The Snack Time Studio Saga
by Fred Brockman, 1997

While the Snack Time 8-track recorder was top of the line (bought from a rich friend who was sick of it) the rest of the equipment there was about as cheap as it gets. It's safe to say that Shellac would never record there. When standing around drunk at the back of friend-rock shows with other producer/studio dudes who were spewing out the names and makes of their new expensive toys I was forced to brag about how close to the drums I had to sit and how I eq'd a track while wearing earplugs. They'd chuckle and then return to their conversations.

With no prospects of buying actual good equipment and never (present company excepted) getting the chance to work in real studios I had no choice other than embracing the plain, common sound I was hearing. I began to rely on the sad truth of Snack Time in order to provide some spice. First, being located in a practice space, there was always a lot of good, loud background noise that bled onto the quiet songs and prevented actual silence from occuring. Next, Snack Time was blessed with an abundance of resident drummers, all of whom had about three snare drums that they never seemed to turn off. The bass player just had to start playing and the whole room would repond with rattles and hisses. I started searching out these sounds, eventually placing mikes next to a rattle to make sure it was included. Finally, the room was so small and the bands were so loud that it really didn't matter where I put the mikes since everything bled into everything else. All of the above was then magnified by the fact that since there was no control room I couldn't actually hear what I was recording until the song was finished and we began to mix. By then the members of the band being recorded were either too drunk to notice the sound "quality", or had used the bathroom at the practice space and were so upset by what they saw there that they couldn't be bothered to complain. Later when they got home and listened to the final mix it would become evident that their guitar wasn't really in tune, that the bass player had lied when she claimed she knew the chords to the bridge, and, sadly, that the singer did not in fact have the perfect pitch he always bragged about at the back of friend-rock show to drunken producers.

Later, when the record appeared at Pier Platters I could blame it all on bad mastering and cheap pressings.

Snack Time had two other notable features. First, each band who recorded ther was required to bring us (Snack Time owners Lyle Hysen and myself) a snack. These snacks were not eaten, they were stapled to the wall next to the mixing board and displayed as a tribute. Second, the place was home to Snacky & Poundy, two stuffed animals. Snacky was a big, big mouse and Poundy was a little red dog. Poundy went on to star as a Yo La t-shirt, I haven't heard from him since. Snacky was murdered by Lyle and me, stuffed into a dumwaiter in a once cheap apartment on Willow street in Hoboken.