Week Twenty-Four There’s CANS and MORE!
I am a total sop for BGT and X Factor. I worked in a rehearsal studios, well two actually, one small and one a bit fab, called ‘BlackBord’ and ‘Samurai’. The former was annoyingly spelled concatenation of HarBORD and BLACKman, the partners and the latter was a wily old record label that had Hawkwind as their main label property. At Samurai, we were noobs and had just a few bods in you might recognise but at Blackbord we were a real part of the music business.
We had four tiny Hessian-lined dungeons with low beams and cheap PA systems and a better room upstairs. It’ll take old and punky types to recall The Godfathers, although BROS were our most famous. They came to practice for Top Of The Pops dates it again. The song was of course, ‘When Will I Be Famous?’ I recall hearing it and thinking .. ‘Hmm next TuesdayBoys.’ We had wannabes of all types. A seriously disorganised crew who failed to keep the advance full payment thing and found they had lost their session got VERY angry. The dude threatened to come and kill me right there. The next poor bastard who came to the studio door had me BANGGGGG upon it, using it as a stun grenade, via its Tympanum effect (see, crazed about sound many years before writing about it!) and opening it FAST, clutching what can only be described as a ‘Universal attitude adjuster’. A scrawny drummer from another act was stood there, shaking in fear. I apologised and he was a bit incoherent, I swear he said, of my explanation for the moment, ‘You, you work!’.
I admit that I had phoned the plod who would only come AFTER an incident and can tell you that the threat came from the designer who created Duffer of Saint George. Incidentally, another, from a MUCH nicer bunch, was the bloke who created the Whistling Fish designs and sold them to M&S. Fat Cat, Thin Cat, Upside Down In The Bin Cat
Anyway, as Corbettesque as ever, I digress. The point is, we had fully FIFTY different bands in each week. From the awesomely talented and yet musically directionless, the totally, hilariously deluded. The weirdest was Sweatband who might have been called Sweatband Yah as they were from a world where you NEVER play ‘˜records’ at a ‘˜do’. Thus they did society weddings and covered all the hits like Billy Ocean! And maddest of all was that Baroness Izzy Van Randwyck was the vocalist and another was Prince Charles Equerry who’s famous last words were, ‘Go, SIR GO!’ just before the avalanche that killed him and made him into front page news, caught him.
They used to buy our unlicensed beer cans with a cheque.
So music is not recordings for me. I wanted to be Big Mick, not Mick Jagger. At least there are four in Metallica and U2, and a few Rolling Stones but all are ‘˜played’ by the one engineer. Thus, I adore those shows but never stop criticising the mix in the program feed! It also means I just empathise with the performers, even if I think they have no hope and can ignore the producer-led schpiels they have to yock up.
And I REMEMBER a bunch of pretty girls who met at an audition. I thought the chubby one was cutest. Now I cannot even tell you which one that was. For, in Cowellesque fashion, they were corralled apart from their hopeless not-as-good chums and called Little Mix.
Nowadays, the Vibe Audio people are getting into some terribly serious territories as well as car audio. If you check the PresenterBloke channel on YouTube, you will find my videos of their headphones in Las Vegas at the CES. But any minute now, this product hook-up will be public. Yep, Little Mix Headphones.
I hope they can connect with that market. We ALL use cans these days (sorry ex pro audio term) and fashion seems to lead.
Did you like the Mansory Aventador? And the Modified Nationals Show Report is better, denser content in more depth, than most places on the net about any damn thing. I admit I am quite liking it. There’s the Propper Droppers How Its Made video as well. If you haven’t checked this stuff out, then use the drop down menus at the top to explore the magazine content. There is a pretty hench body of work, there!
Well I hope you have a fabulous week and apologise for the Tuesdayness. I was working on a story that JUST MIGHT make a national paper. If it does, I will brag about it something chronic of course
Just remember, WINDOWS DAHNTUNES UP!
Adam Rayner On Line Editor