Fronted by the nervous guitar and earnest vocals of Richard Barone, the Bongos grabbed the torch from the Talking Heads to light the way into the 1980s for a second generation of eye-opening New York bands that sounded nothing like their predecessors. Dedicated to the proposition that the tired and huddled masses could still find comfort at CBGB (or at Maxwell’s across the Hudson River), the Bongos ruled the greater-NYC roost. A stimulating succession of solo releases, topped by this year’s Glow (Bar/None), leaves no doubt that Barone is still hitting on all cylinders, a vital and imaginative force in today’s music scene when most of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside. Barone will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Barone: I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a geek. The kind of geek who has an R2D2 in every room of his house. So when I had the opportunity to record and mix at the center of the Star Wars universe, Skywalker Sound, it was like wishing for a giant model of the Millennium Falcon for Christmas and getting the real thing. Besides the fact they grow their own organic foods on the Skywalker Ranch and that the studio itself is one the best in the world (rivaling EMI Abbey Road), the chief engineer is the legendary Leslie Ann Jones (daughter of eccentric big-band leader Spike Jones), whose every turn of a knob on her massive Neve 88 console is as inspired as a Van Gogh brushstroke or a tap from Michelangelo’s hammer. Her credits range from the Meat Puppets to Rosemary Clooney, not to mention endless film scores. We recorded the drums for the title track of Glow in the center of the huge Scoring Stage of Skywalker Sound. Richard Kerris’ drum kit was dwarfed in the massive live room, and since we were not looking for a particularly huge sound, I was surprised that Leslie set up no dividers to contain the drums. This is where the arcane art of mic placement and true engineering skills come to play. It was perfect. For the first time ever, my hands never once even veered close to a knob or fader. Leslie Ann Jones was in control.
Video after the jump.
