By 2003 I had a couple of interesting albeit very unique musical contacts. One of them was Colin Seeger, one of the original co-authors of Music Business. He’d been advertising in the Australian Music Industry Directory under the business name Galvanizing Ideas and we hit it off almost immediately. We met up a few times, talked music and business and a heap of other things. He had lots of friends and contacts and suggested a Paddington studio for me to go and record. I touched based with Paul and his engineer Peter and they sounded pretty cool. They didn’t want to hook up before hand and they didn’t want to necessarily hear the tracks before we recorded them. They had a way of keeping me at a distance the entire project and although the results were amazing, the experience left me a little disenchanted. This probably had as much to do with me being a greenhorn and to be fair, Paul is a great producer and musician. We locked in 3 days which cost nearly $3000 for the production and mixing of two tracks: Shiny Spinning Wheel and Things that you Can’t Touch or See. Paul had a system so meticulous, so orderly, so structured that my inclinations to being spontaneous and creative during the process were pretty hard to get through. I sat on the couch and watched. He made me feel like he did this day in and day out every day. I’m not sure how true that is but I did learnt a hell of a lot and would go back for that Paul Najar sheen a couple of years later when I recorded Everytime. He was a Logic user, a keyboard player from the 80’s and he also had a UAD-1 and some pretty cool outboard. We did three precise vocal takes and I watched as he chopped and changed phrases between each take, choosing the best of each. Amazing stuff that I took with me and continue to use from time to time.* A lot happened in three days and the result was two very clean and very beautiful songs which would be the opening tracks on Stamps & Coins.
*I also bought a UAD-1 when I eventually set up my studio.
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