THE (NOT SO) INVISIBLE HAND OF DOOM
Reality Entertainment and the machinations of the real metal machine music
By Cole Coonce
I first met Mr. Reality between 10 and 20 years ago, when he was low man on the totem pole at a big-time recording studio, getting coffee for a couple of big-time music producers and engineers who made Megadeth records. ("I specifically said, 'Two sugars, and a splash of cream' ... I specifically said, 'Cream, and not milk.'") My band was organizing a seven-inch single, and we had a line on free studio time at the old, now-defunct Music Grinder facility on Melrose, where Reality worked.
Because of the freebie nature of our recording schedule ("spec time" in industry parlance), Reality - who at that time answered to his more modest christened moniker, Warren Croyle - moved up from being the guy who made sure Megadeth's producer and first engineer had the proper condiments on their chicken salad sandwiches to being the first engineer hisself.
Watching him work that night was like watching Magic Johnson pass a basketball or O.J. Simpson run through an airport. It was what he was born to do. He took to miking guitars and making records like Tijuana takes to taco meat.
The Grinder's owners picked up on and exploited his energy and Jah-given ability. Beyond possessing a set of ears preternaturally tuned to how a crunching stack of guitar tracks must complement the thwack of a snare drum as it propels the vocal, Croyle also proved to be a whiz at editing tape ... and, let's just say his was a Horatio Alger story with a set of headphones and a razor blade.
As soon as he finished engineering our humble postpunk seven-inch, Croyle moved up to the big time, as his next assignment was splicing together the vocals on "Heaven Is a Place on Earth," a pop ditty by a reformed L.A. punk-rock chick cum multiplatinum-selling New Wave Solo Artist. This meant it was Croyle's responsibility to hide from the teeny-bopping music-loving public this naked fact: The New Wave Solo Artist couldn't sing very well. So, he took a knife to the master tapes of her singing and began cutting and piecing together excerpts of 16 different vocal performances, creating a separate reality by finding a word or a phrase or even a syllable that was in tune and not flat as yesterday's soda water and reconstructing the tape piece-by-piece. (This practice is now done routinely with mouse clicks and hard discs.)
Thus, Mr. Reality earned his nickname while facing some brutal truths and realities of his own. "I spent hours and hours and hours on it for a thankless nothing," he told me one night, back in the day, when we met for beers at a Japanese transvestite bar. "If music production and distribution is just hipster-friendly fingerless gloves for the invisible hand of marketing, you might as well get mercenary and become a master capitalist. An über-capitalist."
And he so did, or so I heard. Which meant that he and I dropped out of contact, much to my regret.
But all these years later, while perusing a copy of Billboard, I see a full-page ad for something called Reality Entertainment's "Harsh Reality" Tour, and I say out loud to myself, "It's fucking Warren!"
So I call him up, and we reconnect, and we laugh about the "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" story. "I cringe when I hear it in elevators to this day," he says.
Later, Warren talks to me from his luxurious-yet-bucolic spread of a home office 3,000 feet high in the Sierra Nevadas' Gold Country, ground zero for masterminding Reality Entertainment, the record label Croyle runs with his partner, "Mr. Floyd." He says their tentacles stick to the wallets of head-bangers from Central Europe to Brazil to Indonesia.
"We are a virtual company, so there is no reason why we can't be filling online orders from the top of a canyon while watching eagles fly," Mr. Reality reports. "I make records while feeding my horses and listening via satellite to what's going on in Studio A or B at the flick of a switch."
Yes, Mr. Reality has become lean, mean, and mercenary. He took a bunch of money made from producing acts for major and indie labels and started his own record company, specializing in heavy metal and nu-metal. In an age where record companies are freaking from identity crises caused by dwindling revenues due to so-called piracy, Reality stares it all down with the calm of Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, grooving on natural selection.
"The new generation isn't limited by anything that has happened before," he explains. "They're creating music based in an environment where iPods and webcams run amok. The end result is a dynamic genre with little or no limitations, besides the essential need for crushing guitar riffs and slamming drums.
"What the major labels don't understand is that time moves faster than time itself," he continues. "They are inept at adapting." He's in a groove. "Which is why something like EMI has become an AT&T-like colossus," he rants, "and is constantly sniffing around labels like Reality. Today's modern economics dictate that majors are now an industrial warehouse, and more essentially a conveyor belt."
Point taken. We haven't seen each other in years, and I ask him why he moved out of Los Angeles and into, umm, "Heaven on Earth."
"I couldn't stand it," he sighs. "Some people are scared to leave Hollywood because it has a death grip on them, the whole slave-master dynamic. Reality is outside of any shape, including a box, and is always growing and changing."
Published: 09/09/2004
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