Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1543
Margaret Fiedler McGinnis' Peel Session prowess, went and visited a world-class recording studio for sale near me.
Good morning good morning. welcome to issue number one thousand five hundred and forty-three. Almost wrote 1542 up there, which was yesterday’s issue, but I caught it in time. I wonder how many numbering mistakes I have made with the issue numbers in fifteen hundred issues. Has to be a few, right? What issue are you reaally on, Rick?
Still negative on the covid, fingers crossed. It would be so cool if Covid tests could tell you you were super negative, really quickly, like they do when you are super positive. So I didn’t have to stress for fifteen minutes every morning. I know no one else in the world ever, ever cares about covid counce backs, but I had one last time and it was a pain. Are we personally, individually more susceptible to such things? Was it a fluke and statistically impossible for me to experience again? It would be so cool if our country did science and we could know these things but nah.
Also I am realizing over the last two weeks I have been all over the map with covid capitalization: Covid, covid, COVID. What I really want to be doing is small caps. But there’s no small caps in Markdown, apparently.
Also why is it “markdown” and not “markUP”? Weird.
So I’m doing that officially-recommended thing that no one does and I am still masking, even though negative and let me tell you: no one in America is really doing this. There are the people that still mask as a habit, fine, they are doing the right thing none of us are doing. But no one seems to mask post-covid. But I am. Because I will never, ever give my wife covid. Mark my words.
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Yesterday the GMHHAY Slack mostly agreed with me that saying you’re “free from 2 to 4:30” meant that you could not take a 4:30 appointment, but they also said I could write the whole thing more clearly: perhaps use the word “between” so it is more noticeable to a skimmer. Or say something like “but I have a hard stop at 4:30.” I suspect this is the correct answer. I love the term “hard stop” in corporate speak. I love all corporate speak that is basically a joint agreement to obfuscate our personal lives from our calendars, so that none of us ever have to admit we have to go to the doctor or dry cleaner or pick up our kids.
We are still working on the “to investigate” playlist today, only five hours left. But it’s unclear if I will finish it today since I have a lot of “hard stops” today. But I think we can finish this before we go to Boston Sunday, so that is exciting. We are listening right now to Eiko Ishibashi, who feels like a Japanese Sade, though I don’t know if she is Japanese, or even a she and not a band. OK I have Googled here and 1) she is a she, 2) she is Japanese, and 3) she is Jim O’Rourke’s girlfriend and has worked with Merzbow, which is probably how/why I found her but boy you would not know it from this awesome smooth music. Though Wikipedia says she met Jim while they were both working on a Burt Bacharach tribute, so that is a bit more aligned with her music. Oh man what if this smooth album — Antigone – is a fluke and she also has noise masterpieces in her oevre I’m gonna have to listen to them all aren’t I. Heck yeah. Music rules I love music K holes.
Speaking of which, Margaret Fieldler McGuiness announced on her instagram yesterday the very nice new release of the Laika Peel Sessions, on the wonderful Beggars Arkive label I wish all labels had a sweet arkive re-issue division, 4AD could really use one. Subdivision of Beggars, ironically, or at least started that way.
Anyway I am telling you all this cuz Margaret said something interesting: she said that as far as she can tell she is the woman who has appeared on the most Peel Sessions by the most different bands: Her two bands Laika and Moonshake, when she was a member of PJ Harvey’s band and apparently (and I did not know this) she used to play with her friends in the fantastic noise band God is My Co-Pilot. Saw God is My Co-Pilot with Lisa Crystal Carver, the editor of the GMHHAY books, in Brooklyn right before I left town. It was a great show. It was in that period when Rubulad had a permanent space. Am I remembering that right?
Ahh rock nostalgia.
Anyway I ordered the Laika and Loop Peel Sessions from Beggars Arkive even though I am not buying records this year.
So yesterday I went and looked at a world-class recording studio that is for sale about 15 minutes from my house. I mean, this thing. It is fucking amazing. It is on ten acres of land, it is designed by one of the country’s pre-eminent studio architects. It is immaculately built, no expense spared. A room with a world-class control room, 20-plus-foot ceilings in the main live room, two amazing isobooths with different audio characteristics and four other rooms/vestibules that can be used as isobooths.
Includes an entire separate B-building annex studio that has a lounge and a mixing room but the lounge and the vestibule could be used as tracking rooms. The A and B studios are connected (by what? Fiber Cat 5? No one knew) so that you could do a live performance (it is big enough to fit a full symphony orchestra), mix it in the A studio, then use the B studio as a live production room for the audio and video.
Also has a four bedroom house on the property so recording guests can stay there.
The asking price is, well, it is too much. By about half. Ish. It is somewhat confusing, though. The sale is being handled by real estate sellers. It is listed on Zillow. But it also has a running business in there, which includes bookings through 2026, a studio manager, some technicians, and this awesome dude that the world needs more of who is a property manager and a financial manager.
They seem to know it is too much, though. And said to make an offer.
There is also this confusion about the gear. In the real estate listing website, they said that “the gear” was included. But then on the tour when we looked at it, they were more circumspect, and said that “the console” was included. Consoles. I mean, don’t get me wrong, these are absolute beasts of consoles: the A room has an 64-channel API Vision all discrete console, the B room has a 48-fader/144-channel Harrison Trion digital console.
But when they said in the ad “the gear” was included, and a business, you could almost get to their asking price. But when “the gear” does not include the world-class microphone selection, the two grand pianos, etc., you can’t get there I don’t think.
The biggest unknown, though, is the studio outboard gear — the pres and compressors and delays and all that. They have some serious shit. All the top gear from API and Avalon and Universal Audio and Manley and all that shit, and multiples of all of them. 500 modules for says. $100k Atmos setup and Dynaudio M4Ss.
So on the one hand, gear, no gear, it’s a sale, no gear, you adjust the price downward no biggie. But it’s actually a lot more complex with that with a studio. You buy the thing as-is, that studio engineer who’s been working there forever is useful, and he can help you learn the monstrous complexity of a world-class studio over time. Pull it all out and sell you just the console and, well, that guy is useless, out of a job. You have to rebuild. But that’s fun too — you do it your way, you learn it as you go.
But some sort of liminal in-between? Insanely laborious for everyone.
And honestly, as much as the $200k API console is awesome I would probably go with one of those SSL analog/digital hybrid thingies. So you’re starting from scratch. Seems unlikely to me that the realtors were correct and it just comes with the console. But who knows.
Oh and there is also a full suite of 8k RED-based DV camera equipment? I mean honestly what’s a single Red Mostro VV worth? They have three 8k Reds. All with steadicams, a panopoly of lenses, etc.
The owner is moving to New Zealand, though. I can see why he would want and could take his mic collection, his six Telefunkens and his casual matched pair plus one of U87s. But… is he really taking both grand pianos? The B3 and the Wurli (if nothing comes of this I want that B3). The realtor said he is sending containers of stuff to New Zealand so… maybe?
But it is confusing.
I rambled on to the realtors about how analog gear, great, that stuff endures and the prices are reasonable, but the fact is that his (amazing, enterprise grade) IT setup was a decade old now and honestly it should all be pulled and swapped for Ubiquiti, the mid-grade is enterprise enough these days for a facility like this boy did their eyes glaze over.
Also the business is not really a business, it is a hobby. So, assuming you’re like anyone ever and you want to finance this thing, that’s a whole additional host of problems because it’s very iffy a bank will do a real estate loan where, like, half the value is in electronics. And it’s not a real business, so even with my amazing local small business lending contacts, there’s no business to borrow against. And I could just afford it, maybe, if certain things all worked out perfectly and I mortgaged my houses n shit (or, quelle horreur, sold Chore House), but it is just… overpriced.
They couldn’t tell me what kind of cables were in the ground connecting the buildings. They couldn’t tell me what the internet was, though I found one blueprint that said “satellite” so, ugh, SpaceX probably.
And — this is petty but — when we were driving there we passed this lunatic’s house with a giant “F*CK BIDEN” sign that Emma swears looks new. Like the dude refreshed the F*CK BIDEN sign since Trump won. He’s not, like, next door, there is an entire neighborhood of (pretty nice actually) new McMansions in between. But still.
I cracked a joke to the realtor about “moving to New Zealand,” amongst rich people could mean they are sick of Trump or they are Peter-Theil-leg-humping crypto survivalists. They didn’t want to say but they strongly implied it was the former. They DID say that when he built the place, that none of those houses were there, he was deep in the woods, and “it’s just different now.”
And that’s the thing, though, bro. I mean, yes you spent so much money building this masterpiece, world-class unique amazing thing (though it needs gutters. And an irrigation system, and and and). But expensive builds are never worth what you spend on them, not after day one, def not after a decade. And if the vibe has changed cuz of that Trumper and that neighborhood for you, it has for everyone else too: the clientele, the other potential buyers.
Still, though. Damn. I would pay half the asking for the property and the buildings. Take your console, take all your outboard gear, I will rebuild the studio in a way I understand. I would totally buy a piano and that B3 off of you. I’ll grow from there.
So I am sort of considering that offer. But also… I am already building a studio next to my house? I mean, it’s nothing like this thing, it never could be — this thing is on its own slab (though come to think of it I forgot to check if A and B buildings were on the same slab), the walls are double, air-gapped walls each made of cinderblocks stuffed with sand. This thing is tight.
But it’s also 15 minutes from my house and not right next door with no crazy Trumpers to drive by.
It is very close to Jane’s eventual high school, so that is cool. But also I bet she will get re-districted well before she gets to high school.
Look at that awesome transition to Jane. She is great. She missed me. We are hugging lots. We went to gymnastics yesterday and I think it was the first time I thought “huh she is getting better.”
That was a good feeling.
She also seems off of her poop obsession, that is nice. Not talking about booty cheeks and poop every day this week.
Maybe I missed the window on that planned scatological edition of GMHHAY.
Got a synth pop playlist for you today. Man this playlist is so good. Lotta great synthpop right now. Some of this is not actually “modern,” I found this great compilation of “Junkshop Synthpop 1978-1985” and the whole compilation rules I tried to not over-rely on it.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.