BOB DYLAN and NEIL YOUNG ? AN ALBUM COVER and RECORD LABEL PRINTER

Christine here!  Taking my dog for a long walk one very early morning, we found the doors of a business wide open.  Inside were machines.  Strange looking machines.   Couldn't figure them out, unless maybe Dr. Suess had done some manufacturing here!

There were some people around and so my friendly dog went in nose first and I followed.  We spoke to a man named Bruce.  He explained that Impressions LA Printing Services and Dorado Music Publishing over at Burbank Boulevard in NoHo were in the business of printing album covers, the innards of the covers, and the center labels.  We're talking for VINYL records here.

Those machines - one from the late 1950's, another from the mid 1970's - others a history of album cover and record label printing! I felt like a secret shopper when Bruce told me that they'd received recent orders from Bob Dylan and Neil Young.  See people are buying Dylan and Young record albums in vinyl even when the same music is available in CD.  (As you may know from Neil's memoir which I covered here a while back, Neil is involved in getting better quality sound recording onto those CD.s)  The records that were recorded originally and pressed on vinyl are being ordered in and for that, an artist needs more album covers printed too.  Bruce said Neil reminded them that he wanted his covers to look as old as the originals do today.  A small run is about 1000.

I'm posting this because they were friendly people and because they give TOURS TO THE SCHOOL CHILDREN.  So while we don't do advertising on this Google Blogger, we thought you might want to give them a call about the little tour.  When I was there those strange machines weren't running.  I hope to go back someday when they are!

Their number is 818-761-9295

NEIL YOUNG ON WALLICHS MUSIC AND THE WHISKY A GO GO

Pages 147-148 From Neil's recent memoir, also quoted earlier in this blog:

... "Let me describe WALLICHS for you: They sold all kinds of music there - 45s, LPs, sheet music, books about music - and in a little shop upstairs guitars and other instruments were displayed.  There were also listening booths where you could hear singles on headphones and see if you wanted to buy them.  I spend a lot of time there.  Of course, the place was crawling with flower children and beautiful hippie girls.

Anyway, like I said, upstairs at Wallichs there was a guitar department.  Martins, Gibson's all manner of electric and very nice old acoustic guitars were there.  This was around the time the Springfield (Buffalo Springfield- his band before CSNY) was happening; we were playing at the Whisky a Go Go, about a mile down Sunset toward Beverly Hills.  Stills (Stephen) and I went to Wallich's a lot and tried out Martins together . Stephen was fast becoming an excellent player and had surpassed me in his knowledge of voicings, and he was always playing rhythms naturally that blew my mind."

NEIL YOUNG ON SONGWRITING : NOT THE TIME FOR INTERROGATION OR ANALYSIS

"When i write a song, it starts with a feeling.  I can hear something in my head or feel it in my heart.  It may be that I just picked up the guitar and mindlessly started playing.  That's the way a lodt of songs begin.  When you do that, you are not thinking.  Thinking is the worst thing for writing a song.  So you just start playing and something new comes out.  Where does it come from?  Who cares?  Just keep it and go with it.  That's what I do.  I never judge it.  I believe it.   It came as a gift when I picked up my musical instrument and it came through me laying with the instrument.  The chords and melody just appeared.  Now is not the time for interrogation or analysis.  Now is the time to get to know the song, not change it before you even know it.  It is like a wild animal, a living thing.  Be careful not to scare it away.  That's my method, or one of my methods, at least.   - Neil Young.

This quote and others from Neil Young are from his recent memoir.

(463) BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD DEBUT ALBUM 1966 : THAT CALIFORNIA ROCK SOUND

NEIL YOUNG,
DAVID CROSBY,
STEPHEN STILLS,
RICHIE FURAY,
JIM MESSINA
...

We can think of them as a kind of Supergroup that spawned other groups and a whole lot of music that changed the sound of Rock and Roll and has provided us some of the most renown songwriters and most memorable music. 

Buffalo Springfield was short but sweet and helped define the California Folk Rock sound of the mid 1960's.

SINGER-SONGWRITER NEIL YOUNG ON SINGER - SONGWRITER FRED NEIL

pages 199 and 200 from Neil Young's recent music memoir

The Grove in Coconut Grove Florida.

"The Grove was intoxicating, and I stayed there on and off for years.  I had a suite in  a local hotel called the Rangoon.  There were a lot of high rollers in and out of the hotel all the time.  Fred Neil, the great folksinger/songwriter who wrote "Everybody's Talkin." which ws eventually used in the movie Midnight Cowboy, was there hanging out at the dock a lot with some of his friends.  (It is ironic to me that someone as seminal and influential as Freddy Neil would become more known for a movie song than the influence he had on a generation of musicians, including Stephen Stills, but that's the way it goes.)

NEIL YOUNG : SINGER SONGWRITER MEMOIR : BOOK EXCERPT ABOUT TOURING AND YOUTUBE

NEIL YOUNG 
WAGING HEAVY PEACE - A Hippie Dream
Published by Blue Rider Press - Penguin Group
C 2012 Neil Young

Chapter 11, pages 89-90 of hardback

"There are a lot of things that can go wrong on the road.  If you get sick, you still play, but people think you are losing your edge.  If you have half a house, people don't feel that they are part of something.  If you don't have a great crew, your shit doesn't sound right.  If you don't have the best equipment, your show may not sound as great as the last one or the next one.  If you have a reputation, it is on the line.  If you forget what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube. If you remember what you're doing, it shows up on YouTube. If you do something new that isn't ready, or something old that you screw up, it is on YouTube.  If snot comes out of your nose while you are playing the harmonica and slithers down the harmonica rack onto your T-shirt, it is on YouTube.  If you say something stupid..."  - Neil Young

(Neil is working on a sound system that will vastly improve the quality of downloaded music.  He is known mostly for his work with Buffalo Springfield which had a debut album in 1966, and then as the Y in Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.)

- Christine Trzyna