Tom and The Heartbreakers exactly where they belong. In front of an audience.
"My time with that particular bunch of Gator hooligans changed the course of my career, and of my life, and it is most certainly a debt I’ll never be able to repay to him or them."
November 22nd, Good morning music hounds and welcome to “Give-Thanks-Thursday” here on the Live Vinyl Lovefest. Today is Thanksgiving of course and as is tradition today is the day we take a few minutes, sometimes longer, to pause and reflect on what we are thankful for in our lives. Now, I know the focus is live music here, so I’m just going to keep my thanks narrowed down to that context … otherwise this post might be long enough that you actually miss Thanksgiving dinner.
So today I thought it would be appropriate to bring you Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers “Kiss My Amps Live”. Now, my reason for bringing this album to light — other than it’s a GREAT live album — is simply to take advantage of an opportunity to give my thanks to the entire Tom Petty family for inviting me along on the ride for all those years. My time with that particular bunch of Gator hooligans changed the course of my career, and of my life, and it is most certainly a debt I’ll never be able to repay to him or them. So I'm not only thankful, but grateful, (and lucky) that Tom and the band and all of the folks that were a part of the Petty camp are the caliber of people that they are. If you work in this business long enough, you quickly grasp how rare a collection of people like that can be.
And lastly, my work with Tom allowed me to kick the door wide open to an opportunity to change and refine the way live recordings are actually made through my work in developing virtual sound check and multi-track arching workflows. This album, among many others now, is a living testimony and validation of those efforts. That entire journey began one fateful day in 1994 at a small rehearsal studio in Hollywood. So for that, I am beyond thankful.
So about this album. There are two releases of Kiss My Amps actually, Volume I and Volume II. This is Volume I which captures performances from the 2008 and 2010 tours. These albums have only been officially released on vinyl, and it was a limited run at that, so they are rare and a bit hard to find. If you happen to stumble upon one in a record store, I would recommend you snatch it up. Both volumes were recorded entirely with VENUE D-Show consoles and Pro Tools by myself, Greg Looper and Stewart Bennett. They were then mixed and mastered entirely “in the box” using ICON and Pro Tools by Ryan Ulyate. It was, and still is, a great point of pride for me that these albums even exist. Happy thanksgiving everybody! And remember, no need for a meal ticket today!!