Modified Nationals Show 2014

Now in year eleven, the Modified Nationals Show prefers to simply be called ‘˜The Nationals’ as they are also veering towards car clubs that are more about joy of possession of well fettled cars by established tuners and OEM stuff rather than pure ‘˜Modified’. Also, the absolute original concept has been re-wrapped into the show as the Custom and HotRod show. This was how the original Doncaster show promoter grew the whole thing. And deliciously, as this is a real fashion-led side of the car world always has been there were some real Forties fans there. Part of the new wave of beardie fashions, (Oh how my old mum would have loved it and it never happened in recent years) there were some couples at the show with the Nouveau Forties look of the hair, the clothes and increasingly, the male sailors’ style ink of sexy ladies and bright colourful fish and flowers.
I did of course, snap these folks when I saw them

But the show was of course about the sounds for me. And this year, in a bid to be a bit constructive, I thought I would make a bit of instructional telly as well as the looking-on-and-marvelling stuff! To which end, I spent some proper time with the Propper Droppers. The video is a simple How Its Made for the PD contest format:

It was so cool to see our old chum Mic B performing on the main stage, as I didn’t! His beatboxing skills were applauded:

The first day was wet and everybody was calling the show The Modded Wets, as we have had so many crap years in recent memory, the name looked likely to stick. Yet on Sunday, we were smiled upon and I got my go at presenting the EMMA sound off trophies.
The new paint job on the Battle Wagon was dead military and looked kinda cool with all the ruddy mud we ended up having to work amongst. Seen here with Andrew Ackerley and Leanne, who is now a test rig operator and thus SPL judge by use of the meter, as well as competing. As this is objective, metered, it’s not an issue.

There were some superb cars there, with the bonkers JL Audio BMW all in white getting my adjudged win for the Dodo Juice Detailing-sponsored prize for Best ICE. It was easyanyone would have said IT was the one to take that prize. It was not about SQ, SPL, SQL or even install but rather a whole show car thing. Hence why they asked me, rather than a ‘˜proper’ judge to tell them apart.

As ever, the show attracts the extrovert:

I stayed at the Days Inn on the A1, which had a garden full of baby bunnies. I make reference in Voice Over, to a term coined by Douglas Adams from Watership Down in this shameless ‘No-Excuse-It’s-Just-CUTE’ clip.

And yet for me, since the SQ cars kinda stay sealed and mud free until judging, the SPL nutters tend to amuse more and I love the atmosphere of happy bassness at these events.

As part of the ongoing Bass Girl Leanne series of videos, this is the third one. In which our heroine is now EMMA staff as well as having more kit and her first system disaster!

And here is the video of all sorts of stuff..

In fact, I shot a pretty massive slew of shots at this year’s show and since the power of computing is up all around, I chose to put some real labour in and video and snap a lot more than in previous years. Thus, you can make a cup of tea, take yer lappy or slappy with to the loo and check out this lot. Over a hundred shots and mostly given a tiny crop or a lighten to see better indoors:
link
A HUGE Big Up to those who had the balls to take part and a massive thanks to the promoters and especially Andrew Ackerley of EMMA, without whom I simply would NOT be involved, as well as Darren Millard of dB Drag (we are going to do a How It’s Made video for UK dB Drag, too.) and of course the awesome Marcos Barnes of Propper Droppers, one of the maddest bass contest formats ever devised.
EMMAlinkPropper DropperslinkdB Drag Racinglink