"The Lazeria Jam"

"The Lazeria Jam"
https://soundcloud.com/bats-brew/the-lazeria-jam

the lazeria studio was a funky place....
around 1981, the band i was in at the time, rented it for 2 weeks, as a rehearsal space for whatever the going rate for that was then.
it was fun, because we had carte blanche to the whole studio all day and night for 2 weeks.
the engineer, used us as guinea pigs while we rehearsed, he'd set up all kinds of mic arrangements and screw around with stuff in the control room, which was big enough for about 3 guys to sit/stand in, and that was it.
it really was 'a control room'….. with the requisite Lava Lamp.
LOL
i remember some really big JBL monitors, don't have a clue what they were.
basically, Lazeria was a long rectangular shaped wide open concrete block building, out in the middle of nowhere....
low ceiling, i guess about 10'.....
"shag rug" everywhere....very dead room…..sounded like you could be recording steely dan records in there.
but the cool thing, was it was wired real smart.....
with snakes strategically placed, separate headphone mixers, lots of booms and lots of gobos...
all the gobos had a carpet surface on one side, wood paneling on the other..and they were on rollers, they were easy to move and position. they were beefy, probably a foot wide. i'm guessing, 6' wide by over my head, maybe 7-8 feet tall.
you could build any size isolation area you wanted....so it was super flexible. You could make it a very reflective space, by using the wood panel sides.
the board this jam was recorded thru was a 15 series teac, into a 85-16 16 channel 1" open reel tape deck...i thought it had a marvelous sound, the playback sounded so clean and sweet.
the guys that ran the studio, had built a bunch of unique one-off mics, basically they gutted different mics of their capsules and transformers, built these big plexiglass stretched-out-hexagonal shapes, and floated the mic capsules with wire, just above the surface of the plexi, using the plexi to 'capture' the sound waves.
my guitar, and the drums, were all captured with one of these weirdo homemade microphones.
later, the engineer dubbed us a cassette of the jam.
don't know whatever happened with the reel to reel tape, probably got re-used.....

hi synkotron,
glad you checked this old gem out...
 
i had a blast playing with these guys, for several years of full time road work......

Great jam.  Loved the bass tone and player!  You all stand out great as well. I remember jammin' for most my early life.  Good to hear this.

dcumpian
Is that this Quintin Berry?
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VffYU2cNKq4
 
Regards,
Dan
 

yes, it is.
LOL
 
here we are, back in about 1981....
 

Woo Hooo! Man, both the track of the jam and the Ditto looper were fun! LOL
What guitar are you playing in the pic?
Being 66, I started out in '63 playing everything on the radio at gigs in Chicago, till the hippie thing hit, then it was jam bands for a long time! LOL     I can't imagine hearing any of that stuff now. I certainly don't have any and an old room-mate sent an 8 mm film of a show at the U of I, Chicago ca '69, but no sound. Oh well, it was fun to see my '68 LP Custom and Twin's with JBLs.
We rented a loft space along the river (the one Mayor Daley dumped green stuff in every St Patty's)and that was very handy, though we could only play there from 6pm till 7:30am (which we did!). After that we bought a summer camp in South Haven MI with a bunch of artists and professor types. That was very cool and extremely loose.
Michael
 

pentimentosound
Woo Hooo! Man, both the track of the jam and the Ditto looper were fun! LOL
What guitar are you playing in the pic?
Being 66, I started out in '63 playing everything on the radio at gigs in Chicago, till the hippie thing hit, then it was jam bands for a long time! LOL     I can't imagine hearing any of that stuff now. I certainly don't have any and an old room-mate sent an 8 mm film of a show at the U of I, Chicago ca '69, but no sound. Oh well, it was fun to see my '68 LP Custom and Twin's with JBLs.
We rented a loft space along the river (the one Mayor Daley dumped green stuff in every St Patty's)and that was very handy, though we could only play there from 6pm till 7:30am (which we did!). After that we bought a summer camp in South Haven MI with a bunch of artists and professor types. That was very cool and extremely loose.
Michael

 
thanks micheal!
 
but you lost me on the ditto looper.........?
 
 
 that pic, shows me playing a 1979 Ibanez Artist 2619.
it had the typical les paul-style tone/volume wiring scheme,
but added a phase switch on the bridge pickup.
added a LOT of tonal options.
 
i used that same guitar in the "Lazeria Jam" clip.
 
 
it's really cool,
to have a place that you could go into at any time,
and do whatever you wanted, playing wise (and other, wise.) 
LOL
 
this jam kind of reflects that attitude and situation.
 

OH, I GOTHCA
that's cool
 
quintin is really good at putting stuff like that together,
he's got a thousand good ideas

pentimentosound
So, I posted the above and went to read a review of an interface, that led to a review of a Great River ME-1NV, which led to this one by you, Rob! I laughed out loud and thought "you're everywhere!". LOL
http://www.prostudioreviews.com/line6-am4.htm
 
Michael

that's funny!
i had forgotten that i wrote that review!
 
i DID use that device for quite some time.....
it had a lot of character, going into a good tube amp already set for some grit.
much better/authentic sound than any of those pods

honestly,
at this point in my history of playing for fun and for a living,
i'd probably invest in a KEMPER  profiling amp, and a decent rig for live volume monitoring,
and call it done, if it were me, starting over.
 
i'm a tube purist, and have stuck with a really high quality tube amp for many many years now,
but after writing that review,
i realized that for working guitarists,
it was a brilliant piece of work,
 
and now, years later,
the Kemper is that equivalent for 'purists' of certain tones.
 
 
the Axe 11 is another top shelf project.
 
 
but for what it's worth,
i will sell my '82 boogie soon.
 
i will either trade out for a modern lunch box version of what i've had for so long (Mark 5:25), 
or build a custom Trainwreck clone, at about 5-10 watts max,
and get a Fender champ.
 
those two would handle everything i want to do for studio guitar work.
 
 
with modern direct boxes , it would be easy to slave those two out to a set of stereo powered monitors for stage work.
 
 
that's kinda where my head is at now.
 

Loved it!  Cool stereo bass part.  I'm trying to remember who you guys sound like...someone on the Jam station on XM Satellite radio.....  Great guitar tones and lines.
Kudos to your mix engineer too!

Hey Bats!  Cool sounding jam.  It kind of has the feel of the time.  I forgot about using the Ping-Pong panning as an effect until I heard this. 
Great playing and greats sounds.