Not long ago people predicted that recording studios could go the way of video shops; recent evidence suggests a premature judgement.

If you've followed this column for a while you'll have noticed a certain pessimism vis a vis the future of the music business. Sorry about that.

There's nothing more wearying than people banging on about how bad things are and how they're only going to get worse.

And what with the world currently in danger of being torn between a shirtless KGB strongman and a self-obsessed snake-oil salesman, we seem sometimes to be surrounded by nothing but bad things getting worse.

This is a world where black people in America are getting arrested for simply being black in a Starbucks outlet, and where here in the Bay so many people think of themselves as The Future of Tauranga that you could damn near make up two cricket teams from potential City Council candidates.

Oh dear.

We seem to be off on a tangent.

Council questions

I was planning to approach the many and various candidates for council and enquire of each of them what sort of music they prefer. That should give a useful indication as to their character.

It was either that or canvas opinions on traffic, the museum, beggars, traffic, Maori wards, roads, traffic, the homeless, public transport, parking, traffic, the CBD, event funding, and, of course, traffic.

But, seriously, 20 of them? It was bad enough when it was just a dozen people standing for mayor.

Let's just go back to recording studios...

So, everyone predicted the death of studios; there were two obvious reasons.

Firstly, with the rise of digital equipment, anyone can set up a home-based recording studio. Get hold of a few grand and you can buy exactly the same operating system – Pro-Tools, Cubase, Logic, Ableton, whatever – as the flashiest studios use to record.

Secondly, there are fewer bands recording, especially at a regional level. Once upon a time bands could easily pay for recordings by selling a few CDs at gigs.

That market has disappeared. CDs are currently selling about 30 per cent of what they used to and falling. So recording, for most bands, is now a labour of love or a punt on one's future.

But, despite those dire predictions, people are now rediscovering the value of recording studios.

For studios may have exactly that same operating system that you saved for, but they usually have a bunch of other equipment too, be it a piano, a tranche of interesting amplifiers, a variety of high-quality microphones, all sorts of effects and – possibly most important – someone running the place who really knows what they are doing, and has many years of experience getting the best out of their equipment and learning clever tricks.

Labours of love

Also, it turns out you should never underestimate people who want to make music as a labour of love. There are a lot of them.

Two recent albums recorded at The Boatshed Studio in Whakamarama spring to mind (both of which I will return to when they are properly released).

Archie Clark, known to many locally as Russell Clark, has recorded a 15-song album called ‘50 Days In Asia'. Archie played in South Island bands for many years before giving it away for a family and day job.

For the past couple of years, he's been rediscovering his guitar and recording songs both decades-old and newly-written, along with the Boatshed's multi-instrumental owner/operator, Nigel Masters.

The results are remarkable, this is a real professional-quality album, and something that would not have been possible without Nigel's studio expertise.

The same is true of a spoken word album that I recently heard from the Boatshed.

Paul Parkhouse of B-Side Band has teamed with the actor Mick Innes for a collection of music-backed poetry called ‘Angel-Headed Hipster'.

I only heard it the other day and have no idea if or when it will be released. But it blew me away and, again, would not have been possible without the many years of skill and experience that you get when you use an established studio.

watusi@thesun.co.nz