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Posted on 03.31.05 by Dale Manquen @ 22:24:03
This story doesn’t involve Wally to any large extent, but it describes Wally’s willingness to stretch the envelope. The Beach Boys were headed for the Honolulu International Center (HIC) in Hawaii, and they hired Heider Recording to record the performances. This was to be the first double 8-track remote, two machines running together, making redundant recordings with a slight overlap so that nothing got lost. The 8-track 1” format was still fairly new, and not many people had two machines that they could send out on a remote, but Wally had two 3M Model 23 8-tracks ready for the job. What Wally didn’t have was an 8-bus console to feed the 8-track machines. Frank DeMedio was working on an 8-bus console that would eventually be used in Wally’s Studio 3, but it wasn’t finished. Wally invited me to travel to Hawaii as the tech, accompanying Bill Halverson on the job. I guess he figured I knew the tape machines inside out, and I could probably figure out any console problems. To help me become familiar with the console, he suggested that I visit Frank’s home, where Frank and his Dad were building the console, sometime prior to the trip for a familiarization by Frank. That sounded like a good plan. Time went by and there was no familiarization trip. Finally, time ran out, and the night before the trip I went over to Frank’s place. What I found was only the pieces of a console. I asked if there was anything that I could do to help, but Frank suggested that I just make myself comfortable for a while as they finished up. That was maybe around 7:00 p.m. Since the console was due to be loaded onto a pallet at the airport around 10:00 a.m. the following morning, I assumed that things were under control and I would soon be able to get a rundown. By about 9:00 p.m. I was starting to get concerned. Things were still scattered around the room. My offer to help once again was refused. Filed under: Dale Manquen Comments: 4 Comments |
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Posted on 03.31.05 by Dale Manquen @ 10:46:52
I guess it takes a lot of energy to keep a hyperactive giant running. Wally certainly enjoyed eating to keep the fires stoked. I remember John’s Kingburger, a sidewalk hamburger shack directly across Vine Street from the Capitol tower. John was a very quiet guy who lived with his dog(s?) and made on Hell of a hamburger. The meat patty wasn’t thick, but it was made from fresh meat, formed large enough to cover the large buns John used. John used lots of seasoning to bring out the flavor of the meat. The real crowning glory of his hamburgers was the trimmings. He would stack up lots of lettuce leaves, slices from big beefsteak tomatoes and beautiful slices of large onions. I think John would pick up his daily supply of vegetables from the L.A. Produce Market each morning. My mouth waters just describing those masterpieces. Pardon me while I wipe the drool off my chin… Lunch for Wally was two of John’s burgers, and then at least one chilidog for dessert. Once when I was visiting L.A. during my 2-year stint at New Mexico State University’s graduate school (1969-1971), I stopped at John’s stand just as I was leaving town in my Volkswagen to drive back to New Mexico. I can remember how proud I was that first time that I was actually able to finish off 2 Kingburgers, but I certainly couldn’t handle a chilidog chaser. I also bought an extra burger to take to my girlfriend back home. On my straight-through drive to New Mexico of about 800 miles there were several times when my girlfriend almost lost her opportunity to see her first Kingburger. I did manage to deliver the burger intact, and she ate it and enjoyed it very much. Filed under: Dale Manquen Comments: 2 Comments |
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Posted on 03.31.05 by Dale Manquen @ 00:00:59
Wally’s First 3M 8-Track  Wally Heider was always willing to play a hunch. If he thought something new could be successful, he was willing to be the first one on the block with the new toy. One of his hunches was to buy the first 3M Isoloop 8-track recorder ever delivered. That hunch paid off immediately. Wally’s 8-track was among the first 3 machines to be hand-built by the design team at 3M Mincom. The other two machines consisted of a ½” 2-channel Dynatrack-only machine delivered to Ross Ritchie at the Marine Band in Washington, and a ½”/1” 4-track shipped to Rolf Epstein at the Film Board of Canada. Wally’s machine was unique. During the design process for the second-generation NAB/Dynatrack machine, a design company, Ford and Earl Associates of Troy, Michigan, was commissioned to come up with the industrial design of the machine and mounting cabinet. One of their first questions was “Can’t we get rid of that terrible buff color on those meters?” Well, they certainly lost that battle, but the console design was very impressive. The machine was mounted in a walnut grained cabinet using contoured sheetmetal and Heliarced wraparounds. The cabinet was mounted on a bird-foot pedestal with 4 casters – similar to a desk chair. Unfortunately, after the first two prototypes of the console were built, that technique was way too expensive. The compound rolled corners and Heliarced aluminum were completely overbudget. The console was redesigned with flat sheetmetal pieces and a deeper (horizontally) wooden box that brought the lower electronics modules forward for better viewing and access. Filed under: Dale Manquen Comments: None |
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Posted on 03.30.05 by Dale Manquen @ 12:10:36
I first met Wally at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966. But first let me set the stage… I grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico and attended New Mexico State University. I loved electromechanical gadgets, and I began a lifelong romance with tape recorders when I was in high school. My first recorder was a Masco recorder that I bought from a newspaper ad for $25. I did all kinds of modifications to this machine and my later Concertone 1401 and Magnecord PT-6R. When I was ready to graduate, I interviewed all the normal campus recruiters from the oil and aerospace companies (and the CIA). I also took a wild fling at finding a job in tape recorders, writing letters to Honeywell, 3M and Ampex. As a result, I was invited by 3M to St. Paul to interview someone named John T. Mullin. I had no idea what Jack’s historical contributions were, nor had I ever been involved in a professional recording session. (Most of my recording was just disk-to-tape copies of friends’ records.) For some reason, Jack liked me and offered me a job. If I had known the odds against me landing that job, I never would have tried! I moved to St. Paul in May of 1965. Filed under: Dale Manquen Comments: None |
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Posted on 03.28.05 by admin @ 00:08:01
This is an excerpt from an unfinished and as yet incomplete interview with Stephen Barncard conducted by Matt Greenwald in 1998. Parts One, Two and Three of the interview can be found at the Barncard site. This excerpt picks up where Barncard is answering a question about his 6 month residence in LA in 1968. A: Sunset Sound was about four blocks away, and we were about two blocks down from Heider’s on Cahuenga. Had I known, I would have been knocking on the doors and just asked for a job, but I didn’t know where to start. There was a demand for someone like me in independent recording and they needed people, but I didn’t know that at the time. Q: This must have been around the time CSN were recording their first album, right? A: Yeah, right around that time they were doing their first record with Bill Halverson but I didn’t know that, and I was a bit unsure about LA, anyway. When my girlfriend, Ellen Burke came out to join me for Christmas, we got fearful of earthquakes and decided to go back to Kansas City by way of San Francisco. When we got up there, it was really more of what I was looking for. The air was cleaner, the musical atmosphere better—What a city! During this trip, I saw The Grateful Dead for the first time on New Year s eve—(December 31, 1968) at The Fillmore. I had never liked their records very much. Seeing them live, I went “Woah! Who’s that groovy guy with the beard singing ‘St. Stephen’ and ‘Dark Star’?” It was great. I actually taped it. I had a little Norelco tape recorder with an SM 57. I guess I was one of the first tapers, it just wasn’t a big deal back then, nobody minded. I wish I still had the tape; it was either stolen or lost. Anyway, the show left an impression on me. So did San Francisco. My girlfriend and I went back to Kansas City for a little while, I went back to KUDL/KCJC-FM and then that first CSN record came out. Q: This is mid-1969, right? A: Right. And I heard those voices and said, “My god, they got a 16 track!”. I could tell that they doubled or tripled the voices…plus the guitars, plus the bass, etc. So after 6 months in Kansas City, I decided that if I wanted to make records, I had to get back to the West Coast. I had to make a choice: East Coast, Woodstock, or West Coast, Bill Graham’s ‘Wild West.’ I blew off Woodstock, flew to San Francisco, stayed with some friends, grabbed a phone book and opened it up to ‘recording studios’, and I saw Wally Heider’s listed and thought, ‘okay, this is only a few blocks away.’ I went over there and talked to a very nice guy named Mel Tanner who was the general manager, and he gave me a tour of the place. They had one studio operating, which was Studio C. Studios A and D were still under construction. Filed under: Firsthand Stories Comments: Comments Off |
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Posted on 03.26.05 by admin @ 12:58:46
The Kama Sutra/Buddah Records Story This story is copyright © 1993 by Bob Hyde, and is used by permission of the author. Charting the history of any record label—much less two or three—is a precarious occupation at best. A hit record makes ordinary people heroes while a stiff causes the arrow of blame to spin madly, looking for a suitable target. Some success in the music business comes from sheer luck; some is the result of hard, diligent work, and some comes from what can only be described as a “genius” for the medium. Filed under: Other Recording Stories Comments: None |