About Me
EJ Emmons
(Producer, Recording Engineer)
Suburban Lawns - Su Tissue (solo) - The Plugz - New York Dolls - Berlin Brats - Biomechanic - Oxygen Law - Vaughn Michael - Ian Whitcomb - Donna Summer - The Doors - Jesse Colin Young - Pee Wee Herman Show (Live) - Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco
EJ Emmons began his career in recording in 1967 when he built his own recording studio from scratch (tape machines and all) in his parents' garage and recorded kids from his high school. After attending Princeton as a special student for showing prowess in Electronics he migrated to Hollywood, CA in 1970 and roadied with The Doors. He then came to rest at Artist's Recording on Cherokee St. in downtown Hollywood and worked on movie sound tracks, and worked with such bands as the New York Dolls and the Berlin Brats. Then it was on to the Record Plant for three months as a Tech, followed by a stint at Westlake Audio where he was seconded to MGM Records (now Cherokee) to take care of their studios and build transfer systems at the label's offices for a large jazz archiving project.
From there it was 4 years at Paramount Recording as head Tech and Engineer. During this time EJ started learning the art of record production in earnest, working with local bands. EJ worked with Rodney Bingenheimer on Rodney's English Disco also for 4 years.
In 1979 EJ produced and recorded the influential New Wave/Punk phenomenon Suburban Lawns and the KROQ classic Gidget Goes To Hell was born. Gidget found its way to airplay on all the major New Wave stations in the country (as well as abroad), along with a coveted video spot on Saturday Night Live. In addition a law suit was filed by the creator of the Gidget show which caused a stir in the industry.
Janitor, another hit followed Gidget and became another KROQ classic in 1981. Gidget and Janitor and the bands Self-Titled first album are consistently sought after by audiophiles on eBay. When the Suburban Lawns broke up in 1983 EJ mixed and mastered Su Tissue's solo piano works Salon de Musique. Su got a call from Jonathan Demme and went on to play Peggy Dillman in Something Wild. Demme filmed the video for Gidget, which debuted on Saturday Night Live.
EJ is currently producing Biomechanic, an Electro sound and vision project. 2nd CD Single, GET UP coming soon! KICK! video in production.
Upon the dissolution of the Suburban Lawns, The Rare Gems Odyssey, some offshoots from Funkadelic, New Wavers Tommy Viscount, No More Houses, The Plugz (who's lead singer went on to be a regular on "Pee Wee's Playhouse" and appeared in The Talking Heads movie "True Stories"), and a cool Rockabilly act known as Hollywood Joe occupied EJ's time. Then Cetec-Gauss needed a contract Engineer in their R&D lab for a couple of months, finishing off the design of their Model 2400 high speed cassette tape duplicating system. The "couple of months" grew into a couple of years. The work was fascinating and expanded EJ's electronics knowledge and ability quite a bit but it wasn't enough to satisfy his creative side. The project wrapped and it was back to Paramount Recording as Chief Engineer.
It was at this juncture that EJ decided he had to do Ian Whitcomb's next album. He called the distinguished English gentleman up with this inspiration only to discover that Ian didn't want to make another record—ever. Who could blame him? He'd made lots of them. EJ loved Ian's style and sense of humour and was not to be put off. Dinner in Pasadena was arranged, at the conclusion of which EJ produced the next Ian Whitcomb albums: On The Street Of Dreams, Oceans Of Love, Steppin' Out, Lotusland, Ian Whitcomb's Ragtime America.
In 1986 EJ moved to San Francisco hoping to find something new in music and secured work at Hyde Street Studios. At Hyde Street he met Sandy Pearlman of Blue Oyster Cult fame who had a thing for the famous fabled Ampex ATR124 multitrack. Unfortunately, there was no one local who was up to making these beasts run properly; thus began a new direction, along with the multifarious sessions that came by way of Hyde Street: that of a Roving Vintage Analog Tape Machine Technician. This proved an effective bolster to the thin recording Engineer market. At the same time he was playing dives with his band The Space Cats, an experience that was quite intriguing since he'd always previously been on the backstage side of things. The band went the way bands go and the next venue was a stint with Jesse Colin Young to rework his console and tape machine (a very clean 3M 79), and then to engineer part of his next album. His friend, Todd Orr (now with Todd-AO), an excellent Engineer, took his place when it was time to again enter the R&D field with the fascinating project of re-engineering the Ampex ATR100 tape recorder for use in the video tape manufacturing field as a medium evaluation platform. This took the form of redesigned servos, a computer to control the deck (using the venerable HPIB bus!) and 12 play speeds: from 15/64 IPS to 480 IPS. The package ended up in a tape cleaner for Tandy Corp as well.
The recession of 1990 had a deleterious effect on R&D contracts, thus it was back to LA to find work in the film industry under the aegis of a company formed in 1992 called Creative Control. Partners Marc Sosnick and Wayne Scott joined the ensemble doing control systems for mixing rooms and retrofitting projectors and dubbers with better servo systems to allow them to move film back and forth more quickly, thus saving precious time on the dubbing stage. Interspersed with all this R&D work was an additional project for Ian Whitcomb, Lotusland, a live PBS radio musical and accompanying album. Also a couple of albums for the Pacific Coast Ragtimers, several projects with violinist Alex Senicki, and demos for an offspring of the old Suburban Lawns' bassist, The Roulettes. In 1995 came a stint with the now deceased Westrex Corporation, working in their R&D department on the Showscan 70mm projectors.
The death of Westrex and Creative Control hurled EJ back into the recording industry with a return as Chief Engineer of Paramount Recording Studios. Times had changed however and after about three vacuous years of Rap and other equally unrewarding "musical" forms it appeared the only thing to do was to build one's own pro studio in the peaceful seclusion of the Southern California mountains. (All images are clickable so explore.)
EJ is currently producing the Eletro sound and vision project, Biomechanic: www.biomechanic.biz
Clean Room Music For The Masses
www.myspace.com/biomechanic1
Kick! CD Single:
1. Kick! (Radio Edit) 4:39
2. Kick! (Building 7 Mix) 6:10
3. Kick! (Whore on Terror Mix) 8:33
4. Fembots in Las Vegas (Bonus Track) 7:07
[ MySpace MP3s are excerpts, full versions available on CD or thru SNOCAP. ]
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