Hear This! 'Hanging out with Itchy and Scratchy'

People often ask me, what's it like hanging out at Scratchy Towers? usually followed by comments such as "I bet it's just one long session of wine, wimmin' and song" "it must be one long groovy party, what with all those legendary vinyl platters being given a spin" and "Do you live your life like a superstar D.J?"

Well my inquisitive vinyl loving chums, I usually like to keep a low profile to keep out of the tabloids, but I can exclusively reveal that life at Scratchy Towers is all of the above and so much more. Here is a rare photo of myself and Mr Knackers in deep discussion, at the H.Q command centre. We've taken a short break from the non stop hedonism, in order to sort the wheat from the chaff, deciding which platters really matter and should be given a spin at the next non stop banging V.I.P rave.

O.K, it's actually a rather lovely oddity of a record, featuring a conversation between the late Bob Auger, a highly respected sound engineer and Bob Hardcastle, a leading music producer (any further information on Mr Hardcastle would be appreciated)

Bob Auger worked on "a number of high-profile public occasions both in the pop and classical fields. These included as varied events as the 1969 Isle of Wight Pop Festival, the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park, Frank Sinatra's charity concert at the Festival Hall and Karlheinz Stockhausen's concert in the same hall in the mid-1970s" He also turned his talents to some of the most famous pop songs to come out of Pye Records in the Sixties such as The Kinks "You Really Got Me" "Sunny Afternoon"The Animals "House of the Rising Sun" and The Spencer Davis Group "Keep on Running"

Hear This! 1981 Discourses Limited DCL 1224

Side One
Reinhold Gliere Symphony No.3 in B minor
John Stanley Six Organ Concertos Op 10 No 5 in A major
Ludwig Van Beethoven The Piano Concerto No 4 in G major
Carl Maria Von Weber Concertino in E flat Op 26
Franz Schubert Piano Quintet in A Major
Scott Joplin Extract from Sunflower Slow Drag

Side 2
Antonio Vivaldi The Four Seasons Concerto No 3 (Autumn)
Joseph Haydn Symphony No 104
Enrique Granados Marche Militaire
Claude Debussy Images
Edvard Grieg Olav Trygvason

In between each extract our two Bobs discuss such important matters as recording locations, The best of mono, channel tests and microphone placement, balance,multi-microphone techniques and multi-track recording, tape editing, dolby and non-dolby comparison and digital recording and the future.

As it says on the cover "Your unique invitation to join a well-known engineer and a producer talking about good recorded sound, from the early days of mono to superb digital recordings of the 1980's" Thanks for the invite gents, it was a pleasure.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-bob-auger-1068562.html

http://wiki.ibs.org.uk/audiocompendium/index.php?title=Auger