After all this time getting the studio together, with the construction, wiring the patchbay, getting the gear, etc, we were finally ready to get to recording.  Fortunately we had a great band in here to start:  The Satellites.  This very talented band came to us via producer Sami Yaffa, currently playing bass for the New York Dolls, and others.   At the time I was playing keyboards and vibraphone for Sami’s band, Mad Juana.  It was a dub style hard rock band – “AC/DC meets Bob Marley”.  Very cool band.  For a bit Mad Juana had been located on the  island of Mallorca – a beautiful spot off the coast of Spain, where we played some gigs.  In Mallorca Sami had become a sort of mentor/friend of The Satellites.  They raised up some cash from their Spanish label and came over as the debut band of Transporterraum.  It was great fun working on this project for us, Gordon engineering, Sami producing, all of us hanging out together.  I thought they were the best group I’d seen in a while, who weren’t yet “discovered”.  The album they recorded ” Our Very Bright Darkness” is so great.  They are Spanish (or Mallorician as they see it), but the album is all in English.  As is so often the case with bands from the Mediterranean, there is beautiful guitar playing.  Jordi, the singer has a very unusual cool high pitched voice.  I played vibraphone for them on a track as well.

I believe that the 21 days it took to make this record were some of the best times to be had in that room!!   It sounds great still – a tiny bit like an energetic Joy Division, with a little Television, all mixed up with some Spanish flavors and wine.  I remember asking these lads “How did you all get so good – no one here in NY is this tight?”  I hope they don’t mind me saying, but the answer was along these lines- since we all live at home, and everything is so easy on Mallorca, this is what we do:  We get up, go to the beach, then rehearse, then eat, go to the beach and smoke up, then rehearse again – every day.  Now I got it.  Everyone I knew in a band barely had time to rehearse, we all had time consuming jobs to get by in NYC.  No wonder they were more rehearsed!   Looking back, wow those were good times….

Check out this video of the Satellites performing in Madrid 2009, “Come Shining” from “Our Very Bright Darkness”