Steve Martin posted this video on his blog recently – from a recording session for a station at Groove Addicts in Los Angeles (from Jingle News)

I was really glad to see this – since I had the pleasure of working with these guys back in December 2002 and  February 2003 on a massive jingle package for the old Capital FM Network. They are a fantastic team of people who have been doing what they do for decades. From memory, I think they tend to do far more work for commercials now than radio stuff, but this is a really interesting example of how they work.

Making radio  jingles is done in so many different ways. You don’t necessarily need massive studios and huge bands in a studio to create a big sound. But they are in L.A.- and in L.A. – you do things BIG. And it’s all about the client as well – a huge sun terrace with catered lunch – food and drink on tap and a fantastic vibe to fire off too.

The studios at Groove Addicts are massive. In fact, when they were built, the building had a small plane hanging from the inside of the roof. So they built the studios, breakout area and all the facilities around it. It’s pretty cool to be playing a game of pool in between sessions with this plane overhead. And the staff are pretty freindly too (though not quite sure why I’m smiling so much..).

Seeing the video got me a little nostalgic for that package we worked on back in 2002 – it was a huge effort really. The demos came about pretty quickly in the November of 2002 and we had it all on air in the spring of 2003. At the time, I was working with our production consultant Jean-Michel Meschin of Soniic Design in France. He now mainly cuts radio ads for French movies – but still works on radio imaging too. In fact – there are still some elements of his influence on air in the production of Fun Radio in France where he was one time production director.

And the highlight was probably working with these guys – the composer/musician etc Phil-X who composed the rockier stuff (including the Top of Hour)- and the engineer Gerhard Joost. In fact – Phil had a band who we saw live at the House of Blues when we were over there – and this was one of their songs. OTT or what?