ICEMAN Hits 46!
A bit like Buddy Holly and Kurt Cobain, it is hard to imagine the coolest people growing old. However when they remain in arrested development or rather refuse to grow old gracefully, we love ’em even more. That’s people like Billy Connolly, Cliff, every surviving Rolling Stone, and of course Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder, for just yesterday, the man turned Forty-Six! Yes, an absurd number for one so cool. However in an hilariously confused misunderstanding and probably due to the bass adding four years to your age, I had him pegged older and only wrote this as I thought he had hit a bigger milestone. However, rather than rubbing it out, I leave it live as every word is meant!
Iceman, the Legend was born at a thing called The Chelsea Cruise and he became known for his horribly louder-than-anyone-else-in-the-whole-UK Ford Cortina, which he still resolutely owns, having kept it through all the years when it became less and less cool. Now, of course, it is a legend itself and he still has it.
I met Ian at the Wembley Sound Offs when IASCA hated him for he was seen simply as a trophy thief. Since all the lads would be happy and excited at the SPL thing, until ICE showed up and they all knew it was just a question of who was going to take second place.
Self taught and now at least degree level on the physics of bass and making enclosures, Ian doesn’t even know that he could consult for public address firms designing P.A. enclosures for bass but he could! What he does not know about bass from small spaces and the outer edges of extreme audio is negligible, yet he continually strives to learn more and never ever acts like he thinks he knows it all. Even when he has to listen to utter claptrap which happens.
A totally cool dude on camera, who has done more and better TV than I have, just for being so effing cool, I once had to go along with him to a shoot for the Gadget Show as his ‘wrangler’ as North One TV were basically scared of him. Jason Bradbury was utterly unbothered until Ian hit him with some sub 30Hz throb. He leapt from the car and said, ‘I CAN FEEL IT IN MY LOINS!’
Always the consummate showman, a thing that I have never ever ever seen anyone do better, Ian considers being at a show as a ‘˜thing’ and doesn’t just set it going with the music he likes a tragic waste in the case of the Ground Zero Shogun that only played hairy arsed rock but rather cool stuff that all sorts enjoy, along with clips on the multiple screens of stuff like Stewie from Family Guy going on about ‘Cool WHIPP!’ yet so absurdly loud that it hurts which is so apposite and bonkers as to be hilarious.
And for many years, he happily did his thing and yet was not terribly well known, it being the pre-Internet Era.
Then, yours truly helped ruin his life.
Yes, I got him £65,000 retails-worth of stuff for his Astra van. It took two years to install. Lots and LOTS of screens as West Coast Customs brand from Directed Audio, who also did Orion, was being run down, so they dumped a dozen on him. The thing was, that it also cost him a long term relationship that broke his heart and to this day, reading this, well by this point the big donk will be filling, up, so sorry mate. I just want folks to know that our man is a lifer through to his middle and could no more give this stuff up than he could breathing.
Hugely respected in the States, I swear upon my soul that while I was showing off furiously to Steve Meade at the Rockford Fosgate do at the Hard Rock in Vegas at CES time, my standing clearly was ramped up when I claimed to be a best buddy of his.
Yet as I write, it is with the knowledge that I let him down a bit last night as the lad was partying in my home town and yet didn’t nag or chide that I failed to show up under the circumstances. I didn’t want to be downer.
So a huge Happy Birthday from Talk Audio and bass heads all over the world, mate.
And here is the feature those images come from: Gallery