Dickie Dare of UCLA  

 
       Record Producer, Founder of Shaolin Records

 
 

The Story of Dickie Dare.

THE BEGINNINGS of ME

Young RichardI was born in an apartment complex, near the ocean, in Pacific Beach, California, at 7:58AM.

Our next door neighbors were prostitutes, (working their way through college I was told).

I took and passed the first RIAA Recording Engineer School Program, that was taught in San Diego, in 1974 at Soundtrax Studio with a 2" 16-track Stephens reel-to-reel tape recorder. Sweet.

1974-76 I worked at Bonita Recording Studio, in Bonita, California, near the Mexican border.

1976 I started contracting to other studios, as a studio remodeler, based upon my remodeling the Bonita recording studio, then another studio, then another...

So now I was becoming famous as a recording studio carpenter, not a recording engineer.

1978 I got an offer to remodel the Beach Boys' Santa Monica recording studio. I worked for Hank Cicalo and Tom Scott. I still have one of the Beach Boys cabinets from that studio.

1979 I was hired by The Village Recorder as a carpenter...and I worked for Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac... I traded some of my weekly hours for recording studio time down-time. But now I was the talent and record producer, not the recording engineer. I hung out with all the recording engineers and techs. I helped deqausse and set up the 24-track recorders for sessions with Frank Zappa and Supertramp...

Over the next five years I befriended several recording engineers so I wasn't getting to engineer as much as I wanted, and I wasn't able to produce as well as I could have, because I wanted these famous recording engineers to produce me. I gave them extra control, but I ended up kind of producing by default rather than by initiative.

I enjoyed being a session player, because I didn't have to engineer or produce, just play.

COYOTE GRAVEYARD Rock Opera 1982


Recent Projects
 

 
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Shaolin Stupa of The Songshan Shaolin Temple
Shaolin Records .com