Well, dear readers, let me just say it straight rather than crooked – yesterday was an interesting day. I could just leave it at that, but I may as well spill the beans even though the beans are still in an unknown state so we’re still trying to figure out stuff. But it’s all tantalizingly close as are many interesting things right now that will hopefully all come to fruition. After twenty years of trying various ways to make it happen, I’m finally going to get to remix and hopefully fix the album that should have been called The Sherman Brothers Album but was ultimately and horribly titled Believe by a bunch of truly ignorant people who simply were amateurs and didn’t know what they were doing. I’ve told the story many times, so I shan’t rehash it here, but half the orchestra tracks, the second pass, were left out, creating half an orchestration, vocals were not carefully comped and therefore not up to my standards, and there was no consistency on the mixes and sound levels at all. It was a first-class embarrassment. And they removed my name from it as producer and gave me a conceived by credit. They lied to Richard Sherman about it and got him to write liner notes because he was told I’d been involved in finishing it. He regretted that instantly once he knew the story. I tried to have various people, including Richard, get it back so I could do it properly, but I think they figured out it was me that it was for and these people who were never going to let me do it. As you may or may not know, the label was trying to sell everything, but they could not make that deal without me because I had the contracts and without those there could be no deal ever. So, when Concord became the buyer, I facilitated the deal and in return I got the rights to the Guy Haines album and the ability to issue any Guy Haines tracks. For the past three months, I’ve been trying to get the Pro Tools sessions on the hard drives, but it dragged on until yesterday, when they finally sent me a link to them. Unfortunately, I could not open the link. They finally added me and my engineer to be able to, and he was able to get in but, because nothing is easy, could not even open the Pro Tools sessions. Why? Because this was recorded in 2001 and Pro Tools no longer supports those kinds of sound files. This is happening all the time – software replaced and then no support for the old anymore, which is a real big problem. Anyway, he said he’d research but that it wouldn’t be easy no matter what.
In the meantime, I sent the engineer here in town with whom I’ll be comping vocals my link and he was able to get in there and because he loves challenges like this, was able to open three of the four sessions, one of which was the complete orchestra tracks for all fourteen songs, both passes of the band. The one session he cannot open at the moment has to be the vocals. The only vocals that are on the orchestra tracks were done the day of the band session, just the LA singers who came in and did rough tracks to make sure the band and they were together. Those are all unusable and there are only three of those because the rest of the vocals were recorded in New York. He also hasn’t been able to save it to a new Pro Tools session, which has to be done. So, he’s trying to figure out why that’s happening – he saves, he gets to 100% and then it crashes without having saved. But he’s going to spend the weekend working on it. He did play me one track of the band, and it sounded great. So, send some excellent vibes and xylophones that we can get all this saved and opened properly and then we will do a completely new mix of the band, I’ll comp all the vocals, I’ll replace one vocal I know we never got good enough, and Guy Haines will do his vocal for a song that never even made the album – we have the track. The LA engineer also thinks he might know a studio that still has this old Pro Tools software on an old computer – if so, then all of this becomes much easier. Also possible, you can purchase a legacy version of the old Pro Tools, and we could install that on my old computer – we’d have to wipe it clean first, but if we got it on that then it could all be saved properly to new Pro Tools. The big problem with that is cost – nine hundred bucks which is absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, this LA guy is really good and I’m praying he can get all this straightened out, saved, and then it’s full steam ahead.
What I’d do is hopefully get it out for Christmas, new title, new packaging, new notes, all that stuff. And then I’d sell it separately and also bundled with Unsung Sherman Brothers and Levi, and bundled with the book, too. So, that was yesterday. I only got ninety minutes of sleep, got up, did stuff, took pill one, and went back to bed and didn’t arise until after noon, so ultimately, I got over eight hours. I also had watched the remake of Kurosawa’s High and Low called Highest 2 Lowest, directed by Spike Lee, starring Denzel Washington. Well, High and Low it ain’t. High and Low, for me, is one of the greatest movies ever made. It has a really interesting structure – the protagonists initial needs, which he succeeds in doing, then the fire that ignites the plot, which is a kidnapping and when that isn’t what it seems, his moral conundrum about what to do in terms of paying the ransom, which would lose him his business that he’s trying to save. It’s a great plot (from the novel, King’s Ransom by Ed McBain aka Evan Hunter), and the first third of the film is just riveting and Toshiro Mifune is magnificent. The police are very helpful and do things methodically. The first third ends with the ransom money being delivered and the kidnap victim being returned. Then the second of the three acts happens, which is the police procedural third of the film, where they follow up leads, analyze film, and try to get the kidnap victim to remember details. These cops are really on it. Mifune is barely in that section. And then, the final third is figuring out the guilty party and his capture and arrest. Then there’s a coda scene with Mifune and the kidnapper that is one of the all-time great scenes and endings of a film.
In the remake, the police are bumbling idiots and completely annoying, middle third of High and Low is missing completely, and the film ultimately has trouble with its tone – sometimes it’s just to smartassy for its own good. It’s directed with simplicity, so that was nice, but it just doesn’t seem to know what it really wants to be. The motivation of the kidnapper is very different, and the final scene in High and Low becomes the penultimate scene in the new film and it’s not nearly as effective. The film has a few moments, but the big set piece of the ransom handoff, which is very focused and razor sharp in the Kurosawa and ALL about Mifune, becomes so muddled in the Lee version, with a ton of crosscutting between a Latin parade, a bunch of sports fanatics on the subway, and a lot of handoffs of the loot. I’m sure it’s meant to be a virtuoso sequence but for me it was simply irritating. All in all, it just made me want to watch High and Low again.
For food, I had fried catfish and potato salad – very good – and I took pills two and three, Prednisone, took the first of the Folic Acid pills. I dozed off for a couple of hours, too, then watched the movie Payback, which I know I saw but I remembered nothing other than it was another remake, this time Point Blank. The reason I remembered nothing is because I actually watched the director’s cut, which wasn’t done until many years later. Mel Gibson ousted the director from the editing room, thirty percent of the film was reshot, new ending, new opening – so I’d never seen the original version, and that’s what I watched last night. It was more of a Mel Gibson fantasy movie than what the original director had in mind, and it was rather silly. And that was pretty much it.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll continue catching up, I’m hoping the Pro Tools stuff gets figured out successfully, I made a batch of tuna pasta salad last night, so that’s the food for today and tomorrow, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is a ME day. Then next week is busy, hopefully with The Sherman Brothers Album stuff and I have the chest CAT scan on Tuesday at 10:45 in the Hills of Beverly.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, continue catching up, hope the Pro Tools stuff gets saved successfully, eat, check with the mail place, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films of Denzel Washington and Mel Gibson? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that we’re almost there for the resurrection of The Sherman Brothers Album.