There is a mention of Ron Murphy's passing on Urb's blog, which was linked to from dailyswarm.com:
http://www.urb.com/permalink/2100/Techno-mastering-guru-Ron-Murphy-RIP.html Not much new information, but there is a photograph of the man at work. Adam On Jan 13, 2008 6:12 PM, kent williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is my recollection of Ron's story: He had been fooling with the > lathe and figured out how to stop the screw action that pushes the > cutting head from the outside to the inside of the platter. Then > cutting a locked groove is a matter of tuning the source matterial to > exactly 133 1/3 bpm, dropping the cutting head in the groove and > lifting it up again after exactly one rotation. > > Jeff came in to cut "The Rings Of Saturn" and as was Ron's method, he > set up the cutter with a scratch lacquer, to cut part of a track in > order to see how it sounds played back. Without telling Jeff, Ron cut > a lock groove out of one of the tracks and put it on the turntable > while Jeff wasn't paying close attention. The loop played for a > minute or so before Jeff's eyes got big, and he said "wh wh what the > hell Ron? H H H How did you do that?!" It's funnier if A) you've > heard Jeff talk and B) you hear it from Ron, imitating Jeff. > > Now the fact is that locked grooves weren't a Ron Murphy invention -- > every run-out groove is a lock groove, and the Beatle's "Sargeant > Pepper" has a lock groove cut in the run-out groove of the first > English pressing. But it may be true that Ron started it in the realm > of dance records. > > Anyway, that's my recollection of Ron's story. He definitely had a > million of them, especially about the competetiveness of the early > Detroit artists. The fact is this, though: In the late 80s, getting > your own lacquers cut and plated, and then pressed locally, was a > completely new phenomenon. Ron Murphy was there in Detroit, and his > help and encouragement with young artists making their first records > was a big part of the development of the techno scene. > > His experience, going back to the Motown 60s was important as well. He > was the uninterrupted institutional memory of Detroit as a center of > unique musical creativity. There are plenty of people who can cut > records, but absolutely no one that cut all the records that Ron cut. > > > On Jan 13, 2008 3:24 PM, Frank Glazer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > "Ron's impression of Jeff > > Mills sputtering in reaction to the lock groove on The Rings Of > > Saturn." > > > > i'm not familiar with this story... what happened? > > > > >
