The latest studio project from Mad Mike Productions was a hard rocking Pittsburgh band known as Officer Green.
Officer Green plays an in-your-face style of rock that kicks your ass right from the start. I knew I would enjoy working with Mark Anthony (Guitars and vocals) again. He and I were in two other bands together (The Slutpuppies and The Mark Anthony Band) and Mark was also involved in the Dream Makers Project from 1991.
This session was only a three song demo and radio promo spot. Due to a low budget, the band looked to record in a digital recording studio. They found Power Pye Studios in Carnegie, PA. Owned and operated by Chris Brown, Chris handled the Engineering and Mixing duties while I sat in the Producers chair. The recording sessions only took about three days and that was it. Although some quality was lacking in the recording, the results are 100% Rock!
The CD kicks off with "My Heart Is Breaking". Description: It's kind of a Stone Temple Pilot-ish tune. No real gimmick here, they just rock it straight at ya. Production Note: This song really relies on timing and the drummer (Luke Erny) was very young and had no studio experience. His timing was pretty decent, but not perfect. I hesitate often to have a drummer try to play to a click for the first time because most of the time it really screws them up - BIG TIME. But Luke took to the click like he's been playing to it his whole life. I think that really held the tune together. I like the ending where I had all of the instruments perfectly muted at the end and all you end up with is Mark's vocals.
Next track is "My Mind". This song was featured on GarageBand.com and is still receiving great praise by many listeners. Description: An excerpt from one of the reviews from GarageBand.com could give you a good idea of the feel of the tune: "I really enjoyed this song. It got going right away and did not stop until it was done. Very good song and nicely done all the way around." Production Note: This song was originally written by Mark when we were in The Slutpuppies together. But we never recorded it so I never really got a chance to help Mark develop it for the studio. Mark had changed a few things since the original conception and shaped it up pretty good. I really wanted to capture a great guitar sound for Mark. He is very picky about his sound and I have heard some studio stuff that he has done where the guitar sounds like crap. It's all in the mic placement and mixing. I think his sound is huge on this tune and the solo rocks. Two things I touched up here were a three part harmony backing after the solo (kind of sounds like a keyboard) and a distortion effect on Marks vocals at the end of the tune. Gives it a more modern rock feel, plus it makes it kind of climax at the end of the tune.
Finally we come to "Nowheresville". Description: this tune has gotten some airplay locally and deservedly so. It doesn't really sound like any other band in particular, yet it fits in with everything else that is out there today (if that makes any sense). Production Note: An acoustic song. Finally an easy production right? Guess again. The first problem we had was the bass line. Bassist (Joel Kleiber) is a very good bassist. But sometimes tends to over-play on some songs. This was one of them. He was playing an acoustic bass and was all over the place. It was kind of throwing the whole tempo of the song off. After listening to the song for a day, we agreed that he should give it another try. I had him play the song with a little simpler bass pattern (which wasn't easy to do) and it fit like a glove. It's what the song needed. The next hurdle was the vocals. Mark nailed them, but this song was missing something. I came up with an effect for his voice that kind of sounds dated (from the 80's - but hey, that's me) but it really worked great. You'll notice that the vocals in this song sound much different than the others and that was by design.
Please click on the titles of the songs to get a listen to some excerpts of these tunes. Enjoy them!