"Fletcher" wrote in message
...

Mark Stebbeds Wrote:
Found this in the LA Times today. Anyone know this guy?

I posted the text as well as the link.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,2174231.story

Mark



Recordings Are Seized at Engineer's Home

snip happens

"These are recordings that he contractually and logically had every
right to have in his possession," Crom said. A recording engineer, he
said, often works at home.

Los Angeles Police Det. Donald O. Hrycyk said the boxes of recordings
carted out of Howard's home - which consisted of a bed, refrigerator
and other amenities in a commercial property in a recording industry
district -

snip happens


"When we got there, he wouldn't come to the door, but when we pried it
open, he came out," the detective said.


In talking with some friends... it seems that someone at RCE kinda
jumped the gun on this for at the moment an unknown reason. Turns out
that there was well over a 20 year relationship between artist and
recordist, that there was a reason for this 20+ year relationship [like
Mr. Howard is an EXCELLENT engineer kind of a reason]... and there was
less than no intent to steal anything from anyone when it came to these
masters... or at least that's the word on the street in LA with people
that know the other side of this debacle.

Apparently the subject of this article did indeed live in his studio,
hence the bed, refrigerator and "other amenities" [like a shower?]...
the studio, not being your average piece of **** home studio, was
"soundproof" [hence why he didn't answer the door but came out after
they "pried it open"].

While the original article was obviously skewed by some publicist for
the person or persons who were pulling the strings from RCE, the fact
of the matter is that anyone who works on any "real" product should be
very worried right about now... imagine you happen to have some masters
from something you were working on... and all of a sudden the Gestapo is
kicking in the door?

I know I have "masters" at my house, as well as at my office... many of
these masters are indeed owned by record companies who didn't want to
store them/"outtake reels" at the end of the project, and the studio
didn't want to store them at the end of the project... so in many
cases, I got stuck with them.

Some of these masters have the work of dead people on them... after
this bullsh*t I'm going to figure out how to send them back to the
labels/artists/anyone in the fukking world but me!!!


--
Fletcher

In helping to clear up a friend's estate, I'm having similar problems.
Years of annual requests for disposition instructions for session tapes have
apparently been ignored by labels and/or artists. My friend should have
disposed of the tapes as he threatened in the letters I suppose, but he was
reluctant to destroy the artists' work. Also, even if you send a registered
letter to a label or artist and get a receipt that it was delivered but
receive no reply, as happened in many cases, how do you carry out the threat
of destruction? You can't just pitch a couple hundred pounds of 24 track
reels into the trash, where some enterprising dumpster diver might dig them
out. The result, in the case I'm trying to resolve, is the equivalent of a
large bedroom stacked floor to ceiling with boxed session tapes, including
masters, not a few of which are very big sellers by known artists. I've got
it! I'll threaten to send the tapes to a well know pirate operation in
China that has agreed to assume responsibility for 'storing' the tapes.

Steve King