Sunday, February 27, 2011

Creating in the Pit

Back in the day, my room was called “the Pit”. Brant gave it the name and it was appropriate on many levels. He first used it as a general reference to returning to the Los Angeles basin or “pit”, but it perfectly described my personal environment and soon was used as reference to any space I occupied. Not many pictures have emerged from the pit but these show two of the typical activities that took place. The dominant activity of course was a place to congregate, listen to music and get fucked up.

In this shot we see Tanya from behind, I’m printing a silk screen of Jimi (below) and Dale’s leg is in the far right. I’m sitting at a huge equipment rack, back before “audio racks” were made for consumer use. There was a drawer that pulled out that is being used as a table top for the screen. Above it is a multi-track recorder, an easel to the side and crap everywhere.

Let’s look at some of the other crap in the background. On the wall is a conte drawing of Jimi I did as a kind of demo for Richie. At the base of the easel is a poster I did for Rhoads’ concert at the high school. There is a cardboard cutout of a Stratocaster body that was used as a template in the painting in the next shot.


This next shot must’ve been taken about the same time. Here we find a different use for the pit; now it’s a recording studio. Paul Shaffer is playing on Richie Strickland's composition "I've Seen the Light" while the Teac 3340 documents the day. There are a couple overhead mics (one with a wind screen for no reason), one in front of Paul and Richie is plugged in.

The wall were covered with crap too. Here are some of the images painted on the walls.

Pencil, ink, acrylic, oil, latex pastel and crayon. Whatta mess; but a lot of neat stuff came out of the pit in those days.


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