I wake up, against my will. I lay there, half awake. At about 6:50 a.m I realise that all the planes in the world have been in the air for a while now and now really, really...really want to land, low on fuel and full of tired yet expectant passengers.
 They arrive ten minutes apart, the descending tone of the engines the giveaway of those landing, the rising roaring - of those taking off. I count in my head to work out the timing. As I do this, I also realise that the sirens are relentless as they wail away, interrupting my counting. How can there possibly be that many emergencies? It's then I remember  most people actually die the very moment they wake up. Perhaps that's the answer. I pat myself down, and yes - I am still here. The day is ushered in by the clattering of the continental white window shutters letting in the sun, no rest for the wicked in the apartment opposite, the random chirping of the faulty alarm system in the courtyard below with the low battery punctuating the whirring as it is heaved upwards by the strap. I wonder if they have the coffee on. I sigh, and roll over, too warm to be welcomed for an early morning cuddle, and look at the ceiling. Woof says the dog. I hear the clack of the electromagnetic lock as the door closes, the chirp of the elevator buttons as they are pressed, the splash of the bath, the squeak of a naked ass on the plastic tub above, the roar of the plastic black wheeled toddler toy, little legs flailing, the flip, and flop of flip-flops followed by the purposeful march of the high heel as someone dressed to win marches to work. I hear the shuffle and rumble of the street cleaners dragging the wheeled plastic bins gossiping, the traffic beginning with a sssssSSSSHhhsss then building to a rrrrrrRRAAAAARRrRRrrr finally resulting in an omnipresent hum as the traffic becomes ceaseless, the faint noise of the rail, the yellow caterpillar-like trams snaking through the city, and yes even the family with NO VOLUME CONTROL is up early too, out and about causing chaos - so much for the lazy theory. I can't stay in bed. I've missed so much already.
“Have you ever been to American wedding?! Where is the vodka, where is the marinated herring?!” He has a good point. Unusually, because I detest them - I am pro-wedding today as it is a good illustration of no matter how different things and cultures are, how similar they are.
Lately I have seen some nasty, hateful, provocative things on my timeline from certain of my "friends" and well, the wedding thing reminded me that one of the main things that causes this dick behaviour is the lack of understanding. Small mindedness, lack of experience. Me vs. you-ism. Â
I went to a British Muslim wedding which was awesome. There was curry - the king of foods, swathes of vivid colour, breaks for prayer and much merriment - albeit alcohol free. Scary, I know. I am not sure that's legal in England. The bride was beautiful, and the groom - was a white boy called Dave and not only that - an Athiest. Yep, he got married, and respectfully embraced the ceremony as a matter of respect for the woman he loved. Nobody got blown up. The room was filled with love. The couple simply loved each other, and both families accepted it. The main bridesmaid as ever was the object of single male lust because she was truly indescribably gorgeous. All was right in the world, and they are to this day happy. Â
I went to a black Baptist wedding with my Mother and 70 year old Grandmother who was very much out of her depth, and did not blink an eye. Of course, I loved it as there was the best music ever and constant dancing featuring me (who was 10 and not yet afraid to dance) and hot black chicks (mainly my Aunts). However, the biggest emotional memory of that was when at the reception, the couple jumped a broomstick. Why, you may ask? Well, because slaves weren't allowed to marry, there was a passed down tradition that this was a symbol representing that union in front of God. Ironically, they were the most Christian people ever, despite the fact that their slavery was justified by the slave owners by Christianity itself. I got it, and to this day have never been able to shake the insanity of the injustice man is capable of.
The Hungarian wedding was pretty normal, the church service was very nice, me being particularly fond of the priest and family in question so much so there was public singing involved but generally much like any wedding, except later the bride got kidnapped, then also perhaps the groom...it's all a bit fuzzy...there were hours d'ouveres and then there was some extortion, and exchange of money resulting in the return of the kidnap-ees which all seemed appropriately Balkan to me, followed by desszert. Sadly there was no picked herring or vodka, but there was an awesome cocktail bar and lots of people who I loved dearly.
I also went to my Mothers wedding. I suspect - twice. Once in, once out. The second one was with a load of American GI's, and I believe ended in my first hangover. I got stuffed in the boot of a car at some point. I liked it. It was rock & roll.
My point is if you live and experience some of the inevitability of life from several angles your fears and prejudices may be dispelled unless you are a total idiot. We all wake up, go to the bathroom, eat breakfast and start the day with practically no difference, and that is the reality of life. Everybody more or less wants the same simple things in life, from birth, to weddings, to death regardless of differences. Only fuckheads are out to get you, or deny you happiness. The rest of us are busy with our mundane, normal, beautiful lives. Next time you see some small minded hate post, perhaps remember that.
So, lately I have had a couple of things come out on vinyl which is very exciting. It would be even more exciting if they were actually made properly and stood a chance of sounding as good as they should.
It's not the best idea to make the vinyl from the CD master because the requirements are pretty different, and so are the technologies; using a heavily peak limited 16 bit CD master is *fucked* from word go. Think of it this way - your vinyl is only going to sound worse than the CD, which is not how it should be. Always send the UNMASTERED 24 bit file to the cut so they can prepare a master suitable of the source. If they do not ask for that, you are working with people who do not know what they are doing. Best case, someone will…"master" your master. Does that make sense? No. It's another generation down, and all those fantasies you have about vinyl being better are lost. It will not improve magically just because it is now on vinyl. That's just you being a dick. Â
Good vinyl cuts sound good for a number of reasons, one of which is the way the dynamics & EQ are handled, and some of the processing needed to prep for the medium, which is why it is essential to do it properly. It's also not as helpful as it could be to read what some of the vinyl places are saying in their FAQ. I checked out XVINYLX and yes - they make some thick ass good vinyl but the prep advice is wack.
First: "cut everything over 12k" They really don't mean that, as in fact the ultrasonic content of vinyl is one of the things that makes it special, the nature of the medium rolls it off anyway; what they really mean is to have a good spectral balance and in particular - keep an eye on sibilance, that is the "sss" and "ttt" noises in your vocals that basically turn into bursts of distortion and play total havoc with compressors. You have a de-esser - use it. Just don't over use it! Not coincidentally the BEST de-esser is analogue tape, and that goves hand in hand with vinyl being an analogue medium. Analogue tape was after all THE source for vinyl through most of recording history. The sibilance became more important with the swap to digital, as you're not using tape anymore and gaining that by default, hence sibilance being more of a problem in modern disc cutting.
Next: "mono the bass under 300hz" Again, this is semi-bullshit. Part of the vinyl mastering process is, or often is a device that makes the LF mono, as if let's say you had a huge fat kick drum panned right, it's likely the cut will be shit, or at best - quiet to stop the needle physically jumping out of the groove. However, a good mastering engineer will use judgement and be perfectly capable of getting stereo bass information on the record. The issue here is usually the mix as in people mixing on monitors that can't reproduce the low end, leaving tons of subsonic crap in there, and other common mistakes. I also know that what people think of as low bass…isn't. Plenty of sneaky bastards I know got fat sounding records that sounded bass heavy precisely by shifting the focus of the bass UPWARDS, not lower. That's why your YouTube video goes PPPFFFTTTTTT in the low end and all the stuff from the 80's doesn't.
The awesome news in general is there is some great quality vinyl being made again, it looks great, and can sound great. Just give yourself the opportunity for it to to sound great as well as be able to jerk off over how cool the disc looks!
The pinnacle of the thing, the English summer, the peak, the tip, the most extremist extremity, the reward, the I'm a prime mover yes I am, is the fucking ice cream with a possibly, but probably not ACTUAL Cadbury's Flake (™) stuck in it - bought at the seaside.
I watched a couple emerge from the mall, new ice creams in hand into the pouring rain and dismal dismay. What I would have given to have double dark chocolate streaming down my hand, lucky people of this city for elsewhere, this is a way of life. It's impossible to be more than 200 miles FROM the sea where I come from. It is your destiny. The seaside ice cream calls you like a mermaid to a shipwreck. Eat it quick - because soon, far too soon - the wicked wind will whip those grains of sand into a dervish-like dance and stick them to your Italian style whatever that is, does it mean it came out of a machine soft whipped creamy dream one damn grain at a time. And nobody likes licking sand on purpose, no matter what it is sticking to. Emerging, determined, face furrowed from the cover of the wind breaker - a must, a series of wooden poles nailed into the sand holding up your shield from…well…the place you live…you see the matriarch or patriarch doing their duty - getting the ice cream at all costs for their brood and receiving nothing but complaints for their trouble. Splendid pleasures in careful measures are a good signpost in this life to that which is right and good. The sand filled ice cream will be a joy, as will being buried alive, the slimy beauty of bladderwrack seaweed between one's freezing toes, and the incredibly humiliating shrinking effect of the ice cold Atlantic on those parts that unlike most seas - can definitely reach. To win some battles is to surrender, which is a difficult concept in this world, but sometimes, rarely, except for every English beach holiday - that is the truth.Â
It was more or less: "Adam - your life is shit, you haven't achieved anything, and you haven't GOT anything."
At this point I realised that some people who think they are smart - aren't.
I had a little attempt at explaining what I considered a reasonable list of things that I had achieved recently, but I did have a think about it as one of my mantras is "question everything - including yourself." It may be true that I haven't amassed a load of STUFF, nor am rich, and I do feel somewhat like I lost everything I valued recently - but after a heart wrenching week or two with myself I don't think they were right.
In the not so distant past, I went to Romania to create greatness. YOU pull a statement like that out of your ass, and I'll be impressed and lend you my ear. Go somewhere for THAT with no safety net such is your self determination - once you locate your balls, then get in touch. However, this goal was, to use a most English turn of phrase "somewhat derailed" and yet thankfully balanced by a reason to stay in the form of someone I fell in love with.
I learned to never eat soup on a train, even if it is the only thing they have available.
That families are a real thing after all, and I want one more than anything apart from a Grammy. I didn't used to, and there is only one RoHungarian family to thank for that. It took my whole life, and to meet these people to learn this lesson. Could I put a value on that? No.
I now know that Brad is a Christmas tree. Auchan should always be pronounced OW-CHAN. Deal with it.
That I am still the fucking greatest. Me, and Mohammed Ali. Why do you think we spent all that time training at the bottom of swimming pools?
That Milka comes in way too many flavours and comes in blocks of 15 chunks, which is just asking for trouble unless you are sharing between three.
People here don't understand what size a coffee should be, so just give me three of those to begin with, thanks.
I can not only shuffle, but can also do the robot dance. In fact, I can dance. People are scared of heights, death... mortality. Me? It was dancing. I can do that now.
Vegetables with dirt on them, purchased from the market are the best. There is no such thing as too much chili. Palinka is not a suitable substitute for white wine in risotto. Someone, somewhere has used a fisherman's friend as a spice.
Yoda's quote "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?" is true even though I'm not quite nine hundred.
Meat is over-rated. Zacusca is under-rated and should be spread like vegetable based joy across the world.
I was escorted away from factory wasteland in search of a questionable lake not safe to swin in, and watched people swim in it anyway. That Balkanic-ness is in fact, sometimes an asset. And to always - ALWAYS - watch where you are walking.
I flew in planes with propellors.
I got a fake child, and gave it fake father attempts at wisdom. I think I did OK.
I helped people do things they would not have been able to do without me.
I learned that Christmas lights are a serious business in Cluj-Napoca, and England knows nothing of Christmas lights done right.
People in bands aren't really your friends, Unless, it tuns out they truly are.
I loved in a way I never thought possible, and paid the price in the end.
Converse are not winter shoes.
I found hope in the future via the collection of misfits I met and observed.
I trekked miles on the finest communist concrete.
That along the way, along the way, this journey is the best and only place in the world to meet people that will matter in this life. You will meet nobody at home watching TV.
The list I could make is actually almost endless, and I'd bore you to death with the fact that all the small things matter more than most imagine, and small things add up to become huge, immovable facts, testaments to time well spent.
These are not things that I would have done sitting in an office 9 to 5, doing a good boy job and making money to spend on a another house which would end up being someone else's house anyway.
I came out of this materially with no more than I entered with, but am far, far richer. Ultimately, you're gonna die. You can't take it with you. No saving for the afterlife will ever compensate for that which living and loving recklessly can provide.
People can be divided into three main types as they wait at a zebra crossing. The watchers, waiters and followers.
I am a watcher, and keep glancing up at the traffic light waiting for it to change, sheilding my eyes, squinting into the sun like an idiot; the waiters stare across the road tapping their feet waiting for the walk signal to go green, and the followers simply follow the herd, usually not even looking at either between taps at their smartphone or the wiping of an errant childs face. The light changed, a car stopped at the line nearest us as at the curbside, and we all casually stepped out to cross. I was closest of course being the watcher - impatient for the light to change, ready to go and by the time I saw the car such was it’s speed, bread rolls had spilled onto the tarmac instead of us, the gypsy man in the white tank top closest to me reeling backward having lost his prized zsemle as he let go of the thin plastic bag. For the longest second in the world, everyone realised that we had almost been hit and seemingly looked into each other. The curious thing is waiting at a traffic light it is one of the few times you are allowed to look at strangers for any period of time even as we all pretend not to, and those we had been facing all connected with us as we passed, building on that merest thread of familiarity, wordlessly expressing releif for us and disdain at the black car’s driver, and those of us crossing checking ourselves, then each other, then thanking those we passed. I’ve been thinking a lot about connection between people, and while this is not exactly how I would choose to feel connected, having narrowly missed being connected to the car and then the road, it neverless felt like something shared, which despite everything had an eerily positive side. It was gone as quickly as it came, later Panna amusing me as she told me she'd read my obligatory post near-death comic tweet, this time a modern slant on human connection and advised to keep tweeting from hospital in the event of actually getting run over. However, but for a foot or two I’m sure there would have been no hospital, just as there were no zsemle for supper. It’s funny how we do connect these days, and don’t. Nobody's really interested in anything we post on social media, yet we do it compulsively, why? Because we have a desire to connect and feel connected. Yes, it has come to this. It was a minor lesson regarding watchers, waiters and followers, both at the roadside, and on Twitter.
I’ve often worried about wasting time, especially when taking a series of almost-journeys between misadventures, until I realised that the journey itself can be the adventure, rather than the misadventure or indeed a waste of time.
Even then, it took some time to negotiate the point of the time between points. To find interest between the interesting on the journey until I realised it all had value. The inconvenient hours spent getting to your goal is a luxury; how often in life do you get to sit and do nothing? Between decades of school, jobs, and important appointments we live in a constant rush to get somewhere, ideally faster than we are. If you have ever been to a major station built at the the turn of the 20th century, you’ll likely see gigantic, ornate monuments to time loom somewhere high above you, the station clocks serving to this day, to get us ON the journey, and implying the value of time. That’s all well and good, but its not really about arrival or departure. We too often begrudge those small spaces created by travel, those moments wasted on the metro with half closed eyes, the visions we let slip by through a dirty bus window or the endless waiting watching others waiting, the most waiting of all before during and after when supposedly moving the fastest - by air. Perhaps this should tell us something. The truth is we are all rushing to the same point, the same destination, location, eventuality, to the very same end in the end: THE end. So let’s take just a little more time getting there, shall we?
"David Lee Roth. Nikki Sixx. Heavy Phuckin' Metallllllll!"
No, no, you don't understand. "You've..been..sen-ten-ced to die  in theeee e-lec-tric-chair!" No, no, you STILL don't understand.Â
The first was from a 33RPM 7" with far too many songs on it by a band from Pomona called Pillsbury (mis-spelled) Hardcore. The second lyric was "Death Sentence" by a Denver band called Legion Of Death. You have no idea what it's like to listen to records by bands that you actually know people in, or in Pillsbury's case - people you know who know people in - when you are a teenage dirtbag. It's not the same as buying a Motley Crue record and painstakingly trying to find the section where "we recorded us fucking chicks", or those elusive "backmasked satanic messages", oh no. Nikki was stringing us along, I'm pretty sure. I even tried to ask the guy that recorded it, such was my naivety later as I started my quest to become the best engineer guy in the world ever but all he could muster was "Get me a pizza! Finish This! I want some Whisky!" God rest his alcoholic English ass. That translates to, twenty years later "I have a premiere to go to! Finish This! Where's my hair gel" by the way. Lame. In those days, bands with their own records was a big fucking deal. This is before indie was just…"indie", and you had to make a serious effort to make record, so to us, these guys were GODS, only not languishing on the Los Angeles part of Mount Olympus like The Crue, but actual existed in real life doing something about it coming soon to an earhole near you Gods. Which meant if YOU wanted to do it, you could do it IF you worked hard enough. Now, after you finish something, anything, 2 minutes later it's on YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, whatever. Is that good? Yes, and no. Yes - because it makes it possible for people who can't but really should to get it out there; No - because it lets slack sons of bitches pretend they mean it. Making records isn't for the weak, trust me. I wish you could understand how motivating it truly was to hold those scrappy DIY records in my hand, and how much value the music people make still has to me if they mean it. It made my life what it is today, so I owe you all everything.
It's very strange how time ebbs and flows, sometimes stretching to intolerable lengths, the very seconds each seemingly taking an age to move past, a huge cavernous echo between each tick of the second hand while at other times...
...it feels as if your face is pressed to the glass watching the world hurtle past on some kind of death trip, the driver of the vehicle you're currently locked inside ignoring red lights, stop signs and not even braking should someone fall under the wheels. Bump bump. There goes another one. One of the faster times was way back for me. Way back to a time when it's hard to distinguish whether some of these things happened at all they were so ridiculous, yet inside you know they all did and assorted scars exist as proof. As with the worst of times, they are often the best of times. Skinny asses hanging out of sunroofs, dubious drivers, young lust, who needs fiction when you have a faction; a movement, a hungry mob, never mind four horsemen of anyone's apocalypse; I think we were the last great marauding generation, before everyone died staring at mobile phones even when they were with their friends and life existed on the net. Why look at the fight when we could bring it to you in glorious technicolor, everyone a star, hero or anti-hero? Rock and roll is low-life chic, doused in gutter glitter, stapling things to illegal things, gunslinging, antisocial and social, running away, dreaming, working hard and hardly working. Almost everyone fails, everyone is a loser, but if you live you come out better than you went in. With an ill advised tattoo to remind you. What I'm trying to say is, if anyone reads this, go out and fuck some shit up immediately. Make something, do something, there is no excuse. It was so much harder to do anything then; creation was the result of someone really wanting to try, to do or die. The death trip driver, now he was on a mission, looking, searching, not sure what for, perhaps just life, the feeling that the possible and especially the impossible were in his grasp if only he could find it. Riding shotgun unsure of his wellbeing, sobriety, well, not wise I know, but you learn from mistakes, and most mistakes set you on the right path eventually. The slow times will come, that waiting room number surely can't be right confusion as you pull the ticket from the machine, oh I assure you. So be awake, be aware, press your face to the glass, find your treasure, take your adventure, win, or fail gloriously in equal measure and above all live - to tell me the tale.
All the adventure in the world is out there, and in some way or other at this moment you’re on part of the journey that makes up that adventure, even if sitting at some seemingly eternal stop light or godforsaken bus stop waiting to get moving again.
People may laugh at you, call you a tourist or not understand when you try to find joy in or document even the smallest moments, sights and sounds along the way. When you've done this a  little while, this serial itinerancy you realise sometimes reflecting back on the collection of seemingly nothings is all you truly get to keep, and half the time it is impossible to indelibly etch the pictures and memories you’d like to into your mind forever. So finding other ways to keep them isn’t such a waste of time. And time itself is the very thing, the commodity at large. We only have so much, and once you realise it, it becomes slippery through even the tightest of grips.  Sometimes I have pangs for materialist things; I watch a cooking show. It’s a shock as I realise I once owned a greenhouse, that in fact I built it myself, put in each pane of glass, that it stood in the garden of a house I owned. That I have had and lost an inordinate amount of such ridiculousness, usually to stupidity and carelessness. Now in a position seemingly impossible to rebuild myself,  I seem driven perhaps to see how low I can go. I guess the work is ok, it’s doing good things for other people, but very little for me. Each month, the clothes get a little more threadbare, realising this as I try to put on something half respectable to meet visiting family. A hole in this, an iron mark on that, broken zipper on one of the few remaining jeans that fit. That’s what you get for only buying H&M t-shirts. It’ll have to do.Â
And still, when I pause would I trade things for time, for life? No. And that is my main irritant, the value, quantity and quality of the time that remains, rather than anything else. That time should be spend wisely on adventure, on experiences more valuable than things so there is no time to wait for the light to change at the crossing, nor for people to catch up or be appropriately dressed. You either choose life, or don’t, run or crawl, live, or wait around to die. The style of travel remains to be fine tuned for comfort, I know, but at least I’m still on the road to somewhere even if not dressed to kill.
Many people like to spend their golden years in the sun, and so they do. Lately, I watch the elderly men sitting on the bench from my window. These are not street people, they are just normal residents of the nearby apartment buildings with plenty of time on their hands and not enough to fill the ever increasing hours of consciousness.
Even I am noticing that. I thought you were supposed to get old and tired. It doesn’t seem that way. All drink heavily, and I can fully imagine how easily it happens; deceased spouses, bad luck, the demons they carry but then I question myself. Perhaps this was just how life turned out, perhaps it is boredom, perhaps there is not even a sad twist to the tale after all. I’d like to think that, but know better. The man living above is mentally ill; dog and beer man is terribly alone, and certainly a serious alcoholic being the earliest to start. I watch him return from the shop usually at 8:30 am or so, six beers in a plastic bag, dog at his heel. He struggles to count his change sometimes at the counter as I buy bread, so perhaps he starts even earlier, or never stops. They smoke, they drink, they think. At least the nice weather has given them something now they are free from incarceration. Dog man has a best friend that visibly adores him, so that’s something. The schizophrenic has his other half, but they don’t have a good relationship. When I say his other half, I mean of himself, the person at the receiving end of his wrath, all the late night vicious sounding swearing and shouting. Far from the Floridian vision some have, I wonder if it all comes down to this for these souls, waiting to die, helping the process along, numbing the pain and snatching those moments in the sun.
Some people are thrust into greatness. Some people have greatness thrust upon them. But most people are destined to have greatness thrust into them - by The Almost Legendary Hog - according to themselves, of course.Â
“By the light of the moon, I see your body, body, body” the “bodies” a simulated echo coming from Zane Masters mouth, a Toyota Camry dashboard the perfect compositional tool for “bad beats” via the idle hands of Bart Savage. The endless, pointless driving in the teenage midwest was the backdrop and how it all began. You could only wait so long for the king biscuit flower hour, or Dr Ruth to come along and make the radio interesting while going nowhere fast, sitting in a parking lot. There had already been a gold standard set as the young Lord Buckmond C Whoremaster had already written the immortal “Penis And Tits” in 9th grade home economics while simultaneously baking a cake such was his demented talent.Â
Eventually, the “bad jams” were released into the wild, ensnaring even the music theory teacher with an early draft of “Bitches In Black”, his curiosity by this time piqued by the rumblings of his students. “I have been hearing of this band The Almost Legendary Hog, can we have a listen?” Well, full points to him for even caring.Â
It wasn’t the best production. The “drums” were achieved mainly by hitting a bucket in a bathtub with some spoons, but that was besides the point; the guitars were loud enough - The Almost Legendary Hog were never going to be about high falutin’ production values. Well, apart from live in which case military precision and whatever they measure explosive force in were all that mattered.
There should be an explosion every six seconds so loud, nobody could hear anything else. That was one of the early, wise decisions regarding how things would work. It would cover up any unpleasantry that may occur when The Almost Legendary Hog was performing, seeing how actually playing could be tricky given that The Almost Legendary Hog did not DO standing still. Standing still was boring.
The only time The Almost Legendary Hog stood still was in the makeup trailer pre-show when their crotch makeup was being applied. Unlike the glam rock bands who favoured girly face paint, The Almost Legendary Hog only wore crotch makeup, accentuating what *really* mattered to the baying fans.
Ah, the fans. Despite the fact, The Almost Legendary Hog would in fact unwittingly develop a fan base completely by accident, both in school and in the deep South via bootlegs of bootlegs of bootlegs, no doubt the music buried with nothing but hiss, the album itself being made with two cassette machines to begin with, dubbing between the two. It was always about the fans. Mainly depraved pubescents and virgins (much like themselves) the most dangerous of all minds.
Lord Buckmond C Whoremaster of Hog, Zane Masters of Hog and Bart Savage of Hog as well as having the best names ever came up with many innovations for trailblazing douchebag rock and roll bands, some of which have since been adopted by the international banking community. One of these innovations was “Hog Avoidance Insurance”, requiring cities to pay bi-anually so Hog did not come to play at their local arena, or more accurately - on TOP of their local arena as let’s face it, arenas were too small, and The Almost Legendary Hog pioneered the concept of circles to replace the outmoded “seat”. The parking lot would simply be painted with thousands of numbered circles for it’s adoring fans, and The Almost Legendary Hog would play on the roof. Why not squares, surely a better, more ergonomic solution? The Almost Legendary Hog thought only of the kids, and circles provided breathing space. That’s how much they cared. If you were the kind of prick that was friends with the promotor and got really good circles, you’d get screwed as the closer you were, the worse the view. It was only logical that the true dirtbags, the true fans would get the best circles.Â
Fate however is never kind. Of course, The Almost Legendary Hog fulfilled it’s destiny and BECAME legendary - which meant by default it could no longer exist. In the pre-internet age things appropriately went away, unlike in this pervasive untidiness we have today. But rest assured, somewhere, in a box in an attic lies a possibly unplayable cassette tape containing all the answers to any unanswered questions you may have.
It was truly sad to read that the one man legend that was Otto passed away earlier this month. If anyone has ever been part of the adoptive Rockfield family for any period in time, then you too will be unable to pause without sending love into the ether to him upon learning this.
From being able to fix the cranky heating in the quadrangle apartments much to Kingsley's chagrin as after all heat IS for wimps, to understanding any, literally ANY piece of audio equipment you brought to his lair, he was a brilliant, kind, talented man to whom music owes a serious debt; he made it all keep working, and I think we all know at times that was no mean feat. If something broke, by morning it would be magically fixed, usually with some cryptic comment next to it in the book.
As rock 'n rollers are not early risers, I used to go hide over there to his workshop quite often, loiter and look at the piles of broken electronics. He'd talk to me about things I didn't understand, sometimes the stuff of legends as he'd show me something ancient that so and so did this with, often totally over my head, but I'd try. I recently watched Sound City and thought about Otto as Dave Grohl talked to Rupert Neve. Try that, but with a German who probably knows even more. The main thing is - he was just nice to be around. It was best to get Otto time in before Kingsley would catch you and make you hitch a plough to a tractor or something.
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