I'd like to join the ranks thanking you for sharing that experience; it was very generous of you and Katz.
I'm so glad to hear you take the basic and "holistic" stuff of his to heart. There is one passage that really strike a chord related to these forums, I think:
There are two real nuggets here. The first is his "just remember" comment, which is as true as it gets. The second is your following comment about it coming from "any other engineer".
The bittersweet fact behind the combination of these nuggets is that apparently one does not know what they are talking about unless they have a big name; experience itself is meaningless. There are folks who are regulars on this board like Bruce, Tom, John, Al and Jason* who have great knowledge and experience who say here on a dialy basis the very thing(s) Katz said to Lee.
The difference is when these guys say something like "ride with the mix and listen to what's going on", they get flamed left and right by newbs who think they are just blowing smoke or keeping secrets or just don't know what they're talking about. If the amount of experience any of these folks has is brough up, then the response often (not always) that these guys are too old and just not hip enough to get respect for their opinions. Not because of what they say - that's rarely even taken into consideration - but rather because they were not lucky enough by virtue of circumstance to have cut their teeth on Sunset Boulivard or Beale Street and gotten some gold record names under their belts; therefore they must not know what they're talking about anymore than the newbs here do. But when someone like Katz comes along and says the exact same thing, it suddenly sounds like a Revalation passed down from the Mount.
I'd also like to note that nowhere in Lee's posts re The Katz Encounter were any kind of specific recipies mentioned. Lee, I assume that's because they never came up and not that you're leaving them out? I think that's important to note, and also it's important to note that nobody, including Lee, is complaining about any lack of such mythical "recipies" to come out of a 2.5 hour brain picking with a celebrity name.
This rant is not addressed to you, Lee, or to anybody specifically. Just an open letter to the forum, I guess.
G.
* Don't get pissed or otherwise hurt if I didn't include your name; there are others here whose opinions I respect as well. I just couldn't feasibly list all of them...my posts are long enough!
)