Mike Kregler is a musician from right here in South Brunswick New Jersey. He is a good friend of pretty much the entire Local Noise crew, and he has musical talent, so he really had no choice but to play the show whether he wanted to or not. Since we couldn't get his piano into our microscpoic studio, we were forced to film this episode on location in his living room. Because we were unauthorized to transport any of the dozens of SVHS recording decks collecting dust in the township municipal building, we had to record the show on one of our own standard VHS VCR's. The drop off in quality was minimal however, thanks to the DV camcorder mike was able to get from his school. We used the DV camera along with the SVHS camera provided by the township. Even though after white balancing there was a big difference in picture quality between the two cameras we decided to go ahead with the set up. While we messed around with the video Mike Kregler and Tom Kerese mic'd the piano and mixed the audio. We were all concerned about doing a remote shoot, but the episode turned out great. Along with Tom, Mike wrote the new Local Noise theme song. Mike also wrote the South Brunswick High School alma mater, but that's nothing compared to the theme song.

LWL was our first band that was somewhat famous in the NJ underground scene. A pop-punk 3 piece band, it came out to be one of our best shows. We used a different audio board for this show. Our normal board had mysteriously disappeared, and this forced us to use an older, bigger and less sophisticated Mackie board. While the audio came out well, it came out unusually flat when heard over Ray's George Lucas style audio system back at his pad in Kendall Park. Ray had recently become our new audio guy by default, and despite having little experience in audio work, expects nothing less than perfection from himself. He finally realized that for some unknown reason, the show was not recorded in stereo. This mishap would haunt him for eternity. Despite this fact, the LWL show has become the most popular episode of Local Noise. The band unfortunately broke up in 2001, but their music lives on in Local Noise Syndication. If you have not picked up their album "Quarter Life Crisis" we command you to do so immediately.

Local Noise's most popular show in the first season, the boys from the Effluent were invited back for a second taping. We at Local Noise put the fans first, and since it was the fans who voted The Effluent as the best band we decided we would reward our loyal viewers with an encore taping. Their return had nothing to do with the fact that Special Consultant Taso Stefanidis was their manager. The Effluent is a four piece rock band, with punk and blues elements mixed in with their lyrics and riffs. The band had not played together in months due to a short hiatus they took prior to the taping. When they came back, it seemed as if they hadn't missed a beat, throwing in a lot of new material and a fresh image. As far as sound quality goes, the show came out mostly well, except we had our first problems with overmodualtion in the singers' levels. With some spiffy editing by Ray we were able to fix the problem somewhat, however this prompted us to go and purchase a compressor, which would come in quite handy in later episodes. As of this writing, the band completed their second album, and for the second year in a row, The Effluent holds the distinguished title of "The Most Popular Local Noise Band that hasn't broken up yet."

Uncharted Waters is a soft-rock band from Freehold. They were our first band that featured a female musician - two to be exact. A simple 3 piece band, they were more than happy to come back to Local Noise after we botched their show the first time. The crew learned valuable lessons on the first taping of Uncharted Waters. For some unknown reason, our one and only record deck crapped out during the taping, it would not record any video. We tried to hook up a spare svhs deck but had problems converting the audio into a stereo signal. We finally decided to go back to ghetto style Local Noise, and record the audio and video seperately. While Ray was elated (he has a strange addiction to matching up audio and video during editing) the rest of the crew was skeptical. We also had problems with some of the bands amps. We were finally able to get a taping going and ended up finishing after 8pm. We thought the audio came out well, but a few days later when we went to edit we noticed the lyrics were extremely bass-like and unclear. We asked the band to come back, they were more than willing, and their show came out fine in the end. The band played several short songs, with one incorporating a hands-free harmonica. We were especially impressed with the beetle style guitar used by the lead singer. After the first show botch-up, our Director Mike Lee volunteered his sony dvcam to record the show, with the studio deck being the backup. Recording the show to digital video upgraded the visuals ten-fold, and gave the show an overall sharper and more colorful look.

2.04 --- LT. FUZZ