Pop Shield

Twiddling By The Pool

Anyone who has ever accompanied me to a pub quiz will know, I can be a right pain to be with if the house sound is wrong. Which – let’s face it – it generally is.

I become distracted, distant and fidgety right up to the point where I’ve finished lurking around the end of the bar and surmised exactly how the bad mic is connected to the house’s cheap sound system and where the basic gain and EQ controls are to be found.

My ‘party trick’ is to sneak in, whilst the quiz-leader is otherwise engaged at the opposite end of the pub, to dabble in a spot of vigilante engineering. If anyone on my quiz team starts clenching their teeth, or putting their head in their hands, I remind them that this is for the greater good, and simply must be done – by whatever means necessary.

Usually it’s a case of just popping in a sneaky HPF button and backing off on the mic gain a notch. If it’s an especially lengthy pub for the quizmaster to circumnavigate, there’s probably time for me to cut some lower mids and top it up.

A few weeks ago, I was on holiday on a volcanic island. The climate was wonderful and the surroundings were beautiful. I spent day one sitting by the gorgeous warm pool oscillating between Rapture Face and Pub Quiz Face. Under the palms, languishing in a recliner, I had resorted to wrapping a beach-towel around my head. Not to dry my hair, but to lessen the ear-splitting impact of Aqua Volleyball commentary being screeched into a handheld radio mic, interspersed with lossy files of cranked up bubblegum Europop being played through an unreputably-branded PA monitor via Bluetooth.

It was clear I could no longer jeopardise my hard-earned holiday happiness in the hands of this madness. It was time to call on someone who knew what they were doing a bit more than this lot. And, as luck would have it, I had such a person about my person.

Stick ’em up you hotel staff punks because here comes the gain-lovin’ criminal…

I get to work. First off, find a table behind the speaker on the terrace to sit at. Next, proceed to analyse the situation, making a mental note of any inputs and outputs to the system.

Bingo.

Master volume maxed out
Mic gain concerningly high
Treble control maxed out
Bass control maxed out
Karaoke echo dialled in

With no reps in sight, I immediately do the honorable thing, which is to reset the tone controls to 12 o’clock. This fixes the distortion within the speaker immediately. The subconscious relief of a resort full of visitors is a palpable fantasy in my mind.

Next I turn my attention to the playback level and mic levels. I turn off the echo – which I deem unnecessarily, unless Elvis is making a comeback to replace this overexcited man running the aqua class.

Fit Guy comes over to the amp. Uh oh. I stick my nose in my novel, with one eye on him as he cranks up the bass control and the playback volume pot and walks away. Fair enough, no one was really vibing off being cajoled into remembering the moves to the Macarena at the comfortable levels I’d backed it all off to.

Next off, another rep comes to pack the pool PA away for the day, to make way for the (thankfully superior) evening entertainment rig. I watch like a hawk as she inexplicably turns the tone controls fully to the left, leaving all the other gains and masters up. She switches the unit off, recoils the power cable, packs up the mic receiver and wheels it all away.

My work is done, until tomorrow.

And so, the rest of the week I can allow myself to crack on with the busy task of doing nothing. Relaxed in the knowledge that I can spare the ears of the hotel residents any time I choose to. Which I consider amounts to a pretty good Busman’s Holiday.

January 14, 2023

Tragic Wand

“I really miss Wobegons Wand” I announce at the brunch table one Sunday.

“What’s Wobegons Wand?” says Mini Pop.

“Wobegon’s Wand was a high quality fish slice regifted to me one mornign by the late, great Jerry Wobegon. We used to use it for making pancakes” I reply. “It was far superior to this metal one for using on a non-stick pan because it was silicone covered. And it had a tapered end. Flipping marvellous. But now it is no more.”

“Where is it now?” asks Mini Pop. “Did you get rid of it? “

“We had to let it go.” I reply. “It fell apart through overuse and went off to rest in the same place that dear Jerry did.”

“What?” Says Mini Pop. “The dump?!”

September 24, 2022

The Emperor’s New Zoot Suit

Well. That was one of my favourite days in a LONG TIME! I was at Maid of Orleans, working on a new booking for me, Extended Planet Jazz. Not least, because my day involved a lot of lovely people spanning the musical genres, job roles, different areas of technical knowledge and the best of good old fashioned Corporation cross-pollination.

Takes a jazz band to unite the building.

Me and Martin both got booked onto this session, and one of us is supernumary, which is a fancy name for an extra person. We’re a bit confused. It’s probably Latin. This never happens. Me and Martin meet walking along the boulevard. He has sleepy eyes because his daughter has moved in with her flipping cat that he’s allergic to. I just never got the hang of these plane trees, at any time of year.

Despite this, on arrival we both start gambolling around the building and grinning like the keen audio gazelles we are. Before he has even gone to the toilet, Martin is saying “Oh, I’ve got a question for you!“ and we are off. With one hand helping and assisting Gilly, to the best of our abilities, and with the other, telling clarinet jokes and swapping tips and tricks. Discussing desk modes and reverb engines, jackfield patching, mic assemblies, classic drum micing techniques.

Once we’ve caught wind that our good friend Sir Roger Andrews, Head Of Everything, is in the next door studio, the circle is complete. We suck him into our jazz vortex and things really start to get going. I feel like a junior member of the world’s most excitable – and possibly most misguided – supergroup. And, since Gilly’s supposed to be at the receiving end of mentoring today (if he can get a word in edgeways) this gig is basically in aid of charity. Which makes all the self-indulgence and glee all the more acceptable, right?

I’m not sure this was the intention of the supernumary nature of the booking, but it’s a rare and fine treat. The holy grail. I even get the time to take the vintage MD box up to PK to fix. As with most things, he brown-labels it as “suspicious”. Sure enough, its rugged cable has been run over a million times via by the even more rugged PA speaker on wheels that lives right next to it.

Given we usually live in parallel universes, there’s a possibiliy that Martin doesn’t yet know about Mudstock’s mid-summer Secret Santa gifting Marv those bespoke Christopher Mulligatawny Fridge Magnets. He’s gonna love that. I tell him, but immediately become aware that Peter is signalling to us that the jazz musicians are trying to listen back. Since I have spent my career telling everyone at the back of the control room to shut up, I get it. Within the hour Martin has regaled the story straight back to Peter. You cannot keep a cat in a bag.

Martin and I turn our attention to cat chat. “My daughter’s cat keeps sitting in our fruit bowl. Driving me MAD!” he says. “No way!” I exclaim! “My cat does the exact same! Drives me MENTAL! But at the same time – god, it’s so cute!” I reply. “I’ll send you a photo!” “Yes please” says Martin. “I mean, who doesn’t love a cat photo?”

In and amongst all this we both try and give Gilly lots of support, but also some space too. We can see he that he is smashing this, but I’m not sure that he knows this. Without drawing too much attention, I point out some workflow stuff on the big mixing desk with thousands of buttons and chat about phase checks on the drum channels. Then I try and diffuse any tension this information has caused by telling him an anecdote about the jazz band’s tour bus getting stuck in traffic in the road outside the building.

“Oh! Did it?” said Gilly, on cue.

“Yes, it resulted in a massive jam.” I reply.

“Did it really?” Gilly says.

I look at him pointedly and raise my eyebrows.

“Oh!! Ahaha!! Thanks, I needed that!” I can see he’s feeling under pressure despite the cool exterior.

During the course of the day Peter mentions he has procured a mini SD card to take the audio away on, but that he is lacking a card reader. You can hear the cogs whirr as Martin and I mentally scuttle in multiple directions to our various parishes to make it so.

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, Martin, Peter, Ted, Stephan, Roger and I conjure up all kinds of treats for our guests from all corners of the vast corridors of Maid Of Orleans. Piano, Hammond organ, bass amp, guitar amp, music stands, lamps. We even pull off the rabbit in the hat trick. This is in the form of retrieving an acoustic guitar belonging to Sir Roger Andrews from Room 101.

One of the illusions that goes a little less well is when the lovely musicians gather in the control room to listen to playback. Whereupon they unanimously insist that they can hear distortion on one of two sax microphones we have put out.

Various cables and leads and mics and desk channels and speakers get swapped in and out until the only particles left in common reside within the actual instrument and the the sax player.

We do another hundred takes and overdubs but yet the band are still insisting there is an audible fault on the sax mic.

It’s only when three audio engineers and an experienced producer – who has been intently listening on lovely headphones with his eyes closed – get together behind a closed door that an alternative take on the situation starts to unravel.

“To be honest I couldn’t hear anything wrong”

“I’m telling you it’s coming from the mouthpiece of the instrument “

“That’s a relief. I couldn’t get what they were talking about either”

“I thought it was just me! I was too embarrassed to say!“

“We’ve been properly had. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes!”

We get around the issue by EQing the second sax mic to an agreed sound, and don’t mention it again. The whole situation is a little shame-inducing.

The sax player asks me about the legacy equipment remaining from Ray’s Bionic Glock Shop, and I feel compelled to help as much as possible. I tell him I will fetch the resident expert. I head off on the five mile round trip to retrieve Sir Roger Andrews, only to discover that has teleported himself and his giant rucksack out of the building.

Now, normally you can’t find Roger and he appears when you phone him. But there has been a strange fault at play today. Me and Martin have successfully located him in MOO4 all afternoon, excitably asking questions about SlowTools edit groups and soloing to large monitors. My phone rings and it’s Roger phoning to say that we won’t be able to find him, but that he has taken the key to Room 101 with him. Which, as we all know, is attached to a brass candlestick and cannot logically happen. Luckily, he’s left the door on the latch, so we return his precious acoustic guitar at the end of the session. This is done in the tradional style: Don sunglasses, open the door, hold breath, just fling it in. Slip the door catch as you go.

In return for all the day’s acts of good will, the keyboard player takes the time to properly explain the drawbars on the MOO3 Hammond organ to Peter and I, which had been bugging me for ages.

Talking of embarrassment, Peter tells us about his little incident with trying to get hold of an SD card. Peter is a polite man. As is his type, he occasionally breaks into Latin. Much like Christopher Mulliatawny did once did at a meeting when I was trying to persuade a group of people to spend some money on some much needed equipment. On that occasion, the Latin worked in my favour as no one understood what was being explained. There was a misunderstanding, followed by a conversation to clear that up, followed by an objection which was raised to something I hadn’t been proposing in the first place. Once this issue was resolved, we returned to the original point. By which time everyone was so confused and relieved that there were no further objections and the thing got passed. Yes, exactly.

Anyway. Peter finishes his SD card anecdote.

“So I went down to the Patronising Equipment Centre and said to them “I’d like an STD please.” Which is a tad awkward.”

July 22, 2022

The Future Is A Little Less Bright

I am stood on the station platform to take my train into London, en route to Maid Of Orleans studios. On these kind of days, my normal routine is to get settled on the train, put my headphones on to listen to the recording artist du jour. Then I get out my notepad and sketch out some patch lists for the session.

However, the usual routine is not to be. Today is just one of those days which is about to be forcibly derailed. One minute before the arrival of my train, the world turns upside down.

So, there I am, standing on the platform, phone in hand. I idly click on my InterFace app icon to divert myself into the world of status updates. It is then that a sequence of words jumps out of my smart phone and smacks me between the eyebrows. A post from Yoda – announcing the death of our dear friend and colleague, Nick Waterfall. I read the post, and then begin to scroll through the […] of comments amassing. A real time outpouring of disbelief and sadness.

The train doors open and I fall into a nearby seat, winded, tears of shock streaming down my face. I hurriedly check my work emails for some kind of official announcement, but there is nothing. In haste I decide to take advantage of being in a signal yes-spot to quickly call Christopher Mulligatawny to alert him. Thankfully, he picks up. He is also on the train, and has received a message from Guy. Christopher tells me he will send out a circular later – which he duly does, with sensitivity.

I turn my attention back to the InterFace app. Over and over again these tributes refer to what a gentleman Nick was, how unflappable, patient, and what a gifted and skilful engineer he was. But most of all what excellent company he had been, with a wicked and capricious sense of humour.

It’s quite a day. My intended prep goes to the dogs. Thankfully it appears to be a relatively simple session involving a DJ and rapper. As such, I get by without any detailed planning. On arrival in Studio MOO4, I feel shaky and wrong footed. This is the room where I worked on so many sessions in the past as second fiddle to Yoda, Mixmaster General, Mike, Mate, Nick Waterfall. All of whom have moved on, and somehow now I find myself increasingly entrusted to sit in that big old chair. Just how on earth did that happen.

Fast forward a month to Nick’s funeral and I’m chatting with Mike, who has now retired.

“How’s it going Pop?” he asks.

“Great!” I said. “Doing loads of stuff. Feel a bit in the deep end, mind, I have had a bit of a kick up the bottom of late. No-one to hide behind any more, everyone has left! No you, no Paul, no Yoda, no Rupert, no Quincey, no Mixmaster General, none of the Squared Off Audio lot, no Mate, no Nick. Just Jamie, Eusebio, Guy, Ian and a few others.”

“I know exactly what you mean” replies Mike. “I was like you. Quite happy ticking along as a number two, and then suddenly one day I looked around me and said to myself “CRIKEY! WHERE HAVE ALL THE OLD BLOKES GONE??!!!”

Back to Maid of Orleans today. I’m happy that Mad Dog and Guy are both in the building, meaning that I can take the time to step out and talk to them. Rather than just plough on for hours at a time, as is so often the case these days. When I say the session is ‘simple’, what I really mean is that it involves a visit to the famous valuable-equipment-repository-cum-graveyard that is Room 101. ‘Curated’ by your good friend and mine, half-man-half-rucksack Roger Andrews. He’s not here today but I’ve received a MIDI message with the various information codes and keys required to get through the various levels of the game.

The equipment is rigged. The performers perform. Sounds are recorded. The session moves towards a close to the image of me soloing the vocal channel on the mixing desk, whilst Jack pores over a set of the lyrics in French. Our goal is to try to work out which of the words are just in French, and which ones of them are in French French. If you know what I mean. With the help of the radio plugger and Bamboozle Translate, we are empowered to hack out the unwanted profanity with a virtual razor blade.

Mission accomplished, I set off on my journey home. I decide to give Mate a quick call on the way to the tube. He picks up. Mate is sad. He says he wasn’t able to get hold of Nick on the recent occasions he had tried to contact him. It’s during this conversation that I start to feel the burden of remorse, and the acuteness of Nick’s loneliness living alone during lockdown.

On the train home, I take the opportunity to catch up on the outpouring of grief-stricken accolades on various friends’ InterFace pages. I can’t seem to stop Nick’s voice from resonating around my head. I scour my mind for memories.

I was lucky enough to work with Mr Waterfall on many a session. A few of them really stick in my mind, not least the final session to take place in The Lounge at Ye Olde House before it was closed. Of course, having special staying powers, The Lounge is reincarnated as The Lounge at the top of The Mothership. During the virus, The Lounge is moved to the spacious Grand Hall, albeit as prerecorded tracks packaged up to be played out later. This approach is quite a dead one for a strand that thrives on the magic of all the elements coming together in one moment. Thankfully, when things return to new-normal, The Lounge gets back to the Top of the Mother again and is reincarnated once more. It’s like a cat, all those lives.

I think about Nick mixing in strange spaces with lashed up equipment using video monitors for stage surveillance and lengths of fibre to carry the audio. Even coping with mixing on monitors rigged behind him (rear-fields). It was on these kind of gigs (usually Roger Andrews specials) that Nick truly excelled. He would pitch up in his trade mark faded black polo shirt and faded black trousers carrying a special briefcase containing some awesome vintage compressor with settings like “Thwack’ and “Slam!”. I feel grateful for all the times he made little suggestions about EQ corrections, or would run off to the engineers’ store to borrow a case of bug microphones, which he would proceed to tape on to the target instrument with great care. No matter what the kit was, he made it sound lovely. “That’s why he was such a great engineer”, says Patrick. “Just good old-fashioned right judgement”.

Mr Waterfall was one of life’s independent thinkers and a craftsman. To work with, he was always kind and helpful and bursting with ideas about how to make something sound just a little bit better. Musical and golden-eared. Impeccably polite to all. Except for in the pub, when the other side of him would tend be showcased. A dark sense of humour, angry undercurrents and a love of telling long stories. His shoulders were the type that would rise and fall when he laughed. He was as British as can be, with lots of eccentricities.

For example, many years ago, Nick had taken the decision, that the hassle of regular hair maintenance could be efficiently dealt with in the form of an annual haircut which took place annually at Christmas. Christmas, in our part of the Corporation, of course being celebrated every year in June at Mudstock Festival. He would get a buzz cut and look all feisty and punk rock, then gradually spend the year turning into a prog rock wizard, then the cycle would repeat.

Fast forward to arrangements for Nick’s Funeral. There is some chat on Yoda’s InterSpace Group.

Friend 1: “One more question. Is there a dress code for tomorrow?”

Friend 2: “When would Nick EVER want a dress code?”

Friend 3: “Stage blacks?”

Friend 4: “Bumbags”

etc.

I think about the evening of Nick’s final day working for The Corporation. It was in the height of the first lockdown, at the point where our team Friday night online social Room meets are at their crazy best. I have a conversation via text message with Nick in which I try to get him to join the call.

“Hi Nick, here is the link to get onto our Room meeting tonight. Just click on it and join in the fun.”

“Hi Pop. I’m afraid I have no internet at home and I can’t join on my phone. Make sure you all have a laugh at my expense that my old Blokia 3310 with the original ‘Yellow’ logo on it has just realised that the future is not so bright after all!”

“Ha ha. Hang on! I just realised you can dial in to join the meeting. Call this number…”

And he did, and spent hours on the phone with a load of friends on a Room meeting, telling stories into the night. The last time many of us spoke to him.

And I think of him now, sitting quietly in the control room of heaven or hell or wherever it is he hangs out in the world beyond. The bright green gain reduction lights of his analogue outboard compressors dancing all around him. Listening intently, with his wispy hair falling onto the collar of his faded black polo shirt, his head cocked. He leans forward, takes out some lower-mids, pushes the voice of god/satan a little more into the compressor, and adds just a touch more reverb.

July 16, 2022

Yesterday

As is my crazy life, I set the alarm for 0330 this morning to head to Wobegon House for It Was Better In The Sixties!

This will be my final time working on the show, because it’s going self-op next week. Sniff. This means that instead of having an sound operator who waggles their fingers around a bit whilst mostly helping with the all-important duties of smiling at the presenter’s jokes, the producer now has to single-handedly set up the whole operation whilst following unfathomable instructions on a laminate, produce the show, and grin twice as hard at the presenter whilst simulteously managing them, being responsible for absolutely everything, oh – and checking the texts and emails. With no-one else in the building to help out in case of technical trouble. Nice.

For me and my fellow audio butlers, it’s adieu to basking in the glow of Pop’s “Lovely levels, *insert name*!” flattery. No more smiling at his antiquated gags, squinting in the harsh studio lights like an excavated mole. Or waving ‘merrily’ whilst Pop points his phone at your blinking face and tells you you are being broadcast to his fans via Interspace Live. And possibly a little less of listening over and over again to the song Blue Castanets which has been broadcast on every third episode of the show for the past thirty-nine years. Yes, Peter Piper.

Now. Whilst, I adore Pop Pickering like everyone else (and love the show obviously), I’m not so keen on the time-slot. As I remarked to Guy: “I don’t mind getting up early, but I DON’T LIKE GETTING UP YESTERDAY!”

And, of course all you nerds are going to be shouting “but the day ends at 23:59:59!!!!” True. Or at least that applies if you’re booking a Corporation minicab. Naturally, as Cinderella will confirm, the day really finishes at the stroke of midnight. But you try telling that to the local bus driver at Mudstock Festival this year, who turned up onsite a full twenty-four hours late to an early morning mass collection of staff. Because to normal people 0130 is still yesterday.

While I’m at it, what you REALLY don’t want is the misfortune of starting on a night shift at Telly Central on the Saturday night before the change from BST to GMT. In this eventuality, when you hit 0200 – at the precise moment you start to look forward to the appearance of a Killing Station breakfast on the approaching horizon – you witness the hands of all the broadcast clocks around the room whizzing around backwards like you’re in some kind of horror movie. Which you are, because you’ve got to work an extra hour, whilst the world sleeps in their delicious beds, which you won’t get paid for.

In Little Sister Radio of course, any clock change just means more bimbly temporal confusion generally resulting in it being 1600, teatime, but that’s fine because everyone and everything is lovely.

I digress, as usual. Anyway, I have fond memories of working on It Was Better In The Sixties! (back in the noughties, when it was better) with Right Honourable Reverend Quince. In the Good Old Days, the studio producer was Peter “The Acquisitor” Piper and the show was presented by Matthew Briers. In those days it was not only a more civilised start time, but prerecorded each week on Veterans Day, Tuesday. Matthew would appear and sit in a chair to the left of the cubicle mixing desk while you set up. You would record the first hour (the ‘A-side’) in two chunks, leaving a gap for the trail. Then Peter Piper would pull out a smashing array of packaged sandwiches and offer you a choice (often a split pack so one tuna mayo, one chicken salad). Then you would record the ‘B-side’ in two further chunks, and receive unnecessarily high praise for performing a few basic edits and a fade to time on ‘Shoe Stomper‘. All very nice. Anyway, I say ‘Good Old Days’ but I’ll skip over the bit where the Corporation announced Matthew dead on the news, when in fact he wasn’t. Quite. But we’ll move on.

On these bookings with Quincey, I learnt a huge amount about mono and stereo recording, how to EQ effectively and how to diagnose bad remastering. Incidentally, Reverend was spotted out last night at Cali and Suzie’s leaving do. Sadly I couldn’t be there, but these are the sacrifices you have to make when you have to get up for work YESTERDAY. Hello ladies!

And so, like a 1980’s TV pop show video transition, my mind casts back to the final moments of Quincey’s Corporation leaving do. If I’d been there last night, I would have been sure to tell him that the fault was subsequently rectified.

June 29, 2022

Support Acts

And so, I find myself back at Mudstock Festival, travelling back onto site in our traditional Sunday ‘Terrible Tees’ for the final day of mixing and recording.

As per usual, we are listening to Little Sister Radio in the hire car. “Later on,” says Nematode “we will looking ahead to you some of today’s highlights including Kneecap’s performance from the Cube Stage and Calf’s live headline set from the East Den.”

“What the hell is going on?” I heckle from the back. Are we just working our way down the lower leg, or what?

March 8, 2022

Off To A Crocky Start…

Over the past months, each of the studios used by the Nations Favourite has received an upgrade to make it more aesthetically pleasing and ready for filming. Once a mish mash of duck poo green baize walls clashing with every available colour on the selectable LED lights, it is now a black box full of about five little black robotic cameras that look like Death Fader which stare down at the hosts and guests. Understandably, some presenters have not embraced the change, any many bookings now begin with the engineer needing to either repower the confidence monitor next to the presenter, re-sync the presenter camera which has been unplugged, or reach up to the ceiling to unfold the black metal flaps around the bright floodlights.

One presenter who has embraced the visual aspect of this transformation is Waylon Wine, a technophile who arrives camera-ready for his lunchtime show having presented a live TV morning show every day and is used to being under the spotlight. Other presenters prefer to lurk in the gloom. From an engineering point of view, whilst it’s nice to have new gadgets to play with, the installation of all the new kit has pretty much entirely eroded any possibility of eye contact between the presenter and the engineer, as well as designating the worse-sounding guest microphone position as the most attractive one.

The new system readily provides content for social media, and the presenter camera also feeds the video input to Room for remote interviews. A new large screen on the wall facing the presenter is able to display the engineer’s desktop at literally the push of a button. If the engineer has performed this task correctly, and at the correct time, the presenter will be able to see their interviewee. If not, they will see bored engineer’s cat videos and their inbox showing the latest promotion on Ripples bundles. In typical fashion, I try and learn all the necessary ropes to make this new workflow run smoothly and promote the new facility to others where I can.

Eccentric journalist/cowboy Waylon Wine is a lovely man. He is tall and slim and likes to wear jeans and statement shirts and is a big fan of the raw hide comfort boots gifted to him by Dave Wrong. When animated (particularly during the year he appeared on a season of Not Strictly Dancing) he is all windmill arms and big leggy, a little like his predecessor David Sleet at 3am on election night. Except that instead of riding a horse through the desert he generally rides a bicycle through the West End. Waylon very much likes to meticulously film, edit and then spew footage from his helmet-cam onto his Twaddle feed. This allows him to freely comment on to what extent he judges that each driver who has overtaken him has adhered to, or is in contravention with, The Highway Code. In fact, Waylon is such a huge fan of travelling on two wheels that he recently bought himself a penny farthing. Somewhat of a challenge, the saddle of a penny farthing is much higher off the ground than a normal bicycle, and the wheels are ridiculously mismatched in size. In view of the fact that Waylon’s head is already a long way off the ground as it is, this renders him a good couple of meters of the ground on a precarious saddle. I’m no expert, however a ‘working from heights’ course certificate and a basic grasp of physics leads me to understand that the forces at work may accumulate sufficient kinetic energy to be potentially damaging. And indeed, a couple of weeks ago Waylon managed to knock himself whilst out setting off from his house in his jodhpurs and cycling helmet across the vast Texan plains of his constituency, promptly colliding with a tuft of grass and flying headfirst over the handlebars. Thankfully, he got away with a black eye, and some back pain, however these – plus the discomfort of his embarrassment – were perfectly counterbalanced by his glee at crowbarring the word ‘divot’ into an on-air discussion with Dave Wrong about the incident.

Today, I report for duty at Waylon’s production desk and routinely listen across the two-way with Zen Hoots to find out what is in store for the show. It’s typically a mix of serious and offbeat items, however, seems fairly serious today. The Ukrainian refugee crisis, waiting lists for NHS operations, cyber warfare and an interview with the survivor of a crocodile attack in Zambia.

As it is an in-depth feature, we have decided we will interview the crocodile attack survivor via Room, in vision. I check the outgoing camera feed, then line up the incoming and outgoing audio by selecting the relevant soundcard sources and testing the I/O by using the be-be-deep-ba-dup-boop! tones, dialling the clean feed into Room back by -8db and toggling the ‘use original sound’ in-call feature. I do an off-air test with our guest, who is sounding like she may benefit from using a headset mic, so I ask her, with a couple of minutes to go, if she has one available. She says she will go and get one and gets up…slowly… but makes it back in time. It is only later, during the interview when I discover the attack left her with a mauled lower leg, dislocated hip and badly injured foot that I begin to feel the guilt rise up into my cheeks.

Anyway, this is nothing to what happens next. Waylon starts the item, during which I sense him physically reach out and adjust the camera in front of him. I don’t see what he does, but these cameras are eminently twistable and tiltable. Manual handling generally breaks the connection with the remote control. Waylon, throws to the guest, I reveal the cameras on both sides at the last minute, which is our new customary practice, and in an instant I hear the very serious item start with an on-air announcement ‘Oh. I’m realising as I speak to you that you might be seeing me upside down.” “Yes, I am, Waylon.”

Oh god. I swiftly cut the camera to save the guest’s sanity, whilst Waylon starts fiddling and swivelling and thanks to his confidence monitor, turns it up with right way and we carry on.

One presenter who has embraced the visual aspect of this transformation is Waylon Wine, a technophile who arrives camera-ready for his lunchtime show having presented a live TV morning show every day, and is used to being under the spotlight. Other presenters prefer to lurk in the gloom. From an engineering point of view, whilst it’s nice to have new gadgets to play with, the installation of all the new kit has pretty much entirely eroded any possibility of eye contact between the presenter and the engineer, as well as designating the worse-sounding guest microphone position as the most attractive one.

The new system readily provides content for social media, and the presenter camera also feeds the video input to Whoosh!, for remote interviews. A new large screen on the wall facing the presenter is able to display the engineer’s desktop at literally the push of a button. If the engineer has performed this task correctly, and at the correct time, the presenter will be able to see their interviewee. If not, they will see bored engineer’s cat videos and their inbox showing the latest promotion on Ripples bundles. In typical fashion, I try and learn all the necessary ropes to make this new workflow run smoothly, and promote the new facility to others where I can.

Eccentric journalist/cowboy Waylon Wine is a lovely man. He is tall and slim and likes to wear jeans and statement shirts and is a big fan of the raw hide comfort boots gifted to him by Dave Wrong. When animated (particularly during the year he appeared on a season of Not Strictly Dancing) he is all windmill arms and big leggy, a little like his predecessor David Sleet at 3am on election night. Except that instead of riding a horse through the desert he generally rides a bicycle through the West End. Waylon very much likes to meticulously film, edit and then spew footage from his helmet-cam onto his Twaddle feed. This allows him to freely comment on to what extent he judges that each driver who has overtaken him has adhered to, or is in contravention with, The Highway Code. In fact Waylon is such a huge fan of travelling on two wheels that he recently bought himself a penny farthing. Somewhat of a challenge, the saddle of a penny farthing is much higher off the ground than a normal bicycle, and the wheels are ridiculously mismatched in size. In view of the fact that Waylon’s head is already a long way off the ground as it is, this renders him a good couple of meters of the ground on a precarious saddle. I’m no expert, however a ‘working from heights’ course certificate and a basic grasp of physics leads me to understand that the forces at work may accumulate sufficient kinetic energy to be potentially damaging. And indeed, a couple of weeks ago Waylon managed to knock himself whilst out setting off from his house in his jodhpurs and cycling helmet across the vast Texan plains of his constituency, promptly colliding with a tuft of grass and flying headfirst over the handlebars. Thankfully, he got away with a black eye, and some back pain, however these – plus the discomfort of his embarrassment – were perfectly counterbalanced by his glee at crowbarring the word ‘divot’ into a on-air discussion with Dave Wrong about the incident.

Today, I report for duty at Waylon’s production desk and routinely listen across the two-way with Zen Hoots to find out what is in store for the show. It’s typically a mix of serious and offbeat items, however seems fairly serious today. The Ukrainian refugee crisis, waiting lists for NHS operations, cyber warfare and an interview with the survivor of a crocodile attack in Zambia.

As it is an in-depth feature, we have decided we will interview the crocodile attack survivor via Whoosh, in vision. I check the outgoing camera feed, then line up the incoming and outgoing audio by selecting the relevant soundcard sources and testing the I/O by using the be-be-deep-ba-dup-boop! tones, dialling the clean feed into Whoosh! back by -8db and toggling the ‘use original sound’ in-call feature. I do an off-air test with our guest, who is sounding like she may benefit from using a headset mic, so I ask her, with a couple of minutes to go, if she has one available. She says she will go and get one and gets up…slowly… but makes it back in time. It is only later, during the interview when I discover the attack left her with a mauled lower leg, dislocated hip and badly injured foot that I begin to feel the guilt rise up into my cheeks.

Oh god. I swiftly cut the camera to save the guest’s sanity, whilst Waylon starts fiddlling and swivelling and thanks to his confidence monitor, turns it up with right way and we carry on.

July 20, 2021

Hard To Resist

And when I retire, I shall perhaps regale the world about my exciting days as a signed-up Corporation session engineer. And in the meantime, I shall regale you.

“‘…Oh, and did I tell you of my discovery about the 12-way XLR loom belonging to the Panic Meat Eaters’ touring keyboard rig?” I shall utter.

Perhaps there will be a small audience, who understand none of it, yet look upon me with some amusement. Much like today.

“Red before brown!” I shall exclaim. “At ONE end only! Crosspatch!!!

“…And then I discretely took the keyboard tech aside, maintaining a 2-metre distance, pointed and muttered through my face covering “wcwndoflajdkfkdjwjf!”

“…And then he said, “Oh ok, yes you’re right, that was the fault of The Noise Boys.”

“…And then I said, “It’s not a phrase I’m fond of in principle, on the grounds of gender equality, but I understand that rhymes can be very satisfying.”

July 17, 2021

#accidentalpigeon

In the name of my own amusement, not to mention a lifetime dedication to spill management, I signed off a lengthy email this morning with these departing words….

“A lot of Hoedown, Stix and Moon Studio recordings didn’t sound acoustically that great, but they had the magic of a band playing together in a room. I don’t recall Otis Brown being banished to a Celebrity Mrs & Mr isolation booth upstairs behind some cameras, but I might be wrong.

If there’s a sliver of light in the possibility of having a proper vocal booth on the studio floor, I would stick a screwdriver in that crack fast and prise open the gap. #accidentalpigeon

July 1, 2021

Bad Connection

Overheard at the Mothership today…

“Were you on the Stay Connected meeting earlier?”

“No, it was a nightmare! Couldn’t get on! Tried every device available! Seems NO-ONE could get on to the Stay Connected!”