Boston Section

The Boston chapter held it's annual banquet dinner on June 12, 2007 at Northeastern University's the Henderson House in Weston MA. The speaker was producer Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads. While Jerry once worked primarily as a performer in bands, he is currently working mostly as a producer. He has worked with bands such as Live, OAR, The Verve Pipe, Crash Test Dummies, and artists such as Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

There was a good turn out for the evening. It started with a social hour which allowed attendees to reminisce and make new acquaintances. The gathering was on the porch where everyone enjoyed refreshments and live music. The event then moved inside for a nice sit down dinner.

After the dinner there was a discussion of matters relating to the Boston chapter. Chairman Emeritus Jordan Tishler lead the discussion calling for member support and assistance with new meeting spaces and the members were again invited to join the executive committee. It was agreed that the chapter would go without a board for a six to twelve month period due to the transitional phase that the chapter is currently experiencing while candidates for board members are sought.

Jerry Harrison was then introduced and spoke about his life in the industry and things that are affecting the industry currently. Jerry discussed some of the history of The Modern Lovers and the Talking Heads. The speech then turned to his life as a producer and the group was privileged to watch part of the DVD 10 Days Out (Blues from the Backroads) which Jerry produced.

Once the DVD was played the AES members asked questions and discussed with Jerry some current issues within the music industry. The internet was a big topic of conversation and Jerry expressed his idea that the major labels should have really embraced DVD quality and better quality audio when the Mp3 internet craze hit. He had a very interesting idea related to this. He thought that the major labels should have given a free DVD-A player away when a person bought 5 DVD's and when they bought 5 more they would be given a player for their car. After a couple months he felt that the buzz for the DVD's would be there and then CD's would either disappear or be released 6 months after the DVD. He felt that this would have got the general public wanting better quality instead of free low quality music. While there were many different points of view on the subject I think that everyone agreed that it is an interesting time in the music industry.

There was some discussion on the new information age. It was the general thought that artists now seem to know more about what an engineer does and seems to think things can just be fixed in the mix. For Jerry a great song is key. To have a good recording the song is 75%, the performance is15%, and the technology and mix are 10%, but an important 10%. For the enjoyment of the attendees Jerry then played some of the newly remixed 5.1 versions of Talking Heads songs. He also said that he did not go back and fix a lot of the things in the music. He did, however, make sure the background vocals were in tune. He said that it is not as hard for the listener to hear lead vocals out of tune, and if the background vocals are in tune things just seem to lock.

Overall, the night went very well and was enjoyable for all. Jerry's speech was very interesting and as Barry Marshall said, "inspirational in a low key way."

- Nicole LaBore and Jordan Tishler, Chairman Emeritus
Audio Engineering Society, Boston Section