Lunar Madness song from Vicious Lips movie remix

https://soundcloud.com/jimmy-saad/lunar-madness-master-9-21-13
 
Remixed the song Lunar Madness today from an old stereo MP3 I had of the original 1/4" stereo mix.  
 
This was originally recorded in my living room on a Tascam 1/2" 8 Track. Tony Riparetti played guitars and Sue Saad sang vocal.  I played the drums, engineered, produced, and wrote the song.
 
I think I posted the link to the song a long time ago on this forum but here is the full Vicious Lips movie the song was featured in:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyhdXv7Ms2w
 
Here is the part in the movie for the song:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU6suXCrOkI
 
Thought you might like to check this out.
 
Rimshot
 
 

Thanks much Frank.  Sue was my first wife a long time ago now.  Tony, Sue and I started the band Sue Saad & The Next on Planet Records in 1979.  This song was recorded before that in 1978!
 
Jimmy
 

Hi John, thanks for the listen.  The darn song held up after 35 years!  Yikes!

That's pretty cool :-) That chick singer has some pipes.

Fantastic - some great playing and singing here - excellent.

The Band19
That's pretty cool :-) That chick singer has some pipes.

She does Robby.  Here's Guilty Pleasures video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KKZL9wFvcw
 

CLEAN
Fantastic - some great playing and singing here - excellent.

Hi Mark, 
 
Thanks for the nice comments.  Remember way back when we had to make committments to what we were recording.  The sound, the take, how it would fit into the final mix.  Recording on 8 track or 4 track made it even harder.  These drums were recorded with 8 mics and output to a stereo track.  There was no going back and tweeking the snare or kick.  The guitars were live with some punching in.  1 track for the lead vocal.  I had a delay unit and a stereo spring reverb unit.  No outboard compressors or limiters.  The board as an old Magma 8 input board.  I used SM57's for everything.  Hey - it made into a B grade film!  
 
I thought you all would get a kick out of hearing this.  
 
Jimmy
 

We have so much more freedom in modern digital recording that it's almost like cheating, when compared with analog tape recording from 20+ years ago.  Post-production quantizing, pitch correction, MIDI editing, groove detection, huge sample libraries, and powerful real time effects have all taken "the perfect take" completely out of the equation.  It's no longer about your skill as a musician, or creating the perfect vibe/mood to capture a perfect musical moment on tape.  Nowadays, it's all about your technical understanding, software budget (which doesn't need to be nearly as high as it used to be to rent the 8-track tape at your neighborhood studio), production training/choices, and most of all, your patience to use all the above tools repeatedly until you make something that sounds "perfect", even if it didn't start out that way.
 
This is why I've moved away from performance based recording and have focused in recent years on post-production techniques and analysis.  I admit that I like the new ear candy, and as a long time professional IT geek it suits my skill set as well.  However, I do wistfully recognize that "the new way" of recording music has pretty much eliminated the need for musicianship and performance talent, and replaced them with increased needs for technical skill and patience.
 
It's also had the effect of raising the production bar, since everyone has access to the new digital process, so it's no longer acceptable for a song to be "flawed" in some way.  For every flaw there is always a correction to be made, and if the producer doesn't make it then they're just being lazy.  Nowadays it seems the hardest part of music production is deciding that you're finished with a song and stopping making revisions. :)

Jimmy, I think the link was broken.  It took me to a song by Rush.  That's some good engineering for an 8 track recording.  I used to use a Tascam(Sonar?) 8 track reel to reel, but my results never sounded this good.  Congratulations.

Lynn
Jimmy, I think the link was broken.  It took me to a song by Rush.  That's some good engineering for an 8 track recording.  I used to use a Tascam(Sonar?) 8 track reel to reel, but my results never sounded this good.  Congratulations.

Hi Lynn, 
 
Thanks for the listen and nice comments.  Yes, it was quite a feat to get descent results out of the 8 track but it actually landed us a record deal with Planet back in 1979.  If fact, we recorded our first album in 2 weeks by pretty much reproducing what we had done at home.  I am very proud of what we did way back then.  
 
All the best.
 
Jimmy