SM: After this time of development, when did your first official gig take place?
GC: My first gig was at the Miami Dade Youth Fair. They were having a talent contest and I wound up taking first place. The following year, I entered it again and won first place plus their bicentennial award. Soon after that I got the courage to play at school functions and my dad started taking me to Hotel bars on South Beach, where I started playing and singing Latin and English songs by Jose Feliciano, Armando Mancanero, Three Dog Night, and others.
I continued playing throughout my teen years with bands I would put together with local musicians who I had met at the music academy or from school. In 1980, I put together a small group called “Gus and the Dreamers”. We were a combination of Punk and New Wave. We mostly played covers from “Elvis Costello”, “The Romantics” and “The Pretenders” but we also played some originals. I put together a small budget and we recorded a 45 single with two of those originals. It sounded horrible but it was my first experience in a recording studio and from that point on, I was hooked.
SM: Now you are well regarded as one of the best producers around in and out of the studio.
What kind of things did you begin absorbing after making that first 45?
GC: I began hanging out at different small project studios learning about midi and synchronization and your basic tape machine formatting. I continued to record in a couple of these studios not so much to release anything to the public but to get more hands on experience in the whole recording and producing world. It’s here where I really got a good insight into arrangements and discovered how good I was at coming up with catchy melodies. So some of the other bands that were recording at these studios would sometimes ask me to help them come up with parts. It was a great learning environment.
"Do it because you love it."
With Eric Thompson (Left)
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