Which adult baby would be the most annoying to work for? Prince, Brian Wilson, M. Gira or Jello Biafra?

based on info related by people who have worked with Prince, it's gotta be him

haven't really heard any complaints about dudes I know who have worked with Jello (altho workers at Rainbow have def complained about him)

Genius? Uh, M. Gira and Jello Biafra?

prince

look maybe i was being hyperbolic throwing the genius word around. pay it no mind.

haven't really heard any complaints about dudes I know who have worked with Jello

his employees literally testified against him in the dk trial

is modern day michael gira a pain in the ass to work with? i can see him being intense but at least from his interviews from the last few years, he seems like a pretty straightforward person

Suspect a lot of patience would be required to work with Brian, but the old boy seems harmless enough.

i'm guessing it's worse to work for mike love than brian wilson

his employees literally testified against him in the dk trial

I don't know these people

can imagine gira pointing to a copy of 'various failures' if you fucked something up

think Gira is just extremely thorough as a bandleader which I guess some might find annoying. being his personal assistant would carry a weird dynamic you'd imagine

modern day Wilson interviews/performances are sad/depressing imo. But working with him would be different I guess.

Prince could cuss me all day and it would be a thrill

not sure why Gira is on this list?

working for Prince seems like a wonderful albeit Kafkaesque dream/nightmare

a friend of mine knows a crew member who toured w/ swans who said gira was definitely a pain in the ass sometimes

There used to be weird things bandied around about how Gira needed pure white table cloths and things. Not sure fi that was domestic or tour or what, did sound pretty obsessive anyway.

BUt when I heard big baby I was thinking of the photos of him in that nappy looking thing onstage at ULU or Town & Country club or whatever.

chaki, so I assume Ge0rge has told you stories? The e-mail faxing still makes me laugh.

im remaining mute on this subject.

yet you started a thread presumably partly inspired by said info?

*nods*

most of the weird Gira shit seems to be from OG-era Swans? he seems more chill lately idk

why do people think modern day brian is depressing? dude is out playing with the best band, his voice sound p damn good and he's doing rad deep cuts, having successful movies, doing a mental health awareness campaign... we're lucky to have him alive and out playing! it's joyous, not depressing.

inasmuch as Brian Wilson has always been a tragic figure (from at least, say, 1965 on) I could see it being depressing. Dude is damaged. We are def lucky to have him be alive, I was shocked at how good some of that stuff on the last record was, dude's arranging/production skillz are still in top form.

mostly I am sad for him having to outlive his brothers, suffer so much abuse, survive so many hassles and assholes and lawsuits etc.

i mean brian has been depressing in that way since 1969 but like at least he's out of bed! i just watched that glen miller doc and it's so so sad and made me appresh the old players we still have out there.

yeah I feel you

well apart from the Glen Miller bit, fuck that guy

it's Gira imo

why do people think modern day brian is depressing? dude is out playing with the best band, his voice sound p damn good and he's doing rad deep cuts, having successful movies, doing a mental health awareness campaign... we're lucky to have him alive and out playing! it's joyous, not depressing.

Yes, this is pretty much how I feel, though I don't know much about the music he's been making lately. Sad what happened to him but he's been this way for a very long time now and at least he seems to be making the best of it now.

a friend and former colleague of mine worked for prince and it's....mentally and physically exhausting

also he'll probably sue you at the end!

but i think while you're with him he can be pleasant and cool to you, if obv a weirdo

i kind of maybe get the sense that if you are loyal and reliable and very close to prince that he would treat you wonderfully. tbh i don't know a ton about prince apart from loving a bunch of his records

ah ok xp

parent-friend of ours did event-planning for the Purple One for awhile, seems like a thankless task

and this guy was inner circle inner circle like he has a couple MTV moon men for prince videos on his mantle and rode with mayte out of LA in a stretch limo during the rodney king riots because prince wanted her out of town

put it this way, i think you have a limited time before prince turns on you and then you will be dead to him

and you also have to be on call literally 24 hours a day to like set up a video shoot at 3AM on a tuesday that prince will subsequently decide that he doesn't feel like doing

most of the weird Gira shit seems to be from OG-era Swans? he seems more chill lately idk

― the naive cockney chorus (Simon H.), Thursday, October 22, 2015 4:31 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

anecdotes from my friend's friend were from recent tours fwiw

but yea he does relatively chill but i don't know much it's all guess work

i imagine there are prob a million artists worse than these four too

let us briefly imagine working for Drake

yeah i mean prince is kind of like...i dunno going to work for willy wonka or running away to join the circus like whatever comes you gotta kind of expect it's intense and surreal and will probably end badly but i'm sure you'll have quite a ride

lol i think working for drake would be hilarious and fun

I have heard tell of him being unpleasantly flaky, otoh the dumb faces

Many posts before the mention of Corgan, B.

geniuses only bro

In his head etc

Usher probably the biggest douche

Wilson would be the hardest, because he is the only one you literally have to work for. Like, he can barely operate on his own, he needs assistance, not just assistants. Prince would be the most exhausting. Gira would be easiest, because he seems like a hard working dude; you'd probably just have to lick a lot of stamps and drop things off at the post office. Don't know anything about Biafra except he always seems to be in the middle of a bunch of lawsuits, so maybe that gig would be the most get me coffee mundane?

(oh and xposting modern Brian Wilson is depressing partly because of the above - he never seems to be fully where he is, as if someone just popped him down and told him what to do. He seems tired and disinterested, often, to the extent that after I saw that 50th tour I can see why Mike Love - now talk about someone probably hard to work for - would fire him; also, no less than kooky Jeff Beck has gone on record saying how far gone Wilson was on their tour last year or whenever).

Jeff Beck has described his 2013 US tour alongside Beach Boys icon Brian Wilson as "a bit of a nightmare."

The guitar icon was persuaded to hit the road with Wilson to promote an album, even though it hadn't been finished.

That led to a situation where Beck was expected to undertake extensive promotional activities to assist with ticket sales – and on one occasion the schedule was so hectic he had to visit hospital for an endoscopy without taking any time off.

He tells Mojo: "They wanted me to spend the whole afternoon doing promo to prop up the ticket sales. So we did this meet-and-greet stuff, where audiences pay good money to watch rehearsals, which robbed me of the afternoon nap.

"I ended up in Chicago University Hospital having an endoscopy – and they still had me playing the next night. It was a bit blood and guts; but I'd fallen in love with the idea of playing with Brian Wilson."

Beck recently told Classic Rock how the reclusive musician all-but ignored him in the studio, saying: "For four days I sat there and didn't even know Brian was in the room. He was so quiet; he never uttered a syllable. And yet they gave me these parts that allegedly he'd written.

"They should have got the bloody record done first, but they got excited and we ended up doing the Jeff Beck-Brian Wilson tour prematurely."

Now he says of Wilson: "He doesn't speak. He's clearly in need of attention – but that's just my opinion."

this is Prince easy, lifelong fan but he's a real shitass of a fuck

he's the type of dude that would knock everything clean off his desk, then press the button on his conference speaker and say "NOW GET IN HERE AND CLEAN THIS SHIT UP NEOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!"

Really wish there was still an Alan Leeds or Susan Rogers in the Prince camp these days

Obv no chance but anyway

I mean Jello Biafra would at least let you beat him up

Prince is fairly loyal, provided you don't divulge details about him with the media or engage in any activities that he would consider to be an affront to the apocalyptic death cult he is a member of.

or dare to use the font that he himself supplied you in articles you write about him when he changes his name to a symbol

I feel guilty and foolish because I accidentally voted for Brian Wilson when I meant to vote for Prince. I mean, I love Brian Wilson. And now I feel like I've betrayed him.

Does Prince pay well or is it YOU'REALLY WORKING FOR A GENIUS SHUDDUP

I bet it's easier to work for Prince than, say, musical genius Eddie Murphy.

don't forget bieber - known for pulling the red emergency cord in disabled loos in europe - "when people tell me not to do something i always want to do it"

Man, the stories I have heard about Aretha Franklin ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLoXrr-Jm xpost TIMING!

I read an amusing anecdote recently from a guy who worked in a sound engineering capacity with Prince around the time of Paisley Park. One day Prince announced that he wanted to hear what a guitar sounded like underwater, so he ordered this guy to take various amplifiers out of the studio and set them up in his swimming pool. The engineer pointed out that the amps and microphones would instantly short out and never work again. Prince was all death-stare, "I wanna hear what they sound like in the pool". So this guy spent the afternoon dutifully lowering various cabs, combos and mics into the pool, and of course as soon as he turned the power on, they all immediately blew up. Prince had already lost interest and was like, get this crap out of my pool. So the experiment concluded with the engineer tossing thousands of dollars' worth of gear into a skip.

um, that makes no sense. There are other ways to hear music underwater. Also if he had a guitar plugged into a lead and played that underwater but the amps were outside, what then?

friends who've had dealings with gira have made him out to be an astonishing cunt, joyless & w/ a colossal sense of self-regard

(xpost)

Indeed, what then?

I dunno, that's why I asked.

if the mountain will not come to mohammad, then prince must be forcibly submerged in his swimming pool so that he can hear what a guitar sounds like underwater

Mark your video link no workie

friends who've had dealings with gira have made him out to be an astonishing cunt, joyless & w/ a colossal sense of self-regard

Why does this not surprise me.

oh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGdI7CXZUXc

oh man i meant glen campbell doc, not glen miller. lol

gira 100%

i mean its probably actually prince but at least youd be working for prince yknow

wilson and prince are probably better than gira or biafra no matter what because you would stay at nice hotels and they are rich and can pay a lot more

yeah why isn't bill corgan included? he's certainly more of a genius than michael gira or jello fucking biafra

orly?

The engineer pointed out that the amps and microphones would instantly short out and never work again. Prince was all death-stare, "I wanna hear what they sound like in the pool". So this guy spent the afternoon dutifully lowering various cabs, combos and mics into the pool, and of course as soon as he turned the power on, they all immediately blew up. Prince had already lost interest and was like, get this crap out of my pool

lol-ing at the idea of Prince saying this literally minutes later

you could really do an entire TV series in the style of "charlie murphy's true hollywood stories" or "drunk history" with people reenacting various anecdotes and legends about prince

From a story I heard at a guitar store once I guess Dwight Yoakam is a pretty serious diva. There was some crazy nugget in there like the dude insists on having carpeting the entire way from his tour bus to the stage and back. I think it was put something like "the boots never touch concrete". Don't know if it is BS or not, but life is often that weird.

When Dolly Parton did an instore at the rec shop I used to work at, we were told "Dolly doesn't do stairs".

That's probably a dress thing.

Or a Dalek thing.

This one was posted on one of the prince threads:

Susan Rogers recalls Prince's real-life heartbreak being the inspiration for a particularly magical night of recording: He came into studio and recorded this ballad. It starts with spoken word. Prince is speaking to Wally, a dancer in his crew. He's telling him, "I want go out tonight and meet someone new." He goes into this chorus. It's beautiful, just beautiful. There's a crescendo. The song gets huge. It breaks down. He says, "I'm not going out any more." The background vocal arrangements, the expression of it was just gorgeous. Of course he played all the instruments. We finished recording the song and then Prince said to me, "Erase it."' He said it very calmly. I could feel the fan in me screaming "No!" I said, "Think about it. Wait til tomorrow at least." He reached over and hit record. He erased it. It was gone.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31962180

oh i remember another thing from the guy i know - i guess he always had to go into prince's hotel room and use cloth and duct tape or even plastic sheeting to competely seal every window so no natural light was in the room (obviously prince says in huge ass suites so there are a lot of windows usually) he also like purple lace and and um you know like stuff that would be under a 50s girl's poodle skirt type material to be stapled to the ceiling

he always also wanted a set of hand weights brought into the hotel room so he could work out

and this was a different person, and i've told this story but it's a favorite of mine, when i was in college he still had Glam Slam the club downtown and I was working a temp job, my supervisor was a p cute woman in her late 20s probably....anyway it was the 90s so she went out dancing in a black catsuit....some security comes up to her and gets her and says, "Hey Prince wants to meet you"

They take her up to Prince's "lair" upstairs (FYI to Mpls peeps this was what became the Ascot Room when it turned into Qwest)....so he's all like reclined on some Bond villain shit and say hello...then he pauses and asks her: "Is that a mystery suit?" (her catsuit)

she doesn't know what to do so she's like "Um...I guess?"

then there's an awkward pause and it's apparent that she's not down to totally fuck him on the spot and so they escort her back to her friends.

"you know like stuff that would be under a 50s girl's poodle skirt type material to be stapled to the ceiling"

Christ I bet Prince accounts for 90% of the crionline sales in the metro area.

UMS has not relayed the story of us seeing Prince in the Entry one time:

My band had just finished playing a show and the room was empty, UMS & I standing around bs-ing, UMS has his back to the door and in walks Prince with two impossibly attractive ladies. There are like three people in the room plus staff.

Me: "Dude Prince just walked in"
UMS: "Who...? WHOA"
Me: "Dude he is short"

We stare at Prince from across the room. He sits on the bench on the back. He is wearing sunglasses and is a solid foot shorter than I expected. A few awkward minutes pass and Prince leaves (not before denying to sign an autograph to my wife for her mom who was dying of cancer, but 'tevs). Staff people come down and I guess his people called a head for like an hour and he kept driving around the block in him limo before coming in and then leaving ten minutes later. Prince!

haha another important detail of that story: you guys were opening for the post-hardcore band Wives, who later ditched one of their members, became a 2-piece and turned into No Age.

I remember talking to one of the Wives guys, it was their first time in Minneapolis, and he was like "Oh man dude that's sweet, I knew this is where they did Purple Rain...that's awesome he must be here all the time huh?" I was like "Um..no."

I think the reason he was there because there was some celebration of Minneapolis women in hip hop festival going on in the mainroom w/like desdamona and dessa and i think mc lyte or shante or some ppl like that, if that was the year you guys won the Picked 2 Click poll in the city pages i bet he was like let's see what this hot new band is all about and then was like ok i'm good lol

It was right after at Strib poll that listed us as "best live act" over Prince, so I want to believe he was scoping out the competition and just showed up like an hour late, ha!

He just missed a shambling, drunk, Jesus Lizard cover!

"you guys were opening for the post-hardcore band Wives,"

I think they were Hollywood headlining in the sweet spot 3 out of four. Wives were really great.

Please forgive the extreme MPLS centric turn this thread as recently taken.

A friend of mine in the Bay Area sez Jello's a "treat" to work with

for everyone's enjoyment, reports from someone who worked with Bill Corgan/William Corgan/BillCo/WillCo in 2009-2010

I came here to say I worked for billy as an audio engi(second) for 1 harrowing year while he was trying to make 11 eps. (2009-10). ama
Quote:
Q: What's the weirdest thing you ever saw him do?
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He had 37 pounds of gold (bullion and coins) delivered by one of those armored trucks delivered to the recording studio because he thought (I'm not kidding, and not sure how much he was/wasn't) because he thought obama was going to drive the economy and country into a dollar failure and gold would be he only currency around.
Follows up later in the thread:

Quote:
I want to believe this so much.
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Its true. I got there first and the loomis truck wouldn't even roll down the window for me. The work load was nuts. 8am-11 or 12 pm every day for that year with literally only thanksgiving day and christmas day off. My body broke down after a while (and I was pretty young). I was doing a lot of the striking / setting up of mics / stands / synths / console switchouts. It was the hardest job I had ever done.

Quote:
Q: What is he really like? Everyone hears stories, and I guess yours (to us) will be just another one, but if you're legit, I'd love to hear it from you
Also, does he realize that his voice is mixed WAY too close to the front?
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He is for the most part, a pleasant guy. He has his super rich guy things. He doesn't touch anyone, he is super worried about the food he eats. There were probably 8 of us at any given time including engis, producer, bandmates and the occasional guest. We all ate the same thing, except billy had a personal chef bring him crazy ancient grains and bizarro super foods for every meal and drank $20 water bottles which brand name changed weekly because he heard the previous brand was bad/poisonous.

Had a good sense of humor though. Very very very hard worker. Guy puts in the hours for sure. He is also a huge conspiracy theorist. Somewhere in between really believing that the illuminati is about to take action and somewhat skeptical on the existence of reptilians.

We recorded on 2" studer tape machines. The vocal process was really interesting. There were about 16 takes for any given track, all one seperate tape tracks. Then the head engineer would spend about a day listening to them all, and in a grid rated EVERY SYLLABLE in each take, and comped the entire thing, per syllable to a single, new tape track. This was this guy's "what I am famous for" skill. the process was nuts, he would hit the shit out of the studer control console thing so fast and hard to punch in punch out each syllable. And apparantly thats the way its always been done with billy. He likes the tape, but is always a collage of lots of takes, comped to tape.
Quote:
Q: How was his writing process? What's the ratio (as far as you know) of songs he had prepared for the EPs versus songs he was clearly making up during the sessions. Did he seem prepared at all?
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He had zero songs prepared. At his house, he would normally just have a few chords perhaps on piano. He would come in and just fiddle with those for sometimes close to a hole day. Mind you our days were about 8am to midnight, 7 days a week.

A little backstory, this was billy's (everyone calls him that and he seems fine with it btw) personal studio, which was a 5000 sq ft wharehouse in the north chicago burbs. He had collected a lot of gear over the years that was scattered about in storage sheds, so this was it all coming together. I can post some pics. But it was serious console/synth/drum machine/guitar porn city.

So he would basically get a skeleton idea down for chords, decide on an instrument to try it on and do a few takes to get it right, so a drum track to get made. Then mike burn (kid in the back of OPs photo...sweetheart of a kid and a great drummer whos favorite drummer is questlove) would do the drumb track). At this point it got strange, it was him wandering through this vast synth collection and patch hunting on each one, then deciding he wanted a sound we didnt have, so would buy something on ebay (like a mellotron).

Most times we ended up recording completely different versions of the same song. Songs that started out being mellow and somber became quite loud and aggressive. Most of the songs you hear from billy had several different iterations (almost unrecognizably) before the final is printed. Vocals were written only after the final version was decided on

Quote:
Q: Did Billy talk about the old band mates at all, or did he berate any of the current band members?
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When this studio project started, Jimmy actually was playing drums with billy and they did some work together, but quickly had a falling out over writing credits (shocker...billy doesn't share those with anyone ever) and did not participate. The Producer at the time was married at one point to Darcy, and there were some snips and slights here and there. Iha never came up.

edit: At the time, there was some stress with the bass player from strawberry alarm clock (who was a million years old and not great on bass) couldnt hack it, and eventually got asked to not come back...other than that other folks were cool. Really, billy played nearly everything in himself except drums. Most of it is just mike on drums and billy, and the rest of the line up was for live. Not sure what the situation is now.

Quote:
Q: Zeitgeist lists credits for both Chamberlaine and Corgan on most songs. Did Billy rant about anything that would give a clue to that change of heart?
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Not really. But the head engineer and studio manager at the time told me that the re-split was about Chamberlaine being angry with billy about being a control freak and not giving proper credit where it was due.

Quote:
Q: What's Jeff (SHREDDER) like? Bet he's real down to Earth.
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It is not the guy from the superchrist vid, and the name escapes me...but he was the original Strawberry Alarm Clock bassist.

He was a sweetheart of a man. Very nice and cool and down to earth. He was a bit bemused as to why he was there it seemed but yeah. A complete joy of a person. There were a lot of people through there with personalities that you would expect from celebrities and cranky engineers, but he was super down to earth and very very personable. The only musician there that had sympathy for the time the engineers and studio staff were putting in.

Also, both him and billy are like 6'5. I am 6'2 and felt dwarfed by both of them.

edit, for context, this was the first song that came out of that studio with that group:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKrB3AM97Xc
Quote:
Q: How was he in terms of listening to/asking for input from other people?
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I would give it maybe 20%. He was confident with his ideas for the most part. The producer at the time literally had such minimal input, but he would spit ball ideas with the head engineer a lot. Like I said, we would record like at least three different arrangements for each song, so he did a lot of trial and error, and there were a lot of ideas thrown out by the musicians/producer/engineer/studio guests (mostly hot models). He never seemed to really use any of these ideas, but I guess maybe just internalized them and listened politely

That syllable-by-syllable thing... would love to hear that done with completely unmatching takes, tbh

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Holy shit that Billy Corgan thing is AMAZING. The syllable thing but also the gold bullion and illuminati paranoia. It's like he spends all his time in hotels watching Fox News into the wee hours.

Yeah, I know they do syllable-by-syllable comps of pop vocals but it would have never occurred to me that Billy Corgan's vocal tracks are the result of that process.

LOL especially now

People are really underestimating the annoying power of Jello'a creepy nasal sneer.

lol

http://pitchfork.com/news/62049-prince-fired-uestlove-from-dj-gig-played-finding-nemo-instead/