Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2021 0:02:57 GMT
STeVe;
STeVe:
Since I'm ****ing bored right now I thought I would say a word or two.
First of all, let's get it straight and clear, the Capitol/EMI/Liberty/Imperial/UA, etc. tapes have been in an Iron Mountain facility for OVER 20 YEARS. Not last week. So this ain't news.
What hurts is Capitol Mastering is closed. The engineers there were smart and cared about what vintage tapes were being used for various projects and knew how to figure out the quirks of the Iron Mountain check-out process.
Those of you who have been following my Nat King Cole adventures know of the struggles to get the right versions of every song for all the Analogue Productions NKC disks.
When the stuff was checked in to Iron Mountain, the old faithful Capitol file card tape finding system was discarded and the tapes were packed in boxes and arrived in no order whatsoever. They were entered on a vintage computer program by someone who didn't know a master from a dupe and didn't care.
So, Jason Blaine (then of Capitol/EMI Special Markets) and I started out looking for the Nat Cole album LOVE IS THE THING in his little cubicle in the Tower. Turns out the stuff on the computer program wasn't marked by album title, so that didn't work so well. We decided to do it by song title, and hopefully the rest of the songs from the album would be there as well, or at least one side.
I chose "I thought About Marie" to start. Yeah, there were over 40 tapes with that song on it. We ordered them all up, disrupting the system for a few days. When they came over to the Tower, I was right, it was side TWO of the album so all we had to do is pick a song on side one to order up (When I Fall In Love) and another 40 tapes arrived.
But, the stuff that arrived! Every useless digital dupe from 1984 on, all record club dub tapes returned to Capitol in the 1970s, the eight-track running master, the cassette running master, the open reel running master and so on, plus all of the analog dupes over the years, mono and stereo, the EP cutting tapes, etc.
80 reels and we just needed two of them. Found them, of course. But this was the EASIEST Nat King Cole project to work on.
Think about this, in order to find any outtakes from the album, we had to look on the 1988 computer program song by song. And guess what? Some songs were spelled wrong on the tape box and entered wrong in the computer. "I Thot About Marie" was a highlight. But, that was the outtake with the studio chatter that we used on the vinyl. So then we (because we were nutsy) had to check every song title on the album (not just one per side) to see if any tapes existed that weren't part of the 80 reels we pulled out. YES, there were, but nothing we needed, a lot of Capitol Special Products reels for this and that, plus all of the Phono Reel dubs of all the songs, both mono and stereo (which came in handy to fix a few tape glitches on the well-worn masters.)
And that was the EASIEST of all the projects we did. The hardest? The Nat "King" Cole Story. Yikes.
On the Nat Cole tape boxes (and therefore entered into the ancient computer program), the artist was sometimes listed as NAT COLE. Or KING COLE or "KING" COLE or KING COLE TRIO or NAT COLE/STAN KENTON or NAT KING COLE or NAT "KING" COLE or KING COLE/BILLY MAY even NAT KYLE, etc. Once we discovered that, we actually found a few things that were missing which was damn silly. All because we couldn't eyeball the reels on the spot.
This had to be done on the GARY LEWIS & THE PLAYBOYS complete singles box set I worked on, also on JAY & THE AMERICANS box set I worked on. Jason Blaine did those on his own and actually found every mono single master for all of those. Took him weeks.
Now, the old saying is "Once in Iron Mountain, never out of Iron Mountain" and I can understand it. It's not a library, it's storage. So, every time Jason and I called up reels, EMI got fined. And when we pulled the above 80 reels for Nat Cole LOVE IS THE THING and returned 77 the next day, no one was happy. We did that for months and at the end, when Chad of Acoustic Sounds agreed to do the mono AFTER MIDNIGHT, it got even crazier, so much so that the President of Capitol/EMI had to write a letter to Iron Mountain asking them to cooperate with us! The irony is that when I started the Nat Cole stuff, one regime was in charge at Capitol and by the time we were finished, they were all gone and another set of suits were in charge, strangers to us. That made it tough.
In the good old days of the 1990s and older, when the tapes were filed at the Capitol Branch building IN ORDER on the shelves, we could locate stuff in a few seconds, either by master number (outtakes), album number mono, album number stereo and single version on the Phono reels using the card catalog. The building had the gas that could be pumped in case of fire, the whole deal. It was perfect. Someone, I guess long since fired, decided that Iron Mountain was the place for the stuff, even though they didn't think it through, it all went.
So, what can I say? The fact that there is NO Capitol Mastering engineer to pick the CORRECT reels out of 80 is quite depressing to me.
Iron Mountain is a great, safe place to store your stuff, but if you have an active Catalog Development Department at your record company, perhaps not so great..
Over and out.
First of all, let's get it straight and clear, the Capitol/EMI/Liberty/Imperial/UA, etc. tapes have been in an Iron Mountain facility for OVER 20 YEARS. Not last week. So this ain't news.
What hurts is Capitol Mastering is closed. The engineers there were smart and cared about what vintage tapes were being used for various projects and knew how to figure out the quirks of the Iron Mountain check-out process.
Those of you who have been following my Nat King Cole adventures know of the struggles to get the right versions of every song for all the Analogue Productions NKC disks.
When the stuff was checked in to Iron Mountain, the old faithful Capitol file card tape finding system was discarded and the tapes were packed in boxes and arrived in no order whatsoever. They were entered on a vintage computer program by someone who didn't know a master from a dupe and didn't care.
So, Jason Blaine (then of Capitol/EMI Special Markets) and I started out looking for the Nat Cole album LOVE IS THE THING in his little cubicle in the Tower. Turns out the stuff on the computer program wasn't marked by album title, so that didn't work so well. We decided to do it by song title, and hopefully the rest of the songs from the album would be there as well, or at least one side.
I chose "I thought About Marie" to start. Yeah, there were over 40 tapes with that song on it. We ordered them all up, disrupting the system for a few days. When they came over to the Tower, I was right, it was side TWO of the album so all we had to do is pick a song on side one to order up (When I Fall In Love) and another 40 tapes arrived.
But, the stuff that arrived! Every useless digital dupe from 1984 on, all record club dub tapes returned to Capitol in the 1970s, the eight-track running master, the cassette running master, the open reel running master and so on, plus all of the analog dupes over the years, mono and stereo, the EP cutting tapes, etc.
80 reels and we just needed two of them. Found them, of course. But this was the EASIEST Nat King Cole project to work on.
Think about this, in order to find any outtakes from the album, we had to look on the 1988 computer program song by song. And guess what? Some songs were spelled wrong on the tape box and entered wrong in the computer. "I Thot About Marie" was a highlight. But, that was the outtake with the studio chatter that we used on the vinyl. So then we (because we were nutsy) had to check every song title on the album (not just one per side) to see if any tapes existed that weren't part of the 80 reels we pulled out. YES, there were, but nothing we needed, a lot of Capitol Special Products reels for this and that, plus all of the Phono Reel dubs of all the songs, both mono and stereo (which came in handy to fix a few tape glitches on the well-worn masters.)
And that was the EASIEST of all the projects we did. The hardest? The Nat "King" Cole Story. Yikes.
On the Nat Cole tape boxes (and therefore entered into the ancient computer program), the artist was sometimes listed as NAT COLE. Or KING COLE or "KING" COLE or KING COLE TRIO or NAT COLE/STAN KENTON or NAT KING COLE or NAT "KING" COLE or KING COLE/BILLY MAY even NAT KYLE, etc. Once we discovered that, we actually found a few things that were missing which was damn silly. All because we couldn't eyeball the reels on the spot.
This had to be done on the GARY LEWIS & THE PLAYBOYS complete singles box set I worked on, also on JAY & THE AMERICANS box set I worked on. Jason Blaine did those on his own and actually found every mono single master for all of those. Took him weeks.
Now, the old saying is "Once in Iron Mountain, never out of Iron Mountain" and I can understand it. It's not a library, it's storage. So, every time Jason and I called up reels, EMI got fined. And when we pulled the above 80 reels for Nat Cole LOVE IS THE THING and returned 77 the next day, no one was happy. We did that for months and at the end, when Chad of Acoustic Sounds agreed to do the mono AFTER MIDNIGHT, it got even crazier, so much so that the President of Capitol/EMI had to write a letter to Iron Mountain asking them to cooperate with us! The irony is that when I started the Nat Cole stuff, one regime was in charge at Capitol and by the time we were finished, they were all gone and another set of suits were in charge, strangers to us. That made it tough.
In the good old days of the 1990s and older, when the tapes were filed at the Capitol Branch building IN ORDER on the shelves, we could locate stuff in a few seconds, either by master number (outtakes), album number mono, album number stereo and single version on the Phono reels using the card catalog. The building had the gas that could be pumped in case of fire, the whole deal. It was perfect. Someone, I guess long since fired, decided that Iron Mountain was the place for the stuff, even though they didn't think it through, it all went.
So, what can I say? The fact that there is NO Capitol Mastering engineer to pick the CORRECT reels out of 80 is quite depressing to me.
Iron Mountain is a great, safe place to store your stuff, but if you have an active Catalog Development Department at your record company, perhaps not so great..
Over and out.
STeVe:
I've received a few PM's saying how horrible this must have been for me, etc.
Sorry if I gave that impression. It was fun, actually. Jason and I made a game out of it. By the end of the NAT COLE adventures, Jason could find tape at Iron Mountain from any EMI/Capitol artist, old or new. He was the expert, by far. Then, he got fired, along with the entire lower level crew. So, the Institutional Memory that he had was swept away..
Sorry if I gave that impression. It was fun, actually. Jason and I made a game out of it. By the end of the NAT COLE adventures, Jason could find tape at Iron Mountain from any EMI/Capitol artist, old or new. He was the expert, by far. Then, he got fired, along with the entire lower level crew. So, the Institutional Memory that he had was swept away..
