Week Twenty- Six Emotions Through Technology!!
Pioneer Electronics have got a special historical cachet in UK car audio. For of the Japanese brands, they are the one that most people who deal with the oily bits of your car remember. Especially if they are old geezers! They have the widest mainstream brand awareness of anybody. In the days where nearly every single car had to engage with the aftermarket for its radio provision, Pioneer Electronics had a beaten up car radio stand in the reception area/trade counter of just about every garage that mattered in the land. They were the very first to do separates like home hi-fi. Anybody else old enough to remember Centrate components by Pioneer? In today’s money, it would be well above the cost of a top end OEM option like say, Mark Levinson in Lexus cars.
I recall their headquarters by the M40. I was thrilled when they moved to a purpose-built premises in Stoke Poges. There was a pond in the fully surrounded internal quadrangle of the building. A lady duck found it, nested and raised ducklings. A truly hilarious thing, and you can see videos like it all over YouTube, was that she would lead her ducklings in and out of the building through the reception area from the atrium to the front door, when the ducklings needed to see a bit of the bigger world and to eventually fledge!
Nowadays, if the Royal plane lands 100 yards short of the runway at Northolt aerodrome, then they will be landing in the highly secure, gated industrial park that Pioneer share with such people as the BBC. Slap bang on the desk of my mate Mike Haseler, who features in my latest Pioneer Electronics video content. For the grunters reading, I know I have a very recent video with Bob Griffiths at Team Impulse and that he had been at Pioneer but that was before my time. Dick Church was the first chap I dealt with, then it was a young chap who’s name eludes this middle aged fart-brain, followed by Martin Fuller, who’s son was five when he joined and eighteen when he left. He had to hire his replacement, one Girish Janday. A star so bright that he has been snapped up by Pioneer Europe and now works for the main outfit over in Beneluxelandville. G-Man adores all things Pioneer.;
Today, I was sent a link to a YouTube video starring Girish, filmed brilliantly as he drives around some annoyingly beautiful European street scenes. Mostly he reaches out, presses one corner of the unit’s screen and asks it things. The Pioneer Android Auto demonstration is very corporate and very crisp but if you actually engage with the requests he makes, our Girish comes across as a bit of a player! Using Android Auto and the cool new Pioneer double din head unit, he texts Eva. Asking what they were having for dinner. Eva replies that she is happy he is only going to take 30 minutes and that they are eating pasta tonight. The very next instant we see Girish asking for the nearest restaurant. I don’t think he’s going to eat with Eva. Poor girl.
All that aside, I was there at the very birth of voice control and even though and somewhat hilariously I can just blither at my iMac, (yes I am dictating this piece..) I do recall how you had to train the in car voice control systems to your voice back then. They were more novelties than proper functioning. If I link to that video directly from here, the soi disant ‘˜clever system’ will throw a full YouTube window into this article and it doesn’t half make my side column bulge! This is the editorial, so for one week sits pinned alongside the story ladder.
And yes the headline is the title of the video.
Although this is Britain and the weather comes and goes like there was a necromancer in charge, we have officially had the longest day and the day length now get shorter instead of longer. Which is a long winded way of saying, ‘Winders DAHHHHN!’
Meanwhile there is a ginger elephant in the room. I have been a man slightly obsessed since the announcement and have been rehearsing 30 second scripts in my head even as I sleep! So here is a question. If I make a few possible audition clips, would you help me? I need judgement and maybe guidance and advice. The closing date is the 20th of July, so I can do takes one, two, three and ten before submitting my best efforts. I keep on referencing a Will Smith movie. ID4 or Independence Day. As well as the moment our fly boy gets to try out the awesome performance of the alien space fighter, shouting, ‘I gotta get me one of these!’, It’s the quiet emotional murmur he utters as he leaves Earth’s atmosphere, saying, ‘I have been waiting for this moment my whole life’ in such a way that he kind of grabs you emotionally.
And since it is proper Telly, darlings, you don’t wish me good luck, you are supposed to tell me you hope I break a leg, to show support.
Hey I have some ideas, like Auntie Adams Automotive Agony uncle-ing: ‘I wanted to get a sports car but my girl says we need a hatchback’ My reply, ‘dump her.’ And Fat Man in a Ferrari. Will he fit? I have done the full squid getting into a bottle manoeuvre into Lamborghinis, Ferraris and McLarens. The owners always looked troubled and it’s always been funny as hell.
Still got to do my damn whole year’s accountsGAH!
‘Top Gear Theme’ Dah-nah-nah dee-dah-dah-dah DAAAHHH dee daahhhhh ‘Top Gear Theme’
Adam Rayner On Line Editor!