So...1992, the band just started, how did you find Zero Return?
BT: Actually, it was kind of a strange story. There was a fellow who will remain nameless who promoted shows in Montgomery, and got us a cassette tape of all these terrible, but well recorded Montgomery bands called Offerings. Brian Causey [Starcrunch] and I were listening to this tape and commenting on how terrible a lot of the bands were. And then we were like "God, the drums sound really good on this stuff." And we were looking for a place to record what was going to be a self-produced record at the time that we were going to put out on what turned out to be our record label.
JM: You all wanted to put it out on 8 track cartridge.
BT: That was the start of many failed MOA? ideas for strange 78 or reel to reel formats. So I got in touch with Jim and he said "Sure, come on down. I got a couple different formats we can record on.' There's a funny story about the first recording we did about the 4 track thing. He didn't tell me this until a year ago.
JM: I had a Trashcam, or Tascam, 8 track that was always broke down. It was a piece of crap. Japanese junk. It broke down right before they showed up and I didn't tell them. So I pulled out the old Sculley ?" four track. In retrospect, I'm glad we did do it because track-for-track it's so much better. Half inch is 30 ips and pretty good sound quality.
BT: We didn't think anything of it.
JM: I looked at those guys and thought they'd never know the difference between four track and eight track. Besides, the four track is five times larger than the eight track so it looked a lot more impressive.
BT: So we were doing what was to be the first record that Estrus ended up putting out on four track from this Sculley machine and we did the majority of it live to two track, right and left. Then we did samples on track three and vocals on track four if we needed them.
JM: We did all the music live stereo to two track then whatever else we had to do we just did on the other two tracks.
BT: And ever since then, we've been bugging Jim and he's been adapting with us and obtaining new apparatus to give the illusion that we actually sound good.
JM: No, I think y'all sound good in spite of what I do. The next machine we got was an ancient one inch eight track which was dated 1968 which has to be real early for the Ampex 1000. It weighs about 600 pounds. It broke a red headed guitar player's arm, so it's got some good karma going there.
BT: I think on that machine we did most of Destroy All Astromen and some of Project Infinity on that one. Then we've been getting greedier and greedier and getting more and more tracks but I can't really see going past sixteen tracks. 16 tracks serves as a pretty nice natural editor. Like right when you're on the phone calling the string section, you say "Ah, we're out of tracks!"
JM: I had a brief stint with the digital thing before I realized it was a load of crap.
BT: We've done one or two things on ADAT and that's it.
What was your feeling about it?
JM: Um, I really didn't like it too much. I'm definitely what they call a "Loghead." I'm pretty much a digital hater. I can see some merits to it. They are cheap, and for people who can't deal with a 20-25 year old machine that's constantly catching fire, it's....
BT: The biggest problem I've had with recording on ADAT, is that the sound is just so flattened out. Every band that records on ADAT you can totally hear and perceive it was recorded on ADAT. And all those records tend to sound the same. So many pop punk bands have that clean sound but it's so ADAT. It has no characteristics. I think a lot of old analog machines had different tendencies in how they captured sound and the way things were laid to tape depending on what machine you were using. I think that gave records a lot more individual characteristics instead of everything sounding exactly the same. The main difference in a lot of things now is just stylistic differences and not recording techniques.
JM: I think the greatest thing about digital is that when it came out and everybody started buying into it hook, line and sinker, all this old analog equipment started dropping in price. Those are the great machines.
BT: Especially like eight track one inch machines.
JM: Those are great, they just sound so much better--the quality that went into them. There's no way with modern technology, and the way things cost now, that those machines could be built again without costing $100,000.
So lead me through this, you started on four track, went to eight and now are working with sixteen?
BT: Yeah, we started with four track.
Then lead me up to how things ended up the way they are today. It just seems like things have more of an air of credibility to it now. It's more of a "studio" studio.
JM: Yeah, it used to be more of a home/studio, now it's a studio/home. I've got some straw in some Kroger sacks over in the corner that I sleep on.
BT: It used to be a house, now it's a house with a lot of expensive stuff in it.
JM: I'm kind of like the Fred Sanford of the recording world. You walk into my house, on the back porch, the first thing you see is....
Lamont! [all laugh]
JM: But the first thing you see on the back porch is the two sections of the board from the Neve console with parts and pieces just lying around. Speakers are hanging on a wall, and when you walk in the house there's two huge boxes full of electronic parts. I don't even have any closet space. My closets are like those cartoon closets. Seriously! Where you open them up and it doesn't fall out, but it could easily. Just from the floor to the ceiling it's electronic junk.
[in gruff Fred Sanford voice]
Lamont! Don't touch it!
BT: It's really awe inspiring to go out to Jim's. The first time we ever went out there, Jim gave me directions on the phone. We were about ten to fifteen minutes outside of Montgomery. At the point he said "Then you hit the dirt road..." I knew we were in for something special. There's all these spare crates filled with undefined electrical components everywhere on the porch. Jim showed up at the door with the sweet tea on the oven. Jim makes the world's finest and sweetest tea.
JM: They come to record, but they stay for the tea.
BT: Exactly right. What I love about the whole situation is that any band that has ever come up there [intending] to record in your typical modern dentist office type environment where everything is state of the art and is totally into getting that kind of vibe, don't last fifteen minutes out there if they're just not used to having just anything and everything goes. And the thing is, Jim's amassed some really amazing stuff with the Neve console and the Neve mic preamps. Stuff you can't find in modern studios, especially around Alabama.
JM: Everywhere else is either ADAT or Mackie. I'm pretty much a non-computer person. I don't have any MIDI stuff. No computers. I got a rotary phone. I'm ate up with it.
Brian has told me about all of this really sophisticated equipment you've acquired through some guy who did a Depeche Mode movie?
JM: That actually started before MOA?. I started getting some nice microphones which I think are the key to any recording. I started collecting them and basically never threw anything away. I guess that was my motto. I never really had a lot of money to spend, but whatever money I did have, I'd buy one piece of equipment, like one microphone. The first good microphones I bought were a pair of RCA 77 VX's which are really nice old ribbon microphones. But when I bought the 77's, they also had a Neumann U47 tube microphone [in the shop] and it looked really neat. Big phallic looking mic. I asked how much it was and they said $500. I thought that was just way too much to spend on a microphone so I bought two 77's. Now if you can find a 47 for $4000, it's great. Most people try to get $6500 for them. That was the one that got away.
But from what I've gathered from Brian, it's almost like there's an arsenal of microphones.
BT: I think it's mainly come of Jim's ability to spot a good deal and amass stuff over the years since there's a lot of weird sources for stuff in Alabama. It might be more different now, but there's always some weird studio that's shutting down or some old guy who doesn't know what he has. The bulletin board down there has been the provider of many finds.
JM: Yeah, the bulletin board. You find somebody selling a 1954 Stratocaster, you go look at it, and it's got like a 3-bolt neck and the guy's saying "Yeah, my granddaddy got that for me way back in the 70's."
BT: What do you think is the strangest piece of studio equipment, be it microphone or preamp or outboard unit, that you've actually gotten through a source like that?
JM: Probably not a real valuable thing, but a real great piece of gear, a mid-50's GE tube compressor that this TV station just gave to me. They were just going to throw it out. It's a great sounding compressor. Also, I bought an Altec 639 microphone which looks like a giant birdcage. It's a pretty neat microphone. I got it from somebody for next to nothing. They actually sound pretty good sometimes.
BT: I think there's a weird concept in places that aren't part of a large metropolis area like Alabama. A lot of times, a studio in Alabama will be trying to keep up with the latest, most insane piece of technology they can get their hands on. There's studios out there that have spent tens of thousands of dollars on the latest digital crap. And as far as really cool tube and analog stuff, they ignore it and it's really opened up a lot of outlets. Like maybe if you were in Chicago or some place where people would jump on that stuff, but a lot of times, it leaves things open.
So do you thank the digital revolution for Zero Return's arsenal of equipment?
JM: In that aspect, digital's great. People said "Oh, we don't need this old stuff..."
Good!
JM: A friend of mine from Chicago told me "Never buy new." As soon as you buy it, it's worth half the money. Go out and buy something old. Go ahead and wait and buy something of really good quality instead of buying something with a lot of whistles and bells on it.
BT: We often talk about a lot of those old tube compressors. What's so great about them is that they're built so durable and there will be two knobs on it so you can't fuck anything up.
JM: The GE compressor I was telling you about, all it is is a two or three rack space box with an on/off switch and a big red light right in the middle of it. You just plug into it and it sounds great. You can't fuck with it. The new stuff has fifty buttons, and has so many parameters and functions, and layers and you can never figure out what's goin' on in it.
BT: It's so far removed from the original signal.
JM: The best guitar amps have "volume" and "tone." They have a sound and that's it. All these new amps have 20 knobs across them.
BT: I think the biggest improvements on music in general hasn't made anything sound better. It's made things be quicker or more convenient or you can have more options with something, but none of the advancements have been technically superior to anything from the 50's or 60's.
JM: I try to recreate that sound from the 50's and 60's. I'm using a lot of the same equipment. I don't know what it is, but people really knew what they were doing. I think a big part of how well things sounded then was due in large part to the people who were involved. It still sounds too new to me sometimes.
