The Alan Parsons Project

As a teen in southern California back in the mid seventies, cool date destinations were endless. One of my favorite places to visit was the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park. Perched on a mountain above Los Angeles, scenes from the epic movie Birth of A Nation were filmed there in 1915 as well as scenes from Rebel Without A Cause, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood, back in 1955.

On this expansive 4,210 acres of land, several attractions make their home--one of which is the famous observatory that houses a planetarium. In the planetarium, back in the post-psychedelic era, they hosted laser shows accompanied by symphonic and cinematic music to punctuate the bigger-than-life nature of the lighting spectacle. The audience, of around a couple hundred (might have been less...I'm going on memory here), would sit in circular-arranged seating with head rests attached to allow gazing into the pretend sky where the lasers were projected. All the while, specially selected music played which accented the colorful array of moving light. The music that caught my ear every time was that of the Alan Parsons Project. His music was, and is today, a blend of vocal and instrumental pieces, infused with synthesizers and the creative use of studio effects like delay and reverb. Parsons' productions are always filled with great compositions, and are produced with great attention to sonic detail, which was well suited to the Quadraphonic sound system of the Griffith laser extravaganza.

The next day after the laser show, I rushed to my local record shop and caught up on all of the Alan Parsons LPs offered to that point. I waited in anticipation for each subsequent release for years to come. I lost track of his new records after Eye In the Sky, released in the early eighties. But as soon as the new medium of digital CDs offered his greatest hits collection, I once again marveled at the wonderful sound that flowed from my speakers.

Alan Parsons' career goes back to assistant engineer on the last two Beatles albums at Abbey Road. He was also an engineer on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Al Stewart's, Year of the Cat, and many more hits of which people are unaware. After Parsons teamed with Eric Woolfson (who passed away December 2, 2009) at Abbey Road Studios in 1974, there began a three decade creative force which brought sound scapes to pop music, rarely existent up to that point. The Alan Parsons Project (APP) forged a brand with the co-writing of Woolfson and his vocals and keyboards, along with other iconic APP vocalists like Lenny Zakatek and Colin Blunstone, and guitarist, Ian Bairnson (of Pilot fame with the hit, Ballroom Blitz--another Alan Parsons production). I have continued to enjoy these recordings to this day.

Alan Parsons has a website which is dedicated to his passion for handing his expansive knowledge of recording to a new generation of producers and engineers called The Art and Science of Sound Recording.

Even though Parsons' lyrics are a bit esoteric and laced with eastern philosophy and various religions, the productions employ broad sound scapes which evoke wonder and dream-like moodiness that I cannot find anywhere ele. Delightful!