Time Capsules, Creative Clutter, Stacks of wax!

Hey Everyone,

I was just digging through some old pics and found this picture in the Record Room Studio in Montreal circa early 2000s. This photo was taken by my friend Paul Labonté, who did all the press shots and tour photos around that time. From the looks of it, I believe this photo was taken sometime around Some of My Best Friends Are DJs and Your Moms Favorite DJ releases.

Just FYI, no matter what apartment I moved to in Montreal, there was always a room where the records would be stored. It was often the same room where my little recording set up would be.... hence the "room with the records" became known to friends as "Record Room" or "Eric's studio" even though for many years it was just a bunch of records, some turntables and a multitrack recorder.

When I was at school all the vinyl would be in milk crates on the floor of my dorm room. When I graduated to apartments, I bought a shelf from IKEA called the "Expedit" as advised to me by one of my DJ mentors, Strictly Kev (DJ FOOD/Ninja Tune) from London. I remember taking a van taxi to IKEA to pick it up and bring it back to the apartment. My first record shelf! I still remember assembling the shelf that day. A bit of a rite of passage for most DJs of that era. Sounds silly now, but It felt very grown up at the time. Like I had graduated to being a semi professional about scratching and deejaying!

Looking around that shelf I see the usual "creative clutter" that haunts this and all the record rooms that followed. The shelf would also house sketchbooks of early character designs, and notebooks of record cataloging, CDRs, and tapes. I can see a box of blank Maxell XL-IIS cassettes (my preferred master tape cassette for my 4 track recorder). A copy of the Te of Piglet and Tao of Pooh that was loaned to me by a friend who asked for it back 15 years later and I still had it to return to her! AMAZING! I also see a making-of book of Jeunet's Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain (One of Corinne and my favorite films).

Here I'm playing a Wurlitzer 140 tube electric piano. I found it at a second hand store in Montreal years ago. It was the slightly out of tune one that was featured on the original Nufonia Must Fall book soundtrack.

I also have a digital sampling watch on. I thought that watch was really dumb/funny because it had a "record" function on it with a big REC and PLAY button on the front panel. So the joke was, if anyone asked me what time it was, I would be reminded that it was time to record and I was supposed to be finishing my album instead of doing whatever I was doing.

I've not worn this watch in years because on the Vinyl Vaudeville tour in the UK in 2012. I demo'd the sampling function of the watch on stage.

and some quite inebriated partygoer yelled:

 "Oi! Let's have that watch!"

"Pardon me?" I replied on the microphone

"The watch, let's have it!"

"You want my watch?"

"Yeah!"

(crowd laughs)

"Uh... okay!"

Honestly it was such an odd request, it very much threw me off and cracked me up. I mean, who asks for your cheap plastic watch?! but I was in such a good mood I took the watch and threw it towards him in the crowd. He caught the watch like it was a fly ball at a baseball game and the crowd erupted into the biggest cheer! So weird!

And since that gig in 2012, I've not worn a watch. Mainly because I haven't found another sampling watch. But also, let's face it, the time is always on your phone nowadays. LOL.

Anyhow, sorry for the stream of consciousness post! This photo just brought back a whole bunch of fun memories!

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