THROWBACK THURSDAY: JL AUDIO MIAMI TRIP 2014

YES, FOUR FULL YEARS AGO AND AN AWESOME EXPERIENCE. Seeing as we have Miami-esque weather right now, it seemed a good time to show you this again. Since those days, JL and Celsus have both gone from strength to strength.

Read on….

Way way back, longer than just about anyone can recall, there was this sudden upstart newcomer to the list of brands that the top class sound quality competitors were using in the USA. For you could not win without the taut sexy bass provided by JL Audio. Beyond all the other brands, even the dyed in the wool aristocracy of subwoofer culture, they were just stomping on reputations and carving their own. With pressed steel chassis subwoofers! They make cast ones now, as well….

They caused a sensation, that grew and an even bigger one when they launched their amplifiers. I was invited to the Master Brewer Motel for a press and dealer event. Now long demolished and turned into a copse of scrubby trees as a vacant lot alongside the old A40 near Uxbridge. It was a magical round building as the centre part of the motel, where I danced with my first ever girlfriend and she did cartwheels while wearing frenchies.. and she was a big girl…But I digress. The memories are so clear, from so very long ago and then merely a decade or so, when the product was being distributed by BBG. Chris Bennett alone will recall my being placed on the front row to ask cogent questions.

And NOW, I found myself on the stitch-up of a phone call… “I have some news and I want a reaction video for social, media, Adam.” It was Mark Baker, media wrangler, from Celsus, who among other things, are the UK distributor for JL Audio and have been for six years or so. It was my invitation to MIAMI! To go the legendary land of the big game fishing and the alligator. Of the whole Miami Bass culture, the world’s peak of DJ culture and the MOST beautiful people. And especially, of Miramar and nearby Hollywood, Miami (yes, like Piccadilly, Manchester!) where JL Audio and also the Bass Mekanik live.

I was palpably thrilled.

Came the day and I was so utterly spoilt, I had been sorted an extra legroom seat on both flights. Miami is a huge hub airport and the car hire infrastructure is vast. You land, clear immigration, (unless your surname just doesn’t ‘fit’ – random, my fat arse.) trek off to a tram station, that whooshes you to this atrium hub in an area with like twelve hire car companies. All have kiosks outside and it is inside a city sized multi-storey car park. As you leave the cool of the airport buildings, it is like stepping into a sweaty bathroom where someone left a HOT shower running.

Mike Keenan and Chris Bennett were the pilots of four rows of seats in monstrous great “mini vans” with powerful aircon. Ours had a six litre V-something and made really good vroom noises as well as squeaky tyre ones when Chris slapped a foot down to feel it. As after all, he IS a petrol head. Fully laden, including ME and lots of others, it really WENT. Accelerating fast enough to make the lads squeak and with brakes so good that cries of, “parachuuute!” went up now and again.

After the official doings, of which more in a moment, I had a little wander out from our hotel and was oddly expecting to be able to find BIG clothes in all the stores but was mistaken. Folks go to Miami to show off. Their muscles, their woman, their boobs, their baubles and their cars… and most of all, sheer lumpy amounts of cash. With waterfront homes, having monstrous craft moored at the end of the garden, this is still the town to rock up in to prove you made it. It remains massively Cuban influenced and yet that movie, the iconic Scarface had only one single cultural reference that I saw, in a tourist shop.

It was a black shirt that said, “The World Is Yours.”

We were there to tour the factory, learn about how they make the top end products still created in the USA and also to spend a second session in training about the best way to use the JL stuff to design any system you can possibly conceive. We had listens to demo cars and then, a tuned car was put all out of whack and the lads were given a structured method to dial it back in. I got video footage of the factory stuff selectively and covered the Stealthboxes and the fabled home units, called Gotham.

The factory…with Stealthbox manufacture, testing and custom-form shipping.

This is just router-porn and then excursion lunacy. Do bear in mind my microphone was just overloaded in the test chamber…

Now, regular readers and viewers may recall a huge long video from the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, some 32 floors up from the CES. It was largely about the new JL Marine kit. And there is this powerboat company – a Miami version of a steam about the bay… which means it has HUGE engines, can go totally airborne and you have to sign a health waiver, voiding all your insurance, to ride it! Called THRILLER MIAMI. Had I known, I could have begged for one of the tummy straps for kidney support and lumbar protection that lots of the factory folks were sporting. Anyway, I wussed out but filmed this segment about the Marine thing..

Hilariously, they pull up outside various stars’ homes and use the really bloody powerful and tremendously clear JL Marine kit to torture the likes of Ricky Martin, if he is in, with the strains of Living la Vida Loca! across the water, good and loud. Every day like Groundhog day. I would go spare….

On the Saturday, I went to see my old chum The Bass Mekanik and to see mucker DJ Billy E and his awesome and venerable, yet still bone-breaking van. And best of all, to deliver Neil’s aid pack of Sainsbury’s tea! Neil drove me the full hundred miles to Jupiter and back again, as well as popping in on his mom for a cuppa on the way back! A top bloke, he always, like all real musos, sings, taps and hums along to all the music he hears. We all do, except, Neil adds a harmony NOT in the mix, or a rhythm kinda contrapuntal. It’s bizarre, as it always improves it and it was every thing we played on the CD both ways. I think this need to hear himself is why he has not installed a powerful set up in his car. I was just so grateful for a brilliant time.

The van was awesome and utterly absurdly powerful and loud. I will let the video do the talking: The clip has rain effects like Isla Sorna when the dinos escape in Jurassic Park.

And here is a prize. The interview with Neil ‘Bass Mekanik’ Case.

Of course, none of that would have been possible without my invitation to Miramar from Paul Baker and the rest of the top blokes and lasses at Celsus. So a massive and deeply-felt thank you from myself both personally and professionally. It was amazing stuff and I look forward to seeing what these freshly enthused car audio artisans are going to do with their fresh injection of vim and vigour.

JL Audio and much more here:

http://www.celsusice.co.uk/