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July 13, 2014:

THE PICK-UP SESSION

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, we have had our pick-up session for And the World Goes Round, but before I get to that, let me just state here and now and also now and here that yesterday got off on a weird note (D#) – I went out to the motor car to leave for the session and funnily the car door was open.  I have one of those keyless things and I knew I’d locked the door the night before.  In fact, I usually put my car in the garage, but I’ve been leaving it out every now and then.  Yes, some pathetic little punk somehow hacked the keyless thing (I’m told there are devices that do it, and I’m also told that they have master keys that work on most cars’ driver side doors, which also have a key thing in addition to the button thing.  However they did it, they got in the car.  They were very neat about what they did – the glove box was open and they’d looked through there for valuables, finding none – I do keep my spare glasses in there, and those they left on the passenger seat.  They’d opened the little compartment that’s between the seats, and removed a little tray to get to the iPod, which they took.  I do hope they like soundtracks and show music.  It’s an older iPod anyway, so really, how much do they think they’ll get for that?  Stupid.  They also opened a little compartment where I keep change for parking meters, and they took all of that, about eight bucks’ worth.  So, they can go get a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.  That was it.  They did not open the trunk – had they they would have gotten the second iPod I own plus a nice portable speaker thing.  So, to whomever did this, let me just say that I am sending you most excellent vibes and xylophones for the most miserable, awful life any human can possibly have.  Let’s all send those, shall we – they really do work and these people deserve nothing but the worst of everything.

Other than that, it was quite a lovely day doing our pick-up session.  It was quite long but we got everything we needed.  We spent the first four hours with our trumpet, trombone and reed players, fixing a lot of egregious mistakes and not optimal playing.  There’s nothing like having the real deal, musician-wise – these pros came in, heard the track, and nailed the fixes instantly.  This is what these kinds of guys do and it’s why you always want studio players like this.  The difference was astonishing actually.  Some fixes were a few bars here or a few bars there, and some were a lot more than that.  We did get three or four things that weren’t on the list, so that was a nice bonus.  We had some lunch – Astroburger, naturally, but this time from the Astroburger on Melrose near Paramount – never been there but it was every bit as good as the other one.  Then Kyra Da Costa came in and spent two minutes fixing a note here and a line there in one song.  Then we did our musical director’s vocals, and he did very well – I gave him some direction and he took it and did a swell job.  Then we had about seven piano fixes to do, and that was the hardest thing of the day – there are some horrendously tricky licks in this show, that would tax anyone – I do think we finally got the two most difficult.  We wrapped around seven o’clock.  By the way, we were in a legendary Hollywood Studio.  It’s now called East West, but back in the day it was called United Western.  We recorded the score to The Creature Wasn’t Nice there, and in the smaller room we were in, once upon a time they recorded California Dreaming there (and Monday, Monday) and the entire Pet Sounds album of the Beach Boys.  Here is an actual photograph of me producing the session – one of the best photographs of me ever – my arm looks SO young, doesn’t it?  That’s my engineer, John Adams, sitting on my left.

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I then came home, made some popcorn, and ate it and a little fruit for my evening snack.  I didn’t really have time to watch anything, although I did finish a documentary I’d been watching about the Sunset Strip.  Not great, but some nice historic footage.

Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep, and then around one I’ll mosey on over to the engineer’s house and we’ll put in all these fixes and fix those mixes.  We’re really going to try and finish everything.  Then the musical director will come by late in the afternoon and we’ll assemble everything that’s in pieces, so that when it goes to the mastering guy it will all be easy as pie.  One of the problems we may or may not be facing is that our three musicians yesterday were so great that it may highlight some problems that we carefully hid in other tracks.  We’ll listen to those carefully, and I really think that if it’s necessary to do two more hours to fix a few more things that everyone would be up for that.  I’m sure we’ll eat at some point.

Tomorrow and the rest of the week, it’s all finalizing songs and getting singers their music, meetings and meals, seeing several shows and, well, it’s a very busy week indeed.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully finish a mix, eat and relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them.  So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that we had a good pick-up session and happy that my motor car is safe in the garage.

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