I am a gear slut

Looking back, I probably shouldn't have asked Ricky Martin's recording engineer, "Hey, man, how gay is this guy?" And telling EveAnna, head honcho of a major audio manufacturing company, "I can't really tell if you're gay or straight, but I'd do you," was probably a little over-the-top. Yeah. Probably. A little.

But I'm having fun on the GearSlutz pro audio forum all the same.

Not that EveAnna (not her real name. It couldn't possibly be her real name, could it?) didn't get even. She cut me a new one all right. We're talking revenge of the nerds here, baby. Too bad. I was kind of a fan of hers, until the evil little wench turned on me.

Fortunately, GearSlutz allows you to go back and edit or delete your posts. Excellent. The next morning, I was busier than Trent Lott after a birthday bash when I sobered up and performed my instant revisionist-history, spin-doctoring mojo. After all, these people are the keepers of The Great Recording Secrets, and now that I'm putting together a recording studio at my house, I need that information.The last thing I want to do is piss them off and get kicked out of GearSlutz. At least not for another month or so.

But maybe I'm too paranoid. Today I saw a post that read, "The problem with a lot of these forums is that it attracts disruptive assholes who post non-audio drivel and waste our time. I come here for information, not for jokes and shenanigans. The trouble is, if you kick these guys out they just reenter the forum using a different name."

Cool. Rack him.

Frankly it would probably be wise to change my handle on Gearslutz anyway, since I signed up as Mike Jasper. I know. Brilliant, huh? But I figured, what the hell, these people don't have any idea who I am. Somehow, I think that's going to change. Not that they'd ever read this column. But someone's bound to read it to them.

Oh, well. As EveAnna pointed out to me in one of her posts, "...you might want to ask yourself if this sort of shite belongs in a public forum or not in the first place..."

Good point. It is a public forum. That means I can write about it as much as I want. If it were a private online club, then I couldn't really write about it with a clear conscience. Sure, I'd probably write something anyway, but I'd just feel terrible about it.

Besides, it's not like people aren't taking shots at me on the forum. Before I could delete my posts, EveAnna played the politically-correct card and rallied the troops. One guy wrote, "That's humor huh? Pure class. You give humans a bad name..."

All of them? That's astounding. When you return to your planet, you must file a full report.

Yeah, I made some questionable comments about EveAnna's sexuality, but my regular readers understand I was being complimentary. Besides, I knew a lot about EveAnna going into the forum and had already come to this conclusion -- I'm in her target market, she ain't in mine.

So I took my shots. Bang. Bang, bang, bang. My foot still hurts, but I'll live.

Fortunately, I do get along with some people on the forum, as unbelievable as that might seem. For example, Jules, the guy who runs GearSlutz, is almost too good to be true -- helpful, sane beyond belief, loves "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys, and even has a sense of humor. There's also a session player in Nashville who has given me excellent advice about bass guitar sounds, and six or seven other guys who have also come through with key info. Beyond that handful, I have come to this conclusion about recording engineers:

I HATE THESE FUCKS!

Guess that's one of the reasons I'm building my own studio, huh? All my life recording engineers have told me, "Naw. We can't do that. You'll have to try something else." Case in point: I've always wanted to record my electric guitar with live effects, not have echo and such added later. But every engineer told me it was a bad idea and to forgetaboutit. You don't want to argue with these guys in the middle of a session, for they will sabotage your sound if you piss them off.

Paranoid? Sure. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

So I'd always go along with them and record my guitar dry. Guess what I learned? Ever hear of The Edge? He's the guitar player for U2, and some would say he gets a pretty decent guitar sound. Turns out he records his effects live through his amp, just like I always wanted to do.

I HATE THESE FUCKS!

Of course, I could get plenty of them to suck up to me in an instant with just one post.

"Hey, guys. Did I mention my brother used to be the business manager of Creed, Seven Mary Three, Days of the New and other bands that sound vaguely like Pearl Jam? Settle down guys. No need to push and shove. You'll all get a chance to blow me, just form a line."

It would take about two days before someone pointed out, "Hey! Did he say 'used to be'?"

That's the problem with forums on the Internet. Reading comprehension skills vary greatly. Writing skills? Well, they vary even more. Pissiness abounds, however, and unfortunately the sense of humor is narrow. Extremely narrow. Like this:

"So I told the guy, 'Nothing but pro for me! Give me the Behringer.' HAHAHAHAHA. I make audio joke."

Yeah. It's a grim bunch.

But we've all seen them before, haven't we? You remember. Back when we were in junior high. They were called audio-visual (AV) guys, the morbid chumps who came slithering into classrooms with a projector on a cart. Remember? They never smiled, threaded the reel through the projector, broke the leader tape so the teacher would have to talk another fifteen minutes, then finally said, "It's ready," and fled under the cover of darkness.

I don't know about you, but I always wondered who the hell these fuckers were. You never saw them in school unless they were carting around a tape recorder or a movie projector, and at lunchtime they completely disappeared. You never, ever saw them in a real class.

When they got older, they joined GearSlutz.

They're not bad people, really. Just annoying middle- to upper-class white males. Even the black guys and the women.

Still, all would be forgiven if they would just laugh at ONE of my fuckin' jokes. But I get nothing. And it sucks, because I've come up with some great material. Like this one:

"Say what you want about Musician's Friend, they've got such a great search engine that you could write in 'cum-stained sheets' and it would take you to a can of Auralex."

You see, Auralex is this kind of sticky, spray foam which... fuck you. Of course, you don't get the joke. Only a pro audio guy would get the joke. But the catch is... they never get the fuckin' jokes.

I HATE THESE FUCKS!

And before I forget... Happy Holidays.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're on your own. Copyright 2002 by Mike Jasper.