tip to the SP twelve I'll leave
was one of the first person people I know to
carry around a little uh mac, you know, the all
in one things with the little tiny screen.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (50:28):
And he used op code and so they would come
in after a while, they would come in pretty prepared.
Sometimes I would take this stuff in the other room
in logic, the room in the back, yeah, and kind
of just slip it around a little bit and hopefully
not take the funk out of it. But in the
beginning it was so primitive. I mean, samplers didn't have

(50:50):
a lot of sampling time. So if you had twenty
four track on tape, and you had one track two
tracks taken up by the sink tone and the guide
band guard band, if you wanted to lay down like
a complete sort of two bar phrase, you had to
do it in really tiny little pieces deck. Okay, let's
take the next pass. So you listen to and you

(51:12):
record deck and you put them together. What Yeah, I'm serious, man,
you'd had to You had to do the beat, little
tiny pieces at a time, you know, technology a recent
track record. You had to no, no early on okay early?

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Yeah. Did you do any hip hop before Stetsosnic.

Speaker 8 (51:33):
Maybe at Calliope, I don't know, I don't know, maybe okay, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
So I would hear of these primitive sampling techniques, especially
like with the deaf sand people at Chunk King, where
they would what's the process where you take the tape
and get a pencil and you loop? Yeah, you make
a tape loop. Can you describe that process?

Speaker 8 (51:56):
Because what you do is record your two bars that
you like, don't boom, don't go, and you cut it
and you you splice it together and make a tape loop. Now,
obviously that loop's going to be at about twelve feet long,
much too big to fit on the tape machine. So
you stand back with pencils emulating tape guides and you
hold them so you have the proper tension on it.

(52:17):
And you're standing like twelve or fifteen feet away from
the machine with like two pencils that are acting like
rollers or tape guides. And yeah, yeah, it was primitive, man,
But you know that was sort of You had people
before that. You had eight a Way drum machines like Stets.
So Sonic was the end. And I'm not a hip
hop historian, but I just know the stuff I've worked on,

(52:37):
But Stet's was the end of the eight away. You
either had that or you had amazing DJs cutting back
and forth between two records and going for four minutes
in perfect tempo the first time I saw that man completely.
I said, you want to do what? I said, okay,
well I'll set it up, and I'm like, they're never gonna.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Be able to do this, and they did it perfectly.

Speaker 8 (53:00):
God, yeah, let's kill it.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Let's kill her.

Speaker 8 (53:03):
So yeah, at first, when sampling happened right after that
first wave of hip hop, when we first started hearing
samples on records, the sampling time was like a second
and a half maybe on the sp one or the twelve. No,
the Achai six twelve was actually the first one we used,
and it had these little quick discs of proprietary sort

(53:23):
of mini floppy format that you saved the stuff on.
I think it had seven to nine tenths of a
second of sampling, so you basically you'd lay down the
kick drum by itself, then you'd lay down the snare.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Drum by itself.

Speaker 8 (53:36):
Chris at Calliope used to use an electro Harmonics one
shot and when you unplugged it, that was gone. Forever
you would sample something, you got it on the tape.
There was no way of saying saving it. You unplugged
it and you just did something else.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Yeah, so you're sick. Okay, so you're saying, now, when
we did Melon, my man, the first time we worked
together and we engineered at Mello, my man says, Took,
I know that we started at twelve in the afternoon,
and you were very disciplined. You were out of there
like seven seven pm. So no, maybe you start at

(54:11):
ten in the morning.

Speaker 8 (54:11):
I probably had another session, man, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
No, no, it was Christmas. It was Christmas Eve, but
like home getting his robe.

Speaker 7 (54:17):
But I do, but.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
I do remember that. Okay. So I was told by
other people that yeah, you know, you can mix two
songs in a day. So it's like, wow, we're mixing
one song a day.

Speaker 8 (54:35):
And he's very meticulous on you know, each track, Like
each track he spends a good twenty to maybe forty
five minutes. Like yeah, and that's so wrong.

Speaker 7 (54:47):
I don't do that anymore.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
But go ahead, well, because you know, we have technology
now that speeds up the process, like we did phrenology.

Speaker 8 (54:53):
Record time, I know what I'm doing. Was Oh yeah, no,
I'm serious, man.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
I was like, okay, really got to get this right.
So you're Jedi mind trigging me.

Speaker 8 (55:02):
Yeah, okay, now see I thought you're just a mad
genius that no I'm believe a microwave mixing, and you
wanted to slate it was I was really into it.
I work in concentric circles now. I don't like to
get bogged down on any one thing. I'll go through
everything on a real cursory level and then go back
and spend a little more time. But I don't work
in a linear fashion. Ward, the kick drums got to

(55:23):
be perfect, the snare drums got to be perfect because
you lose the context.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
You know that. What yeah, okay, well it sound a
little revisionous to me because.

Speaker 8 (55:31):
No concentric circles.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Man, you were the most disciplined engineer I've ever known.
I was out of my mind. Man, what can I say? Okay, well,
I think you're doing false honesty. I don't think the
CD baby. My whole point was that if you were
tracking on primitive stuff and it had to sound perfect,
then that took a lot of time.

Speaker 8 (55:52):
So you say, nah, now you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
Man.

Speaker 8 (55:54):
You know, when you set up a session, my thing
I tell my students you get it sounding pretty good
really fast, you know, because the energy of the people
sitting on the floor is the most important thing.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
This is what I want to know the special things
about the Native Tongue Records, the Tribe, the Daylight, Jungle Brothers.
Did you do okay?

Speaker 8 (56:20):
You did this straight up the jungle before some of
the early stuff, and then one really bad one.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (56:26):
I just want to say he took Alan smithe or
one of the last you were Robert Powers, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Oh wow, he took he took Alan Smithy. Uh. JB's
with them. You know something, though, I went back to
that record, it wasn't as bad as it maybe seventeen
eighteen years later and it was. It was kind of

(56:53):
rezid ish like it was. It could have worked in
the right year.

Speaker 8 (56:58):
I just don't it could have been an okay record
in the right year, because apparently.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
That was the one that that wasn't even the record
they wanted to put out. Apparently it was crazy. But
I feel like you put the record out that you
want to put out.

Speaker 8 (57:11):
It's like, uh yeah, if you're if you're big cheese,
you know the other than that, the record company says, no,
that's not good enough.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
We don't hear any So the record company just took
the record and said this is what it is. I
don't know exactly what happened on that. Yeah, I mean
they did remixes to what they did videos, so I
didn't see any committed to her. Yeah, and you made
the record, yeah that she ain't make it. So yeah,
that's that's going to be an interesting I have a
lot of questions about Mike. He actually lived not too
far from me though.

Speaker 8 (57:42):
Mike's a good guy.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
Both good guys. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (57:44):
I talked to Africa once every ten or twelve years.
It seems like somehow, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Well, the one thing that people rarely mentioned about these
records is how I mean they're really three dimensional. And
you know, because hip hop is so full of caricatures,
you rarely get to see the flesh and blood of people.

(58:12):
And I felt with the skits that were on these records,
it kind of just armed the listener because they really
showed that these guys had goofy sense of humor. But
I always wanted to know because it always sounded so
spontaneous and so fun and so of the moment. I mean,

(58:32):
where they're just live mics everywhere and were tapes and
cassettes constantly running in case an idea came.

Speaker 8 (58:39):
Up and no, but there were mics open because we
were doing rhymes and stuff, and you know, somebody says,
I want to get on the mic your press record.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
You know, it just always felt like a reality show,
where like, you know, that's good artists at work. Serious seriously,
So how do you, I guess as a well, two questions.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
One, where does the line? Where's the line for you
between producer and engineer.

Speaker 8 (59:07):
If I'm engineering, I'm just there to make it sound
really good and help the momentum of the session move forward.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
That's the line.

Speaker 8 (59:14):
I don't offer artistic ideas, That's not why I'm there.
And then when you're producing, it's you know, man, it's producing.
Every artist is different. You know, some artists, some artists
who you guys know me for working with you try
to set the table right and get the fuck out

(59:36):
of the way and let them do their thing because
they're so incredibly dope, and you try to corral it
a little bit so it sounds like a record. And
then other people, you know, you gotta build the car
from the wheels up. You know, it's just always different.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
So with the corraling, because that was my that was
as my next question. I mean, a regular Dayla Sola
did that I mean, I love, I mean a lot
of people love.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
It's my favorite record. That's my favorite Daylight record too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
But like something like Johnny's Dead, which is fucking hilarious,
you know what I mean, But something like that could
never happened on a hip hop LP, now you know
what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
So like, how do you needs to come back?

Speaker 8 (01:00:14):
But you know that was Paul and Pass okay and
Dave also, that was them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
But I'm saying, like how the moments like that get
captured where it's not like, okay, guys recording and roll
in the same way that.

Speaker 8 (01:00:29):
When you do a take, it doesn't sound like you're
playing to a clip. You know, it's just what they do, man,
So just happened to be Yeah. Also, that was a
much more innocent time, which is why people got away
with those skits, is because the whole gun thing, the
whole violence thing, hadn't really gotten big yet. It was
a much more innocent time. People were just out of

(01:00:51):
high school.

Speaker 7 (01:00:51):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
You also worked. The unique thing about your work is
that you work with groups. I mean, now we're in
a system in which, you know, the solo artist is
celebrated can only be one.

Speaker 7 (01:01:05):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
And I thought about that, man, that's right? So I
know hip hop groups anymore barely, So how did you right?

Speaker 7 (01:01:20):
Right? Singers?

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
I mean there's hardly any his personalities, but.

Speaker 6 (01:01:24):
How Klezmer music has no groups now either.

Speaker 8 (01:01:28):
But all that said, Earth Winding, Fire Lips, that's all
I can say.

Speaker 7 (01:01:36):
No, how how uh? How these?

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
I mean who would know where their place was and
who would be the alpha and who would well you
know that, and I'm certain that you've had conflicts of
especially when you're a group and there's multiple.

Speaker 8 (01:01:53):
Producers, and well that's when I say, you know, does
someone sneak up to you and say, yo, turn that?

Speaker 7 (01:02:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
I can't do that, man. I gotta be honest with everybody,
So I don't do that. So have you had situations
where someone comes up to you and is like, yo.

Speaker 8 (01:02:11):
Man, I'd say, we need to talk about this with
everybody and I haven't?

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Or does it come with you from you first? And
sort of an anonymous like no, Well, if it needs
you have to play doctor Phil.

Speaker 8 (01:02:25):
You've seen me in the sessions, you know, sometimes stop
and say, guys, listen, you know we were talking about
maybe turning the high hat.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Up on this part or whatever or losing it ride
in there. What do you guys think?

Speaker 8 (01:02:34):
And then I stand back and get out of the way.
You know, that's not That's not what I'm there for.
I just try to keep things moving forward.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:02:45):
It comes from paying for studio time myself and not
having enough money. You know, you learn to keep things
moving forward.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
In the studio.

Speaker 8 (01:02:52):
In retrospect, the forward motion of a session is like everything,
It's ninety percent of whether stuff comes out of good
or not is the momentum of the session.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
I think, okay, so the low end theory which I'm
gonna get something out of this. I'm gonna get some
blood out of the stone, dammit. I mean what was
the typical session, like like when songs take a day
or like for me, it's like, okay, we jam on something,
jam something, Oh, here's an idea, and then we track

(01:03:24):
it Like I mean, how are records made back then?
Like would they come in pre production and say this
is what I want to do?

Speaker 8 (01:03:31):
By then, Tip and Only we're doing programming on their own.
So Tip Pat and SP twelve and Ali had his
computer and S nine hundred, so they would come in
with stuff. The technology still wasn't that great that we
didn't have to mess with it just a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
You couldn't slip tracks.

Speaker 8 (01:03:49):
At that point, you know, move tracks back and forth
in time. So if you sampled something and it wasn't
quite the feel you wanted, you had to do a
few tricks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
To get that to happen. You taught me that sometimes
you put it through a delay. Well at the time thing.

Speaker 8 (01:04:04):
You know, now in a computer you can say to
the snare, I want the snare to be you know,
thirty milliseconds back or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Back then we used to fake it.

Speaker 8 (01:04:13):
And again this was Chris Irwin who was brilliant. You
would synchronize to Simpty on the tape to a timecode.

Speaker 6 (01:04:20):
Can I guess the lynxes?

Speaker 11 (01:04:22):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
Almost, but you'd you'd synchronize.

Speaker 8 (01:04:25):
No, you'd synchronize the SP twelve to simptly because the
SP twelve was one of the first things to read
it and spit out many clock and you'd feed the
Simpty through a fifty millisecond delay, so everything that got
printed on the record, if it was printed at zero,
was actually fifty milliseconds behind the Simpty. And then if
you were printing, say a snare, and you say I want.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
To pull this up in the field.

Speaker 8 (01:04:49):
You just lower the delay time on the delay and
the snare would move a little.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Bit forward in the field. But yeah, there me a
few times.

Speaker 8 (01:04:56):
Yeah, very soon thereafter you could slip could slip traps
in a computer. You know. That's everything now, that's that's yeah,
I see move you know for people who don't know,
move traps backward and forward in time. So it's funkier.

Speaker 7 (01:05:10):
When did when did it?

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
When did it turn? Like? When did the technology? Early nineties?

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
I think, Yeah, do you remember the first record that
you did completely in the box?

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Man?

Speaker 8 (01:05:23):
See, because I use microphones, I can't you know, get
with that in the box. And I still mix even
though I mostly in the box. I still have a
two bus chain. The stereo mix comes out through some
really nice stuff. But the technology is there. I can
mix in all in the box and it'll be fine.
The technology is absolutely there now, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Yeah, you just got to use it. So uh, would
you say that brown Sugar was your first foray into
First of all, when you were a prochanity welcome to
was when you were approached. I was assuming that Kadar

(01:06:09):
came to you to do Brown Sugar Did he just
want you to engineer it first? No? No, did you
say I want to produce this? You know, I went
to the truth.

Speaker 8 (01:06:17):
I don't remember. I don't remember, but uh yeah, I
really don't remember. But as you know, with D you
played you the music firston Yeah, of course, moving stuff
along is half the battle. I still have the four
track assats his demos.

Speaker 6 (01:06:33):
That's what I was gonna ask. Do you don't Do
you have those the demos from Brown Sugar?

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
I think Bill does.

Speaker 8 (01:06:39):
I had a fire and most of the stuff got destroyed,
but I may still have those.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
I'm not sure you had a fire. Yeah, my home,
my home in New York was destroyed by a fire
about six years ago.

Speaker 8 (01:06:49):
Oh yeah, listen, No, it's good. If it had been
my studio with all my gear, I would have jumped
off the roof. But the worst thing that happened, I mean,
it was bad. It was a couple of years fighting
with the insurance company, but no one was hurt. And
I lost a sixty five Telly Sunburst with white binding, one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Of the original ones.

Speaker 7 (01:07:08):
But then you use that on IM I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
I used to use it a lot. Yeah, that's your
IMIB guitar.

Speaker 8 (01:07:14):
Yeah, so you know, Dia is one of those artists,
and I was learning as I went along. But as
you know, Dia is an artist where you got to
let him do his thing because that's where the good
stuff happens.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
It's getting him to do his thing. You said it,
I didn't. Well, I mean compared to the other two records.
I mean, you made Brown Sugar record time you started
what ninety three?

Speaker 8 (01:07:39):
Yeah, but I also made half that record, and I just, oh,
you know how to say this? I mean, the world
knows it's not You're in a unique situation. I do
love d the same way you do, but I just
couldn't wait around anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
And I also know that he wanted to do it himself.

Speaker 8 (01:07:56):
You know, so, so explain chasing the demo for those
chasing the demo is when someone makes demonstration recording of
the song, which is not a full on version of
the song because they don't have the resources.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
But it's just an outline for the song.

Speaker 8 (01:08:11):
But when the demo is like really incredibly cool, you
end up making the real thing. But then it's too
good and it doesn't sounds cool for a demo, but
the demo itself and then people say, well, why don't
you just use the demo for a record, because it's
too messed up.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
It's just you can't quite do it.

Speaker 8 (01:08:28):
But actually, with him and with Michelle on her first record,
I would pull stuff off the demos.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
If there were multi tracks and there were parts that
were really, really cool, I pulled them off the demos.
How would you line them up? It was hard, It
was really hard. Wait, by this point you had pro
tools though, right.

Speaker 8 (01:08:43):
I had a rolling DMAD and the protols sounded horrible
at the beginning, and it really didn't work. I had
a rollin hard disrecorder. There was also enough sampling time.
I could fly shit in, you know, from one tape
machine to another and kind of keep punching in and
get it right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
You know, just got to work. Yeah, I'll say that
Dreaming Eyes of Mine definitely. I remember calling you when
it came out and asking, like I thought there was
just a discrepancy glitch in the drum programming.

Speaker 8 (01:09:16):
That's so funny, you say that, man, because because everything
you know, listen, musicians talk about people's feel and you know,
to get things to sit comfortably, you always want to
keep the back beat sort of behind the beat, and
you want your rhymes to be behind the beat, and
jazz playing is behind the beat.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
D is in last week.

Speaker 8 (01:09:36):
You know, he's so behind the beat's two weeks ago.
So it's funny. When I was flying the vocals with
my rolling hard disc recorder, you do it by a
temple map, so it's you know, it's going to be
correct when you put it in the second verse, it's
going to be in exactly the same place it was
in the first verse. And it was his background vocals
were so back in that I was sure that the

(01:09:58):
gear was fucking up because they were so behind the
beating and stuff. You know, that's me on guitar in
that song too.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
When you're approached. Let's say, like for Michelle's record, which
wasn't a out of the box platinum album, but in
an artistic achievement, that's my favorite Michelle album. Yeah, well
I know, well yeah, both of them. Yeah like that
one and then I like Bitter too, bit it was

(01:10:27):
really dope. But do you take when you take these
projects on how many of her albums you did?

Speaker 8 (01:10:31):
The first three, I've mixed almost everything. I produced two
or three cuts on the first one, and then mixed
a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
David Gampson did.

Speaker 8 (01:10:39):
Most of that stuff, and Michelle did it. You know,
there's not a lot of people I know a lot
of great musicians.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
I know know a lot of artists.

Speaker 8 (01:10:47):
Michelle is one of the deepest artists I know in
what way? Come on, man, do I have to explain that? Yes,
she is one of those people that just does things
really differently from other people and it always comes out
really pretty dope. Provision is is way different than other
people's way way different. I mean plantation, lullabies, like the

(01:11:11):
way that record is constructed, the way that record sounds,
and the parts. It was sort of like hip hop
from Mars meets R and B meets Anger.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
You know, it was cool. It was cool. You did
Bitter as well? Correct, No, that was damn yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 9 (01:11:37):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:11:37):
I mixed a comfort Woman too, guys. Comfort Woman's great record.
It's a great sounding record too. We did that down at.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
Chrun King.

Speaker 8 (01:11:47):
It's a really good sounding record too, and I've done
a couple with her since then.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Is probably my favorite.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, Okay, I got all of them,
the credits. Sometimes that's dope.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
So when you make when you make these records, what's
your grand achievement, especially when you're not dealing with an
artist that I'm certain that Maverick would love her to
have had one foot in platinum status and the other
foot and artistic achievement. So I'm pretty sure you've had

(01:12:21):
a earful from the A and R people, not back then,
not back then.

Speaker 8 (01:12:26):
You know, I only did a couple of cuts on
the first record, so not back then they had two
lonely hearts or no, what was the sexy one?

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Dreadlocks?

Speaker 8 (01:12:38):
You know, but that was also I mean, did you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Do all Night?

Speaker 10 (01:12:43):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Wait, why y'all have like that song Don't Exist? That
was a top ten hit. There's a connect that was
a melon camp.

Speaker 8 (01:12:54):
There's a disconnect between Michelle and the pop music juggernaut.
You know, she's definitely in our that deserves to be
out there and everybody needs to hear her and resources
have to be put behind her. She is not necessarily
the artists that you expect to play, you know on
Hot ninety five, you know I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Gonna keep it that way too. No, no, make it
hot ninety five.

Speaker 7 (01:13:22):
That's just three.

Speaker 8 (01:13:23):
That's a great middle finger. Okay, christ loves Supremeka Hot
ninety five.

Speaker 7 (01:13:34):
Keeping it.

Speaker 8 (01:13:38):
But no, you know that it's like record companies. If
there was an economy of scale, which there is now,
that allowed artists to make records, and that the company
didn't need to sell millions of records to recoup or
keep their doors open, it'd be cool. But there's not
a lot of places like that. They need to keep
the scale that they run. Those he's on they need

(01:14:00):
mega hits. You know, I'm not telling you anything you
don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
So, did you ever have a client in which, like,
you know, once the mixers went home, then suddenly.

Speaker 8 (01:14:10):
Yes, And I've heard and our people say to artists
after you know, kissing their ass up and down for
two years, sending the limos for them, Champagne, go into
the office, I don't hear any hits, go back and
write me some hits, which is like the most crippling
thing you could ever say to anybody. You're not good enough.
Go back and make yourself good enough. Oh that's helpful,

(01:14:30):
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Jesus. Yeah, you've heard that, man, Come on.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
So, but I think the same thing could be said.
I remember you saying one time the zach obviously can
be true. Like when y'all signed with their Jam and
Jay was like.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
Yes, don't make it, don't That was even bigger problem.
I was like, oh god, now we gotta get eight
and Pitchfork. No.

Speaker 8 (01:14:54):
But that's a good situation when they know who you
are and sign you because of who you are.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
But I don't want them to use that as an
excuse to not to want to promote us.

Speaker 7 (01:15:04):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 8 (01:15:05):
So it's like this is that that's a kind of
reverse bizarre paradigm work. Yeah, don't make any hits whither
or away in obscurity.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
I'm the champion. You're so successful, all right. So yeah,
well your your production and chasing demos and seeing the
product through and Erica as well. We're doing bad duism.
I mean, did you the way the way you sold
me to d I have to mit and I always

(01:15:36):
tell the story, well you wanted me to play on ship,
damn motherfucker. And this before Ron Carter had a change
your heart.

Speaker 8 (01:15:47):
And he had no change your heart. He closed the
door really fast on that one.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
It's like, what's the song called No, I'm not doing it? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:15:55):
I called him. And Ron's actually a good guy. He's
you know, he's prickly, but he's a good guy and
he's a musician. And I called him and I told
him all about this stuff, and I said, blah blah
blah blah blah, he's a really great artist, really unusual
blah blah blah around By the way, you have to
let me explain, and I will explain after I tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
But the title of the song is shit damn motherfucker. No,
you just had to do that, didn't you.

Speaker 8 (01:16:23):
And no, I didn't want to mess with him, you know,
and have him come in for that. And I tried
to explain, I don't know what he is, but he
said in nobody's book? Is that a good phrase to me? Motherfucker?
So no, and I tried to explain to him. I mean,
it's it's sort of a woe is Me thing. It's
somebody with their head in their hands saying, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
No, how did this happen to me?

Speaker 8 (01:16:42):
He's not calling anybody else that, But it didn't matter.
He's on smooth though, right, No, Larry Grenadier, He's fantastic,
is unsmooth?

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Hmm? Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, I love that song.

Speaker 7 (01:16:55):
Nobody.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
You know, people sleep on that song I love smooth.
Oh yeah, that song on that record. No it's not,
it's not it's great.

Speaker 7 (01:17:03):
I uh, I shouldn't tell.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
I'll wait till Dee gets here to tell the when
we get by story? Did I reveal that on the board?
Hold on hold, if we're gonna get d in here,
it's gonna be like twenty already booked him, all already
already booked him.

Speaker 8 (01:17:20):
He booked him three years ago. Show up next month?

Speaker 7 (01:17:25):
No, sorry, we love you, D. What were you saying?

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Uh?

Speaker 7 (01:17:29):
Steve oh So?

Speaker 6 (01:17:30):
Who ended up playing bass on ship?

Speaker 7 (01:17:32):
Damn?

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
I just thought of that.

Speaker 6 (01:17:37):
I didn't actually have a question.

Speaker 8 (01:17:40):
It might have been Larry Grenadier. It might have been
D's sample bass, because he was really good at that.
I mean the stuff he got out of the EPs
sixteen was really good.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
It sounded great. You know something, what still has the
same He still fixes it? Who fixes it? Ben? You
know we did a show? Still has the same floppy discs?

Speaker 8 (01:18:00):
He has such a technophone?

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
Man, Wow, not really, I mean he has new stuff,
especially like flip phone. He has an iPhone.

Speaker 6 (01:18:11):
Wait, you're talking about as R ten? What did what
did you say? E?

Speaker 8 (01:18:15):
P E P S sixteen it was precursor. But but
the architecture is the same.

Speaker 6 (01:18:22):
Yeah, so that was before the ASR.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
He has a he has the same brown sugar stuff
in his apartment right now. Yeah, like the same flop.

Speaker 7 (01:18:29):
Guys.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
That's the mark of a great artist.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:18:32):
They can sing Mary had a little lamb and you go,
oh my god. You know, it doesn't matter what they have.
There's such they have such a strong stamp as an
artist that they could use the most primitive thing in
the world and you go, my god, that's so cool.

Speaker 9 (01:18:45):
It's like all those times I used to say, you know,
listen to Luther Vandel sing the Telephone Book, you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:18:50):
What did the road sound come from?

Speaker 8 (01:18:51):
It?

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
On?

Speaker 7 (01:18:51):
That sounds like it's underwater.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
It was mostly out of his EPs we called we
called the flying jet patch.

Speaker 7 (01:18:58):
We uh, we we use some we.

Speaker 8 (01:19:01):
Use some live roads. And also if you put the
roads in they used to be called.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
A pant scan.

Speaker 8 (01:19:06):
It was actually an analog piece of gear that pants
something back and forth really fast. You can do it
in the box now too, and it gives a road
kind of like a watery kind of sound.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
Yeah, still has it. Yeah, it's like a dripping water sound. Yeah, yeah, wow.
He calls it flying V. Okay, he calls it his
flying V. Why be like guitar flying V? I don't know,
but it's it's always and he's flying put up a

(01:19:36):
fly patch, you know?

Speaker 6 (01:19:38):
So did he create that patch himself or is that
a sound.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
In the boat.

Speaker 8 (01:19:42):
He did a lot of editing the stock sounds. Yeah,
but again, I mean he could take anything. He could
take the most primitive, silly sounding thing and do something
incredibly cool makes it.

Speaker 7 (01:19:51):
You know that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Yeah, I'm my witness to that. Wait, wait, while we're
on this subjec I got I got a phone call
last week that was painful to get, which was yet
another illustrious New York City studio is shutting down and

(01:20:18):
MS yeah, I keep moving my equipment from studio to studios,
studio to studio, and.

Speaker 7 (01:20:27):
Even where do we do at Hamilton Avatar? I was
at Avatar and heard about I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
Sorry, and Avatar is shutting down to.

Speaker 7 (01:20:34):
Avatar is selling.

Speaker 8 (01:20:35):
They're waiting to They're waiting to find a person who
has enough money to keep it a studio. You know,
the footprint of the building is worth you know, fifty
times as much as it is as a building now
in the studio.

Speaker 7 (01:20:47):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
Wow. Well my question is you know now that studios
are becoming a relic of yesteryear. I mean, to work
with you is to you know, to see you send
these massive cases to the studio, like working on commons,

(01:21:09):
like order for chocolate record, like you'd send these giant
property property of Bob.

Speaker 8 (01:21:16):
Power, like like my cartage was five hundred bucks just
to get the stuff there. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:22):
Yeah, I mean you you were carrying a lot of
outboard gear. Yep.

Speaker 7 (01:21:26):
But I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:21:28):
In the middle of the decade, did you eventually just
start doing pro tools and pro tools only or No.

Speaker 8 (01:21:36):
I made a commitment to becoming a veteran in the
box mixer about eight or nine years ago, and not
because of commerce, because that actually that's why I should
have done it, because I saw what was going on.
I just saw what technology was becoming and realized that
did I want to be in step with technology or not?
And I love technology?

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
So you had to learn all over?

Speaker 8 (01:22:00):
No, No, no, I just said you can be I've
been mixing on consoles for years. I did that, okay,
I said I could be a better in the box mixer.
So I just started, and I love it. I wouldn't
look back. I'm in my own room all the time.
I almost never see my clients like a mirror. It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Where's your room? You have a room? Oh yeah yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:22:21):
Steve a Dabo Shelter Island Sound has a medium sized
room on twenty seventh Street.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
I have the other side of the floor. We found
the floor together.

Speaker 8 (01:22:29):
He did a lot of early Suzanne began shown Colvin
and stuff. So I have my own room and anything
I record with one microphone. I got a great microphone collection,
I got great microres. We put up the microphone in
the room going headphones, and I'm really really happy or
as a practitioner now than I've ever been.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
If I never set foot in a big studio again,
it's fine. I know it sounds weird. You don't miss
it at all?

Speaker 8 (01:22:56):
No, not the fruit plates in the you know what's funny.
I always made jokes about that. When I first got
really comfortable my own place. The first thing I would
say to people, I said, you know what I thought
I'd missed the fruit fruit basket?

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
Yeah, but do you know what it means that?

Speaker 7 (01:23:11):
I mean?

Speaker 6 (01:23:11):
The fruit basket is yeah, but he can bring in
his own fruit, you know, to his to his room.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
But it's almost like it's it's like a minute from
a hotel.

Speaker 8 (01:23:19):
Yeah, exactly, it's like somebody else's clean towels. It's really nice.
But my mixing situation, my speakers and I sit in
exactly the same position every day.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
You know, I don't have to move from studio to studio.

Speaker 7 (01:23:33):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
My results, my work is better than ever man.

Speaker 8 (01:23:36):
And I still use an analogue chain on my stereo
mix but all the individual things, no inserts, just pro tools.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Okay, So how did you decide to, you know, bring
teaching into.

Speaker 7 (01:23:51):
The fora like?

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
Uh?

Speaker 8 (01:23:53):
NYU approached me about eight or nine years ago, and
I started out as an adjunct teaching class here and there,
and again my mother gets around.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
They must have talked to my mother.

Speaker 8 (01:24:05):
No, not like that, man, No, not like that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
I knew, I knew you were going to go there.

Speaker 7 (01:24:10):
I just feel like your mom should be the next guest.
She's a shill.

Speaker 8 (01:24:14):
She's a shill for me. But they made me a
professor a couple of years ago, and you know, I'm
still working on the outside of about thirty forty percent
of my work is still mixing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Now what are you teaching that? Everything? Production?

Speaker 8 (01:24:27):
I consider myself a utility infielder, Like if they need
me a third base, I can do it. I teach
the sophomore production class with my associate and boss, Nick Sensano,
who's great he's been doing he worked with Public.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Yeah, yeah, he's my next guy that and.

Speaker 8 (01:24:44):
It's really great. I mean, imagine, after a lifetime in
the record business to be in a position where the
only reason you're there is to help people, that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
You know. Uh, you don't get paid more if you
do better, you know, it's or if you have a hit.
So it's great, but are they interested in the level
of production that you are? Is your forte the the
non microwave production.

Speaker 8 (01:25:11):
The yeah, well because now kids are just using like
fruity loops and right and able to But yeah, that's right, guys,
the same principles whole true. It doesn't matter how you get,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
I teach. They have me in positions teaching.

Speaker 8 (01:25:25):
The things that I know how to do, analog recording,
all things recording, mixing. I teach an arranging class that
I develop, which is fantastic because as you know, The
biggest problem in most people's records is bad arranging chops.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
So it's great, it's great.

Speaker 8 (01:25:42):
Range, man, I need to enter this class. Well, you know,
guys as a grooves are great, but no as a mixer.
You know, if the records well arranged, it's great to mix.
If it's badly arranged, you're just fighting that the whole time.
And in the modern world, the arrangement is as much
your choice of instrument and the timber that instrument as
it is departure plane. I mean, it's not nineteen sixty

(01:26:03):
two anymore. We do things really differently. There was a
girl I was watching the thing you did. We bought
Forarelli and had them right into Maggie Rogers.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
Okay, oh yeah, Maggie is also one of my star students. Yeah,
she's great. She's fucking dope.

Speaker 8 (01:26:22):
You know, the world has completely flipped for Maggie. I mean,
the hits are off the charts. There's a feeding frenzy
going on right now trying to.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
Get her signed. And Maggie's has a real good head.

Speaker 8 (01:26:36):
On her shoulders, and she won't be swayed by all
that stupid shit that comes her way. She's and you
know what, I have to say that there's any number
of students that are just as cool as that. We
have people doing just the coolest thing. There's something that
people heard in Maggie's voice. You know, she almost sounds
like Joni Mitchell singing over electronica.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
But yeah, and it just sounded like her.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
I really liked what for Real said and since that
it was singular, like he couldn't even give notes on
it because.

Speaker 8 (01:27:06):
It didn't sound like anything else, nothing else.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
It was really her own world.

Speaker 8 (01:27:09):
But I have to say a lot of students there
are doing incredibly cool stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Yeah. Yeah, this is the first year in which I
felt intimidated by some of my students, Like, Okay, I
need to learn from you, Like I'm taking this job
so you can teach me stuff that I don't know.

Speaker 8 (01:27:29):
Listen, that's part.

Speaker 7 (01:27:31):
Do they do that you sometimes?

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
No, they don't test me. I mean like do they
know about your history and that stuff?

Speaker 7 (01:27:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:27:37):
Yeah, And the classroom to me, and I'm really serious
about this is a three hundred and sixty degree thing.
The information flows both ways, and if both parties aren't
super engaged while we're in there, what a fucking waste
of time, you know, not just a waste of my time,
wasted their time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
So it's great.

Speaker 8 (01:27:55):
The students are great, the people I work with are fantastic.
First real job I've ever had, first time I've ever
gotten a paid regular paycheck from any company other than
my own. And uh yeah, I still get to work,
and they actually tisch the arts division at n YU
wants you to stay active in the field, so I

(01:28:18):
I need to work and I still enjoy working. But uh,
just because it's school and in theory, I'm full time there.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
That's my first responsibility. Do they make you turn in
a massive syllabus at the top of the year. Oh yeah,
I've had to red and the player.

Speaker 8 (01:28:35):
And it's the weirdest word in the world to say,
you feel like you're silibi. Yeah, okay, I thought that
was just like me to make sure that I knew
I knew what I was doing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
No, my health teacher in uh In college used it.
That was first place I heard it. It was right
after he was discussing gon aha.

Speaker 8 (01:28:56):
It was in my human health And wait a minute, man,
my ship is it's.

Speaker 7 (01:29:01):
I think syphilis cyphilized letter totally.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
So what is your goal when you what is your
mission to when you do teach this class, because the
thing I I enjoyed about teaching is.

Speaker 8 (01:29:21):
The enlightening part of things, and it's the small things
that enlighten them the most and really engage them.

Speaker 1 (01:29:27):
But you know, I hate the whole idea of like
I have to quiz.

Speaker 8 (01:29:30):
Them on this and know the finals and that's bullshit.
And I said the first day, Look, you know, I
don't believe in grades, but this is ny U. So
we got to do things a certain way. If you're
not here because you really want to engage with this material,
you're spending a lot of money. And you know, I mean,
I don't dis people or anything or blow them up,
but that's I I believe really in that we're all discovering.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
This stuff together. It sounds, I know, it sounds like
I was from the sixties, and I am.

Speaker 3 (01:30:00):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:30:00):
I love the process of you know, discovering things with them,
you know, I yeah, I believe the same thing. But
you still have to give grades. Yeah, and that's I'm
not even going to get into that. I try to
be really objective about it. I try to take what

(01:30:21):
I like and don't like out of the equation. So
I have this big spreadsheet. It's just based really on
you know, whether they show up, whether they participate, whether
they finish the assignments, whether they did this, did that,
And it's totally by the numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
I was going to ask you, what, so, what is
the difference between you know, someone like a Maggie that
like shines and then just those kids that kind of
flame out?

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
Like what what do you see? There is no difference.

Speaker 8 (01:30:46):
You know, some people the most almost all of the
students that are there do something that's really really cool,
as you know, having the perseverance to stick it out
for the long run.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
I get sidetracked, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:31:03):
Are you aware of the effect that you have on
them as like a mentor, because I find that I have.
I don't know how you feel about this, but like
I had teachers, two of them, particularly when I was
in high school, that were totally instrumental in my life.
I feel like teaching, once it gets down to it,
is one of the most important things people like us
can do.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:31:20):
I tend to sort of not think too much of myself,
so I try to keep that thing out of it.
But no, listen, if there's one thing, If there's one thing.
If there's two things.

Speaker 1 (01:31:30):
I can teach them is be a decent human being
and engage engaged with what you do.

Speaker 8 (01:31:37):
I won't say be serious. I say, if you're here
and you're doing it, engage. It's like playing music. You know,
you're not sitting there playing the chart like this. You
got to engage with the music. So that those are
the things that What about the decent human being part?
Can that be optional?

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Listen? Do you really want to be in this class?

Speaker 8 (01:31:58):
Do you tell them and encourage them to mix very quietly?
Because I believe it or not, I do that now.
I tell them to mix at reasonable volumes. You know,
your ears do really funky things when you listen to
a loud music for a long time.

Speaker 7 (01:32:15):
And they lie to you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
So if you can mix at volumes, I turn it
up every once in a while to check ship. I
gotta sell.

Speaker 8 (01:32:22):
I checked the bottom. I'm mastering now, so I got to.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
If you can you master your own stuff. Isn't that
dangerous though?

Speaker 8 (01:32:30):
Sometimes, but most of the time it's good. I've gotten
really good. You don't think you need fresh airs to
Sometimes I do, but but you know, people want to deal.

Speaker 7 (01:32:38):
Can get her name?

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
I cut it all in.

Speaker 7 (01:32:42):
Wait, did you think of Joe.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
Bill also is the Joe Raposo of Sesame Street. So
and I always put you up Joe Reposo's name, So
film a school micer was who I was. Refra was
brilliant guy.

Speaker 8 (01:33:00):
Yeah, yeah, but I encourage them to mix that volumes
sort of like you're talking to somebody from two feet away.
That's where your speakers are gonna be the most accurate.
And the biggest part of it is you obviate the
negative effects of the room. If the speakers aren't very loud,
the back of the room is not going to be
bouncing around at you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
So that's a big deal. So what Bob and are
explaining to you, of course, a love of supremers that
are like scratching your head right now is uh.

Speaker 8 (01:33:28):
If you look on discogs dot com and you turn
up look up Bob Power's name, you'll see a lot
of variations of nicknames that I've given them on various
roots albums, such as Mixed by Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:33:44):
Guys.

Speaker 8 (01:33:44):
I really can't hear the mix, guys, Bob guys, I
really really need to hear this, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
And Bob it's bad enough that it's now five forty
six am. I do do I have to put off
with the talking guys power anyway, My point is he
left out to shut the fuck up. Bob taught me
that the best mixes if if your mix sounds awesome

(01:34:12):
on shitty speakers. I mean, that's why studios speakers like
Jenolis or Yamaha NS tens they were there to give you.
Even Thriller was last minute mixed on like a clock
radio speakers. Billy Jean was done like on the cheapest
speaker that Bruce Foro Dean could could get, because if

(01:34:35):
it sounds great on bad speakers, that don't sound awesome
once you have it on speaks.

Speaker 8 (01:34:40):
One of the early engineers I worked with when I
was scoring TV, we always talk about what's a good mix?

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
What's a good mix?

Speaker 8 (01:34:46):
And he's now a nuclear physicist by the way, he
got smart, but he said he said the best thing
I've ever heard anybody say. It said, a good mix
is something that doesn't sound too terrible anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
Right, You're right, Well, there's a generation now. I mean,
I won't throw him under the bus, but I've had
a few conversations with Kanye's people about their engineering tactics,
which you know, I feel like his music. I feel
like his music is made for no. This is my point.

(01:35:22):
When I saw the Yeaser show at MSG and I
happened to be within twenty feet of the speakers, then
I realized, Oh, all these songs were created with this
being the end game the concert. The near colonic level

(01:35:44):
of how the low end was rumbling my stomach, and
I got it. And I also imagine, so you know,
I would ask him like, when you guys mix this stuff,
do you ma?

Speaker 7 (01:35:52):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
The guys would shake their heads like you won't imagine
the level of loudness that he makes the speakers when
he's engineering in the studios. And I was like, well,
always thought you were supposed to make it quiet. And
especially because most of us consume our music now on
MacBook pros and these, you know, tiny computer speakers, you
would think that whenever I listen to you know, his

(01:36:12):
stuff on the iPods or my computer, I'm indifferent to
the music and it affects how I perceive that record.
But then when I hear it on big as speakers,
then I'm like, oh damn, I might like this.

Speaker 8 (01:36:25):
Listen just about anything sounds good when you crack it.

Speaker 7 (01:36:30):
Didn't you just say that loved musical? Your ears will
lie to you.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
Your ears lied to you.

Speaker 8 (01:36:34):
And also, you know, a really good mix should hold
up at a bunch of different volume. The musical balances,
internal balances should stay somewhat the same. Looking at it
like they want to shoot, They all like you, sucker,

(01:36:55):
And I'm just saying.

Speaker 9 (01:36:57):
You know, if if, if, when you play music loud
and you start playing tricks on, you kind of explains
the last fifteen years of clippings.

Speaker 1 (01:37:05):
Nah, that's real. Well, yeah, I assume that nowadays people
just mix it loud and don't give a regard to
it's just gonna get played in the club inferior, which
you would think that most people would mix for their iPhones,
their cheap car systems.

Speaker 8 (01:37:21):
Yeah, but also if somebody says to me, I really
want this to pop on the radio, I'll go a
certain direction with it. You know, it's just but again,
in a perfect world, you want something that sounds pretty
good everywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
And yeah, yeah, do you still not hardpan your base?
That's another lesson you taught me. You said that the
groove and the record will skip.

Speaker 8 (01:37:42):
Yeah, that's an old record thing. You'd never put anything
with a lot of bottom on one side because when
the needle has to make the big excursion, it'll pop
over into the next groove.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
That's an old school thing. Same thing with sibilants. You know.

Speaker 8 (01:37:56):
The biggest issue, one of the biggest issue in modern
records to me mixing is people don't DS enough. The
fucking essays on the vocals will take the enamel off
your teeth.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
Yeah, stuff like that. You know whatever, any one thing
in the tom inks right now?

Speaker 7 (01:38:10):
Is there a.

Speaker 6 (01:38:13):
Did they have a DS plug in?

Speaker 8 (01:38:14):
Pretty serious? Yeah, there's a gazillion of them. And the
cool thing is you can make them do anything you want.

Speaker 1 (01:38:21):
I love the digital world, man.

Speaker 8 (01:38:23):
I you know, people say you missed the way things
used to be. I said, yeah, I missed the budgets,
that's all. I miss everything. You can get so much
closer to what you want to hear?

Speaker 7 (01:38:32):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Am I allowed to ask you what was your moment?

Speaker 8 (01:38:36):
Like?

Speaker 7 (01:38:37):
What was your.

Speaker 1 (01:38:39):
Oh, how much my biggest payday? Yeah? Like I don't
mean the exact amount, but like, what was your We really.

Speaker 7 (01:38:46):
Want you to do this record?

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
Bop out?

Speaker 8 (01:38:49):
You know, I have management for all that time and
he was just making my deals. So but you know,
as a producer, you know, and this is one of
the things I teach my students is that you don't
get paid a cent. I mean, you get paid advances,
but until the record company makes their money back, you
don't get paid your royalties. But say they make their
money back after they sell one hundred and fifty thousand records. Well,

(01:39:12):
one of the things you want your contract is that
you get paid from record one. You know, you don't
want to get paid from record one hundred and fifteen
thousand one. So the first check is always big. Oh
come on, man, you know what Bob the reason why
I have said, I know he never touches his own money.
He says, I never look at my own money. I

(01:39:32):
have people around me to do.

Speaker 7 (01:39:33):
That for me.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
No, no, no, well yes, and I know, seriously, I
never touched my record money because non, it's like paper money.
I mean, we sell respectively.

Speaker 8 (01:39:49):
But I don't know if it's a good thing that
DJ Questlove is monetarily more valuable then Quest Love has ever.

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
Been as a studio musician or a producer or drummer.

Speaker 7 (01:40:04):
You know, but I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
I don't mean Carlturally speaking, I'm just saying that I
kind of live in life now where like my value is,
my monetary value is in places other than where you thought,
which is kind of a mind fucker, which is made
me the the equivalent of Bob Power Engineers. I was
about to say, that's like the story for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
Man, Yeah, that's that's my thing. Hits is not a
lot of times. It's not the thing that you think
or that you may even thought it was going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
But do you resistant or do you embrace it?

Speaker 8 (01:40:36):
No, wanting to make a lot of money is not
a reasonable objective, I think. No. Honestly, being able to
live decently and decently and do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
What you love with people you really like, that's payoff.
That's real. You just turn it back to Kumba moment.

Speaker 8 (01:40:56):
What is what is your favorite funk out of man?
I played that kombay A?

Speaker 7 (01:41:01):
You have ever what's your thing?

Speaker 8 (01:41:08):
Which you've seen that Jacket Wilson thing when he's live
on television? You guys ever seen live clips at Jackie Wilson.
Oh my god, because he's saying stuff that's kind of
like Kumbaya. But he is so incredible, not like kombay a.

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
But I will now look at it.

Speaker 8 (01:41:22):
Your love keeps lifting me. You gotta see this clip.
He's doing it live on television. You could have made
a record out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
It would have been great. I'm on it. I will look.
I gotta know what is your your own personal desert
island disc Like, if when all's said and done, what
is your artistic crowning achievement? I'm by power and I did.

(01:41:49):
It would be one of my own records.

Speaker 8 (01:41:51):
Man, it wouldn't be one of my own records, it
would It would be Lewis Armstrong and the Elephantzgerald Duet's no.

Speaker 1 (01:41:59):
No, no, no no. I mean as far as your achievement,
your achievement is concerned, like what are you most proud
of having done the last day of whatever session?

Speaker 8 (01:42:07):
It was proud of being a decent human being and
doing decent work.

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
I always just got there positively.

Speaker 8 (01:42:16):
Know what's really going on? You know he's really did,
but he's trying to save it now he's trying.

Speaker 1 (01:42:22):
To save it.

Speaker 7 (01:42:22):
But what a dick.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
I don't want the bad stories, but I'm just saying, like,
you know, a crowning achievement, like Okay, I.

Speaker 8 (01:42:30):
Did that there's a lot of Man, every record I've
ever worked with I love worked on I love.

Speaker 1 (01:42:34):
I'm serious. It's like your favorite bread the Roots, every
roots record. Dude, I wasn't even hinting. I forgot you
worked on the Roots.

Speaker 8 (01:42:45):
Sure you did.

Speaker 7 (01:42:45):
Man, No, I'm thinking like what.

Speaker 3 (01:42:50):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
No, I honest to god, I love every record I've.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
Ever Well, what's the record? Okay, maybe what's the record?
I'm curious to know what's the record?

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
That?

Speaker 2 (01:42:57):
And hell, maybe all of them go follow this category
like something that you finished that maybe you didn't think
you're gonna fish like something that the process.

Speaker 1 (01:43:06):
Was really say that, Sugar, Can we move on now?

Speaker 7 (01:43:13):
Okay?

Speaker 9 (01:43:13):
Maybe maybe maybe this might clear up of me this
question better. If you had to listen to one song
that you worked on right now, which one would you choose?
Like a gun to your head, Bob, you have to
play one of your songs right.

Speaker 8 (01:43:26):
The song from Comfort Woman that Chris Dave plays on
Love song number is that it where the drums start
out really far away and then they come towards you.
It's like an up tempo reggae thing.

Speaker 7 (01:43:39):
Okay, opening so.

Speaker 1 (01:43:43):
Really reggae flavor.

Speaker 8 (01:43:45):
Yeah, I know, I can't think of the name because
the names on the love song Umber one, that's the
one I'm trying to get. So you're your Michelle work
is your No, I'm serious, man, I like the friends
that do with everybody, all right.

Speaker 7 (01:44:00):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:44:07):
You work on that that got deep six and should
have came out. I can't name names, Prince.

Speaker 8 (01:44:14):
I've had records that people have redone, which is no.
You know, anybody as a producer knows that sometimes you
make a record, sometimes people don't like it and they
redo it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
You gotta live with it. It's like being a musician.

Speaker 8 (01:44:25):
But I've had records that have been redone where the
redone one was really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
Not a remix, but no, no, just you mean one
of those iTunes.

Speaker 5 (01:44:33):
And gag records.

Speaker 3 (01:44:35):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
I tuned like a like a playover, like oh my god, yo, yeah,
like you'll go to heat Wave and then like, oh,
it's like they re recorded this. I felt for Black
like Black Ivory redid they did and it's fucking horrible.
But I bought the album. Yeah, I brought the bad

(01:44:56):
version was spinning in concerts like how come tips version
don't sound like this? But it seems like yo, that
that's not the verse that he redid it like I
fell for that ship.

Speaker 8 (01:45:04):
Let's talk about real Desert Island any records I wanted
to earth Winding Fire's greatest hits in the super Fly soundtrack.
It does not get any better than Freddy's Dad is
like possibly one of the pinnacles of music.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
That scares me, having heard Freddy's Dead when I was two.
When the modulation goes to the horn thing, well, yeah,
scares of I can't detect say nothing.

Speaker 7 (01:45:36):
I want.

Speaker 1 (01:45:37):
I want to see the mission statement that says I'm
now I'll just sing on my own goddamn radio shows,
as opposed to it's not a contract, Bill be coming
off like the principal and back to the future Alphae
is a slacker. When I was a kid, that that
modulation used to always scariest modulations, always kid, right, what

(01:46:06):
about the what's going on?

Speaker 8 (01:46:08):
They go like to a tritone away if.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
It modulated and not Golden Lady by Stevie, but like,
and that's the one thing they cut out of my
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech when I inducted
Hall of Notes, was you know the end of Sea's
going We're just stays in there's now and then it
goes here point under the blankets.

Speaker 8 (01:46:34):
That's some Hollywood ship right there. You know, that's the
cheap shot. You know, go up a half staff each
time in the out course.

Speaker 1 (01:46:39):
That's like a harp glist.

Speaker 8 (01:46:41):
Going into a new section. Well what I call the
sucker punch of orchestration.

Speaker 1 (01:46:45):
I would turneth whenever Sea's Going came on. When I
was a kid, I turned on all the lights.

Speaker 7 (01:46:52):
I never thought that.

Speaker 1 (01:46:54):
I wasn't allowed to touch my dad's radio, so you know,
I never knew that modulations.

Speaker 7 (01:47:03):
All the time.

Speaker 8 (01:47:04):
You know what else scares me? And I know Bill
Steve wants me and tell the story. You ever watched
Tiktac dough tick tech dough now a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
I remember there's a game show. There's a call television.
There's a game show called tik Tac though, I remember that, okay,
speaking well, whenever you pick the center square, they give
you a two part question and then sort of scary
Jeopardy music to give you thirty seconds to think it over. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:47:37):
scared Jesus, I remember that. I remember that, guys.

Speaker 8 (01:47:40):
I got to tell you about this building my dad
was a television producer in the fifties and sixties, and
we moved from Chicago when I was four, in like
fifty three or four and fifty five, and I was
in one of the studios here because he did Mister Wizard.
You guys don't remember, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):
You know mister Wizard, but don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:48:01):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:48:02):
I remember mister Martindale.

Speaker 5 (01:48:08):
I remember now what it was, this the mister Wizard that.

Speaker 7 (01:48:11):
Was on what you call it?

Speaker 11 (01:48:12):
Right?

Speaker 7 (01:48:12):
How we were there?

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):
Well, you know the villains from What's Happening, But you
don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:48:18):
I probably know if I see it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):
I just remember mister Wizard because like mister Wizz, I
will watch.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
It and he would do experiments and stuff and it
was just like well, and I would try to do it,
but I never had none of the ship.

Speaker 5 (01:48:28):
Did you need it?

Speaker 7 (01:48:28):
Anyway?

Speaker 8 (01:48:29):
I was in this building in the studio when I
was five years old and I got kicked out because
I had a cold and I kept kept coughing. My
mother had to take me out of the studio. So
this is my triumphant return the studio.

Speaker 7 (01:48:43):
Mom.

Speaker 6 (01:48:48):
In reading your wiki page, Bob, just the things like
studied classical composition and uh, a master's degree in jazz.
Now when when you started working that was awesome? Eat
a Chinese peanut.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
Or something, discussion seaweed.

Speaker 6 (01:49:13):
Yeah, So like this this knowledge of classical music and
jazz and then and then suddenly you're in the world
of samplers and tribe cald Quests and day La soul
and and so now I watched I watched Quest sampling
a lot, and he's tuning his samples. So now did
you bring a lot of that stuff to hip hop?

Speaker 7 (01:49:33):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (01:49:33):
And no, making sampling more musical, yes.

Speaker 8 (01:49:36):
When we had to, But no, because I also realized
that the ethic was often contrary to that, and I
didn't want to suck it up. But the low end theory,
I mean, we spent a lot, a lot of time
on stuff like that, like tuning and timing and things
like that.

Speaker 6 (01:49:50):
My my more general question though, is like how did
you apply your real world classical and jazz experience to
those projects.

Speaker 8 (01:50:00):
There's different gigs, man. If you're on a jazz gig,
you play jazz. If you're on a poka gig, you
play the poka.

Speaker 1 (01:50:07):
So you didn't so you No.

Speaker 8 (01:50:09):
I wanted to help the people realize their vision it
was not about me.

Speaker 6 (01:50:14):
I guess I'm asking if you applied that stuff to
the world of sam you.

Speaker 8 (01:50:18):
I think everybody, every practitioner in the world, applies everything
they've ever ever seen to everything they do.

Speaker 1 (01:50:23):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:50:24):
There was no direct line, There wasn't any straight lines.
But of course, yeah, yeah, I think.

Speaker 6 (01:50:28):
So, because they were using a lot of jazz samples.

Speaker 8 (01:50:31):
Yeah, I mean, it's musical sensibilities, that's all, which is
why the drums are always so loud.

Speaker 6 (01:50:36):
But they were then the stuff they were bringing to
you that they were bringing to the sessions that they
had done prior. Did you find that that stuff was
already the way they wanted it?

Speaker 8 (01:50:46):
Sometimes, so we had to work, you know, early on,
especially before technology caught up, we had to tweak things
a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:50:54):
Yeah, so, emir, like the.

Speaker 6 (01:50:58):
In a lot of hip hop'tensional clashing going on, right
and then and then there's this whole idea of tuning
the samples so that they make more musical sense.

Speaker 7 (01:51:08):
So where is that that was?

Speaker 1 (01:51:09):
I believe that's Bob's entry now with uh Nix Susanna
who works with Bob at n Yu.

Speaker 7 (01:51:19):
Being the.

Speaker 1 (01:51:21):
Works, he's my boss. Okay, what a preck.

Speaker 8 (01:51:27):
Nick love your guy.

Speaker 7 (01:51:30):
I was like, clean that up.

Speaker 1 (01:51:31):
No. Yeah, So Nick the Santo's uh you know, his
his his the beauty and in his work was it
was like throw everything on the wall and see what happens.
And you know, Nick did practically every Bomb Squad associated
album from Nation to Millions to Fear of a Black

(01:51:53):
Planet to America Yes he dies, Unberser and Black Teenagers.
And a side note, Nick said that they would.

Speaker 8 (01:52:04):
Pre sequence all their things like they did no fading
and no cuts, nothing was automated, so everything was pre programmed.

Speaker 7 (01:52:14):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
And I got to see the note production note sheets
from Nation to Millions and like, I mean they were
literally like at four minutes and thirty two point five seconds,
here comes the one, two, three, four, five six kick
it from base Heads to Like they pre programmed everything

(01:52:36):
so as you heard it, that's how it was. Like.
So that's why Eric Sadler gets a lot of a
lot of praise there. But yeah, I mean your entry
was basically to strip it down and to bring it forth,
and it made it louder.

Speaker 8 (01:52:49):
I guess the less elements you have now, Knicks mixes
are crowded and noisier, but everything's compressed and small. But
that's also pe you know. Like, guys, what I do
is exactly like being a musician. And you play the gig.
You don't play your chops. You play the gig, you
get there what the music is playing, and you play

(01:53:10):
the music. You don't play your own shit.

Speaker 1 (01:53:12):
You know. So you never had scratched once, like when
you first a lot. I'll let you relaxations like where's
the fourth bar? A lot A lot. But you know
that's part of learning, man.

Speaker 8 (01:53:23):
It's incumbent upon one as a practitioner to kind of
understand the ethic of.

Speaker 1 (01:53:27):
The music that's going on. You don't make it come
to you. You have to go to it. Such a
wise man. Okay, another thing, Bob, Bob, do you have
the cane out there? Did I live?

Speaker 7 (01:53:43):
It's next to your walker? That no, Bob?

Speaker 1 (01:53:49):
When you worked on loew In theory, that was awesome. Okay, Bob,
you could. I could keep you for another twelve hours,
but let's come back and do it again. Yeah, let's
save something for three years from now.

Speaker 7 (01:54:04):
Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:54:05):
I want to thank you very much. I appreciate everything
that you've done for music, for me, and for the culture.
Hashtag for the culture.

Speaker 8 (01:54:14):
I can say exactly the same about you. Thank you man,
I appreciate it all right.

Speaker 3 (01:54:20):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:54:22):
I always feel the need to end these shows with lessons.
What do we learn from Bob Power? We learned that
we will never hear any conflict stories of none of
his artist ever.

Speaker 7 (01:54:32):
Never.

Speaker 1 (01:54:32):
If you work with Bob Power, I think your reputation
is safe. Well, he won't allow you to do anything
salacious in his studio sessions anyway. So you know, I
was hoping to get like one, you know, leaders of
the New School tribe fight story or something, but that
that wasn't happening. Classic class act is protect class and

(01:54:57):
is my mom as well. Uh yeah, so shout out
to uh. I've learned that Bob Power uh protects all
of his clients and loves them very very much. What
else did we learn?

Speaker 6 (01:55:12):
He also gives them most of all the credit for
all the work. You know, really kept emphasizing that, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:19):
He kind of made me feel important when I knew
good and well that you know Bob was making on
Like Bob would never let you touch a button, like
you would have to present a case, get a lawyer.
Just to add a little, just to add a little.

Speaker 7 (01:55:35):
Reverb to a song.

Speaker 1 (01:55:36):
It was like, I don't know if it calls for
that dam here anyway. This is a Questlove of Quest
Love Supreme. Be safe, ladies and gentlemen. I hope to
see you now. Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

(01:55:59):
This classic episode. It was produced by the team at Pandora.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.