Laurie Spiegel taught herself notation in an off-grid trailer in western Illinois, with no running water and a kerosene lamp, because she wanted to write down what she was making up on the guitar. A few years later she was at Bell Labs with Max Mathews and Ken Thompson, writing software that let a computer improvise alongside her. Somewhere in between, a forwarded phone call reached her in a backyard in Woodstock, asking to send her work out of the solar system. She assumed it was a crank call and asked them to put it in writing (on NASA letterhead). This is part one of two, in which Laurie talks with Eventide's Tony Agnello and James Frazee about a childhood on the South Side of Chicago, the factory reject Harmony guitar she bought with recycling money, and the three library albums that redirected her life. She explains what actually went on the Voyager Golden Record, a realization of Kepler's Harmonice Mundi, and why she asked NASA to prove they were real. She walks through Juilliard, where the composition jury refused to accept anything she made electronically, and Bell Labs, where nobody told anyone what to work on. She also makes the case she has been making for fifty years: that electronic music is folk music. Made at home, on homemade instruments, passed sideways from person to person and changed along the way. Finally, she shares the story of Music Mouse, her 1986 software instrument, brought back this year by Eventide. ABOUT LAURIE SPIEGEL A pioneer of computer music and algorithmic composition. Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2019. Worked at Bell Labs from 1973 to 1979 on the GROOVE system, one of the first computer systems built for making music in real time. Her realization of Kepler's Harmonice Mundi opens the Sounds of Earth section of the Voyager Golden Record, currently in interstellar space. Her 1986 software instrument Music Mouse put algorithmic composition in the hands of people with no formal training, and was re-released by Eventide in 2026. Her 1972 piece "Sediment" appears in The Hunger Games.

John Agnello and Stewart Lerman kick off a new Record of the Week with The War on Drugs' Red Eyes, off 2014's Lost in the Dream. They trace the two-year process behind the track (six or seven studios, by their own count), break down the harmonic choices that give it its pull, and swap stories about how they each got hooked on Adam Granduciel's band in the first place.

Elvis Costello sits down with Gear Club for a career-spanning conversation, from the tiny London room where My Aim Is True was recorded to the unpublished Bob Dylan lyrics he helped finish decades later. John Agnello and special guest host Tony Agnello of Eventide join for a conversation that gets surprisingly candid about the studios, the producers, and the gear behind four decades of records, including the Eventide H910 Harmonizer that helped define the guitar sound on This Year's Model. Topics include the 49th anniversary box set of My Aim Is True, the making of Imperial Bedroom, working with Jeff Emerick, King of America with T-Bone Burnett, Wise Up Ghost with Questlove and The Roots, and the New Basement Tapes sessions built from Bob Dylan's unfinished lyrics.

This week, we take a look at the acclaimed Surf's Up by The Beach Boys. In 2004, the album was included in Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and ranked 61 on Pitchfork Media's "The Top 100 Albums Of The 1970s".

In this episode we present the history of Eventide, makers of revolutionary audio products for over 50 years, as told by founder and owner Richard Factor. Eventide's history stretches back to 1971, but Richard was tinkering with audio electronics well before that, paving the way for some of the first Eventide products. Richard takes John and Stewart through the early history of Eventide, from its founding and naming to its first groundbreaking products, among them the first remote tape machine transport control and the first digital audio device, the 1745 Digital Delay Line.

From there it's on to the dynamics-defying Omnipressor, the psychedelic Instant Flanger and Phaser, and the arrival of the venerated Harmonizer line of pitch shifters. It's a fascinating and fun oral history of a company that continues to define innovation in audio. As always, we encourage you to like, subscribe, share, and leave a comment. When you do, it lets us reach a lot more listeners, and our biggest goal at Gear Club is to share these incredible stories with as many people as possible.

In this Record of the Week, John and Stewart dig into "Peaches en Regalia" by Frank Zappa, the opening track from his 1969 masterpiece Hot Rats. They break down the recording techniques Zappa used across the album and how those techniques shaped one of the most celebrated instrumentals in rock history. Along the way, John shares his own story of accidentally reinventing the same trick decades later, and why Hot Rats still sounds like nothing else ever made.

Here's Record of the Week, where we listen to records that inspire us and made us wonder, how did they do that? This week: Fat Old Sun by Pink Floyd. John & Stewart hone in on production techniques used to create the piece, and dissect the wacky, experimental nature of this song in Atom Heart Mother in comparison to later Pink Floyd albums.

In this episode we talk with author, producer, engineer and musician Tom Beaujour. Tom's career started as a writer for Guitar World Magazine, going on to found Revolver magazine and Guitar Aficionado, and most recently co-writing The books Lollapalooza and Nothin' But a good time, Oral histories of two pivotal moments in rock music. In tandem with his writing Tom has been recording and producing albums for the likes of Nada Surf, Juliana Hatfield Three, and Doug Gillard. We chat with Tom about writing his latest book, striking a balance between journalism and record making, and hear some great stories about the insanity of the Lollapalooza festivals.

This week on Record of the Week, we dig into one of the most overlooked and mysterious songs connected to The Band: "Out of the Blue," tucked away on The Last Waltz Suite. Robbie Robertson's lead vocal, the unusual arrangement, and the lack of clear information about who actually played on the track all make this song a real puzzle.

John Agnello and Stewart Lerman sit down with David Mansfield - violinist and multi-instrumentalist for Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue - to dig into the mystery. We discuss Robbie Robertson's voice and his role in The Band's harmonies, the Garth Hudson keyboard signatures buried in the track, why the rhythm section doesn't sound like Levon Helm or Rick Danko, and what the song tells us about the final days of one of rock's greatest groups.

We also get into The Last Waltz recording sessions, John Simon's revelation that nearly every note in the film was replaced in post-production, the relationship between The Last Waltz and Bob Dylan's Renaldo and Clara, and the Rolling Thunder Revue's place in Dylan and The Band's shared history.

0:00 Intro: Record of the Week

0:12 Discovering "Out of the Blue" on The Last Waltz Soundtrack

1:26 The Mystery of Robbie Robertson's Solo Vocal

2:22 Who Is Actually Playing on This Track?

3:30 Why Are No Other Band Members Singing?

4:06 The No-Show Sessions at Shangri-La

4:49 Analyzing the Rhythm Section: Levon Helm and Rick Danko

6:43 Robbie Robertson or Richard Manuel? The Vocal Question

7:34 Rolling Thunder, Before the Flood, and the Band's Final Days

8:11 Bob Dylan's Contentious Rights Battle Over The Last Waltz

10:01 The Tension Between Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm

11:11 Identifying Garth Hudson's Musical Influence on the Track

13:03 The Post-Production Secret: Every Note Replaced in The Last Waltz

14:12 Outro: Final Thoughts

In this episode John and Stewart sit down for a chat with friend and mentor Rick Chertoff. Rick is a Producer and songwriter whose career started in A&R for Clive Davis's newly minted Arista records in 1974. From there, he went on to be senior VP of A&R at Columbia records, started his own Blue Gorilla record Label at Polygram, and all the while produced songs and albums for Cyndi Lauper, The Band, Joan Osborne, Sophie B Hawkins, and many others. In this interview Rick discusses his path through the music industry, gets in depth about the writing and recording of Cyndi Lauper's smash first album She's So Unusual, and shares behind the scenes stories from a career filled with hit records.

In this episode John, Stewart, and myself sit down with Tad Kubler, best known as guitarist and songwriter for the best bar band in the world, The Hold Steady. John and I have both made records with the band and it was awesome to catch up with Tad about gear, guitars, and all things Hold Steady. We also got into Tad's production and engineering work, his burgeoning home studio, and his writing and demoing process.