Author: Kelli Richards

The ‘Sound City’ Documentary Reminisces About a Simpler Time

Kelli Richards July 8, 2013

When Dave Grohl talks, people listen. That’s why music fans flocked to theaters to see Dave’s documentary “Sound City” last year. The former Nirvana drummer tells the story of legendary Los Angeles recording studio Sound City, which recorded such artist as Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Tom Petty and Nirvana. A number of these rock legends got their big break after recording at Sound City. Much of the studio’s success can be attributed to its sound board, the Neve 8028 analogue mixing console.

As the music industry settles into the post-pro-tools world, the documentary is a homage to the way things used to be. Long recording sessions, a dirty studio and some of the best music in history. That’s legacy of Sound City.

The Board that Started it All

While Sound City is a hallowed monument to rock ‘n’ roll, it wasn’t much to look at. In the documentary, interviewees describe the hideous shag carpet and beat up couches that lined the room. It wasn’t the atmosphere that made Sound City special, though. It was the Neve 8028, widely considered one of the best recording systems in the world.

“The Neve boards were considered like the Cadillacs of recording consoles,” Grohl told NPR. This Cadillac ushered a new era of music in California. With 28 inputs, 24 monitors and 1085 EQ, the Neve 8028 was a recording monster in the ’70s. Neil Young recorded “After the Gold Rush” at Sound City, and Fleetwood Mac recorded “Never Going Back Again” from the acclaimed album “Rumours.” In Sound City, music legends talk about the Neve as if it’s an old friend.

The Digital Takeover

The underlying theme in the documentary is a longing for the glory days. The musicians featured are some of the best in the world, and when they recorded at Sound City, they couldn’t rely on technology for cleaning up mistakes. Much like cable.tv offers a new experience for watching — digital recording revolutionized music. Rather than recording digitally, these icons recorded on tape. Viewers get the sense that a part of the artistic process dies when computers correct every tiny mistake. For musicians, Sound City is a challenge not to rely on technology. Average listeners may not spot the difference, but recording with Pro Tools has a plastic, sterile sound. There’s nothing wrong with that for certain genres, but rock ‘n’ roll are as much about the mistakes as the synchronization.

Grohl’s Reunion

The documentary isn’t just a reflection of this legendary studio it’s a continuation of its legacy. Sound City closed in 2011, but Grohl purchased the Sound City Neve for his personal studio. In addition to the documentary, Grohl also released and recorded a new record with a number of Sound City alumni, including Paul McCartney, Rick Springfield, Stevie Nicks and Trent Reznor.

This blog was contributed by Mario Vasquez
Mario teaches screenwriting at his local community center and writes about TV, movies and entertainment in his spare time.
**Image by Man Alive! pursuant to the terms of his Creative Commons license.

An Intimate Talk with Michael Dorf of The Knitting Factory and City Winery

Kelli Richards July 5, 2013

I recently invited Michael Dorf, former chairman and CEO of The Knitting Factory and founder of City Winery, to talk with me on my Blog Talk Radio show, All Access Radio. Michael, being the entrepreneur that he is, started the Knitting Factory, a combination café, art, and performance space housed in Lower Manhattan at age 23. He left the Knitting Factory in 2003 and transformed his career from art and music to incorporate another passion, wine. He created City Winery in 2007, the first fully operational winery in Manhattan.

My path first crossed Dorf’s in 1994 when he produced the Apple MACFEST, the first on going live streaming of music from a club. This was during my tenure running the music initiatives at Apple with a small team. It has been a long time since we’ve connected, but in the interview we both confessed to following each other’s careers on the Internet.

When asked about his early experience with Apple MACFEST and how it opened doors for him he responded, “We were mimicking and experimenting with what we were doing at the Knitting Factory and tried to make it into a large festival with what we were doing with Apple. It felt like experimentation. No one really knew what was going on. We knew this was a potentially powerful tool, but we didn’t really understand it.“ He went on to say, “When you’re a promoter or a true promoter, your role is to connect the music and artists to as many people as you can and do it in a way that makes sense for all parties – the audience, the performers, and the venders. Really, that was the approach we were taking and we just though that was a really powerful way of expanding what we were doing.”

Our interview provided insight into his time as CEO of the Knitting Factory and the bridge between that career and his current venture, City Winery. To hear the full interview, click here.

You can hear my entire interview series on my website at https://allaccessgroup.com under the Resources Tab / BlogTalkRadio.

Until next time,

Kelli Richards, CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

Google: Pioneering Meaningful Controls to Prevent Child Pornography

Kelli Richards July 1, 2013

With so many ways to access, share and distribute information on the internet, is it possible to put meaningful controls in place to prevent child pornography? And if removing the offending pictures is achievable, what happens when they reappear in another location? For all of the benefits the digital age has brought us, the rarely discussed world of online child pornography is the one defect that has yet to be addressed. Fortunately, Google is about to implement a change that will drastically reduce online child pornography.

The internet search giant is taking on child pornography in an effort to remove offending images from the web. Using hashing technology developed in 2008, Google will be able to identify duplicate images that still exist. According to Google spokesman Scott Rubin, a database of images will “…help all technology companies find these images, wherever they might be.” Because each image is unique the computer is able to identify multiple copies of the same digital file across the web. The best part is that this technology can accomplish the task without human interaction.

Google is developing software that gives search engines the ability to share information about offending child pornography. Organizations such as the Internet Watch Foundation will flag offensive images. The database, which is expected to be operational within the next twelve months, will then clean all offending flagged images off the web. Almost instantaneously, all copies of a child porn image will be removed.

Google is creating a $2 million fund to allow independent software developers to create software to further eradicate child pornography. Pressure has been building for software industry leaders to combat this problem. Recently, England’s Prime Minister said he was “sickened” by the images available online. Up to now no industry standard existed to identify and eliminate images tagged as child pornography. Any images removed in one location could pop up somewhere else. By developing an industry standard, companies can find and remove images where ever they reside.

The resources Google put into this task is unprecedented. Chief Executive Officer Susie Hargreaves of IWF, an organization partly funded by Google, stated “This announcement is inspiring for those who are at the forefront of tackling child sexual abuse content.” While it is unrealistic to expect any one solution to be one hundred percent effective, this will go a long way in dramatically reducing the amount of child pornography found online.

Until next time,

Kelli Richards, CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

Debbie Gisonni

Kelli Richards June 27, 2013

Letter from Kelli for June – Linda Tucker, Saving the White Lions

Kelli Richards June 25, 2013

This month I had the amazing opportunity to interview Linda Tucker on my weekly “All Access Radio” podcast (I’ll share that interview in my July newsletter, be sure to watch for it!). Linda has devoted her life to saving the white lion. Yes, the animal.

The sad reality is that African lion populations have decreased by nearly 70% in the past 50 years. Were it not for courageous activists like Linda Tucker, that number might be even more catastrophic. In her adventurous and suspenseful new memoir, Saving the White Lions, Linda describes her dangerous, decades-long struggle to protect the sacred white lion from the brutal mafia-like trophy-hunting industry, armed only with her indomitable spirit and total devotion.

Before devoting herself to this pursuit, Linda was a very successful advertising executive. And even before that success, Linda led an extraordinary life, growing up in South Africa during Apartheid and attended Cambridge in the UK. In 2002, after abandoning that successful marketing career, she’d honed so carefully, she founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust, an organization that works not only to protect the white lions, but also the indigenous communities and knowledge of the Tsonga and Sepedi cultures, which celebrate the white lion as a sacred living heritage. Linda is invited as guest speaker at international conservation congresses, and her work has been featured in documentaries produced by National Geographic and Animal Planet and through her tireless efforts she is an inspiration to us all. I’m grateful for her work, and also for her friendship. You can support Linda by purchasing her book (featured to the right of this newsletter as my “Book of the Month.”

To your HIGHEST success! Kelli Richards

Do Female Music Artists Have a Lock On The Industry?

Kelli Richards June 24, 2013

After taking the stage at “Sound For Change” in London on June 1^st, Jennifer Lopez declared that “women have taken over the music industry.” The event was presented by Gucci’s “Chime for Change” charity, which seeks to promote health, equality and justice “for every girl, every woman, everywhere.” J-Lo joined fellow female superstars Beyonce, Madonna, Ellie Goulding and Mary J Blige for a series of performances designed to “put girls’ and women’s issues on the world’s stage.”

Lopez, in an interview with Stylist magazine, went on to say that female artists have had a grip on the industry ”going back 20 years,” citing performers such as “Cher and Gloria Estefan,” followed by “Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, and then the next wave which was me and then Britney and Beyonce,” and culminating now with “Rihanna and Lady GaGa.” She admitted that in all this time, there have been “a few guys,” but overall the ladies “have really had it on lock for a bit.”

It’s clear that some of the biggest names in music right now belong to women. In addition to les femmes fatales who performed alongside J-Lo in June, one doesn’t have to think too hard to come up with more names: Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey, Adele, and even Ke$ha are a few that come to mind. The prevalence of female success stories makes it tempting to assume that J-Lo’s optimistic claims are well founded.

It is exciting to think that women are “taking over the music industry.” But it is one thing to command the spotlight; it is quite another to command an entire industry. One is forced to wonder how many female producers, agents, and record-label owners are working behind the scenes to back up J-Lo’s claim.

Indeed, as a recent BBC article reveals, “the story is not being replicated on the other side of the sound desk.” The article goes on to say that while we may recognize George Martin or Pharrell Williams as household names, “only three women have ever been nominated for best producer at the Brits or the Grammys. None of them went home with the prize.” Susan Rogers, one-time studio-engineer for Prince, pointed out that “women who want to enter the field face a boys’ club.”

But the spotlight is not a bad place for women to start. After all, one of the benefits is guaranteed global attention – which is perhaps the most powerful force imaginable. The real question is how our empowered female artists will use that spotlight to shed light on the real issues faced by the girls and women who look up to them. How will our contemporary female music stars use their influence to advance the causes of health, equality, and justice for every girl, every woman, everywhere?

Until next time,

Kelli Richards, CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

Michael Dorf

Kelli Richards June 24, 2013

Zack Zalon

Kelli Richards June 24, 2013

Kip Winger

Kelli Richards June 24, 2013

An Exclusive Interview with Stewart Copeland, Drummer from The Police

Kelli Richards June 20, 2013

I recently talked with my good friend, Stewart Copeland, a film composer, musician and the and the drummer for The Police on my Blog Talk Radio show, All Access Radio. Stewart has an extensive and diverse resume. We started the interview talking about what motivates him and what passions drive his choices. Steward said, “It has to be creatively amusing.”

We discussed his childhood, and living in Lebanon with a father who was unknowingly working for the CIA. His cultural environment in the Middle East very much influenced his music as a creator. He explained that the “cultural environment was Arabic music, which has that dropkick beat, which is very similar to the rhythm trick of reggae which has that dropkick beat; the absence of one an emphasis of three of the bar.”

Copeland described how his passion for drums began and shared with me hisfavorite memory with The Police. “Favorite experience, probably Shea Stadium. We probably all agree that out best, ultimate gig where we reached the pinnacle, -Sting likes to say ‘the only place we could go from now is down’ –and soon after that we broke up, but that was a really great gig, a really great evening, a wonderful experience and a pinnacle of everything that we had struggled to achieve.

To hear the whole interview, more stories and more about Copeland’s career as a film composer visit my website where I put out a new interview every Monday at 8:00 EST.

Until next time,

Kelli Richards, CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

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Author: Kelli Richards

The ‘Sound City’ Documentary Reminisces About a Simpler Time

The Board that Started it All

The Digital Takeover

Grohl’s Reunion

An Intimate Talk with Michael Dorf of The Knitting Factory and City Winery

Google: Pioneering Meaningful Controls to Prevent Child Pornography

Debbie Gisonni

Letter from Kelli for June – Linda Tucker, Saving the White Lions

Do Female Music Artists Have a Lock On The Industry?

Michael Dorf

Zack Zalon

Kip Winger

An Exclusive Interview with Stewart Copeland, Drummer from The Police

Search Resources

Topic Areas & Guests

Join our mailing list

As Seen In:

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My Commitment to You

Now is Your Time

Author: Kelli Richards

The Board that Started it All

The Digital Takeover

Grohl’s Reunion

Search Resources

Topic Areas & Guests

Categories

Join our mailing list

As Seen In:

Join our mailing list

Pages

My Commitment to You

Now is Your Time