I mentioned on a Reddit thread that I had met Rick Rubin and somebody asked me for the story, so I wrote it. It was long enough that I figured it was worth saving in a blog post. So here it is!<\/p>\n
There was this band called The Matches who used to produce their own shows in Oakland. They had a lot of buzz – they had just released their first album, which they had funded and recorded themselves in someone’s mom’s basement with a friend, and had gone on a national tour on their own dime by calling in favors from bands they had booked at their shows.<\/p>\n
So Rick Rubin shows up at this show in this weird little venue in Oakland with a bunch of his friends. To watch the Matches, and possibly sign them, and possibly consider working with them on an album.<\/p>\n
He actually stood in the audience for a bit, in the sweet spot in the middle of the room about halfway between the front and back. A friend of mine, also in a band, introduced himself to Rick and said he really admired his work. Rubin thanked him in a tone of voice that sounded as if he had never received a compliment before – “Thank you, I really appreciate that!” He sounded totally genuine. (Even when my friend told him, “You’re my second favorite producer, behind the Neptunes.”)<\/p>\n
Eventually, he wandered upstairs to check out the “control room,” because the venue broadcast all shows online and that was totally unique – this was around 2004!<\/p>\n
I knew a lot of people in that scene at the time (including the guys in the band), so I was able to just walk into the control room shortly thereafter. Thing is, I was on the level where I could go into the control room, but not at the level where the main guys in the control room would bother to introduce me. So I just stood there awkwardly. I had another reason to talk to the guy who ran the venue (related to my own band), but I was just using that as an excuse.<\/p>\n
I was standing near the entrance. Rick got up to head back downstairs, and was about to squeeze past me to exit. He saw that I was looking at him and didn’t know what to say, so he just stuck out his hand and said enthusiastically, “Hi, I’m Rick!” I was taken aback, so I weirdly said “I know,” laughed, gave him my name, a REALLY awkward pitch for my band, and a folded up piece of paper that had our web site address on it. He was polite, said he would check it out, and that was that.<\/p>\n
I’ve only met a few celebrities, but I gotta say, Rick Rubin was a class act. He was really nice to everybody, very polite, and basically the way he comes off in interviews. No wonder people like working with him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I mentioned on a Reddit thread that I had met Rick Rubin and somebody asked me for the story, so I wrote it. It was long enough that I figured it was worth saving in a blog post. So here it is! There was this band called The Matches who used to produce their own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-music","post_format-post-format-aside"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nemo10.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}