Flim & the BB's was a contemporary jazz band that was among the first bands to record albums digitally.

History

Flim and the BB's consisted of Jimmy Johnson, nicknamed Flim, on Alembic 5-string bass and the two BBs, Bill Berg on percussion and Billy Barber on piano, keyboard, and synthesizer, with their initials having a whimsical connotation of BB pellets. Woodwind-player

Dick Oatts Richard Dennis Oatts (born April 2, 1953) is an American jazz saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator. Biography While growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Oatts gained an interest in music from his father, Jack Oatts, who was a sa ...

was a featured guest on their first album before becoming a full member of the band. The band was a side project, as they worked as studio musicians for a living. Their early days in the late 1970s included studio work in Minneapolis and playing as a band at the Longhorn Bar. They became acquainted with Tom Jung, chief engineer at

Sound 80 Sound 80 is a recording studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States founded by engineer Tom Jung and composer/musician Herb Pilhofer in 1969. Largely involved with local artists, the studio is best known for recording portions of Bob Dylan' ...

Studios in Minneapolis. It was around this time that Minneapolis-based 3M began experimenting with

digital recording In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storag ...

, and Flim & the BB's were hired to provide music to test this new equipment at Jung's studio. The group's self-titled debut album was recorded in 1978 at Sound 80 and was ostensibly going to be a

direct to disc recording Direct-to-disc recording refers to sound recording methods that bypass the use of magnetic tape recording and record audio directly onto analog disc masters. Professional analog sound recording Most sound recordings for records before the 1950s ...

. Nevertheless, 3M placed an experimental prototype 50.4 kHz digital recorder in the control room as a backup to the direct-to-disc lathe. Because of the "direct-to-disc" setup (recording directly onto a lacquer platter) the band was required to play the entire LP side without stopping and without being able to do any editing afterward. When the resulting

acetate disc An acetate disc (also known as a ''lacquer'', ''test acetate'', '' dubplate'', or ''transcription disc'') is a type of phonograph record generally used from the 1930s to the late 1950s for recording and broadcast purposes and still in limited use ...

was deemed inferior in sound quality to the digital master tape, the LP record was pressed from that digital backup tape, making it the second-ever U.S. commercially available digital recording. Since the machine used was a one-of-a-kind prototype, built before any digital recording standards were established -- and dismantled within months -- there is currently no way to reissue that first album on either LP or CD.Liner notes from ''Tricycle'' Flim and the BB's recorded its second album, ''Tricycle'', for

DMP Digital Music Products DMP Digital Music Products was one of the first digital recording labels, generally specializing in jazz artists. DMP was founded in 1983 by engineer Tom Jung after leaving Sound 80 recording studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The label's first re ...

, an audiophile record label started by Tom Jung. The album was the first non-classical recording to be released in compact disc format. It was recorded on the Mitsubishi X-80 digital audio recorder at Sound 80. The disc displayed the full dynamic range available in CDs, becoming a popular test disc for this reason. It was also the first jazz album to be recorded, mastered, and delivered in the digital domain. The recording chain, after the first few feet of microphone cable from the musicians' instruments, remained in the digital domain until it was decoded by the consumer's CD player. DMP's releases were for the most part recorded directly to two-tracks as opposed to the more common multi-track method. This means that there was minimal use of overdubs and the majority of the music was performed, recorded, and mixed "live" to the digital recorder. The cover art for ''Tricycle'' was drawn by Bill Berg's son Jacob. Flim & the BB's released four more albums for DMP, with each winning Digital Audio's "Jazz CD of the Year" award. After the release of ''The Further Adventures of Flim & The BB's'' they parted ways with DMP and signed to

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

. They released the album ''New Pants'' in 1990 and followed with ''This Is a Recording'' in 1992. Billy Barber composed the theme song for the TV soap opera '' All My Children''. A version of the song appears on ''This Is a Recording''. DMP released two of their albums, ''Tricycle'' and ''Big Notes'', on limited edition

Gold CD A gold compact disc is one in which gold is used in place of the super pure aluminium commonly used as the reflective coating on ordinary CDs or silver on ordinary CD-Rs. Gold CDs can be played in any CD player. Blank gold CD-Rs are also availab ...

s, and ''Tricycle'' on Super Audio CD (

SACD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips, Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows mul ...

Discography

Studio albums

* ''Flim & the BB's'' (Sound 80, 1978) (LP only) * ''Tricycle'' ( DMP, 1983) (CD,

and

) * ''Tunnel'' (DMP, 1984) (CD and

) * ''Big Notes'' (DMP, 1985) (CD) * ''Neon'' (DMP, 1987) (CD) * ''The Further Adventures of Flim & the BB's'' (DMP, 1988) (CD) * ''New Pants'' (Warner Bros., 1990) (CD) * ''This is a Recording'' (1992, Warner Bros., 1992) (CD)

Compilation albums

* ''Vintage BB's'' (DMP, 1991) (CD)

References

External links

Internet Archive of DMP Records' Flim site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bbs, Flim and the American jazz ensembles from Minnesota Musical groups established in the 1970s Warner Records artists