The Bidons is a four piece rock’n’roll band from Salerno, at the time of this session they were actually five, Albino in vocals, guitars: Gianmario and Nico (who left a few months ago), Ezio on bass and Mario on drums. 

I invited them to my studio and asked a very talented videomaker friend of mine, Luca Mordente, to shoot and edit the video. We tracked everything live except vocals - the mask the singer was wearing in the video didn’t really help to get a pristine take, so since we didn’t have any lipsyncing issues we figured that overdubbing was the best choice.

Drums were tracked with a recorderman with a couple of MJE-K47H, Akg D112 on kick, 57 on snare, Bass plugged direct in the Daking, guitar amps were on the opposite of the drums, facing the walls with a panel close to the rear to isolate them. The amps were a Fender Deluxe Reverb making love with a 70’s Mustang (what a combo!) miked with an RE20 and a Victoria Bassman replica, feeded by an USA standard Tele, the latter going through some serious boutique stompboxes before reaching the amp, which was miked with an MJE-47H. I then added an MS, in the center of the room, with the Mid (an Oktava MK105 facing the drums) and the side facing the amps, to have some natural reverb, I wanted the sound to be consistent with the video and to give the listener the feeling that he’s in the room with the band.

Having just one camera, we had the band play the same three songs several times so that Luca had a lot of footage to work on. I mixed and mastered itb with a couple of Yamaha HS50M. Now try to listen to the Bidons without dancing!