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MAKING MUSIC
I played cornet in my high school marching band, and fooled around on piano. But I became a musician on February 9, 1964, the night the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan. Although I've made my living working on the business side of music, I still primarily identify as a bass player.
My first band, The Keggs, never got the chance to record. And my college group, ORANGE, cut a few songs that languish on 1/4", 7 1/2 i.p.s. tapes. But below are playlists featuring some of the songs we covered during that glorious era that spanned Beatlemania to Psychedelia.
MAKING RECORDS
I once described the A&R process as that of laying down one’s body as a bridge over the chasm between art and commerce. The hope is to find yourself in the path of an artist, who, made blind by ambition and sighted by inspiration, can span the opposing banks long enough to see her fantasies become reality. The job requires a passion to discover and develop a handful of exceptional artists, and to make a select number of records that actually matter. And you must have the fortitude to meet head-on that wonderful/terrible crisis of midwifing the birth of artifacts that are intelligent, original, and honest and at the same time hugely entertaining and wildly successful.
In short, you get paid to give your friends money and make music together. Who wouldn’t love that? I did.
DESERT ISLAND DISCS
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