Patterns was Rod Serling’s first major teleplay,
later adapted into a film production of the same name in 1956. It told a story
of an older man in decline being pushed out of his long-time position in
business by a younger man on the rise. An age-old story, it brings to mind the
ancient Roman tombstone epitaph: “As you are now, I once was. As I am
now, you will be.”
For 25 years and
8 months I was what my employers reported to the IRS a “Defense Analyst.”
A catch-all and overly broad term, during my career I performed numerous duties
including communications specialist, multimedia content provider, database
sales, news reporter, website designer, and the job I did through all that time —
weapon systems profiler. I worked for companies in news, publishing, competitive intelligence, and on an independent contract basis.
Back in late 1997, a friend of mine, an editor at a military database in Washington D.C. was complaining to me about one of his stringers, a senior freelancer about 60
or so. A friend of the publishers, he had probably started off in the field in
the 1960s and his habits were still squarely set in the age of typewriters. For
example, his habit of pressing the Return key at the end of every sentence
created havoc with the HTML coding which read every Return keystroke as the
end of a paragraph, not just the line. Consequently, my friend had to go through the
old guy’s assignments line by line and remove each Return keystroke. It was a massive pain in the ass. I admit we had a
bit of an ungenerous laugh at the guy’s expense. A couple young bucks mocking
an old bull’s growing obsolescence.
I was hired to replace him; however, as I would eventually learn, if you live
long enough you become the punch line to your own joke.
Climbing
Up the Ladder
Database
product name for a company I worked for.
The company my
editor friend noted above hired me for is a proprietary online military
database located in the Washington D.C. area. The subscribers include
governments, industries, libraries, militaries, news organizations, etc. My work
mainly involved profiling weapon systems and tracking exports, transfers, and
sales, but also sometimes preparing news abstracts as well as a nation’s
order of battle — meaning what weapons it had, how many, how they were
acquired, where they were located, and with which units. Small arms were generally
considered beneath our concern. Rather, the focus was on large weapons
systems such as aircraft, artillery, armored vehicles, and electronic intelligence and sensor
systems.
It was not
full-time work, but since I could do it at home on my own time it suited me just fine. For nearly 26 years, I had a steady monthly
income. The amount varied over the years, and a regular monthly paycheck is a
nice benefit; however, it was one with a steadily declining return. When I began in
1998, I was paid $900 for a month to update the profiles of 50 weapon systems,
or $1,736.72 in 2024, or, in other terms, $18 per record or $34.73 in
2024. If I spent just one hour per record that would have been decent pay,
but instead, it took me about 80 hours to finish 50 records, which reduced the
hourly pay equivalent to fast-food wages.
The company
would recruit other stringers over the years, political science majors, pre-law
students, grad students, but the tedious, detail-oriented work, and low pay,
would eventually move them all on. After two and a half decades, I was the last
man standing, more out of stubbornness than talent, but in the end I was there.
Frankly, it was the longest relationship in my life.
Rung-by-Rung
Another
former project I worked on.
As my career in
defense information grew, so too did my skills. I became proficient with
website design, HTML coding, using software like Dreamweaver and Sound Forge to
produce interactive maps and audio commentary. My work also expanded to other companies.
I worked several years as a freelancer for one Israeli defense information
company writing news abstracts and then moving on to sales, creating contact
lists of hundreds, and I do mean hundreds, of generals, admirals, majors, lt. colonels,
colonels, defense attaches, and military libraries. The following audio clip is
a background sound collage for an Israeli defense information database I produced and gives
a sample of my work during this time:
I occasionally
did work for my editor friend from the Washington D.C. military database. After
he left, he started his own company, through which I had such assignments as producing news
abstracts and multimedia content for the US government’s former OSIS, the
Open-Source Information Service, producing such reports as The China-Taiwan Air Power Monitor and the PRC-ROC Conflict Chronology: 1945 to Present.
Other work over
the years included designing a webpage for a behavioral modification company
run by a former Russian general (at least that’s what he claimed), as well as audio commentaries for a defense media reporting website (see below).
Despite all of
this, I should mention that I am a peace advocate and there's not one war in my lifetime that I have supported. Yet, while a peace advocate,
I am pragmatic. I live in a world with nations led by psychopaths who do not
share my sentiments. On the other hand, one thing I learned in nearly 26 years
of reporting on the weapons of war is that wherever weapons go, war
inevitably follows. While one may conjecture that a strong military deters
others from attacking a nation, the truth is that human history is replete with
examples of militarily strong nations going to war against each other. I
explore this conundrum in another essay on Aeolus 13 Umbra, “If You Want Peace, Prepare for War”: The Logical Paradox.
Not-So-Secret Reports
Banner
I created for a special report I prepared on shoulder-mounted missile systems.
I also did work in competitive intelligence (CI). On the surface, CI is just gathering information
on what a company’s competitors are doing. Ostensibly, this is NOT corporate spying, according to the industry,
but it sort of really is. One company I worked for created shell companies to provide cover for researchers to approach competitor companies for information which they
would otherwise not share. The old pros quickly caught on to CI inquiries and
shut me down. So, I shifted tactics and called at 4:30 PM on Friday afternoons
before a holiday weekend. At that point, the only ones left in the office are
interns, receptionists, and junior execs who were more easily fooled and I
usually got the info I needed.
Special reports I prepared during this period of my career include:
Just a few years
ago, I completed my last such project, this one involving a company producing Resilient
Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) solutions and secure radar and GPS. These
are systems that ensure accurate navigation and protect aircraft and ships from
electronic attacks. The executive heading the effort was generally an absent leader and
when he was around he was a fatuous ignoramus. It reminded me of the empty
suits I worked with in public relations and why I left it. I was getting too old to have the patience for this shit.
Old Man
Out
It was always a
side-gig, but I began to shift more of my work to teaching college composition
courses as I realized my defense information career, such as it was, was
drawing to a conclusion. Through all this time, I continued to profile
weapon systems for the company that first hired me back in 1998. Yet, desktop
publishing technology had changed over time. When I first started, the company required
the records be prepared with the extensive use of HTML tags and all hyperlinks had to be formatted manually in a very specific way.
Each assignment typically had thousands of HTML tags and hundreds of hyperlinks.
Very little of my time was actually involved in researching and writing. Since
I was the only stringer to endure the tedium so long, I became something of an
institutional relic.
As the decades rolled
by, the need for HTML tags and special hyperlink formatting was no longer needed. Nevertheless, how I did things had become engrained in me and it was
difficult to make the change. So, I kept turning in assignments as I always had, HTML tags and all, which, as the old man caused my editor friend at the beginning of this journey, was just creating more work for the database editor.Eventually, I made the change as the evolution of the software eliminated about half the total time I spent working on an assignment.
Notably, this entire time, the new database editor said nothing to me. I was actually hoping he would and probably dragged it out longer than I should have just to see if I would get a reaction. I didn’t. Over twenty years younger than me, I could only surmise he was hesitant to disrespect the old man.
And that’s what I was. I became the old man.
Banner
I created for the OSIS Pakistan OSINT page in the wake of 9/11. Posted Oct. 10, 2001.
In the final few
years I was there, acquisitions, mergers, and partnerships with
other defense information companies brought with them real defense experts with journalism
degrees and military experience — not a peacenik slumming around an old beat. My pay hadn't changed in nearly 26 years, and taking into account inflation, I was earning a lot less than I was when I started. With each change of editors, my workload, in addition to my pay, gradually diminished until they
simply had no more use for me.
Last year, as I got the old
heave-ho, I thought about that old man whose obsolescence my editor friend and
I laughed at. I was 58 and a just a couple years younger than the old man was when he became the object of our derision. Rod Serling’s Patterns
haunts me now as a ghostly reminder of my own hubris and the whole experience brings
me back to that old Roman epitaph, “As you are now, I once was. As I am
now, you will be.”
As I learned, if you live long
enough, you become the punch line to your own joke — just be careful not to
choke on it.
Mac, Bob, and Rosco the Clown, hosts on Up, Up,
and Away (credit: Bob Carroll).
“The World's
a Nicer Place in My Beautiful Balloon”
This year is the
50th anniversary of a fondly remembered TV show from my childhood. In 1974,
WAST (now WNYT), Channel 13, Albany NY, premiered a short-lived children’s
show, Up, Up, and Away, it featured
three performers, Rosco (Steve Roz), a clown; Mac (Mark Macken), who played
guitar; and Bob Carroll, who performed magic and ventriloquism. Opening up with The Fifth Dimension’s hit, “Up, Up,
and Away,” the show was as gentle as its theme song. It was a quiet spot for
young children in a world that seemed increasingly confusing and chaotic in the early 1970s.
The 5th Dimension perform “Up, Up, and Away” on the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
Rosco, Mac, and
Bob were performers from Gaslight Village, in Lake George N.Y. A 1890s-era theme
park designed by the legendary, and later Disneyland designer, Arto Monoco, and
constructed by the equally legendary theme park entrepreneur Charles Wood.
Gaslight Village was a more gentle experience than the large high-energy amusement
parks today. Featuring vaudeville shows, clowns, Keystone Cops, silent movies, a
movie car collection (including the car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), and some generally tame rides, Gaslight
Village was a fairly mild amusement park experience. My other favorite
childhood destination, Fort William Henry, was located directly right
next door. With Lake George only about an hour away from where I lived, between
school field trips, scouting excursions, and dragging my dad, I enjoyed many a visit in my youth.
Nov. 9, 1974 TV listing from the Albany Times Union.
According to one
advertisement, the show premiered Sat., Nov. 9, 1974, at 7:30 p.m. Bob Carroll,
in response to one of my questions also remembers a slot on Fridays at 4:30
p.m. as a running time as well. That also fits in with my memory as I remember
watching it after school. A look at the Albany Times Union microfilm record reveals a 4:00 p.m. Friday start time (see image below) though it is possible the show got shifted to a later start time during the course of its run.
From the Albany Times Union, Feb. 3-7, 1975, TV
listings.
In a Facebook
post, Bob Carroll noted that he, Rosco, and Mac, each received $30 per show ($191.18
in 2024 dollars) and that the show was sponsored by Sears.
These types of
locally-produced children’s shows were a staple of television stations
beginning in the 1950s. The other one that comes to mind from this era is The Magic Garden (1972-1984) on WPIX,
Channel 11, NYC, with Carole Demas and Paula Janis. These shows were low budget
productions driven by the hosts’ personalities and talents. Nothing overly
stimulating took place. With gentle humor and low-key laughs, these were just
peaceful diversions for children, not the high energy advertising platforms
more common today.
“It Wears
a Nicer Face in my Beautiful Balloon”
Frankly, it was
just what I needed as a kid. The years leading up to 1974 were confusing for any
child. I was still 9-years-old at the time of show’s premiere and the previous
two years were confusing, to say the least. Several incidents stood out to me
at the time and affected me deeply.
Credit: Bob Carroll
First, the infamous Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Phan Thị Kim Phúc in 1972. My brother paid me 25 cents to help him deliver newspapers and sometime shortly after the photo was taken on June 8, 1972, it appeared on the front page of the local Knickerbocker News. Phan was naked and covered in burns, running away from a South Vietnamese napalm attack on her village — napalm provided courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. It was the first time I ever saw anyone naked, let alone a 9-year-old girl burned and running for her life. We were nearly the same age. I was absolutely terrified.
Then, there was
the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics when members of the
Pro-Palestinian terrorist group Black September attacked and murdered 11
Israeli athletes. American swimmer Mark Spitz, in the middle of a seven gold medal run, is Jewish. I had to wonder if he would be next.
Then, in 1973,
there was the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, which, although touted as “Peace
with honor,” sounded suspiciously like we lost the war, and the United States
never loses a war, right?
Then, also in
1973, came the Watergate Hearings and President Nixon resigning. I thought the
president was supposed to be the most trusted man in America. What was going on?
Finally, the
Patty Hearst kidnapping in 1974. As the local Albany newspapers were Hearst-owned publications, it got a prominent coverage. It was getting hard to keep up. My 8- and 9-year-old brain couldn’t process all the tragedy, not to mention the
complication of my own family’s dysfunction.
All of the world's problems got
played out not just in the news but also recycled in popular media on sitcoms
of the time like All in the Family and M*A*S*H. Heck, even comic books were not safe. In 1971 Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy developed a heroin addiction and in 1973
Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy died while he was fighting the Green Goblin.
It was almost enough to make me want to read Richie Rich.
Is it any wonder
why a 9-year-old me found Up, Up, and
Away to be a peaceful place of escape amidst all the turmoil I knew would
be waiting me when I grew up?
“Way Up
in the Air in My Beautiful Balloon”
Bob Carroll at his magic shop In Albany, early
1970s (credit: Bob Carroll).
Then, in late 1974,
came Up, Up, and Away. Harmless, and probably
boring for teenagers, the show was a sort of Zen-like break from reality for
me. A budding ventriloquist and magician myself, I watched Bob closely for
tips, but despite my Charlie McCarthy doll and magic kits, I was never very
good at either. I bought my share of tricks off ads on TV commercials (like the
Marshall Brodien TV Magic Kit) and from the back pages of comic books, such as
the ventriloquist’s mouth aide, a small piece of metal you were supposed to
slip under your tongue. It never worked, and I was afraid of swallowing it,
so it got little use.
At the time of
the show, I was also a frequent customer of the House of Magic at the now
long-gone Northway Mall in Colonie, NY. One showpiece trick at the store was
the guillotine. They would dare customers to put their heads in it. No matter
how many times I saw them use it, and understanding it was a trick, I could
never convince myself to stick my head in it.
Marshall Brodien TV Magic Kit.
In the
intervening years, I often thought of that magic store and wondered what
happened to it. As it turns out, Bob Carroll himself worked there! He later opened up MCM Magic a little further down from Northway Mall near Redwood Lanes in Colonie, just a half mile from where I live today. All these
years of me wondering what happened to two fondly-remembered things from my
childhood — Up, Up, and Away, and the
House of Magic at Northway Mall — and it turns out both were connected.
The House of Magic listing in the 1973 Albany, NY, phone directory.
According to
Carroll, Up, Up, and Away, came to an end about ten months later when Mac decided to move to New York City. Steve Roz
continued on as Rosco for Gaslight Village and elsewhere, as did Bob Carroll,
who continues to post online his memories of Gaslight Village, Charles Wood, and
others from that era. Indeed, it was in looking up old photos of Gaslight
Village in a bit of nostalgia when I discovered the theme park, the magic
store, and Up, Up, and Away, were all
related.
“We'll
Chase Your Dream Across the Sky for We Can Fly”
Promotional advertisement (credit: Bob Carroll).
I spoke to a few
others my age who recall the show but remember little else except for the
opening theme, the hosts, and the channel it played on. Anyone younger than their mid-50s
would not remember the show. Given it was a local show, short-lived, and the
passage of fifty years, I doubt that more than a few thousand people alive today probably
even recall it.
However boring
and inane they might seem to grownups, there is a value to these types of innocent children's shows, whether
it is Up, Up, and Away, The Magic Garden, Barney & Friends, or Teletubbies.
Children are more observant than we give them credit for. They know how confusing
and scary the world they’re going to inherit from us is going to be. Is it too
much for us to give them a safe place for a few years?
Gaslight Village poster.
Gaslight Village
closed down in 1989 and Rosco the Clown was there to the end. Times had
changed. The small locally owned upstate tourist-trap theme parks that opened
up in the immediate post-war Baby Boom era of the 1940s and 1950s had by the
1980s begun to give way to large nationally owned amusement parks. Restricted
by its plot of land located inside the village of Lake George itself, Gaslight Village could not
grow. Combined with changing demographics and consumer tastes, higher ticket
prices, and fewer customers, Gaslight Village, like Frontier Town and other
local theme parks, closed down. The other local Charles Wood-owned theme park Storytown
USA, also originally designed in part by Arto Monaco, survived — now known as Six Flags
Great Escape.
As is the great
tragedy for locally produced shows from the pre-home VCR era, footage from
shows like Up, Up, and Away is
probably lost unless the station saved a copy, which is unlikely. The tape
format used in 1974 would have been 2-inch reel-to-reel tapes which take up a
lot of storage room. It is unlikely the station would have any 2-in VTRs
available to play the tapes even if any had survived.
Nevertheless, it
is important to preserve those unrecorded memories of our youth in some form,
even the most fleeting and ephemeral like a short-lived children’s show, a
magic store, or a long-gone, old fashioned, theme park, elsewise
when the last person to remember it disappears so too will the show itself, like
a puff of magician’s smoke, and float . . . Up, Up, and Away.
Ed Stasium,
sound engineer for Hot Hero Sandwich,
wore a button with those words during the recording sessions with the Hot Hero
Band. Somewhere between a curse and a challenge, “Eat Vinyl Death” is a battle
cry, a call to arms, and a reminder that rebellion is always at the heart of Rock
and Roll.
Nothing demonstrates
the power of Rock and Roll more than the music for Hot Hero Sandwich. Despite no recordings being released, every Hot
Hero fan will acknowledge the show’s memory was nursed along for four
decades by the remembered snippets and snatches of songs produced in the recording
studio. The music made no allowances for being a Saturday morning kid’s show. It
was straight-ahead, hard-driving, Rock and Roll. The music didn’t pander or
preach. It PUNCHED!
Helping to create
that sound was Ed Stasium. If you haven’t heard of Ed before, but have been
alive the last fifty years, then, yes, you have heard Ed Stasium before. In
fact, you’ve been listening to Ed most of your life. Just before he hooked up
with Hot Hero in 1979, Ed engineered
the first album for the Talking Heads, Talking
Heads: 77, and the Ramones’ second album, Leave Home, the first of many Ramones albums to come. Ed also engineered and/or produced albums by Motörhead,
the Smithereens, Living Colour, Peter Wolf, The Replacements, and many, many
more. Ed Stasium very literally engineered the soundtrack for Baby Boomer/Gen
Xer lives.
For Hot Hero Sandwich, Ed Stasium was the
sound engineer in the recording studio with music director Felix Pappalardi and
The Hot Hero Band, helping to give the Hot Hero sound just the touch it needed
to sound authentic to teenagers who can spot a phony a mile away. As I’ve noted in other articles, the
soundtrack for the show has been what sustained the show’s memory decades. The
catchy melodies, hard-driving guitars, steady-thumping bass, pulse-pounding
drums, and soaring solos, were a far-cry from the corporate, tin-can, pop music
packaged for mass consumption on other TV shows. This was our music played the
way we wanted to hear it. When Casey Kasem came on during the opening credits,
it was as if it was just another break on American
Top 40.
Working on a TV
show and putting music to video was new ground for Ed at the time, but, as a
practical matter, engineering the sound for a kick-ass rock band for a TV show is,
except for certain unique tasks, is much like any other project. Whether it’s
the Ramones, the Talking Heads, or the Hot Hero Band, for an engineer, a
four-person band is a four-person band. Ed didn’t dial down his efforts just
because it was a TV show. Ed’s dial starts at 11. That’s why great artists kept
coming back to him, because Ed brought the same level of dedication to his
craft whether it was a Saturday morning TV show or a ground-breaking album by a
legendary band.
Ed Stasium’s name first popped up early on in the Hot Hero Sandwich Project in my interview with band member Robert Brissette. When Jimmy Biondolillo, the music coordinator for Hot Hero Sandwich, brought him up again, I began to wonder about Felix Pappalardi's right-hand man in the sound booth. As I have been gathering material for a profile of Felix Pappalardi for the Hot Hero Sandwich Project, I knew I had to speak to him. Fortunately, Hot Hero Band bassist Robert Brissette was still in contact with Ed and hooked me up for one of the most educational and enjoyable interviews I’ve had.
A small selection of albums Ed Stasium engineered,
produced, and/or mixed.
Get ready
audiophiles and Rock and Roll historians! First, Ed takes us on a deep dive
into the recording world in New York City in the 1970s, reviews exactly what a
sound engineer does, discusses how he got involved with Hot Hero Sandwich, provides insight into Felix Pappalardi’s role
with the show, and talks Space: 1999.
Hey, anything from
the 70s is fair game for the Hot Hero
Sandwich Project!
So, Rock and
Roll fans, point your speakers down, turn the volume up to 11, and get ready to
blast off — we’re about to visit Rock and
Roll: 1979!
Ed Stasium at work in Mediasound, NYC, 1970 (Edstasium.com).
Ae13U: Ed, thank you so much for speaking
with me today. It’s really going to fill in more pieces of the Hot Hero puzzle. Although the show Emmy
awards, there were no recordings, no cassettes, vinyl, or VHS, no articles in Rolling Stone or even Teen Beat, yet ask most Hot Hero fans
and they will tell you that music kept the series’ memory alive. Without that
music component provided by Felix Pappalardi, the Hot Hero Band, and yourself,
I’m not sure we would be speaking today.
Ed Stasium: I did not even know an Emmy
was won by the show.
Ae13U: Oh yeah, a couple. One for Outstanding
Children's Entertainment Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in
Children's Programming, plus nominations in several other categories [Note: Please see Hot
Hero Sandwich — A Second Serving! 1980 Daytime Emmy Awards for
more information.]
OK, to get started, Bruce and Carole Hart
made a point to hire young people, so I have to ask, how old were you during
the series production in 1979?
Ed Stasium: I guess I was 30 years
old. Yeah. I was born in September of ‘49.
Ae13U: For those of us outside the
industry, how would you define what a sound engineer does? I’m sure you could
write book.
Ed Stasium: There’s a lot involved, but
basically, when I was in an engineer position, and not producing, I would, you
know, set up the microphones and make sure that everything was recorded onto
the tape. We there was tape at one time. You have an assistant working with you
and you would have the talent of making things sound good. I suppose, making
sure it was done properly, making sure it's sounded good, that there's no
distortion. Basically plugging a mic in and getting it onto tape clean and you
sound right. From there once [you have] all the elements, you need to use multi
tracks. Back in the day, probably with the Hot
Hero stuff that was a 24-track tape machine and we would record in stages.
Some people
still think records are made with the band will just go out to a studio to
record. That doesn't happen. I mean, that that happened with the first Beatles
record and all the Sinatra stuff and Count Basie stuff and Louis Prima . . . that's
all live, right, the early Sinatra, not the later stuff, but that was all live
in the studio.
Ae13U: Old school indeed. It had its own
set of challenges.
Ed Stasium: The engineer’s job was to
make sure, especially during those days, there would be no multi-track. You
were mixing two mono or stereo, Mono in the early days. You would have an
assortment of microphones put into a desk, a mixer board, whatever you want to
call it, which would convert the microphone signal to audio, and that audio
would go on to, in the early days, a disc.
Ae13U: Right, right before tape. We’re so
used to editing audio using software, people forget we had to use a razor blade
and tape to cut and splice audio back then. When I tell my students that, they
look at me like I’m from the Stone Age.
[laughter]
Ed Stasium: Oh, man, you know cutting
tape saved my life! My engineer and I were in London coming back on that
terrible date, December 21st or 22nd, 1988.
I ended up spending a whole extra day editing songs together over the
budget and we didn't make the flight, so it saved our lives.
[Note: Stasium is referring to Pan AM Flight
103 which exploded on Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland, due to a bomb
placed by Libyan terrorists.]
Ae13U: There, but for the grace of God . .
.
Ed Stasium: So, the engineer basically
makes sure everything is set up and then you mix.Now back in the early
days with all the Sinatra stuff at Capital Records, or wherever they were doing
those recordings, he [the engineer] would actually do the mix with the
different microphones live. You have to know cues . . . sometimes the producer
would be there with you and you'd be following cues as to what instrument would
be featured for a solo, the piano, or a saxophone, or trumpet, and you place
them in the room where it would sound the best.
Ae13U: It sounds like you must have a
really strong working knowledge of how all the different brands of equipment
work.
Ed Stasium: Well, it's all the same. It
really is. You know, a preamp is a preamp. They sound differently, but they
don't operate differently. You know you have your input volume or attenuation
whatever you want to call it and get it onto the tape —nice and clean — and
then you now, especially with Hot Hero,
you know 24 track. So you do the backing track, you do the band — your drums,
the guitar, bass, and then you would overdub anything else on top of that, vocals,
percussion, keyboards, whatever you would do.
In one
particular session with Stephen Stills I remember doing . . . I think we did “Love
the One You're With” and he had played all the he played all of the instruments
on that at Mediasound . . . he did
everything on it. I don't know if he did a live vocal in the show or he did
sync.
Stephen Stills’ performance of “Love the One
Your With” on episode 4 of Hot Hero Sandwich.
Ae13U: It was all lip synced. I think you
probably could hear him singing while he was up there performing, but the mic was turned off
because they had all that neon. If the mics and instruments were plugged in, it
would create too much interference.
Ed Stasium: I don't think I ever saw
any of the shows. I was just in the studio recording this stuff and I was
probably doing other work as well at that time.
Ae13U: Stephen Stills appeared there as a favor for Felix Pappalardi, according to Mike Ratti.
Ed Stasium: Oh, OK.
Ae13U: All the guest music appearances, including Stephen Stills’, have
been uploaded to the Hot Hero Sandwich YouTube
channel.
Ed Stasium: Oh, you do? I haven't
checked that out.
Ae13U: They were recorded by the same crew
in Studio 8-H at Rockefeller Center that also filmed the musical acts on Saturday Night Live, so there’s some
great work going on there.
One little-known fact about the Hot Hero Sandwich Central YouTube channel is that it was built upon an older channel
dedicated to clips from Space: 1999 (which I have written about elsewhere on
Aeolus 13 Umbra in “Space: 1999 — The Complete Series Review”). In my research on Hot Hero, reading
through all the TV Guides, I discovered that one show that was often on in the
afternoons after Hot Hero, and sometimes on the same channel, was Space: 1999.
So, I removed the content and rebranded it Hot Hero Sandwich Central and most
of the subscribers stayed.
When I revealed this to Ed, he SUDDENLY ran
off camera and then returned with . . . Well, take a look below as we discuss
our mutual fandom for another 70s TV show.
Ae13U: OK, before we got sidetracked on Space: 1999, we were talking about the
recording process for Hot Hero . . .
Ed Stasium: Oh yeah, well, I didn't get
to recording the band, doing the overdubs, and then you go into a mixing stage
where you would take all the elements that you've recorded onto the 24-track
tape and then you would you would mix it. You'd reduce it. You'd reduction that
into what was probably a mono mix. I don't think at that time stereo TV had
really caught on yet. So, I think that we would do a mono mix of the material
of the band . . . of the track. Maybe we’d
get a stereo mix, but I don't think so. I think it was probably all mono and we
would listen on little Auratone speakers to simulate a television speaker.
Ae13U: Those TV speakers were pretty crappy compared to what we have today.
Ed Stasium: I remember that one of the
things that the television wanted back then was to put a little more bass, a
little more bottom end, in the mix because when you would mix you'd adjust the
treble and the base in the mid-range to where it would sound good. So, we
listen on these small Auratone speakers and they always want the bass a little
bit more prominent because of the back then there were the we didn't have, you
know, [Dolby] 5.1 or any type of stereo
speakers hooked up to your TV. You just had the television speaker — a little
crappy 3-inch speaker. So, you wanted it to sound good on those suckers.
Ae13U: Jimmy Biondolillo also mentioned
that in his interview with me. Those old TV speakers were tiny. I remember it well.
Ed Stasium: I remember having a TV
monitor in the control room when we did the theme song because they had already
shot the video for the opening. I think the band either played to it or we did
to a click track, but it was the first time I ever worked with video and music
together.
OK, moving along, so right before Hot Hero you worked with the Ramones and
the Talking Heads and a bunch of other great bands you were involved with in Sire
Records. I'm wondering, listening to band’s music and other pieces on the show,
and maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but were there any kind of aural
cues, set-ups, techniques, or whatever, that you may have brought over from
your previous engineering gigs to help make the Hot Hero sound?
Ed Stasium: Good question, but in my
experience it's always make sure it's in tune. Make sure everything's in time,
make sure there are no mistakes in the performance, so you will just want to
make it as good as you possibly can. And you know, [regarding the Hot Hero Sandwich sessions] we weren't making albums
here. We are doing quick sessions, very fast sessions. Got to get it done quick.
I don't think the budget was all that much, you know, working with Felix was
great. He would guide them.
Also, I was the
engineer, right? So, I didn't do anything more special than I did, except,
listening in mono probably was the exception because I would always mix in
stereo, although in my early, earlier days I would make a mono and stereo mix,
I think probably up until around ‘78 or so. So, we would make a mono and a
stereo mix for the DJ for a single, especially. There would be a mono mix on one
side, on the other there'd be a stereo mix. On the other side, so just making
sure that it popped out of a small [TV] speaker, like I just mentioned our last
bit of the conversation.
Ae13U: Right, mono sound, and through small
speakers, still had to be taken into consideration.
The entrance to Mediasound in NYC.
Ed Stasium: We worked in two different
studios. I remember we worked at Mediasound worked at Mediasound at Studio A,
up in the lounge as well, and we also worked in the studio called RPM. We did a
lot of work at RPM and we tracked I remember tracking the band there as well.
They had a nice Neve console as they did in Studio A and Studio B at
Mediasound. I don't know why I did get
into Mediasound because I was not a staff member. We gave RPM a lot of work
doing Hot Hero there. We did a lot of
overdubs. I think we probably did some mixing there as well because I remember
Bob Mason, the owner, he gave me a bonus check for all the time Hot Hero spent in the studio . . . It
was amazing. I was like, “What? Are you kidding me?”
[laughter]
They said you
deserve it and for bringing the work in here. I ended up doing a lot of work at
RPM over the years. Even on the second Living Colour record back in 1991, the Time’s Up, record. We did all the
overdubs we tracked in LA at A&M Studios . . . Then we went to RPM and we
did all of the overdubs and all the vocals, all the guitar overdubs, all the
overdubs, there at RPM when Bob Mason still owned the place.
The Hot Hero Band in rehearsal at RPM Studio in Greenwich Village,
1979. Left to right: Richie Annunziato, Robert Brissette, and Mike Ratti (photo
credit, Rich Annunziato).
Ae13U:How did you get hired to be Felix Pappalardi’s sound engineer on the
show. Had you worked with him previously?
Ed Stasium: I had not. I had not met
Felix, but I was a big fan of Felix because he had produced he had produced Disraeli Gears by Creem, and Wheels of Fire, and I think he did some
stuff on Goodbye as well [Note: Pappalardi is listed as producer on
all those albums.] — he produced some of those tracks. But you know, Disraeli Gears was a ground breaking
record for Cream. It sounded great. It was engineered by the great Tom Dowd and
Felix had produced that, and so I knew his name and also he had been in Mountain
with Leslie West and Corky Lang, and those are really good records — and I
believe he produced those as well. You know, he and Gail wrote some of those
songs, Theme from an Imaginary Western,
which is really great stuff. So, I always, like, thrilled to be there.
Susan Planer,
the late great. Susan Planer, a great friend, tragically killed in a car
accident in in the 90s, going to a high school reunion up in upstate New York.
They slipped on some black ice and everybody survived except her. She the car
flipped or something. She broke her neck. Died instantly. Real, real tragic,
but a great friend. [Note: Susan Planer
was the influential and well-respected general manager of the legendary
Mediasound Studios in NYC.]
Susan Planer at Mediasound in an undated photo (Mediasound Studios NYC Facebook Group).
Now, I have a
long since storied career which I won't even get into, but I ended up coming
back, I was in Canada. I was working
at the studio Warren Heights — an infamous recording studio in the Laurentian
Mountains. You know everybody rushing all their records there. I was on staff
for approximately just under a year, did some great stuff, met that a lot of
great people, hung around with the Bee Gees when they were doing the Children of the World [1976] which some
of the songs ended up on the Saturday
Night Fever soundtrack.
Ed Stasium: At this One to One
telethon, I think it was broadcast on WOR, but it was held at the in the ABC
studios up there on 66th, like Amsterdam, I think it was some or somewhere
around there, I ended up living on 78th between Amsterdam and Columbus in the
80s and 90s. But I think it was up there somewhere. So when I went to this
telethon, I left Canada for a few days and came down, stayed at my mom's house,
rented a car or I probably borrowed her car, I ran into an old friend, Tony
Bongiovi, who I met in 1972, and Bon Jovi and the previous manager of
Mediasound, was the manager of Mediasound, Bob Walters, building a new studio,
which was to be named Power Station. I was the first person on staff. They paid
my moving expenses. I came down.
And then for
different reasons, I left Power Station and the winter, I think it was November
of ’77, and I went independent. And because I had been doing some work at
Mediasound with Tony, Tony Bongiovi, I became friends with Susan Planer, and
Susan when I went independent, she started getting me gigs. My recollection is
that Jimmy Biondolillo, I think he asked Susan for a recommendation for an
engineer, and Susan approached me.
Being
independent I was not on staff but I doing a lot of work there. As a matter of
fact, when I went independent in late 77 and all through 78, I did the Ramones Road to Ruin at Mediasound, as an independent. I suppose I
was one of the first independent engineer cats, you know at that time everybody
was on staff, you know, [Bob] Clearmountain was at Power Station . . . Ronnie
Saint Germain . . . but I believe
Susan Planer got me involved with Jimmy Biondolillo.
Ae13U: Which led your involvement on the
show. Are there are anecdotes or stories about Felix during your time with him
that may give us further insight into his dedication to the show or his craft?
Ed Stasium: He was very knowledgeable.
He's a talented musician, talented producer . . . I don't remember any
particular stories or incidents that happened. I just remember that we got on
really well and we worked really well together. We complimented each other and
you know, I would suggest something once in a while and Felix would, “Great
idea! Yeah, let’s do that.”
But he pretty
much let me do my job and he did his job and we were a team. I wish we could
have done more work, but we never did. I think I was in touch with him. I
probably still have a number of his in one of my address books.
Then he was
tragically killed by Gail [Delta Collins, Pappalardi’s wife]. She’s passed
away, not recently . . .
Ae13U: About a decade ago, I think. [Note: In 2013.]
Ed Stasium: She was kind of a trip . .
. Gail was a trip.
Ae13U: It was a complicated relationship.
In any event, this does help paint a larger picture. Did you have any further
contact with the Harts after Hot Hero
Sandwich?
Ed Stasium: As a matter of fact, she
[Carole Hart] offered me some work recording Sesame Street stuff, but I couldn't do it because I was kind of
busy doing Rock ‘n Roll at the time.
Ae13U: Well, considering some of the
legendary albums you worked on, I think we Hot
Hero fans can let that slide. Ed — I think I’ve taken enough of your time. Thank
you so much for helping us learn a bit more about Felix, the Harts, Hot Hero, sound engineering, and your
own fascinating career!
Ed Stasium at home. Nice set-up Ed! (Edstasium.com).
Knowing Ed Stasium’s discography, and discovering how much he engineered the soundtrack
of my life, I grew incredibly nervous about our interview; however, Ed couldn’t
have been more kind and gracious. Considering that the show was just one small
short-lived gig that probably didn’t even last six months out of a 50-plus year
career, I thought I would be lucky if Ed even remembered the series. Yet, not
only did Ed recall the show and his work on it, he gave us a bit of a tour of rock
history — history that some of which he produced himself. As a historian,
this type of primary source research is absolutely invaluable.
And, after all
this, if you still continue to doubt the life-altering power of Rock and Roll, my good friend, all I have to say is:
Tales
from the Hot Hero Sandwich Archives: Disraeli Gears
Ed Stasium’s
reference to Creem’s Disraeli Gears in his interview recalls a story how the album
played a part in Felix Pappalardi joining Hot
Hero Sandwich.A Nov.
4, 1979, Record World article
includes the following passage where Carole Hart tells the story how they came
to hire Pappalardi:
“We were breakfasting with a friend who's a
psychic just about the time we were looking for a music director and she said,
‘Carole, I see the name Felix behind your head.’ Bruce and our film editor
simultaneously said Pappalardi. We called him in Nantucket and he was working
for us the next night.”
When I saw the
reference Carole makes to “our film editor” I knew that could only possibly be
Patrick McMahon, the film editor for Hot
Hero Sandwich, later married to series writer Sherry Coben (both of whom
have previously been interviewed for Hot Hero Sandwich — A Second Serving! A Retrospective Interview).
Reaching out to
Pat for a little background, he graciously shared with me that he was indeed
the film editor friend of the Harts referred to in the article. The psychic was
a friend of his, Judy Needle from Ashville, NC, who he introduced to the Harts.
At the time, the Harts were just about to fire the music director they hired
for Hot Hero Sandwich, Gary Sherman,
who, while certainly competent and experienced, being in his late forties he
may have been a little out of touch with the late 70s teen zeitgeist. This was
noted in Hot Hero Sandwich — In Conversation with
Music Coordinator Jimmy Biondolillo, in which Jimmy discusses his interview
with the Harts and Pappalardi.
The Harts
were unfamiliar with Pappalardi's work as a producer, so McMahon lent them his copy of Disraeli Gears. Loving the album, the
Harts tracked Pappalardi down in Nantucket and a week later he was hired and at
work on the show.
McMahon,
however, never did get his album back . . . but I think he let the Harts slide.
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