| 1983 in Denver, I'm recording the drum track of Thinking Plague's Thorns of Blue and Red. I can tell you this was the first part of the song because that's the only part where I didn't use
my right hand. Just behind that peeling silver sparkle tom was a snare drum tuned high and snappy. At the right of the photo is another snare drum, the one you hear in the second part of the song. It
was mic'ed extremely close, tuned very loose, and muffled with a crumpled up plastic bag which also added some scrunch to the sound. That SM57 mic was plugged into an Electro Harmonix Memory Man
analog delay and then into the studio's reverb plate, which in turn was run through a noise gate to get that strange, detached reverb which follows each snare hit. It was a fairly radical thing to do
at the time.
This was an 8-track studio called Free Reelin'. I never cared for studios like this which had soundproofing and carpet and absorbent material all around, but I think the Packing House, where
we'd recorded the rest of the album, was gone by now...I really don't remember. Anyway the rate at Free Reelin was low enough that even we could afford a few hours now and then...knowing of
course it meant being even more behind on your $75 a month rent and eating three meals that week instead of five...
Photo by Mike Johnson.
|
