Music news

What came through the room.

Release notes, session write-ups and label news, written from the control room rather than rewritten from a press release.

The Neve VR60 control room at City Lights Recording Studio

22 August 2025 · Release

“Peace” comes back as a Philly funk record

Four years after the original went out to launch a global peace campaign, The GDVO released Peace (The Instant Philly Funk Mix) — the same Guy Daniel song, rebuilt on a Philadelphia funk rhythm section and running three minutes flat.

The original, cut between City Lights in Farmingdale and Chicago, featured The Chi-Lites and the late Denroy Morgan. Both had already recorded at City Lights, which is how the record came together in the first place.

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Live feed

Straight off the City Lights Facebook

The studio posts sessions, bookings and shows to Facebook constantly. This pulls those posts in live, so the News page is never empty even between label stories.

City Lights on Facebook@CityLightsRecordingStudio City Lights on YouTube@guydaniel1299

How this feed works It is Facebook’s official Page plugin, so it shows the studio’s real public posts with no extra accounts or upkeep. If a richer feed is wanted later — Facebook, Instagram and YouTube merged into one wall — that needs the Meta and YouTube APIs and a small backend. Noted for phase two.

The desk

Where the rest of this goes

Session diary

A recurring column from inside a tracking date. Cheap to produce — the cameras are already in the room — and it is exactly the “show the process” content that membership research says retains subscribers.

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Gear stories

One piece of equipment per post, and the records made on it. The strongest long-tail search play the studio has — engineers search by model number.

Needs a writer

Route 33

Local scene coverage — who is playing Monmouth County, who is recording, who just put something out. The reason a fan checks the site when there is no new release.

Needs a writer

The unglamorous question Music News was on the brief as a section, but a news section is a standing commitment, not a page. Somebody has to write it, somebody has to approve it, and it has to appear on a predictable schedule or it actively signals a dead site. Before this ships: who writes, who approves, and how often. One good post a month beats four and then silence.