Archive: Pure - Pure (video)

This was the last video we made from our debut album Pureafunalia. This song has a long and interesting history too. The song Pure was written when we were still calling ourselves The Grin Factory. Though that name was short lived this song wasn't.  We made a demo with John Webster (the producer of Jordy, Todd and Leigh's former band After All). John had been working on sessions with the likes of Motely Crew and Bon Jovi and had built up a respectable array of sampled drum sounds over that time. When we brought him this song he has a Tascam 488 (8 track cassette multitrack) that we striped one track with sync to drive his Mac running MOTU Perfomer. John loaded up his Akai S1000 sampler with some incredible drum sounds that he told us had been made either for a Motley Crew album or maybe it was Aerosmith, they had been made at Little Mountain Studio for a record that Bob Rock had produced (John was usually brought in to play keyboards and generally make things sound even huger than normal).

Leigh Grant, the drummer in Pure, played his parts on a keyboard, triggering these fantastic drum samples and then Jordy put down the bass part. (I don't remember if David Hadley was in the band at this point). Todd laid down one rhythm guitar part and I sequenced all the strings and the clarinet sample along with the little percussion sequence that I'd done in my Ensoniq ESP-16. I vividly remember the moment when John flipped the tape and told Todd to play a solo, but in reverse. The result was mesmerizing. Jordy's vocals went down pretty quickly and we had a killer demo.

Pure, the song, was then played at a Music West listening panel (in fact the festival was called Westex that year) wherein Ron Goudy from Restless Records stood up at the end of the playback and announced to the room that "this band will be signed in 24 hours." We weren't, but it did lead to us meeting a music lawyer and later signing to Reprise Records.

Months later we found ourselves living on houseboats in Sausalito, California and recording our album Pureafunalia with former Talking Head's guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison producing. We tracked an entirely different version of the song with live drums and Dave on bass but something didn't feel right. Turned out we'd recorded it a bit faster than the demo and we had lost some of its groove. That lead to us getting John Webster to transfer the music to a 2" 24 track up in Vancouver and sending it down to us in California. The real irony came later when we built the song up to so many tracks we had to transfer everything over to a Sony PCM 3348 digital multitrack. We managed to go from the day's cheapest recording medium to the most expensive in the course of recording one song!

Pureafunalia came out, we made a handful of videos, toured several times and then figured we could get one more single off the album and made a video for the song Pure. It was filmed in a rehearsal room that was decorated with the items you see in the video. Co-directed by Rob Chong and Jordy Birch, with camera and editing done by Rob. It's a great song and typically Pure looking clip (all our videos seemed to look alike) that I'm happy to share with the world 28 years later.

Thanks for reading. Stay healthy. Cheers!
Mark

Video Single: Not Just Another Night - Zombie Roof

This was an interesting project, something I'd been toying with for a while: to do a one-day video single in a proper studio. I'd made one with Sex With Strangers on their Momento video, but that was done in a rehearsal room with a Mackie mixer. This time I had an SSL in a world class studio to play with. My goal was to record, mix and film a video all in one day. Zombie Roof was the band that agreed to do it!

Zombie Roof are from Squamish (mostly, let's say the west coast islands area). We recorded an album in two days back in 2016 at Afterlife Studio. Afterlife is the old Mushroom studio with a slightly revamped room and completely new control room. Those ten songs went down easily. I didn't have any time with them before we started recording that Saturday morning but we managed six or seven bed tracks on that first day. We were recording vocal overdubs by 4pm the next day! I couldn't believe how quickly it all came together. 

Jump to Summer 2018 and the band reached out to me once again. This time to record a single. I said yes but I wanted to use Hipposonic this time instead. I'd had two successful sessions in their earlier this year with Savanarola and wanted to keep learning that room.  Plus it would be big enough to film the band playing live. 

A couple emails back and forth, one pre-production session at Soundhouse Studio (nice people; well built rehearsal space) and then we showed up on Oct 13th to record "Not Just Another Night." I'll say big props to assistant engineer Liam Moes at Hipposonic; what a smooth running day, everything was ready and waiting and sounding good. Great work, Liam, thank you.

We tracked the song live off the floor. One guitar in the left speaker, the other in the right. Bass and vocals in the middle with some loud-ass drums filling the spaces in between. What a joy it is to work in the old Little Mountain Sound studio B again. Nothing has changed, and Rob Darch (studio owner) has even sorted out how to get the loading bay back into the equation. It's the 90's all over again. This was the room that I shadowed Tom Lord Alge while he mixed Pureafunalia in a week. This was the room that Pure made our first single "Laughing Like a Fiend" with John Webster producing, Ken Lomas engineering, and Mike Plotnikoff assisting. I think we also recorded the acoustic version of Tall Grass on that session as well. 

Back to Zombie Roof. The core of this band has been working together since the early 90's. I knew they could play, so why mess with things right? I wanted it to sound as big as it could without overdubs. A real live off the floor record. Trent, the singer, did a good job tracking with the band but even behind a baffle Enzo's drums were bleeding heavily into his mic so we retracked the lead vocals (and then doubled it as I still love that sound). The bridge was just a quick couple backing vocal overdubs with guitarist Todd's daughter on the oohs and a 12 string to give it some freshness. All told we took nine takes and then grabbed one better fill from our 8th take, fixed a bass note, a guitar bend and that was it! 

Then I mixed the song while the band was setting up to do their video performance. I was still mixing the song while Kale Beaudry and Benn McGuire were filming the band! Great work from both of them as well.  Really appreciate the gimbal work Kale.  

Printed a mix that evening at Hipposonic, along with stems, and then packed up a good days work. We had Craig Waddell master the mix and then, after several evenings at the computer editing, I came up with this:  Zombie Roof - Not Just Another Night.  Please have a look!  

Thanks for reading,
MRH

New song from Pure "So West Coast"

In honour of our friend Todd Simko, we are making available a free download of the last song he ever performed on as the guitarist in Pure: So West Coast. 

We recorded this song back in 2010 at the Boutique Empire studio as a bit of an experiment.  Joined by the wonderfully talented Juice and Misty of the Yoko Casionos on drums and bass respectively, Jordy Birch, Todd and I all got together for a fun-filled afternoon of music.  The song came together in just a few takes and then we did the usual overdubs of vocals and percussion.  Everything went quickly and easily, it was probably one of the smoothest Pure recording sessions we'd ever had! (Big thanks once again to Juice and Misty for helping that vibe!) The result is the track you can hear below, which was recently remixed by none other than John Webster (the same guy who'd mixed Generation Six Pack and recorded the initial demos that got Pure signed to Reprise Records back in the 90's).



Please feel free to download and share this song, we'd be happy to have Todd's work remembered by as many people as possible.  Also remember to join us on May 10th & 11th for a mini Pure reunion at the "A Change of Frequency" festival in New Westminster at the Columbia.  

Thanks for checking it out,
MRH

Last Days of Mushroom Studio

A great venerable recording studio in Canada is closing it's doors this week.  Hipposonic (more popularly remembered as Mushroom Studio) has been sold and this country's equivalent to Abbey Road is shutting its doors forever.  It is with both regret and some selfish excitement that I can announce that we'll be in there tomorrow evening to record a new Guilty About Girls song with Jordy Birch and Lucas T Poth.   These last day sessions are part of owner Rob Darch's desire to offer something memorable and historic to the audio community before we witness the departure of his great sounding studio.   Tomorrow should prove an emotional day, but I'm excited to be a part of one last sessions before it transforms into an office space.

An additional note for posterity is that we've asked John Webster to help record our session.  Way back in the late eighties John once produced Jordy and Todd Simko's first band After All.  Even though Todd is no longer with us I think it's a rather pleasant way to say goodbye to one of my favorite studios anywhere in the world, and rather poetic for Jordy to retrace a few old steps from his past.

Please stay tuned for the reveal of the song Riot Riot  a moody piece that I'm suspecting many old fans of Pure might be pleasantly surprised to hear.  Another great song from Mr. Birch.

Thanks for reading,
Mark Henning