December 2007
5 posts
4 tags
Bonus Fred.
The original Fred McDowell sets we recorded at the Village Gaslight in November 1971 probably ended up being a couple of hours long altogether. Back in the day, it was barely conceivable to us that we could even get it together to release a single LP abridgement.
But in late 1998, right before he passed away, Tom Pomposello went back to the original session tapes and pulled out more than a...
14 tags
WKCR and Oblivion.
Columbia University Radio Club, the WKCR ancestor, 1942
Between 1972 and 1976, during and after my years attending Columbia University in New York, WKCR-FM (“89.9 on your FM dial”), the university radio station was the unofficial home of Oblivion Records.
The station was enduring the same radical transformations as the University at large (and the culture, for that matter). When I...
7 tags
Recording Fred.
The recording of “Live in New York” was a simple and, for the times, as primitive as you could imagine.
My experience was that of a completely self taught engineer, and Tom Pomposello’s was less. We’d been in high school rock bands, so we’d used microphones and cheap mixers for our live gigs. Between 1969 and November 197, I’d observed one professional...
1 tag
Why "Oblivion"?
Why did we name the company Oblivion Records? We weren’t particularly alienated suburban youths, probably just the opposite.
Tom Pomposello was the ultimate musical hipster of the age (OK he was a hippie), particularly when it came to blues and folk music. And one of the hippest indie labels of the age was John Fahey’s Takoma Records (eventually sold to Chrysalis) and in early 1971...
13 tags
Two of my favorites.
Both of these tracks were recorded by virturally unknown artists in a spare studio at my college radio station, WKCR-FM, at Columbia University in New York City. It’s the classic story of the indie, a small crappy room, shitty equipment (two track, when the standard was 16; a humming board held together by spit and rubber bands; OK, the mikes were top notch because they were stolen by one...