The concept of an ensemble consisting entirely of musicians named Charles Johnson naturally extends to a recording session in which this engineer -- or maybe two different guys with the same name -- twirl the dials. There may be actually only one recording dude named Charles Johnson, since the life span of people in this end of the music business is normally much longer than that of some of the performers on the other end of the microphone. The first evidence of such a relationship in Johnson's life would be a rock group named Heavy Cruiser, which cut two albums for the Family label in the early '70s.

Geographically, this would place Johnson in Hollywood; artistically, at least one critic described the results of the sessions as "monotonous." The use of this word allows an opportunity to point out another difference, this time between Johnson's chosen profession and those in yet a different part of the music business, music critics. These people are allowed to experience and complain about the concept of monotony, while recording engineers are not allowed to recognize its existence. Whether Charles Johnson the recording engineer(s) experienced monotony in his (their) more than quarter-century of activity is not open for discussion, whether the client is a band like the rowdy Beat Farmers in the late '80s or a Celtic singer named Niamh Parsons in 2002. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi