A friend of mine's dad invented the LP

Here's a little story that may be of interest. Just something odd. I used to program synths and samplers for songwriters and producers in LA. One of the people I worked and became friends with was Andy Goldmark. He's a songwriter who has written with Eric Carmen, Celine Dion and a lot of pop artists. In fact, I have a funny story about a nightmare session with him and Michael Bolton. That may not be suitable for a public forum though. It's a classic however trust me (ie. nothing worked... one of those).

Anyway, I was at Andy's place one day and when I was in the bathroom I noticed there was a picture of a guy on the wall shaking hands with Jimmy Carter. So when I got out I asked Andy "Who is shaking hands with Jimmy Carter?" and he says "Oh that's my dad. He invented the LP". I said "Excuse me? What do you mean? He invented the Long Play record?????" and he said "Yeah" like it was nothing.

I've met a lot of people whose dads were in famous bands. This was really unexpected though. Hey, I guess someone had to invent that!

Hope you liked my little story. Happy New Year!

 

First Google hit on "Goldmark LP record":

 

Or the next one (from google's cache)

Did you read that - free copies of EVERY LP produced by Columbia!

 

Like with most things, there's a wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carl_Goldmark

 

Sorry .. one more - this is the most complete (except it doesn't have the bit about free records)

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/goldmark.html

 

Son of a gun. I've seen Andy's name a bit, but who knew? Great trivia.

Frank G

 

Haha I knew you guys would add some cool stuff. Fun trivia huh? Wow, no royalties???? Man. Well, still, not bad eh? Andy is a very successful songwriter. I used to work for him and also a guy named Steve Kipner who was friends with him. Songwriting is where the money is by the way (and thus I am an idiot- haha... not really. I am more into the art of songwriting than the commerce side probably).

Okay, so if you want some more trivia I will tell you a tamed down version of my Andy Goldmark/Michael Bolton story. Andy was working on a song for Henry Lee Summer that he wrote with Michael Bolton. They were just recording it and hired me to do some keyboard programming stuff. That was my usual gig at the time. I opened my big mouth and suggested we record over at my friend Gardner Cole's place (Gardner wrote "Open Your Heart" for Madonna and similar pop hits, he had a nice studio and let me use it. I worked with him too on some things like Rod Stewart and the Temps... good story there too but I am already drifting too many degrees away from the Goldmark. ). Okay, so I suggest Gardner's studio because it was a 24 track instead of Andy's 12 track Akai thing so they say yes. Toto's engineer Jess Suttcliff was supposed to show up because he knew Gardner's board pretty well. The first problem was that he didn't show! So, I decided to engineer it myself which was a big mistake because for some reason nothing was working right... no smpte, the audio routing was all messed up and to top it off MB expected to complete an entire song in one night! Needless to say he was very upset and it wasn't a pretty sight. Andy forgave me though as it wasn't my fault. Still, that was one of the biggest nightmare sessions of all time. Hence, I laughed extra loud when I watched the movie Office Space. Just kidding.

The story had more stuff to it than that but for all I know it could get read by the wrong person and come back and bite me in the behind... not that it really could or that I'd really care at this point. But still... There was a catch phrase born from it. I just can't say it here.

Anyway, useless trivia. Andy also tried to shop a deal for my band at the time. Nice guy. I haven't talked to him in years. But, you've probably seen him on some album credits somewhere. Those songwriters... one song can buy you a house you know!