Just spent twelve hot, long but fascinating hours babysitting a film crew recording a fictitious radio session for a feature film. I understood one of my jobs was to help consult on authenticity, but it soon became apparent that I was taking it all far too literally… “But why would you want the groupies to be wearing headphones in the control room instead of listening via the lovely loudspeakers?” I ask the director. “Artistic licence” he replies. “Oh I get it - you want it like the Helifex adverts!” I reply, with a wink. Anyone who has ever had to put up with my technical critique of Helifex ‘radio station’ advert authenticity will know that I have truly had my come-uppance for being the nerd I am. Ended up with an acting part - wearing headphones in the cubicle no less!
‘The Blob’ has landed!
So, here - by popular demand - is a little tale about an influential US hip-hop collective called the Woo Woo Gang and a bunch of live sound engineers.
It’s my first year of working on the main stage of Mudstock Festival with some of the world’s biggest rock bands. My job is to be up on stage in constant communication with our expert balancers in the backstage sound truck to assist in the line checks. High profile, high pressure and at times a stressful and noisy environment. The sound is being mixed not only to a massive crowd, but live to radio, live to TV and so on. Teamwork amongst the stage and truck crew is key in this kind of situation. You need to get on with everyone, pick your moment carefully and get your point across concisely.
Having just got married, I had had little time to mentally prepare for the job ahead. I literally had unpacked from honeymoon, thrown some stage blacks and a leatherman in a suitcase. In the moments before leaving the house, it inexplicably became a priority to plug my name into the Woo Woo Gang Online Name Generator and see what it came up with. Aptly it seemed, ‘Wacko Pupil’. So, I then searched for my teammates’ names and shared the results with them in the car on the way down to Mudstock - much amusement all round.
On arrival, more Woo names were quickly attributed to our colleagues working on other stages. By the next day the main stage PA crew also had their own Woomonickers. It was decided that we would refer to each other solely by Woo nicknames on the talkback: Scratch, Conq, Smiley, X-Pert, Wacko and so on. Anyone not using the correct name was snubbed. This added a game element to an already pretty complicated task.
Woomania rolled on and on. Even certain hit producers visiting the truck were entered into the Woo Name Hall Of Fame. Scratchin’ Leader, Ruff Begga, Arrogant Conqueror, Thunderous Menace, Pesty Mercenary, Undiscovered Bum, Bittah Contender - the list pinned up in the truck became longer and longer.
By the time the Woo Woo Gang hit the stage, Woophoria has reached fever pitch. It’s a joy to witness the moment that two coincident yet separate worlds collide. Made funnier of course by the fact that only fifty percent of the participants are in on the joke. At the side of the stage is a band dressed in trainers and dressing gowns holding bottles of champagne. They are doing little gangster jogs in readyness to run on looking all tough and hard. Meanwhile, just metres away from the real deal is the sound of Scratch calling out to Fearless on open talkback. And Fool is sat at his laptop generating more Woo names.
Just funny.
Desk Of The Week (Day 7): FOH position at Loko.
Desk Of The Week (Day 6): Yup, it’s this beauty again!
Desk Of The Week (Day 5): Actually not a desk either but a lovely polka dot British-build Watkins amplifier, and a foxy matching carpet to boot #girlsmakemusictoo
Desk Of The Week (Day 4): Actually not a desk but a very cool baby called Jet (ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh).
Desk Of The Week (Day 3): Big Orchestra Day in Crichester
Desk Of The Week (Day 2): Assisting Yoda on this big beast again.
Desk Of The Week (Day 1): Got to mix my first session on this baby.
If there’s one radio guest that you don’t want to have to try to engage in a lengthy technical discussion from the other end of an ISDN circuit five thousand miles away it’s probably the diminutive top-heavy country songwriting legend Molly Carton. But that’s another story.
And if there’s a man on this planet who you would least rather have an “is your radio turned off / is your phone fully charged / how many bars of signal do you have / are you off hands-free / are you parked in a safe place with the windows wound up?” kind of conversation with it’s chirpy Liverpudlian Sir Pete McCarthy from 60’s pop phenomenon The Bugs who’s in the middle of the school run and a bit stressed as he’s about to go and catch an aeroplane.
It’s the morning show on Nations Favourite Radio and Sir Pete is expected to break normal protocol (a right reserved by the extra famous) by calling in on one of the control room telephones. Unbeknownst to the the host of the show, it will be a surprise interview to promote his new record. There are two minutes to go until Sir Pete is due on air and the watched phone sits there all silently. Tom’s on tenterhooks, we are collectively willing time to slow down. Oh and as if that’s not enough pressure, the Deputy Head of The Corporation is sat watching. Andy has scheduled an extra long seventies track to eek out the time but still no sign of McCar. There’s a standby guest ready to go. Tick tick. Record ends. Long chat with the sports guy, good good, and then…here comes the interview, oh damn, fade the backup girl up.
Soon after the replacement interview gets on air the telephone in question shrilly bursts into life. Tom answers, has a brief chat and then says “Sir Pete on TBU2”. I divert the call to the mixing desk, hit the pre-fade to check the line. And what do you know, it’s a bad one! Ffzz Ffzz Zpp. Och. Here goes. “Hello Pete it’s the engineer here.” “Oh Hi. Ab dib bup hep sczscz.” Pants. ”Pete, your line appears to be a little noisy. Are you hearing the program ok?”. This time the reply comes back audible. “Yes thank you, all sounding good to me”. Hallelujah. “And you’re sounding loud and clear to us now too, please stay on the line we’ll be with you any moment”. Cue Top Cat. “Now guess who’s just phoned in! It’s Sir Pete McCarthy! Hello Pete, are you there?”
No choice but fade it up and hold my breath. It’s not so easy to try and operate machinery whilst crossing your fingers. Thankfully it sounds fine. It’s getting better all the time.
One of the many billion things I love about my job is that I get to work with some of the loveliest, funniest, cleverest and most creative people around. Once a year now the music recording studio doors are cast open to a selection of aspiring songwriters, musicians and producers so that they can share in the joy and pick up some tips and it’s all streamed on the internet for the general public.
I have had a few hours of downtime today so I looked into some of these videos. And I must say they are an interesting sideways glance at how my esteemed senior colleagues view the art of recording digested for a lay perspective. Here are some of my favourite bits:-
“The 1176 is God’s own compressor…it was invented by God, to make his own voice louder.”
“Drums don’t scare me. They’re just drums. Hit them. Don’t worry about them.”
“You really have to try and understand where your artist is coming from. You’ve got to try and listen to the voices in their head. Because they’re musicians, they can’t articulate themselves with words, that’s why they play something. You’ve got to try and work out whether they’re hearing a purple guitar in their head and what shade of purple that should be. Insanity doesn’t come into it.”
“Singing drummers. Nightmare.”
“People used the [saturation] qualities of tape to change the sound. Tape distorts in a nice way so you would record it loud in order to harvest some of that distortion. But if you wanted a clean sound…. Erm, I don’t know what you would want a clean sound for! Then you would record it quiet. I mean if you were recording Paul Simon or Sting.”
“I could take all these mics down and use Shure SM57s for everything. I’d be quite happy doing that. On everything I could use £70 microphones. I’ve never tried it but I could…well I’ve only got two SM57s.”
“The idea with compression is to keep the bass instrument absolutely like a big piece of chocolate cake. You know it just doesn’t move. It’s always there.”
“I have these speakers at home. I’m lucky enough to know the guy who makes them so I get a deal. I wish I was friends with Waves. It would save me a fortune.”
“The guitar, the way he’s playing it, the way I see it, just needs a large amount of reverb. Because he’s trying to express godlike sentiments. And when God speaks to you he’s got a lot of reverb on his voice.”
Genius. Love you guys.
Followers of this blog may recall the time I helped songwriting legend Bach Bertrach out of a fix by giving him a green teabag. Or perhaps the time I broke open my new box of Yogi Cold Season herbal tea to give a bag to songwriting legend Roy Davis. No? Well never mind. Now I bring news of a brand new celebrity drinks-related anecdote. Which, as many of these stories go, is just a shameless excuse for me to drop made-up names.
In an exciting turn of events I am asked to accompany producer Adam and britpop jacket-flapper turned king of culture Calvin Jocker to an exclusive Mayfair hotel. A place often frequented by the late great crotch-grabbing white-gloved monkey lover Jackie Markson. Our mission is to record a question and answer session with veteran Canadian poet and musician Chester Lohen following playback of his new album to a theatre full of journalists and art critics. I am nervous about the audio as it is to be used on air by several big arts and news programmes such as Tomorrow and Back Row, as well as Calvin’s own Sunday Sequence.
The album is lovely, all deep and sparse and the conversation is honest and thoughtful. Calvin points out to Chester that his sad poetic imagery of a broken banjo floating in the sea is offset by the fact that it is perceived in the UK as a somewhat comic instrument. Chester takes all with grace, humour and humility. My BB+ recorder holds out too.
After the event I join Adam and Calvin for a quick drink in the private bar. It’s detox January and Calvin and I are both off alcohol. I order sparkling water, Adam beer and Calvin asks for an adventurous tonic with a few drops of angostura bitters. This is a talking point. Calvin kindly offers me a sip. I give it some careful consideration and say yes please. The only problem now is that there is a straw in the, as yet untouched, drink. This presents a social dilemma: Do I sip from the straw or ignore the straw and sip from the side of the glass but risk the eye-poke? Not without awkwardness, I opt for the marginally more hygienic third way of beverages. I plunge my own straw into the drink. Which, as you ask, tastes exactly like the word ‘interesting’. Say if “Interesting” were the name of a drink this is what it would taste like. (Note to self: avoid career change to marketing.)
So for anyone who was hoping for a rum and coca cola story I can only apologise.
Wintery sunrise at Breakfast. Light passes through the spokes of the London Eye and then through the strings of a royal Welsh harp.
Absolutely loved the juxtaposition today of a slightly testy atmosphere of a room full of grown men with cameras navigating the logistics of filming a bunch of blokes wearing cuddly classic Wimbles outfits miming their new single live on the radio, and everyone taking it all a bit seriously. A discussion breaks out about whether or not it would be acceptable for The Wimbles to muck about in shot behind a business news report. Meanwhile, forearmed with the knowledge that “The Wimbles require foldback” one question I am not expecting is:- ”Can you put even more backing track in the monitors please? The Wimbles are finding it hard to hear anything through their costumes.” Sorry, maxed out, my furry friends. Good luck studio.