tom recalls evisions

In 1979 I was Managing Editor of Recording Engineer Producer Magazine, at the time
the leading trade publication for the recording industry. CBS Studios in San
Francisco, where I'd been for years engineering, had closed the previous year and I
thought a move back to LA and a career change would be interesting.

I got invited to a product launch for Tascam's Porta-Studio. As they said, "It was the
birth of personal multi-track" - 4-tracks on a cassette. I was blown away. For several
months I talked to people about this empowering product. Dean Thompson, who
owned Two:Dot, where the first Prufock album had been recorded put up some
money and I left RE/P to start Creative Space. CS was a private hotel in East
Hollywood where we installed in each room enough gear for songwriters to make
their own demos. A picture of one of the rooms is in the inside lid of the CD case. It
was the first self-operating recording suites and sort of a bed and breakfast for
songwriters. They could book to stay a few hours or a week. They could sleep there
and Janice, the manager, would feed them. It was very cool.

I got back in touch with Chuck, who had been in Prufrock. He was between gigs and
looking for something to do, so he moved into CS, and became assistant manager.

I also got back in touch with John Capanna. He was still writing great songs when he
wasn't being the Assistant Principal of a suburban Middle School. I organised a
porta-studio for him, and his writing got even better.

Creative Space, while creative, was not particularly profitable. It catered to
starving musicians. To make some extra money I did some teaching at a couple of
the private schools in Hollywood. Music Lab in Silverlake had three studios and extra
space for classrooms. The owner decided he wanted to start a school. He got in
touch. Like so many times in my life "let's have lunch" became a job. I ended up
helping him found the Institute of Audio Video Engineering at Music Lab and was the
head of the audio program. Once IAVE got going, I would present most of the audio
lectures and ran several student workshop sessions every weekend. I did that for six
years.

About a year into CS, I switched from Teac to the Fostex multi-tracker. Fostex was
new and I liked the design of their machines better. Another "let's have lunch", and I
was asked to join Fostex. I started as a clinician, and soon became their field sales
manager, which I did for years until moving to Australia in late 87. But that's another
chapter.

During '81 and '82 I was on the road for Fostex most of the year and when I was
home on weekends I would be at IAVE teaching recording or producing and
engineering commercial sessions. Janis and Chuck kept CS going. By then all three of
us were living there.

The workshops needed bands to record and they needed to be good. But the bands
also needed to accept that they were a part of a learning experience. In other
words, if the session ran a bit bumpy, or the occasional technical mistake was made,
no one would go beserk. Bands would sign up and I would vet them. In the end I
would make sure the band would get a pretty good free demo. A few of the bands
got deals and subsequently some of the students got paid work from the bands.

Chuck was a good musician, and could sing pretty well, so I suggested to him that we
could use some of the workshops to record John's songs and Chuck could organise
the rhythm charts, play bass and sing. I arranged for some of the fantastic session
players I'd been working with in the paid sessions I'd been doing to play with him.
When we did string and horn workshops I'd ask Bruce Garnitz, this great arranger I'd
been working with, to write sweetening charts. The students benefitted by learning
how to record the much faster paced studio musician sessions.

There were still a goodly number of garage bands coming through but depending on
the workshop Prufrock was in the studio. John Capanna would be there most
sessions and Chuck and I were always there. John Hall, who had contributed so much
to the Visions album seemed at times to be with us in spirit in some way or the
other. By late 82 John Capanna finally added the lead vocals, and all the recordings
were done. I had to fit the mixing in with everything else I was doing and I could
only get "down time", so mixing Prufrock was a solitary experience often from 4am
till 10am when I would make the long drive to Fostex while listening in the car to
what I'd mixed that morning.

Over those two years dozens of musicians were a part of those sessions that totalled
in the hundreds of hours. The students were able to get experience of working with
hot session players, and John, Chuck and I had almost by accident created a second
Prufrock album.

Chuck and I always knew John wasn't interested in the rock and roll life. He had a
solid career going. So, like the first Prufrock album, Revisions was never shown to a
record label. We put together a song demo cassette that was sent to publishers, but
not as Prufrock. JB Shannon was invented. John, as the lead singer and songwriter
for Prufrock, had some justifiable concerns that many of the songs were not the sort
that an Assistant Principal should be singing. So J was for John, B was for Brian, his
one-year-old son, and Shannon his five-year-old daughter.

Revisions was completed just about the same time that Creative Space closed.
When we were offered a deal from a media company that wanted to use it in the
lead up to the LA Olympics, we took it. CS's was revolutionary, but its life span was
short because by 82 so many songwriters had bought Porta-studios, and no longer
needed CS. That was OK with me as I was on the road for Fostex promoting personal
multi-track, teaching on weekends, and producing and engineering projects in LA and
various other places in America. What was sad was that Chuck and Janis and I had
been living at CS, they were family and they would be moving-on.

About a year later the songs got the attention of Nia Peeples' agent, and we ended
up re-recording many of the tracks with Nia singing. In some cases entirely new lyrics
were written. John always seemed to be able to come up with what ever change
was needed. The conversation would go something like this. "Hi John. Look can you
take Smokin' Gun that's about assassination, and write some lyrics for Nia about a
cheating boy friend." On the website I have included Nia's version of the Revisions
song. Three are quite different, with very different lyrics. She does a great job.

But song pitching is hugely competitive, and with me on the road so much, there
was very little opportunity to get out there and do anything with the songs. I was
soon on to other production projects. Sometimes that involved John and his amazing
ability to write songs, and fix lyrics. Prufrock's Revisions and JB Shannon slide into
the past. Along the way John and I lost track of Chuck. When the Prufrock Visions
album was released by RD records it set in motion so many memories of our past. We
thought we should release the second album Revisions. We hope you enjoy it. I
consider it some of our best work. -- Tom Lubin