My own experience with the Turbs came late in the day, as the band was about to break up. I'd seen a number of their live shows, of course, because they were easily one of the most exciting bands in town. There are certain groups in certain towns that need no promotion or advertisement to draw the faithful. Like some natural phenomenon- hurricane, magnetic storm, forest fire -the local animals know what's coming and they all start to head in the same direction. In Athens, Georgia in 1986 we could finish a Lifeboat soundcheck at one club, and then follow the folks streaming to the old 40 Watt Club without knowing who was there, to be rewarded by the presence of . Place your faith in those same crowds in Raleigh, New Orleans or Columbus, Ohio that same year and you'd likely be treated to great shows by the Connells, Dash Riprock, or Ronald Kohl and the Billionaires. Cast your fate to the winds in Beantown circa 1986 and chances are you'd find yourself standing in front of the Neats, the Flies, or the Turbines. Blessed by the Gods, you might find two or more in the same place. The faithful came, and were always rewarded...that's how they became faithful in the first place.

Many of the details of the Turbines birth and demise can be found in the Conversation with John Hovorka page, so I won't go into that much. There are certain things that come to mind, though, when I reflect back on the sessions that we did for the final Turbines LP- Magic Fingers and Hourly Rates (NOTE: I don't generally go into much detail about recording techniques for a project, even though that's the shit I love to read about, but in this case the record is one of my all time favorites, so I'm going to get all gearheadedly excited- move on if you're bored). This was the kind of album that Fort Apache was built to make. Raw, straight ahead, mostly live but with ample room to apply creative recording techniques. This is the kind of band a producer prays for at night: hot off of touring, at the peak of their performing powers, poured red hot out of the crucible of unforgiving rock clubs and long rehearsals. A band that knew exactly what they wanted- and what they didn't want -but weren't timid about trying a new thing or two to get at it. Making that record was a blast, start to finish.

For one thing these were the early days at Fort Apache South, when the rest of the enormous warehouse space was still unoccupied. We could throw open the doors at night, run a snake out to that huge space outside our walls and crank things up. This allowed us to use all natural reverb and echo for the vocals and instruments. That was how we recorded the slapback echo on Jack Hickey's guitar tracks. We had some trouble getting his Fender Twin to sound right in the room, and after a bit of a huddle he agreed to try my Vox Super Berkeley II through a Buckingham 2x12" cabinet. We put the amp at one end of the long hall between the studio and control room, and placed a close mic and another one at the end of the hall. Then we stuck another outside the hall, through the open studio door and about ten feet away. The result was a natural reverb and slapback as the sound hit the close mic, the hall and the outside mics in series. Sweet. For John's sound we placed the amp in the outside warehouse space and used a close mic and another stereo pair facing the walls to catch the slap. This kind of wide open sound might not work for every band, but it matched the Turbines' industrial Road King sound to a T.

The vocals were even more fun. Across from our walled-off area, just off of the huge open space, was another empty room. The walls were brick on two sides, sheet rock on the other two. Against one entire side of the room the brick wall stood about six feet high, and from that point to the top of the twenty-foot concrete ceilings were thick, reinforced-glass windows, made up of around a thousand of these ten by twelve inch panes. The place was a natural echo chamber. John recorded his vocals in the center of the room. We used a handful of other mics facing the glass panes, the corner where the brick wall met the ceiling, and the sheet rock wall- that was our reverb and echo setup. While mixing we could isolate the splashier reverb mics and those with a more distinct, bounceback echo. The results couldn't have been more appropriate to John's one-man-in-a-room-with-a-bottle-of-Jack rasp and growl. Considering that we only had eight tracks to work with, committing echo and reverb to tape is a ballsy move. The use of natural sounds was a calculated gamble we were real glad we made. Another way we used that room and the big, empty concrete space was during mixdown. We sent the snare signal out to a Ramsa PA speaker in "the Cavern" and re-miked it, noise gating the resultant room sound. A similar approach was taken on selected tunes for guitar and vocals.

When the New Rose advance copies of Magic Fingers... arrived I wanted to weep out loud. Because it sounded so good. Because there'd be no chance to do another one, now that we were comfortable together, now that we had our little recipes for sounds and all. Because the band had already called it quits, and it was a real loss for Boston. Because the Turbines wouldn't get a chance to take their message to the rest of the country, the rest of the world, like they really had a right to. I wanted to cry for all those reasons, but also in a big way because after all the work it took to get the Fort together, and the chances we were taking throwing our fates to the rock winds, here was a tangible proof that what we were doing was the right thing...that eight tracks and a dingy, dangerous warehouse could be made to cough up the sounds that a Beantown boy heard in his head when he drove down the highway with the windows open and the motor wailing and the mufflers screaming a pained plea that sounds like "freedom". Thank you, John, Jack , Dave and Fred. We needed the Turbines.