Week Twenty-Two A HUGE Thank You!
The sheer delight of a large number of those who went to the Modified Nationals show this last weekend was all over the social media like a happy frosting of sweetness on a Crunchy Nut Cornflake today. From the funny, to the awfully honest from Hertz Girl Natalya Bex (by the way, a massive BIG Up to a remarkably less-cubic-feet Mr. Paul Ellis of Source Sounds in Sheffield for bringing Natalya to the world’s attention as your one-lass promo agency! See her interview in the show report article, soon.) which girl had been tempted to mess around with the Team HighDown Car Audio pickup truck with the dance pole mounted in the bed!
Happy crowds with cameras gathered as Nat Nat recalled the muscle memory of all the cavorting of yesteryear but she is paying today with aching muscles and bruised legs, as I write late on the sunniest Bank Holiday Monday in years. And I want to offer my deepest thanks to Mark Needham, Jacqueline, his partner and Nicola, Shelley and the Boys, for being such a brilliant promoter of an excellent show for over a decade now. We have seen the attendance change in flavour and volume as we go on but the sheer skill, craftsmanship, beauty and awesomeness of the cars and sound systems has never been greater. The ‘˜Old Days’ had nothing on us now! And best of all maybe was that quietly, in the cowsheds, were the awesome slices of Hotrod and Custom metal. American awesomeness and serious shiny schoolboy fantasy machines.
All of which I utterly missed, as also did I miss meeting up with Mr. Cliff Moore after a decade. Cliff was the promoter who grew the Donny show from the Custom and Hotrod thingup to the day the Big Boys bought the HUGE Doncaster Racecourse show from under him. It was he who first put me on the arena in front of up to four thousand people at a time. I DID do stage fright back then, but only in advance. These days, I get to harangue a bunch of mostly mates, as the inestimable Richie Don and his crew have disgustingly more talent than me but I still think my own brand of salacious-yet-respectful for the Barb’ competitions was all my own.
But the point is, from the first day commentating an SPL contest in a public park in Derby, an age ago, to working the main stage of the big car shows, I was of course happily chasing ego and fee. So, I have a confession to make. (which will earn a sardonic snort from my publisher, I am sure.)
‘My name is Adam Rayner and I am Media Whore. If you pay me, I will do it..’ OK, well I ain’t quite as bad as all that, but we know what the whole performer thing runs deep for some sad souls and I was raised that bit odd, by folks whom might be termed ‘˜Luvvies’. Call it the Fridge Door Gene, (as in open door, light goes on, and you perform) but I can’t help it. So, I admit I charged more to the show promoters themselves than I can to the hand-to-mouth organisers of the car audio contests, for whom I was working directly and exclusively, this year. I got my main stage ‘˜fix’ at prize giving time, complete with a self indulgent chant-at-me moment, which I so enjoy (egomaniac!) but the rest was my roots. My core. My fricking soul.
Beautiful, emotional car audio.
I sat and REALLY listened to a car adjudged to be the finest in Europe’s whole car audio community. European winner, twice two slivers as well and it can make you cry.
I felt some bass. And then, in Mark Smith’s Volvo 850, I took myself beyond 157dB to the 160dB zone and regretted it. I EXPERIENCED BASS THARN! And that will mess you up. read my article and realise what extreme audio really, truly means and be deeply, and I mean right down inside, be scared of it. I witnessed it play bass you could feel to a group of pee-their-PANTS-excited boys. I was worried for them.
For they were a group of deaf friends and used sign language. We had a short conversation in moron-signing (that was, mine were moronic) but because I have done that a lot near such cars, to ‘˜hearing’ people, when no bastard can hear ANYTHING else apart for the Team Ice member’s sound system, I had ‘˜em in fits!
(quick note here new trend for BULLET tweeters, means you must stick your fingers in your damn ears in show demo silliness, OK? No shame, like fingers and candle flames, boys and girls. Or get the pennies-a-set earplugs of foam. Ringing means you are going to need to learn sign language and then you will never weep at music again. Just for its loss.
OK it’s bank holiday and I got a half hour to move pictures and video around before Britain’s Got Talent and don’t forget, I was a sound engineer in a rehearsal studio for some time that had fifty bands a week through it and saw all the gamut from deluded to undiscovered, so get all emo ever sodding show! Chortle onwards.
Lastly and Vastly I went to JVC see the video with Adam And Adam
I’ll go get on then
Adam Rayner On Line Editor