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Brian
Wilson
 A
Labor of Love, Live
by
Gregory A. DeTogne
Those
who have long wondered by what unit of measure a pop song can be deemed
extraordinary need only remember this simple test: If Brian Wilson hears
it over his car radio and becomes so overwhelmed he has to pull off the
road, someone has a very serious hit on their hands.
Continue..
Jon
Brion
Crazed
Eclectic Co-Conspirator (And Producer)
 by
David John Farinella
These days,
it seems like producers come in more varieties than Pokemons. Former engineers,
musicians, managers, roadies and girlfriends (not mentioning any names
here) have all moved to the seat behind a recording console and called
the proverbial recording shots. By adding those ingredients (and subtracting
the girlfriend bit) to the titles acoustician, human jukebox and musical
historian, you get the 21st century producer Jon Brion. From his early
dates as a Jellyfish sideman, to his more recent producer assignment on
Fiona Apple’s latest, to his composer credit for the hit film Magnolia,
Brion has seemingly handled all facets of the recording process. Continue..
Jeff
Bova
A
Studio Pro Finds His Home
 By
Gary Eskow
Growing up
in Old Greenwich, Conn., the son of a professional trumpet player who
headed off to New York City to play ballets at the Met, shows on Broadway
and tons of session dates, keyboardist/composer/arranger Jeff Bova was
raised in an atmosphere steeped in love for all styles of music.
“I can remember going to Broadway shows to watch my dad play,”
he says from his basement studio at Avatar Studios (formerly Power Station),
New York City. “It was so fantastic—someone I knew was involved
with this amazing experience!” Bova took up the trumpet in elementary
school and continued with it through Berklee College of Music and the
Manhattan School of Music. But, it was keyboards that would prove to be
his lifelong axe after he picked up a Hammond M-3 at the age of 15. Continue..
Boston’s
“More Than A Feeling”
 by
Dan Daley
In 1976, mainstream American rock was making the transition
from blues-based proto-metal to what would become a decade-and-a-half’s
worth of power pop. It was an era when the recording of the pistons of
rock—guitars and drums—made the transition from a crude craft
to a true science, as guitar sounds began to receive the kind of data
processing heretofore reserved for NASA telemetry.
“More Than A Feeling,” the first single from Boston’s eponymous
debut album, hit the airwaves that autumn (making it to Number 5), and
acted as a pivot in this transition, combining some of the ebullience
of the rock era’s early days with the precision and technology that
would mark rock record productions from then on. That song and album also
set benchmarks for the record business. Boston became the best-selling
pop debut effort in history, a title it held for a decade before it was
supplanted by Whitney Houston’s first album. It ultimately sold 16
million copies in the process of creating a reference point for production
values and studio technology that would stand for years. Continue..
Reprinted with permission from 
Magazine, September, 2000
© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
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