AES Journals of 1978: Digital Audio meets VCR

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• Just ran across your article today. I used the SONY PCM-1 for 2 2-day sessions in August and September of 1978 to record the First "ALL" Digital Rock and Roll Album in History. SONY wanted to know just what their machine would do so they lent the first one to us through an old engineer/producer connected with Elvis Presley. My producer/friend, Bill Sullivan (who passed away before 9/11), had awesome connections in the music world of LA and Southern California. My LP, "Live One On the Wire" had more than half a dozen "firsts" at that time and we actually got a retraction from Warner Brothers in Billboard Magazine when they put a sticker on Ry Cooder's "Bop Till You Drop" album claiming that one as the "Rock's First All Digital Album" - Cooder's producer, Lee Hirshburg, was one of the first people we contacted when we finished ours and before he released Cooder's album. (Cooder's album used the Soundstream Digital Recorder which was eventually abandoned). Seems I have left a Zero footprint in history. My LP, pressed on "pure" vinyl" and cut at the JVC Cutting Labs by Stan Ricker used several innovations at the time. The LP was originally to be a "demo" but we decided to put it out as an Independent Label release on our label, Oneiric Records. This was the time at which consumers were complaining about record quality. To make a long, long detailed story short, we bit off more than we could chew, so to speak, and have seemingly been relegated to the dustbin of history. This is quite a story of two guys driving around LA doing all the attendant work associated with producing and marketing a record with technology that "no one" had any idea existed, let alone what it was. But, when record company execs heard the sound, most of them freaked -- the purity and difference of the sound was unmistakable(Unfortunately I never did find that one person who would guide me through the music industry, but I was once told by Jeffrey Weber, who became Bonnie Raitt's producer on her breakthrough album, "Nick of Time", that "there are only five other guys in all of LA who could have done what we did". Quite a complement. What fun and such a great experience that time was when everything in the Record Industry was changing. And I've never even been able to listen to our Master tape recording because the PCM-1 has disappeared as well (although I hear tell that Stevie Wonder bought two of the proto-types and has put them away in his warehouse in Santa Monica, CA (as I recall) with a couple of tons of musical equipment). This story has never been told. I hope you haven't minded me running through some of the high points in this email. Thanks for reading , , , , Jeff Campbell (now in Oregon enjoying memories and playing a little music).

  • Hi Jeff. Thanks for this. I tried to find your music on youtube but could not. Can you provide us some link to hear these recordings? Thnx. CR