Self-proclaimed at an early age as “The Wizard of Waukesha”, he deserved the monicker. Not for his legendary guitar-virtuosity, but for his advances in music technology.

My parents might blame Elvis, or Bill Haley, or Allen Freed for ruining radio with that darn rock-and-roll, but in fact it was mild-mannered, “Via Con Dios” playing and producing Les Paul who gave us the toys and tools to rock and roll.

Would there be “Stairway to Heaven” without the Les Paul guitar? Would there be “Sgt. Pepper” without the multi-track recorder? In fact, I doubt I would have had a career without the multi-track recorder. It’s the first purchase I made after Sorgel-Lee Multimedia sold a project. (I was making mix-tapes before you were born, sonny-Jim. Er, sorry. Got cranky there.)

Anyway, smash a Sears Silvertone tonight in honor of Les Paul. He needed tools, couldn’t find them, so he invented them.

Necessity.

But in the summer of that year, we were asked by Ric’s friend Mike Kiefer (with some influence from Ric’s Dad) if we’d like to produce a slide show touting their company, Kiefer Corporation. A real corporate project! Kiefer sold commercial kitchen impliments and did custom stainless steel fabrication, and they wanted something to show at a trade show.

The answer was yes, the budget cheap, and I had my first real script to write. No relying on other people’s voices, this had to be written for a narrator. And since the budget was cheap, we couldn’t afford– and for that matter, didn’t know– an announcer.

My job was to write the script and produce the soundtrack to which the slides would be edited. And, I agreed, I would read the narration as well.

From an entrepreneurial standpoint, this was perhaps the critical moment in my development as an audio-visual person. My first script, my first narrative soundtrack, and my first (and I hoped, only) voice-over read. How I handled the assignment would define our house style for years to come.

I was a mimic in those days. I did impressions of Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny, George Burns, Kirk Douglas, Johnny Carson…. wait! Johnny Carson, Johnny Carson… Ed McMahon!  Budweiser. Clydesdales. Tonight Show Commercial Reader. Ed McMahon was the answer.

Short sentences, a good theme line, a low key personable approach. Ed McMahon didn’t write what he read, but he made it sound like it. I worked on the script, maybe 3 or 4 pages,  and I remember the final line– it was a direct rip-off of some Budweiser commercial read by McMahon:

” Kiefer Corporation. All… You’ll ever need.”

No explanatories, like “This is Kiefer Corporation, your leader in kitchenware.” No verbs. No complete sentences— and a dot dot dot to guarantee the pause in the right place. Hell, even I could read that, it was so clean.

Which I did. We lived in a one bedroom apartment which was distinguished by the fact that it had one closet for the entire apartment, in the back corner of what passed for a living room.

In that closet was all our earthly possessions, which, given that this was Wisconsin, included a bunch of winter coats. I set up my tape recorder outside the closet, fished the mike cable under the door, attached the Shure SM57 microphone, started the tape recorder and closed the door. I stood in between the coats to insure no reverb or reflections, and also to help give some bass boost to my voice. And I read. And reread. Until I could hear Ed McMahon.

I never read professionally again, but what I had done that day worked beautifully. It helped me define the words I would write, the music I would use, the style of our shows, and the pace of our shows.

It made us a real company, with a real industrial demo to show. It helped put us on the map.

Thanks, Ed McMahon. Your were all we ever needed.

It came in the mid-seventies– documented cases of the swine flu.

(Now,it may be coming around again. Let’s hope we avert it.)

For  the ’70′s version we were hired by the State of Wisconsin to produce Public Service Announcements warning of the potential tragedies of the imminent swine flu, and urging people to get flu shots.  Problem was simply that no one had ever heard of a swine flu, and those that had, well, they thought “Swine Flu” sounded pretty funny.

People weren’t paying enough attention, and it was our job to get attention.

First, we did a spot featuring an interview from a survivor of a real swine flu epidemic in the 1920′s. We did another with a couple of Green Bay Packers doing some locker room talk about “taking out” the swine flu (this was before the Reggie White / Brett Favre Packers, and ten years after the Lombardi era.)

Finally, came my turn. I decided that we had to emphasize the risks of not getting a flu shot. To do this, I featured a gambler, standing under the proverbial 5000 lb weight which was hanging from a rope.

Here’s a foggy copy of what transpired.

Swine Flu PSA: The Gambler from brienlee on Vimeo.

I can tell you this: at the end of that 30 seconds, I was scared. I thought I had killed the talent, Larry Roscioli. So did the crew members at WTMJ-TV4 in Milwaukee.

Luckily Larry emerged from the studio smiling and asking, “Need another take?”

No. But I did need a drink.

Which is why I don’t remember whether I got my flu shot or not.

This show was produced as a "9 on 1", i.e., nine projectors on a single screen. The projectors were controlled by the AVL Eagle, an early desktop computer that featured a language that told various projectors and dissolve units what to do. (see article below)

If you’d like to see more samples of past and current work, click on the "brienlee" above.

This has always been my Benchmark for snow that is just too darn late in the season.

Looking out my window now, and checking the date, I see that once again, we are past my benchmark, and it is snowing, and I remember back to that 1973 storm…

It was 9am the day of the storm and my business partner Ric and I were putting the finishing touches on a two-projector dissolve slide show we had produced for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. It had been reviewed and approved with a few changes the day before by the Symphony’s P.R. Director Andy Moquin. Those few changes kept us up all night re-laying out the slides, making a few subtle changes to the soundtrack (remember, this was all on audio tape), and reprogramming (or repulsing as we called it then) the show.

There was a deadline– 10am that day. Because that’s when we had to drive the gear and the show over to the Schlitz Clubhouse on Port Washington Rd. to unveil the show to the Symphony Women’s League at their annual fundraiser.

Fueled by Tostitos and Tab Soda, we made it. It was a clear day, no traffic, no problem.

There were a few speeches, an address by famed "Sing-Along" conductor Mitch Miller, who at the time was apparently a roving drive-by cheerleader for Symphony Fundraising campaigns, and finally– hours later– our show ran. It was a big success.

By this time we were pretty goofy from lack of sleep.

We commiserated, had our free cookies, packed up, headed out the back door, and then noticed the door wouldn’t open.

Two feet of snow.

Well, let me tell you– the small talk runs thin pretty quick when you are sleep deprived, 23 years old, and surrounded by the august members of the Women’s Symphony League. There were daughters of Beer Barons, descendants of heavy duty transformer companies, foundries, leather tanning companies, you name it.

They got tired of telling us how wonderful we were, and we got tired of hearing it (okay, not really, but the conversation slowed quickly. They just didn’t really know what to make of us. They kept asking us where our fathers were, assuming we couldn’t possibly be old enough to do what we were doing.)

Finally, being that we were in the Schlitz Clubhouse, a Beer baron descendant saw fit to break open the industrial sized cooler in the kitchen. Yes, we drank Schlitz.

Conversation loosened (mostly a blur) and suddenly, it was two hours later and a path had been plowed. We made our way to Ric’s Chevy Blazer and set off to our small office to unpack and call it a week.

Mitch Miller was none too happy, however. He was due in St. Paul at 4pm and that wasn’t happening. No cell phones. No iPods. No laptops. No PDAs. Just Mitch and the ladies.

And he didn’t drink.

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