The Colors of Jackpot!
or, why does this studio look the way it does? -by Larry Crane
In 1997, as Elliott Smith and I began building out the cinder-block shack for the original Jackpot! Recording Studio, we had to quickly decide what colors we would paint the walls. I’d worked in studios like Enharmonik/The Hanger with John Baccigaluppi and Greg Freeman’s Lowdown in San Francisco, and neither one was a typical built-out studio. Instead they’d embraced the funkiness of the place they were in and made the most of it. I’d been in a few other studios that felt more like dentist offices, and I had no interest in having my own place feel so visually boring. So, in some fit of goofiness, Elliott and I decided we should paint every wall of the live room a different color. We thought that instead of saying, “Move that mic towards the front wall,” that we’d be saying, “Move it towards the blue wall.” Guess what, that never happened. Not once. Never. But we did get to pick out some wacky colors, I believe with Marila Alvares’ help, and we got to work painting the place after building a wall to separate the live room from the control room.
During the whole move in/construction project we bartered upcoming recording time with local musicians to help us out – I think it was “work an hour, earn an hour”. Members of The Maroons, Harvester, Underpants Machine, and others built walls and painted and became some of our first clients.
Over the years I’ve seen more studios adopt playful colors like Jackpot! features. I like to feel we had some part in commercial studios getting away from the sterile office vibe that so many places had in the ‘80s.
When we moved into the “new” building in 2007, manager Kendra Lynn and I decided to keep many of the colors, though we were dissuaded from painting every wall in the rooms different colors as it would have cost a lot more money!
Green, yellow, and blue are the main colors now, but the memory of why we went with this pre-school Romper Room design still lingers. Thanks Elliott.
