To Will and all,
It's time to share some interesting stories about WPIX-FM. Well, I hope they're interesting.
As I originally mentioned, I recorded, engineered and mixed all but one live concert for WPIX-FM from 1979 until the station's format change. Years later I had the opportunity to do a few live Jazz broadcasts and the "Be Cool -- CD101.9" TV commercials for them when they turned to the smooth jazz format.
I'm going to tell you about Jerry Lee Lewis, the Police, XTC and the buzzcocks.
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Steve Jones... You rock! How the hell are you my man?
Yup, back then my first and only truck was kept in my driveway in Flushing. Willobee and I shared a basement apartment for about seven years. We joked about installing a revolving door at that place but, that's another story! heh
Willobee is living in Austin, Texas running his own club, managing bands plus a ton of other cool stuff. Call me anytime @ 718.886.6500 and we can catch up.
Steve, do you remember what happen to us at the Police or Jerry Lee gigs? I'll tell you all about it in a minute or two.
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schwenko, I trust we don't know each other. How long have you lived in Flushing? I live near Queens College.
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Will,
There was no 5 second delay at WPIX-FM in those days. Heck, there really wasn't much use of profanity time delay on live radio and TV back in the day -- Today, it's a different story, it's paramount.
To answer your question about where live R&R is going -- IMO, broadband and satellite transmission are future homes for live R&R (and all styles of live music for that matter).
Ahh yes, the Buzzcocks fiasco at Irving Plaza, NYC. Let's get Jeff Rutledge in on this story. Jeff's old pal Chris Barnes got the brunt of the brawl. I was in the truck so I only heard about it on comm and saw the results of the aftermath when Chris and Jeff made it back it to the Aura-Sonic truck. If my memory's not mistaken, Chris got his nose broken. One of the Buzzcocks' techs head butted him straight on during argument about the live broadcast (or something to that effect). He was really hurt bad... Even Jeff was full of Chris' blood because he tried to help his buddy out. Hey, one cool thing I found out from Jeff, Chris Barnes ended up with the acting bug and got a sitcom role on the "Life with Bonnie" show. Bonnie Hunt rocks -- it's too bad her network didn't think so.
One of my WPIX-FM stories was at the top of my list in this thread...
Top Five Hairest Moments...
The first story on my list of the top five hairiest moments in Aura Sonic's history was -- the Club Lauralei ratchet story... Or, "How to short all three legs (before the fuse) of a three phase AC panel with a stainless steel ratchet and live to tell the story about it?" story. And that wasn't why the show was delayed so long...
The ratchet situation happened at the end of a very long and hard day trying to get Jerry Lee Lewis on stage and on air!
Like I said in that 2002 thread, "Audio emergencies can happen anytime. Assistants running on stage in between camera moves to fix a mic or stand, or to add or change something is par for the course. That's why they wear black. Last minute feeds or runs are standard in some production ventures. Wild things happen to us, but not always in the control cabin. The really hairy experiences have happened before and/or after the gigs for us..."
The reason why it took so long for Jerry Lee Lewis to come out and do his show on WPIX-FM was because he damaged numerous pianos at sound check and we were trying to find another piano for the show. At this point any piano would do, upright, electric, anything... We called around and everyone had the same story... They had the piano but, when we brought up his name no one wanted to part with it. I remember the call to SIR. It's started off by asking them for a piano. They said, they had a brand new Fender Rhodes, it just came in. They could not stop hyping the instrument, telling us all about this "state of art" keyboard. We were sold. We thought, it's not his sound but, it's an instrument with keys. So, the rental process proceeded. We gave them all the info... Everything was going perfectly until, he asked who the artist was. Man, there was dead silence on the phone. We didn't know what to do. Do we bullsh*t them and take the risk; do we tell them the truth? Well, we told them the truth and the guy said, NO WAY. We begged this guy. It was a done deal, he didn't want anything to do with this show. And that was that, I'm afraid. Then somehow someone in our crew got this kid to give up his Wurlitzer piano. We set it up and the show went on... Needless to say, Killer, killed the Wurlitzer during the show. This kid was damaged more than the keyboard was.
We had the opportunity to record and broadcast the Police at the Hotel Diplomat in NYC back in September 1979. We could not park the truck in front of the hotel, we had to park around the block. We were basically about a block away from the stage. Back in those days we did not have the resource we have today. Cables and snake runs were at a minimum. Well, we park the truck, got our power with no sweat. The snake run was a whole other story. We ran our 300' snake line to the stage and ended up 3 or 4 feet short of the stage where we needed to place our splitter. We had to rerun the snake during their soundcheck. That's right, we missed the soundcheck because of the short cable run. I remember a sort of "bucket brigade" situation going on, even Jeff Rutledge, our producer was helping out. We cut every corner we could to make up the difference we needed to get to the stage. We made it to the stage but, the soundcheck was just about done. They were not interested in doing anything more than patching our splitter. During the broadcast I had to start somewhere. I place all the faders at a unity gain and set the pans where I wanted them. When the band hit the down beat (my "soundcheck" started) I started to blend the mix by bring the levels up or down from my unity positions.
XTC's echo Plans for Nigel... We recorded and broadcasted XTC from a club in NYC called Hurrah. I loved this place. It was near Lincoln Center on Broadway. The club was hot, the staff and management were the best. Not your typical club organization. They were fair, kind and wonderful to work with. Anyway, when I was working out the details with XTC's sound guy, the echo effect for their hit song, "Making Plans for Nigel" came up. I told the guy I had the perfect setting for the song. I continued to tell him how I work it out the night before and was all set. He then told me that I had to take a feed from him because he had to handle the effect because it had to be right and that was that. Well, I tried to convince him, I even asked him to come down to the truck and listen to the effect for himself. He was not interested. In the effort to keep him happy I complied. We tested the effects feed from him and all systems were go. The show went off without a hitch, everything was everything and all was cool... Until, yup, you guessed it, their hit song, "Making Plans for Nigel." The song started, the crowd roared, everything was perfect until the featured echo effect came on. Believe it or not, the sound guy screw up the effect and it sounded nothing like the song. Damn, You cannot imagine how I was feeling at that moment. I was bummed out big time. Here I was with the perfect replication of the effect (from the song) and I could not use it because of politics. That's show biz as they say.
Will, I remember the Lenny Kaye "panel strangle" situation but don't remember the details... Maybe the Rut, Steve Jones or Loretta can enlighten us about it.
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loredit,
I Love your sign on handle. Have you been in touch with Meg Griffin lately? I had the pleasure of working with her again during the 2003 Downtown Messiah live recording and broadcast from the Bottom Line Cabaret. It happened to be the last live recording before they closes down. That concert aired Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in 2003 on WFUV in NYC and on NPR nationwide in 2004. It has become one of my favorite live broadcasts.
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I'll try to think of other memorable WPIX-FM events.
Anyone else have a story to tell about PIX!