For our Audiophile-completist friends, we offer this technical analysis of the recording process for Pollo Del Mar's "Live In Japan Town".
Sometimes the really great ideas come from a moment of divine inspiration. And sometimes, bad jokes crawl out from the bottom of a bottle of tequilla. Great idea or one trick pony, you decide...
It all starts in a restaraunt in San Jose where Pollo Del Mar was due to open for the Red Elvises at The Cactus Club. The club had called and said to be there at 5:30 for soundcheck and we are nothing if not prompt. So, there we are at 5:30 at a completely empty club, which also happens to be empty of sound engineers. "Sound guy usually shows up at 8" says the bardude, barely looking up from the want ads. And so we decide to take in a leisurely dinner, "leisurely" meaning cocktails first.
There was small talk and margueritas, and then large talk and more margueritas, and then LOUD talk and still more margueritas- "but this time could you please hold the salt and Mr. T�s and that froo-froo lime and please just leave the bottle', and pretty soon we had decided we were the best damn live band on the planet and why the heck don't we do a live album.
The idea struck a chord, as we had always wanted to do a live recording on our Japanese tour. But, there was only one problem in that we had no plans to tour Japan any time soon. Well, if you can�t go to Japan, how about Japantown in San Francisco? Brilliant! And so the ball started to roll.
Our venue of choice was the Japantown Bowl, large and roomy and the crash of a ten pin strike between songs was enticing. Then, inexplicably, the bowling alley closed to make room for more Dot.com businesses (bad timing there.) Next, we thought about booking two nights at a tiny bar called The Deuces in the Sunset district of SF. We had concerns about leaving all of our instruments, amps, and recording gear overnight and the next day, so we axed that place too. After considering a couple of other options, we finally decided on the soundstage at Lennon Rehearsal in S.F., which is a nice big room with an elevated stage, and a place to park the "Pollo Remote Recording Unit". We could set up during the day and record a whole show in one night. A major concern was "bleed" from the other bands practicing,but it turns out that it wasn't loud enough to worry about (just try and hear it between songs). We picked our lucky date: Friday the 13th of July, 2001.
On Monday, July 2nd we met at the room to hash out the logistics. It all looked good on paper. At practice that week, Jeremy had a meltdown. "What if the gear doesn't work!? What if we don't play well!? What if nobody comes to our party!?" With the help of the cool heads of Pollo, we calmed down, had a beer, and persevered.
To make a proper recording, we called in a lot of favors. The tape decks, mixer, cables, microphones, etc. were all borrowed from employers, friends, and colleagues. We rented a big box truck to serve as the Pollo Remote Recording Vessel (PRRV) for the day. The morning of Friday the 13th started by loading the truck with all of the band's gear from our practice room, then a stop at Black Boxes to pick up the recording gear. We drove across town to Lennon, parked the PRRV, and began loading into "the Budokan" about 2pm. One major concern was for the safety of the road crew as we would need them later in the evening to play the instruments during the recording. With the party set for 8pm, we hoped to get set up and test the recording rig with enough time for dinner. We barely made it.
Our engineer Edwin Deshazo worked at a fevered pace to set up all the equipment and the mics, In addition to the multitrack recording, Edwin had his hands full creating a mix for himself to listen to in the PRRV (a monitor mix). This mix was also recorded onto the DAT machine so we could have a rough idea of what the performances sounded like without having to go to a studio with multitrack capability. If that weren't enough, he also created a "house" mix that fed the PA in the room. This mix had the vocal mics and some drums for that beefy sound in the room for our partygoers to enjoy. Hats off to Edwin for the great juggling!
An extreme stroke of luck happened that afternoon. As we were taking a break from the set up, we heard a kid speaking in very broken english. We asked if he was from Japan and he nodded yes, at which point we smiled at our good fortune and invited Mr. Nobu Hattori-san to be the MC for our show that night. We just prayed that he understood what we were talking about, but he pulled through for us, showing up that night and turning on the charm.
Back in "Budokan", band guru Peter Brown worked on getting a good room mix. Ferenc had some trouble with some random noises from his amp, but by showtime, the beast decided to work, though you can hear his tank rattle throughout the CD everytime the stage shakes. The folks from Lennon did a nice job focusing the stage lights (even a mirror ball, wow!), and then it was time for the show to begin.
For the invited crowd of about 45 dedicated Pollo fans we wanted to give the impression that we were in Japan for a concert. Nobu introduced the band in Japanese, though we don't know for sure what he said, it was really fun watching him get the crowd worked up, and telling jokes they couldn't possibly have understood. We played for 2 and a half hours, and got a good recording of an authentic Pollo set, "warts and all".
Here's what the snake input list looked like for the recording.
Input list
Microphone
Track #
Kick drum AKG D112 1 Snare drum Shure SM 57 2 Hi Hat Shure SM 81 3 Tom 1 Shure SM 57 4 Tom 2 Shure SM 57 5 Tom 3 Shure SM 57 6 Overhead L Microtek Geffel 7 Overhead R Microtek Geffel 8 Bass gtr DI Box 9 Bass Preamp DI Box 9 Jono Gtr Shure SM 57 10 Jono Gtr Shure SM 57 10 Ferenc gtr Shure SM 57 11 Ferenc Gtr Shure SM 57 11 Jono vocal Shure SM 58 12 Ferenc vocal Shure SM 58 13 Front Room Ambient Microtek Geffel 14 Back Room Ambient Microtek Geffel 15 Tape Machines Alesis ADAT 2 Track Panasonic DAT Mixing Desk Crest
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