RE: Name

A man named Nick Caporaso (friend of the Block) had this sound studio located oddly enough in the meat packing district. The real selling point for Nick to locate his new operation in the meat packing district was cheap rent. In looking he found this sizeable space with a few rooms for mixing and performing music for recording purposes. It seemed like not a bad idea... except this one detail. It not only was in the meat-packing district, but also in a meat-packing building.

Walking up to the door of this “professional building” was a huge metallic door locked only by a huge pad-lock. Like a dungeon. Inside was the stench of death and coagulated blood, which by the way was not at all subtle. The floor of the hall leading to the office was padded with sheets of cardboard that was also in turn padded with grease and fat from the footprints of the meat-packing men who march through the corridors during the day. In terms of running a recording studio it was actually not so bad inside the space that Nick had created with all his equipment and know-how. However, the entrace and horror show of arriving at this location was hard to get by.

As Nick was settling in with this operation, Mike and I were making the effort to name our company and really having not much luck. We came up with a few and had thought that RE: Design was where it was at. You know... Romer/Essl design... also meaning “in reguards to” design.

Sort of dumb?

As it turned out there were already four or five companies with the same name that would definitely be considered “the competition”. Sadly, we started the process all over again.

I had also been trying to put some kind of positive spin on the horrible location of my friend’s recording studio. I thought it would be smart to make its weakness its strong point. Yes, it was nasty and grimy... but so was rock’n’roll! I thought he should push the meat-packing image in his company’s identity and even name the studio accordingly. He was already sold on Giant Jet Labs (largely due to his band’s name being Giant Jet Ball) so my efforts were fruitless.

During a one of these sessions where I tried to convince him to change the studio name I threw out a few meat-packing / studio names that would seem appropriate. There was “Meat Sounds Recording Studio”, “Prime Cuts” and “The Chopping Block”. When I said it Mike’s eyes perked up and he remarked, “That’s good”. I thought it was pretty clever and fitting for a recording studio too. Mike said, “Yes, but maybe we should take that”.

The idea went away for a little while and we didn’t take it seriously until we actually thought we needed to make the final decision. That was when Mike asked why we shouldn’t use “The Chopping Block”. I didn’t have an answer and all of a sudden we were in love with the idea and fell deeper in love once the logo was forged.