R/E/P Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6   Go Down

Author Topic: You know what annoys me?  (Read 30417 times)

electrical

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 674
You know what annoys me?
« on: April 29, 2006, 01:31:44 PM »

Not much really annoys me. This shit annoys me:

I grab a bunch of mic cables and they're all coiled wrong, so they tangle into a wad when I try to unwrap them.

Someone tried to use the wrong mic clip for a mic, and instead of getting the right clip when he realized his mistake, he wrapped a yard of gaffer tape around the mic. At the end of his session, he put the mic back in the drawer with the tape still stuck to it, and now it's a gummy mess I have to contend with.

Instead of lowering the thermostat, they've propped-open the door so I'm heating the great outdoors all day.

The band spends the first three hours of the day lolling around on the phone, creating a manifesto of a lunch order, socializing with their friends and fucking around on Myspace, and then wants to work until 4am "because we have so much to do..."

The phone rings and nobody answers it, so I have to interrupt what I'm doing and answer it. Then the staff's collective response to this complaint isn't "you're right, we should be answering the goddamn telephone," but instead, "See? We need voicemail."

The mobile phone makes the guitar amp go "dit-dit-dit" during the quiet part. For the eighth time today.

When the dude you did a favor for acts like the favor was standard and expects an extra-super-double favor this time, and gets weird when you decline.

Graffiti. Buy your own damn building, build your own damn gangway and spraypaint your name on it. Leave me out of it.

The land speculator assholes buy the building next door and knock it down, in the process fucking up the water main, the electric service, the sewer, cracking the wall, flooding the basement and making life hell for a few months. They then leave it as a vacant lot for two years, with a swampy marsh in the center that breeds mosquitoes and smells like Gary, Indiana. Then the bums who collect scrap metal and cans from the alleys start using the swamp as a place to burn the insulation off cabling to get the metal out. Then one of the bums notices that there is a copper coolant pipe on the side of our building running up to the HVAC unit on the roof. The bum then tears this pipe off, so he can get a couple of bucks for it from the scrapper. Then I have to spend $5000 fixing the blown compressor, replacing (and bum-proofing) the whole shebang. And the land speculator assholes adamantly refuse to help us out at all.

To recap:
Mic cables, tape on the mic, the door open, the band wasting my time, the phone/voicemail thing, mobile phone noise for the eighth time, the dude you did a favor for, graffiti, the land speculator assholes and the copper pipe thing.
Logged
best,

steve albini
Electrical Audio
sa at electrical dot com
www.electrical.com

Vertigo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1334
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2006, 01:53:05 PM »

You need a vacation. Like a week or two someplace mellow and nice where you can have a good time. Annoyances tend to stack up, and you're going to be wound up like those mic cables before too long...

-Lance
Logged

rankus

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5560
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2006, 02:02:14 PM »



You know.... A thousand miles apart, in different countries, with a couple of million dollars in investment difference.... exactly the same issues.. not similar.. exactly (except for the copper pipe) LOL

Just had a "diva" (she acted like one anyway), piss away four hours being late for sessions and going out for coffee... turn around and complain that she should get a few more hours to tweak her tracks.  She got upset that I suggested she pay for these hours.
Logged
Rick Welin - Clark Drive Studios http://www.myspace.com/clarkdrivestudios

Ive done stuff I'm not proud of.. and the stuff I am proud of is disgusting ~ Moe Sizlack

"There is no crisis in energy, the crisis is in imagination" ~ Buckminster Fuller

crm0922

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 272
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2006, 05:13:19 PM »

The wasting time thing is why we have a hard stop rule after 10 hours, except the rare times when we are feeling like continuing to roll for a while when 10 hours arrives.

It gives some structure to the day and prevents having to round people up when they are off screwing around on the web.

We also have a VERY slow computer for web access, which makes it no-fun to play around for much longer than it takes to check email.

The 10 hours thing does result in us having to skip eating every now and then when the band is insane.

Chris
Logged

Daniel Farris

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2439
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2006, 11:15:24 PM »

electrical wrote on Sat, 29 April 2006 18:31

The band spends the first three hours of the day lolling around on the phone, creating a manifesto of a lunch order, socializing with their friends and fucking around on Myspace, and then wants to work until 4am "because we have so much to do..."


This exact thing happened to me THIRTEEN days in a row last month. I essentially had to throw them out at 5 AM.

If we let bands fuck around as much as they'd like (and then didn't bill them for the hours, like they'd like), we'd all end up working for less than minimum wage.

DF
Logged

Linear

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 25
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2006, 07:22:16 AM »

Well lots of shit annoys me, so I’ll have to pare it down to a top-ten.

Something is spilled on the floor/broken into pieces/missing. There are only 4 people at the session, but nobody seems to do anything about it/know anything about it/have it.

A fuse blows in something. The correct fuse not at hand, so unit is bundled with higher-than-rated fuse which ultimately explodes unit (note that the corollary of this is being somewhere that doesn't have a set of spare fuses for the equipment at hand).

People that walk into a room clapping to check acoustics (I don’t know why this annoys me so much, but it just does – makes me think the next session is just going to be recording hand-claps).

People who order take-away coffees and put the cardboard takeaway tray on the equipment rack, then attempt to lift the coffee off the tray by the dodgy plastic lid, spilling the contents on the equipment rack.

People who don’t replace the log-roll on the holder, but instead place it on the floor where the said log roll gets wet so when you go to use it, it feels like you're wiping your arse with hair gel.

People who yank mic cables by the lead and then wonder why they’ve stopped working.

People who gesture something while holding an unopened beer, then act surprised when explodes with froth on opening.

People who use gaffer tape on things that should be secured permanently by more effective/cheaper/more aesthetically pleasing means.

Tapes that are supplied without track listings or notes or tones or labels, so the first hour is spent trying to work out what is on each track.

Chris
Logged
http://www.linear-recording.com.au

"Fashions change, the laws of physics don't"
Steve Dove

Plush

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 264
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2006, 12:18:49 PM »

Fire that band and those staff and don't have them back!
Logged
Hudson Fair
Atelier HudSonic, Chicago

http://www.myspace.com/hudsonek

cdr-1

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 44
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2006, 02:29:26 PM »

Quote:

People who gesture something while holding an unopened beer, then act surprised when explodes with froth on opening.


I don't post here much, but I have to pipe up for that one. That was the fucking funniest thing I've read today.

Logged
"Henceforth I shall suck the teat of the musical welfare state. I have become a DJ."

mitgong

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 114
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2006, 03:59:16 PM »

See now we're gettin' into some real studio owner shit.  Yeah!
Logged
My name is Matthew Saccuccimorano.  I should be working, but I'm posting this message instead.  I deserve punishment.

jetbase

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2454
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2006, 09:41:38 PM »

electrical wrote on Sun, 30 April 2006 03:31


To recap:
Mic cables, tape on the mic, the door open, the band wasting my time, the phone/voicemail thing, mobile phone noise for the eighth time, the dude you did a favor for, graffiti, the land speculator assholes and the copper pipe thing.


all symptoms of living & working in close proximity to other people. i suggest a hermit-like existence. or come and live in australia, everything is perfect here. we are taught how to correctly coil cables in kindergarten.

glenn
Logged
sleep is not an option

jwhynot: "There's a difference between thinking or acting dogmatically and drawing from experience."


Glenn Santry
http://www.myspace.com/glennsantry

Invisible Member

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 276
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #10 on: May 02, 2006, 05:08:08 PM »



What I find funny is some of the stuff I hate as well but I've also found Im the culprit.  


I break my own ground rules and methods all the time because I get busy or distracted.


I yell at people for something I did... all the time.


It started right after I turned 40.


It really, really annoys me when people move my car while in Guitar Center!


Logged

bradwood

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 64
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #11 on: May 02, 2006, 06:59:16 PM »

Wow- What copper pipe is still that valuable? We had a similar situation at Idful, when Andy Bryant called me to alert me to his ability to see "light coming from the toilets". A quick check in the basement confirmed it: all the pipe- copper & otherwise- had been sawed off all the bathroom fixtures from below. Water & shit & piss flowed freely, as Idful shared its bathrooms with the other building tenants. All copper to & from the a/c compressors was stolen, but at least the units were still there. We had our rooftop compressors stolen repeatedly over 10 years and stolen coolant was an annual right of summer passage. It wouldn't be June if Idful's a/c wasn't sucked dry... The joys of owning a business in Chicago. Good luck, Steve!


Best- Brad
Logged

Fig

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1186
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #12 on: May 03, 2006, 02:39:56 PM »

Great post Steve!

The tape residue on the mic clip is infuriating, if it gets on the mic - firing squad, no trial Twisted Evil

Wrapping cables incorrectly is just plain wrong!  Demoted to intern, lose a turn.

Regarding stolen metals, somebody swiped the "hat" off of our chimney - savages in this town.

The one that REALLY annoys me, though, is when the parking lot in the back of our place gets full of cars belonging to the neighbors.  They know we are too nice about it to say anything -- so then they let their clients, visitors, spouses and friends park there, too.  Always right in front of the load-in door Rolling Eyes

Oh, and its really great when their alarms go off cuz we're loading around their cars, which are blocking our door.

Thanks for a good thread topic in your own forum.

Warm analog regards,

Fig
Logged
The easiest thing to do is the thing most easily forgotten.

Tripper

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #13 on: May 05, 2006, 05:26:26 AM »

lurking for ages, just hadta jump in on this great post.

the most annoying thing for me, is when i spend all my time, money and effort to get a good recording going, and the band turns up unrehearsed.

band: "umm... is it the chorus now?"

me: "its your *(&^$%$%^ song! you don't know?!?!"



that and when people start checking acoustics by clapping their hands... like Linear, it just annoys me and i don't know why! Laughing
Logged

amorris

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1029
Re: You know what annoys me?
« Reply #14 on: May 05, 2006, 09:21:42 AM »

you know you really have to be insane to want to do this job. I was told that if anyone tells you they want to be in the music business, that means they have no idea what the music business is, knows no-one in the music business, and couldnt make it in the business. the only ones in the business have to be in the biz cause its the only thing we could/ would do.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6   Go Up
 

Site Hosted By Ashdown Technologies, Inc.

Page created in 0.058 seconds with 22 queries.