The X-Mas Dinner Spread

I thought long and hard about what to bring, and frankly it stressed me out a bit. I started to think through what I had – a spare picture frame, photo-shop skills, a photo printer. All these things add up, but a final ingredient made everything come together: the desire for revenge.

I had been the brunt of a few jokes in the sales department, those strapping men who drive fast cars but gossip like school girls at the faintest hint of romance: I went to lunch with a girl, and weeks later, Arthur was still prodding me about the marriage plans. My walk from the creative wing down to the sales department became a passage through that affectionate verbal gauntlet common to most male workforce interaction.

Kim knows what I'm talking about...

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the interaction. However, I am not one for immediate retaliation either. If I feel the need to save face, I’ll smile, nod and laugh along, then later when you aren’t looking I’ll slap you in the back of the head so hard your glasses fall off. It’s more fun for me that way. So, in this vein, it dawned on me that the White Elephant gift represented a beautiful opportunity to bring things back around. And to do so tastefully.

I started scouting the company server to find an old funny picture of one of the culprits. Quite honestly, the possibilities, when mixed with a little photo-shop trickery, were endless. I knew who my targets were: Joe and Arthur. Andy, the new guy, might take it a little hard, not to mention the shortage of his pictures on the server, so I really had no choice but one of the top dogs.

Understanding how creative business works, I did a few mockups:

Here's Joe Faulkner with his good friend Joe Faulkner.

Arthur Casias on vacation in California.

However, an axiom I try to live by: natural is better. If you can find something that requires no manipulation and still meets your needs, it will almost always be better than something you have to tweak endlessly (for example, Arthur’s chin above). Knowing this, imagine how elated I was when I stumbled across this gem:

"I am Arthur, hear me roar." Photography by Paul West.

Ultimately, as the ringleader, it was Arthur who I felt deserved the proverbial slap in the back of the head, even though Joe and Andy participated in the friendly banter. So I printed the above photo, practiced Arthur’s signature twice, then dreamily signed his name across the left side with plenty of x’s and o’s. I wrapped it up and headed to the Christmas dinner, where I nervously wondered how everyone would react. Too much? Maybe…

But luckily, they loved it. Even Arthur. Predictably, he still gives me a hard time about said lunch date. But hey, that’s just what sales guys do. (Chest bump)

Arthur, Chad and Joe with Arthur's beautiful b&w head shot.

On Calle Gran Via de Colon, Granada's Main Street, a self-proclaimed gypsy shows a german tourist how to play the tango.

Two women are moved to dance at the annual fair in Moron de La Frontera.

Two years ago this January, I started working at Stephen Arnold Music, and my how that time has flown. I say this in the generic sense, the way one sighs and shakes his heads at the fast changing world, but also with something specific in mind: Exactly three years ago, I was in the middle of what I consider to be the best year of my life.

That’s a big claim, I know, and a tough act to follow, something SAM has done a good job of doing, but for a year starting in July of 2006, at the benevolence of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship foundation, I had the opportunity to travel, record and play music in a handful of countries stretching from Ireland to Mongolia.

Despite what you may think, it is all too easy to forget all the wonderful things I was able to do during that year: climb a mountain in the Himalayas (the 18,000 ft Mendrik Tsari in Tibet), go deep sea diving with sharks (an influx of hammerheads off the coast of Nicaragua), learn to speak a tribal dialect (Rukiga, the language of the Bakiga people in the southern corner of Uganda and the Congo), and much more. I checked so many things off my bucket list that I had to make a new one when I got home.

I have many stories to tell, only I rarely have the chance to tell them – or maybe I choose not to tell them, I can’t be sure – but I do know that I always feel like I have things to say that I never wind up saying. And so it goes – a chapter in my life, and a significant one at that, somehow remains strangely disparate from my life today. On the occasion when I think back, I find myself wondering, “Did that really happen?”

Then this October, on something of whim, which is typically the way I make big decisions, I decided to rediscover that former part of myself, the adventurous soul who, upon my return, has proven to be somewhat elusive. I took a short leave from work and bought a round trip ticket across the pond.

Of all the places I lived, I often considered to which one I would return first. I had many adventures and met many people in many countries, but in the same manner that some old friends fade from the spotlight of our thoughts, many of the places and people I met shifted into that vague and nostalgic region of the mind where we store things that are, for some reason or another, better to forget.

I dreamed of returning to the open spaces of the Gobi desert or losing myself in the isolated winter of a mountain village in Central Asia, but I decided to return to Spain instead. The reason was simple – I did not go to remember the sweeping Spanish countryside, sprinkled with white houses, palm leaves and fields of olive trees, nor did I go to explore the Moorish ruins that scatter the hills Andalucía; several dear friends were made in Spain, and I decided that this was as good of a reason as any to return.

A couple looks out at the Alhambra on a rainy day.

A friend smiles down from his horse at a festival in Moron de la Frontera.

Three years ago, I shared a one-room apartment with Salvador Roman, a true-blood, old school, proud-to-be-gypsy, flamenco guitarist/instructor who struggles to make ends meet throughout the year in Granada. He taught me flamenco guitar techniques every morning, and I practiced for six to eight hours that afternoon before I went to the local dive bar to hear flamenco that night.

An excerpt from my journal at the time:

“Salvador Roman was born 62 years ago in Madrid, but has spent less than a quarter of his life living in Spain. He did not learn to play guitar from his father, Roman “El Granaino” (1904-1983), who is hailed as one of the of flamenco guitar greats and helped to carry the instrument past its nascent years with the art form. Rather, his father taught him to dance, and Salvador traveled across Germany with his father and sister to perform in various hotels during the early to mid 50’s when flamenco was becoming recognized by the country and the world.

Salvador taught himself to play guitar behind his father’s back and set out on his own when he was a mere fourteen. The style he has mastered and teaches is called “Apollando,” which means “Supporting.” It is incredibly, absolutely genius though it is a little difficult to grasp without being able to see the way the style functions. The idea is to train your hands (specifically the right hand) so that every expense of energy simultaneously creates “un punto de apollo” (a point of support) for the next expense of energy, thereby maximizing your hand’s capacity for speed and strength.

Salvador forbade me to play in the style around certain people – he tells me that when one of the creators of the style, Nino Ricardo, played, he would actually put his guitar down and fight anyone who he thought was watching his hands too closely. Yea, it’s that serious. I feel like I have been learning an ancient Kung-Fu style like in the movies, where the master teaches the student the “touch of death” but then tells him he is never allowed to use it on anyone.”

A group of musicians who busk daily at the square

Salvador stands at a crossroads in Granada's Albaycin.

So for many reasons I returned to Spain. But most of all, I returned for Salvador, whose health is failing him and who continues to struggle to make ends meet. Posted here are pictures from my most recent trip this past October, photographs I took to remind myself that that world still exists. The subjects remind me of Spain, but more importantly they remind me of the song of Salvador Roman, and that after three years, I still remember him with affection.

I am still in touch with Salvador, so if you are ever serious about learning flamenco in Spain, go find him in Granada – he’s the best teacher there is.

Salvador Roman at his apartment in Granada

Stephen Arnold Music, Fair Day 2009

It was mad dash to see who could eat the worst fried food (hmm.. Fried Snickers, Fried Honey Buns, Fried Oreos, but the worst has to be Fried Butter – only in Texas!), win the most door prizes, or find the strangest gadgets known to man, my favorite being a rattlesnake lamp, something every mom, girlfriend or wife should get for Valentine’s Day.

SAM got the big idea we should do the Sky Coaster ride. We saw it from a distance. Let’s see – dangling two hundred feet in the air from a cable for twenty seconds before pulling the ripcord and falling back to the earth at 70 miles per hour, you say?  Count me in!  (Remember, I grew up in backwoods Jacksboro, TX, where wild Russian boars chased me on the way to school. But that’s another blog for another time…)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's Stephen Arnold Music!

I never said we were the brightest company at the Fair nor the funniest. You ride in teams of three, so Wheeler, Andy and I were first up, followed by the late great Joe Faulkner, Noah the intern kid (who had no choice), and Clay “I can program any computer” Lorance.

Andy is like nine feet tall so he rode in the middle, which meant either Wheeler or I would pull the ripcord. After a grueling fifteen round game of “Paper, Rock, Scissors,” I won and grabbed hold. Then up up up to the top we went and hung and waited until I pulled the rip chord, then down we came.  Andy turned 15 shaded shades of red, and although he is bald by choice, he lost any ability to grow his hair at the moment I pulled the ripcord. Wheeler was probably the most laid back of the bunch, and as tough as I tried to sound on the ground, I screamed all the way down.

Joe, Noah and Clay were next. Clay was smiling from ear to ear and Noah just acted as if he did this every day before getting out of bed, but never have I heard such screams of terror or cries for mercy as I heard from Joe that day. Except for maybe when he and Chad duke it out at the office. Speaking of, where was Chad during all of this?  He couldn’t even bring himself to watch. He was not only on the ground still, but he probably sat in a stall in the men’s room the whole time. At least Stephen, Kim and Corrie stayed to watch the whole crazy scene unfold, laughing good and hard at how ridiculous everyone looked flying by at 70mph.

You can see yourself – the creative team made a little video montage out of the two groups that took on the Sky Coaster. Check it out:

Much came from all of this –  a great story, an adrenaline rush that we talked about for another hour and the sudden feeling that the six of us ruled the world.  Let me add that Wheeler and I ruled the world a little longer that day because we also took on the Sky Arm coaster – another towering ride that is completely insane.

So what did we all learn? To get rid of Chad, ride the craziest ride you can. Actually, ride pretty much any ride. Then look in the bathroom stall afterward.

And of course, we learned that a half-day off with your co-workers can be time well spent – our team really had the chance to bond.

To be honest, and why not be, I am not the world’s greatest guitar player. But, in the evening at home I can get on “stage” and strum the C chord (that is about all I know) at maximum 10 level and all of a sudden the world seems like a much better place: peaceful, tranquil, focused; I am at one with the 6 strings. What is it about the guitar that causes that transformation? Please don’t tell me that playing the oboe real loud after a hard day at work will do that. Dude, NOBODY will believe you.

Even now, I often dream of playing like Jimmie Page or Eric Clapton or even Rob Hackney (a fraternity brother of mine from college). Well, ain’t none of that ever gonna happen! It is what it is. Still, there is some kind of magic in the guitar to which even a player like myself can attest.

So, recently when I heard of a movie called, “It Might Get Loud”, a documentary of Jimmie Page, The Edge and Jack White, I knew that one Saturday night real soon, I was going to fork over the dough to see that flick. My expectations were low…who would want to be hurt, expecting a diamond but getting a dud. I bought my ticket, strode the dark corridor to the auditorium, took a seat dead center and waited for the flickering moment.

What to say, hmmm…what to say? Well, how about this: I was BLOWN AWAY! From the first moment of watching Jack White “build” a guitar in his back yard, to watching archival footage of Jimmie Page playing “Stairway to Heaven” with the Zep, to listening to The Edge give a tour of his personal, kind of bland and creepy, studio overlooking some river (I assume the Liffey River) in Dublin, to hearing Jimmie Page say he couldn’t sing!, this movie had me from hello.

Of course, I cannot predict your reaction to this greatness. You could be an insensitive, ignorant, drooling bore, unmoved by the transcendental mysteries of “Stairway”, but, hey, who am I to judge. But how could you not be moved by hearing Jimmie say that he is what he is today because, when he was a small boy, his family moved into a rental house, and the former occupants of that house left behind in a small, dark closet a cheap worn-out guitar. That was the guitar that he learned to play on, the guitar he used for years, and, ultimately the guitar that gave us Led Zeppelin. Pause here for prayer and thanksgiving.

For those empiricists among us, all I can say is “ go…see…believe”. As a special treat, let me offer up the movie’s trailer.

So, excuse me now, I’m going to go talk with some friends. It might get loud.

This an interesting excerpt from a book by Tom Petty’s publishing manager- Randall Wixen. (The Plain & Simple Guide To Music Publishing.) Wixen hits on how everyday, music is becoming “devalued” and how important it is for us (writers and publishers) to ”Stand Tall”

He also says:

In a film it might take minutes of dialogue or video to create a mood or tell a story while music can instantly convey a mood and communicate the directors vision. Imagine “Apocalypse Now” without “The End” by the Doors. When was the last time you saw a film with no musical score?
Likewise, some sports, figure skating for instance would not be possible without music. Imagine a college football game without a marching band. Restaurants and stores set ambiance by playing background music.

Yet- in the music industry, not a day goes by without someone who recognizes the value music brings to a project, but nonetheless belittles it’s value, complaining about the cost and pay a fee that is less than fair.” (Wixon p13)

Sound familiar? Ever had a client work you over on price? Here’s a clip that says it all (Thanks Bob Singleton):

The Maasai are as much a part of East Africa as the Serengeti or Mt Kilimanjaro, and their tribal music has been used for song samples, beats, audio recordings and even film scores (think Out of Africa) without any compensation. That doesn’t even breach all the dance performances, photographs or documentaries.

If it works, could fancy tourist hotels in Kenya have to start paying royalties to the Maasai for the “Lion Hunting Dance” they use to attract guests? After all, who would want stay there if they were dancing the Macarena?  Or if the price of licensing a traditional Maasai dance routine were to rise, imagine the artistic director of Carnegie Hall flying a hunting party from the Ngorogoro Crater straight to the stage, then trying to convince them not to kill the “lion” because it’s just an unfortunate guy in a really lifelike costume.

I may be getting carried away according to the article: “While cultural expressions themselves cannot be owned… digital recordings of them could eventually produce valuable royalties for the Masai people who control their distribution.”

In that vein, imagine all National Geographic photographers as their subjects’s next-hut neighbor. Indeed, the world is changing…

“We are going to reinvent the record business, in China, because it’s dead,” the 76-year-old producer of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which has sold over 100 million copies worldwide, told China Daily yesterday evening at his Shanghai hotel room. “Not might. We are going to.”

Quincy has never been one to miss his mark.

His feats include producing the biggest-selling record of all time (Thriller), discovering Oprah Winfrey (as producer, he cast her in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple), being nominated for the most Grammy Awards (79), and arranging the first song ever played on the moon (Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon, played by astronaut Buzz Aldrin in 1969) on a tape recorder.

In the battle against his illusive foe, Quincy has chosen an unexpected excalibur: the cell phone. “That’s the answer (to piracy),” he boasted. Until the sword has been drawn, he’ll continue his work as a composer, student and friend of the Orient. “Yi bu, Yi bu,” he says, “step by step.“

When Paul West, our chief engineer, was going through some tapes that contained recordings of Tom Merriman’s old scores, he got to several tracks that just jumped out of the speakers. Not that Merriman’s music is just par for the course, but these tracks flowed seemlessly, with a different flair than what Paul had been hearing in Merriman’s tunes.

The next time he ran in to Tom, Paul asked him about it. “Who did those other tracks on your old tapes? They were phenomenal.”

“Oh yea,” Tom said, “That was Quincy.”

“Quincy Jones?!”

“Yea. We used to work together.”

<Enter shock and awe from stage left>

I’ve long admired Quincy – and his uncanny film scoring, songwriting, jazz and producer accolades.  I must admit, I would have given my left foot to sit in on the sessions with Quincy and Tom. But I would prefer a stipulation that allowed me to get my foot back after the session.

Luckily, we’re gonna be hitting the studios hard this week anyway, and I won’t have to give my left foot to be there. SAM will soon have some updates and cool demos from all our current projects.

Clay recently bought the DVDs for his wife, who used to watch the show frequently. As Clay and Paul, our chief engineer, deconstructed some old mixes in the control room, Clay mentioned this in passing.

Once started on the subject of Get Smart, Paul, audio engineer by heart and electrical engineer by mind, launched into a classic Paul West story: a humorous anecdote chalked full of details you might could understand if you ever built a NASA space station.

Paul’s been engineering for a long time. And I’m convinced he knows just about everything there is to know about it. Remember the old Bo Jackson slogan, “Bo Knows?” There was that black and white Nike poster of shirtless Bo in football pads with a baseball bat on his shoulders. For all things athletic, it was “Bo Knows.” For all things audio, and especially around our part of Dallas, it’s “Paul knows.” (Granted, the poster with skinny Paul in shoulder pads might not sell so well.)

As it turns out, a number of years ago, in order to reissue old Get Smart episodes, the producers decided to remaster everything. In order to do so, they had to solve a problem: all the audio for the Get Smart episodes was recorded on three tracks. In case you aren’t counting, that was THREE. One for music, one for dialogue, and one for FX like canned laughter.

Now, for all you non-engineers out there, these days in Television music, we’ll burn three tracks on a single snare drum. One for the top of the snare, one for the bottom, and one for a midi-sync track in case we need to get some extra snap out of the mix. Then you’ve got a handful of tracks each for the other drum pieces, the rest of the band, the string section, the brass section, etc. We are not even talking about dialogue or sound FX yet.

Anyway, the Get Smart people needed an audio engineer and/or company that had the then-defunct-3-track recording machine required to transfer a 3-track audio mix onto the then-standard 8 audio tracks. Confused yet? Well, put yourself in their situation: who are you gonna call? I’ll give you a hint – it’s not Bo Jackson.

At the time, Paul worked for Media General Broadcast Services in Memphis. They had a three track player because…well… they were legendary, so they had everything. Via Media General Broadcast Services, the old Get Smart episodes landed on the desk of a young Paul West.

You might be thinking,  “How wonderful would life be if I could just watch Get Smart episodes for my job?” But Paul didn’t watch Get Smart – he got audio only. “After a while, it was very strange…” he recalls with a grin.

But the connection doesn’t end there. MGBS was later bought out by TM Studios, which was founded by the iconic composer Tom Merriman. Merriman is a long time friend of the man upstairs, and a current contributor to the VAULT music library (you can hear his great stuff here). TM, though no longer owned by Merriman, is currently the oldest radio jingle company still in business.

So how’s that for jingle trivia? What do Stephen Arnold Music and Get Smart have in common? Audio engineer Paul West and composer Tom Merriman.

And through at most six degrees of separation, probably Bo Jackson, too.

They say idleness breeds creativity… well Al Capone, apparently quite the gentlemen under the auspices of the justice system, managed to convince the pigs guarding his cell to let him bring instruments into the prison, including a banjo and a mandola. Then he and several other men behind bars formed a band to strum away the years. In light of that, Alcatraz doesn’t sound too bad. Do you think Capone,  sitting in the tombs of the Rock and plucking the banjo with his buddies, ever thought, “Man, I’ve got it made”?

I doubt it.. though he wrote the sheet music for the first (and only) song on his debut album,  the article goes on to say that Capone was stabbed in the back – literally not metaphorically – by a cell mate, whom he then bludgeoned with his banjo. Talk about a sonic brand…

The typical questions were prevalent at first: what should we write about? Who will write it? What will make it interesting? It did not take long before we realized that the most important, and certainly the most interesting parts of our day relate to the company itself.

It all began with a man named Stephen Arnold, a man about whom you likely know very little – that is, other than the fact that that man’s name is Stephen Arnold. It is for this reason, he has been lauded “the most heard, least known composer in America.”

A bird’s eye view of Dallas’ outskirts would reveal our idyllic studio, nestled in the trees on the edge of a wildlife sanctuary. Stephen typically spends the better part of his week here in a multitasking frenzy; he juggles projects between guitars, computers, phone calls, grandchildren and, when his livestock saunters across the studio driveway, the occasional improvised cattle drive. At the end of the week, or earlier, depending on the stress level, he pours a characteristic glass of Vodka on the rocks, braces his large frame against the kitchen counter, and begins to unwind.

This is always entertaining because when Stephen unwinds, he tells stories. And Stephen Arnold has more stories than a 16-year-old caught out past curfew.

He began chasing the music dream along the West Coast in a derelict minivan and eventually found himself hosting penthouse parties for Television personalities in Time Square. Of course, this transformation didn’t happen overnight; his road to success has been a long one, and he learned some important lessons along the way. He also wrote, recorded and produced more catchy tunes than you can shake a stick at.

Still, he would be the first to tell you, he couldn’t have done it alone. The SAM team is a tight one, even family-like, and many important lessons were learned in tandem – something I closely observed when I first began to work here. Each member, old or new, cherishes a number of stories that encompass the company’s collective memory. It is this memory and the related insight that we hope to bring to light.

So, what will follow are tales about the odyssey of Stephen Arnold Music, straight from the horse’s mouth. You may learn some tips and tricks about our industry and trade that you never knew, but most of all, we hope you enjoy the read, and just as we often do, walk away smiling.

Speaking of smiling, you probably will be if you win one of the five Fender guitars we are giving away for RTNDA and NAB. If you’re in the industry, you can register by entering a comment beneath this post here.