Record Plant
The Record Plant is a famous recording studio operating in Los Angeles, California which hosts top level artists and musicians. It is known for its role in innovating the recording artist’s workspace, as well as being the site of many influential recordings over the decades, including notable albums such as The Eagles’ Hotel California,Eminem's The Marshal Mathers LP Guns N' Roses’ Appetite for Destruction and Kanye West’s The College Dropout. More recent albums recorded at Record Plant include Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP, Justin Bieber's Purpose and Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next; the original location was founded in New York City by Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone in 1968, with the Los Angeles location opening in 1969 and a Sausalito, California location in 1972. During the 1980s the New York and Sausalito studios ended up under different ownership, with the New York studio closing in 1987 and the Sausalito studio closing in 2008; the Los Angeles studio continues in operation, was purchased by songwriter/producer Philip Lawrence in 2016.
The Record Plant in New York was the first studio to give the recording artist a comfortable, casual environment rather than the clinical setting, the norm through the 1960s. Kellgren and Stone brought this same vision to their Los Sausalito properties. Stone said of Kellgren, "He single-handedly was responsible for changing studios from what they were—fluorescent lights, white walls and hardwood floors—to the living rooms that they are today." The remaining Los Angeles location continues the founders’ vision by offering additional VIP lounges for the artists, as well as the early signatures of Kellgren’s vision, a Jacuzzi and billiard table. In 1967, Kellgren was a recording engineer working at several New York City studios, including Mayfair on 701 Seventh Avenue at the edge of Times Square, a drab upstairs office, a single room which held the only professional 8-track recording system in New York. There, Kellgren worked with artists such as the Velvet Underground, who recorded "Sunday Morning" in November 1966.
In late 1967, Chris Stone was introduced to Kellgren because Kellgren's wife, was seven months pregnant and scared of the upcoming birth and Stone's wife, had just given birth. Mutual friends thought that the two couples could ease Marta's worry. Though they were "diametrically opposed" in nature, the two became friends. Seeing him at work, Stone determined that Kellgren was not making full use of his genius for making recordings. Stone noticed that the small studio was charging its clients $5,000 per week, but Kellgren was making $200 per week. Stone suggested Kellgren ask for a raise and soon he was making $1,000 per week. Stone held an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and was employed as the national sales representative of Revlon cosmetics. Stone convinced Kellgren that the two of them, with $100,000 borrowed from Johanna C. C. "Ancky" Revson Johnson, could start a new recording studio with a better atmosphere for creativity. Johnson was the second wife of Revlon founder Charles Revson.
She married Ben Johnson, a male model 21 years her junior. In early 1968, Kellgren and Stone began building a 12-track studio at 321 West 44th Street, creating a living room type of environment for the musicians, it opened on March 13, 1968. As the studio was nearing completion, record producer Tom Wilson persuaded Hendrix producer Chas Chandler to book the Record Plant from April 18 to early July 1968 for the recording of the album Electric Ladyland. In early April, just prior to the start of the Hendrix session, the band Soft Machine spent four days recording The Soft Machine, their debut album produced by Wilson and Chandler with Kellgren engineering; when the Jimi Hendrix Experience arrived at the studio, Kellgren engineered the first few dates until Eddie Kramer, the band's familiar engineer, flew in from London. In 1969, Kellgren and Stone sold the New York operation to TeleVision Communications, a cable television company, broadening its portfolio; the purpose of the sale was to gain cash for expansion into Los Angeles with a second studio.
The next big mixing assignment that the studio accepted was to mix the tracks recorded at the Woodstock Festival. These took more than a month to sort out in the studio, as recording conditions had been primitive and some tracks contained both voice and instruments, preventing separate processing for each. In 1970, Studio A became the first recording studio designed for mixing quadraphonic sound. On August 1, 1971, the studio made its first remote recordings at The Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden. During the 1970s, house engineers Shelly Yakus and Roy Cicala gave many local bands their start by donating session time and materials and producing their demo tapes. In January 1972, Warner Communications bought the facility from TVC. Head engineer Cicala bought it from Warner. In April 1973, the New York Dolls recorded their debut album there. In late 1973, Aerosmith began recording Get their second album. Bob Ezrin, known for producing hits for Alice Cooper, was put in charge, but engineer Jack Douglas put so much into the project that he was called the sixth member of the band.
The song "Lord of the Thighs" was written and recorded inside the Record Plant's Studio C during an all-night session after the band realized they needed one more song for the album. When Aerosmith returned to the Record Plant in early 1975 to record Toys in the Attic, they named Douglas as sole producer; the song "Walk Thi
Roundhead Studios
Roundhead Studios is an Auckland-based sound recording studio owned by singer-songwriter Neil Finn. It was opened in June 2007, however by the time of its opening, several international artists had used it whilst the studio was either in construction or receiving finishing touches. Artists who have used the facility include Australian band Augie March, US rapper Kanye West, British Indie Rock band Foals, a range of New Zealand based artists, including Finn's son Liam Finn, Herriot Row, Eddie Rayner, Jan Hellriegel, the Topp Twins and Tim Finn. On 13 July 2007, Neil Finn brought his band Crowded House in and performed a set of songs live to New Zealand radio. Roundhead was the recording location for 2009 Oxfam charity album "The Sun Came Out", featuring members of Wilco, Johnny Marr, KT Tunstall, Phil Selway, Ed O'Brien, Sebastian Steinberg and local artists Don McGlashan, Bic Runga and Neil Finn. After recording for "The Sun Came Out", members of Wilco took up residency at Roundhead to record the foundation tracks for their seventh studio album, Wilco.
Roundhead has two main studio spaces. The A Studio features a Neve console, built for The Who; this console was located at Bearsville Studios in upstate New York. Both vintage analogue equipment and modern digital recording equipment is available. Roundhead was the name given to Neil Finn's previous home studio in Parnell, utilised by New Zealand bands including Garageland and The Stereo Bus in the late 1990s; the name and logo for Roundhead Studios refer to the Round Head period of prehistoric art. Roundhead Studios website
Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop
The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop or Rock and Pop by Australian music journalist Ian McFarlane is a guide to Australian popular music from the 1950s to the late 1990s. The encyclopedia was described in Australian Music Guide as "the most exhaustive and wide-ranging encyclopedia of Australian music from the 1950s onwards"; the encyclopedia is out of print, but was for a time available on the whammo.com.au online record store, is still in the Internet Archive. In 2017 the second edition was published by Third Stone Press. Publishers, Allen & Unwin describe McFarlane's encyclopedia as containing over 870 entries and is an "essential reference to the bands and artists who molded the shape of Australian popular music in an A-to-Z encyclopedia format complete with biographical and historical details; each entry includes listings of original band lineups and subsequent changes, record releases, career highlights, cross-references with related bands and artists."United States Barnes & Noble reviewer, David Turkalo, found that although it was written solidly and had "a surprising number of Australian-American connections", it was too specialised for general American library patrons.
The book has a similar title to the 1978 work by Noel McGrath, Australian Encyclopaedia of Rock and Pop. The second edition appeared in 2017 and was updated to 2016. Steven Carroll of The Sydney Morning Herald opined that "Any survey of Australian pop and rock that includes entries on such bands as Serious Young Insects is a serious tome. It's so easy to get lost in this revised edition: one band leading to another, so on, until you're asking yourself what happened to the last hour." Online version of the book as stored at the Internet Archive Turkalo, David M. "The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop.". Library Journal. Library Journals, LLC. 125: 82. ISSN 0363-0277
Dig (Mark Lizotte song)
“Dig” is a song by Australian rock musician, Mark Lizotte. It is his first release under his birth name; the song released in August 1999 and peaked at 18 in Australia. It was included on his debut solo album Soul Lost Companion in October 1999. "Dig" was the 42nd most played track on Australian Radio in 1999. In 1996, after helping produce and write some tracks on Vika and Linda Bull's album Princess Tabu, the release of Short Cool Ones and Rewind – The Best Of, Diesel relocated with his family to New York City. In 1998 signed a new deal with Mammoth Records and decided to re-emerge under his own name, Mark Lizotte. In November 1998, Lizotte was back in Australia and appeared at the Telstra Concert of the Century/Mushroom 25th anniversary where he joined Chris Wilson and Jimmy Barnes on stage. Lizotte worked with Talking Heads' Jerry Gavin McKillop on the new material. "Dig" "Dr. Jesus" "Sleep While Walking" "Dig" “Dig" debuted and peaked at number 18 in Australia
Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have focused on CD and MP3 formats; the audio cassette was a format used alongside vinyl from the 1970s into the first decade of the 2000s. An album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places; the time frame for recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live" when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, so as to assist in mixing different takes. Recordings, including live, may contain sound effects, voice adjustments, etc..
With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, lyrics or librettos; the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums; when long-playing records were introduced, a collection of pieces on a single record was called an album. An album, in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees and other public notices were inscribed in black, it was from this that in medieval and modern times album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, sketches and the like are collected. Which in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item.
In the early nineteenth century "album" was used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Schumann's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. When 78rpm records came out, the popular 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, about 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of the seventeen-minute Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, it ran for 8m 59s. Deutsche Grammophon had produced an album for its complete recording of the opera Carmen in 1908. German record company Odeon released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky in 1909 on 4 double-sided discs in a specially designed package; this practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been taken up by other record companies for many years. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records.
These albums came in both 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album; the 12-inch LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, it was adopted by the record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from minor refinements and the important addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.
The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as Compact audio cassette, compact disc, MiniDisc, digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. While an album may contain as many or as few tracks as required, in the United States, The Recording Academy's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In the United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" i
Diesel (musician)
Mark Denis Lizotte is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician, who has released material under the name Diesel, Johnny Diesel, as leader of band Johnny Diesel & the Injectors, as a solo performer, as well as under his birth name. Two of his albums reached No. 1 on the Australian Recording Industry Association Albums Charts, Hepfidelity in 1992 and The Lobbyist in 1993. Since 1987, born in Massachusetts, United States, has played on several albums by his brother-in law, Australian rock singer, Jimmy Barnes. Although better known as a singer-songwriter and guitarist, Lizotte is competent on bass guitar, drums and keyboards, he has won six ARIA Music Awards with three for'Best Male Artist' in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Diesel was born in 1966 in Fall River, United States, emigrated to Australia with his family, in November 1971, his father, Henry Bertram Lizotte, his mother, Theresa Rita were parents of Jeannine, Michael, Donna and Mark. They arrived into Sydney, dad purchased a station wagon and the family drove down the Hume Highway and settled in Albury, NSW.
Moving to Perth, Western Australia, where he had a job pouring petrol—an experience that provided inspiration for his music. Henry was a professional saxophonist performing in the US and Australia and his siblings were surrounded by music from an early age. While his siblings became teachers, Diesel settled on electric guitar as his main instrument, he recalled a time in Year 8 at Scarborough Senior High School when he decided on a musical career: "I was trying to get my head around algebra and I thought:'Hang on, I don't have to do this. I can play music as a job!'". During his school days at Scarborough Senior High School he joined a newly formed band by Duncan Andrews named "Dark Spot"; the band was Diesel's first. Whilst the band was without a vocalist for some time, Andrews was on bass, with Bill Advic on electric rhythm guitar and Diesel on lead guitar; each band member tried out for the vocalist spot but it was thought that no one could sing well enough. In 1981 Dark Spot entered the battle of the band competition in Fremantle with an original song penned by Duncan Andrews with Andrews on vocals and bass.
It was well regarded that Diesel's lead guitar talents stole the show and won first prize for the band. In his mid-teens, Diesel performed with The Kind and Close Action; the Kind had Diesel with Denise DeMarchi, Suze DeMarchi, Dean Denton, Gary Dunn, John'Yak' Sherrit and Boyd Wilson. Close Action included Diesel on guitar, Bernie Bremond on saxophone, John Heussenstamm on guitar and Sherrit on drums. In 1983 he joined Innocent Bystanders, a Perth pub rock band, they released a single, "Lebanon" in 1984 with the line-up of Diesel, John "Tatt" Dalzell on bass guitar, Brett Keyser on vocals, Cliff Kinneen on keyboards and Sherrit on drums. Innocent Bystanders travelled to Sydney to record their second single, "Dangerous", released in July 1986, they had attracted the attention of hard rockers, The Angels, went on to record another single and an album, Don't Go Looking Back, released in 1986, however Diesel had left the band. By June 1986, Diesel was back in Perth and had split from Innocent Bystanders leaving fellow member Ross Watson but taking Bremond and Sherritt, they formed Johnny Diesel & the Injectors with George Dalstrom as a second guitarist.
The band played a mixture of blues and Southern rock. Dalstrom left by the end of 1986. According to music journalist, Ed Nimmervoll, the name Johnny Diesel was either from Lizotte's days as a petrol dispenser or from a corruption of John Dalzell's name being misapplied to him as the lead singer; as explained by Lizotte, the real story is. "John had one kid and another on the way," Mark explains. "A friend of ours used to refer to them as'Johnny Diesel and his little injectors'. I got a call from the woman from the venue where we were playing one night a week...'You're starting to draw a few people,' she said.'I'm going to put an ad in the paper, does this nameless band have a name?' I told her we were'Johnny Diesel and the Injectors'. It was just a joke. I wanted it to appear in the newspaper to amuse John Dalzall but the name stuck; when we got to Sydney, our Management said, ` Everyone will think. Are you going to go along with it?' I wasn't going to be stuck-in-the-mud, so I said, yeah. Whatever... fine".
Johnny Diesel & the Injectors moved to Sydney in September after taking up management by Brent Eccles, drummer for The Angels. The group began playing support shows for The Choirboys and The Radiators, they came to the attention of Jane Barnes, wife of hard rocker, Jimmy Barnes, through her recommendation, Diesel was hired to work on Barnes' third solo album, Freight Train Heart. When Barnes took to the road to tour the album in November, Diesel was retained as lead guitarist, while Johnny Diesel & the Injectors were the opening act, it was the beginning of a long relationship between Diesel and Barnes, who would become brothers In law after Diesel married Jep in 1989. Diesel's band signed with Chrysalis Records and their eponymous debut album, Johnny Diesel & the Injectors, was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee with producer Terry Manning from August 1988 and release
