Enormity: “Man of the Crowd” (1997/2018) - Directed by David Ullman
Even though he's four years younger than me, my brother Brian was racking up studio time and rocking places like The Odeon Concert Club while I was still singing Pearl Jam covers around the campfire. 21 years ago today, he and his bandmates in ENORMITY—then just freshmen in high school—went into CMC Studios to record "Man of the Crowd" here and a handful of other originals. I asked that someone bring a camcorder and grab some footage of the session so I could use it to make a music video for this song. I followed up by filming them performing to playback in the band's basement rehearsal space. Unfortunately, I did not have the skill or technology at the time to successfully edit it all together. This year I did, and it's now a part of their posthumous release ENORMITY: LIVE AT THE ODEON (1-31-1998).
One of my favorite things about putting together the last few Dreaming Out Loud Records releases—most notably NJs AND THE JEFF, CAFE DAYS, and this Enormity EP—have been creating the PDF liner note booklets that come with the downloads. The only surviving media from the band is a couple of SCENE magazine clippings, lyric sheets, video dubs of a few performances and behind the scenes their November 1997 CMC studio session, as well my raw VHS-C footage from the "Man Of The Crowd" basement session for the music video I never finished. Their one studio recording tape was given away to a booking rep to get a gig! The only remaining representation of that session was the unfinished "Man Of The Crowd" music video. For the digital liner notes, I pulled stills from the video footage, overlayed lyrics, and did my best to showcase the music.
Digital package art direction and design by David Ullman
The Odeon concert was recorded by bassist Nate Pelfrey's dad, Jeff, on a camcorder from the balcony of the club. The on-camera microphone soundtrack from this VHS-C tape was treated with X-Noise from Waves and sweetened with UAD plugins in Cubase 5 by Enormity frontman Brian Ullman in July 2018. It was mastered using LANDR’s automated system on the "medium" setting.
"Man of the Crowd" was originally recorded to Ampex 456 tape on November 22nd, 1997 at CMC Studios in Canton, Ohio by Jim Smith. It has survived only via the unfinished music video for the song started in 1997 and finished in 2018. The demo cassette dub from CMC was transferred to SVHS video using a Panasonic AG-7750 deck and preserved in "glorious monophonic sound" (as Mike Crooker says elsewhere in this booklet). What is heard here went through the same audio sweetening and mastering process as the Odeon show.
In finishing the edit of the "Man Of The Crowd" music video, I went through all of the existing videotapes, editing them down to a watchable 75-minute distillation of the band's documented output. I posted the segments as the "Enormity Anthology (1996-1998)" presentation, which you can WATCH HERE on the Dreaming Out Loud Records Vimeo page.
Follow this young band from their beginnings as a middle school dance act, into the recording studio, filming their music video, and ultimately onto the stage of one the premier clubs in northeast Ohio playing to a packed house.
That packed-house performance is the basis of this new/old legacy release, ENORMITY: LIVE AT THE ODEON (1-31-1998). The digital album download bundle includes the 15-page liner notes PDF with lyrics and photos--plus the "Man of the Crowd" music video, and a post-performance interview with the band.
Comments