How Low Can You Go?

If there’s one man who can be relied upon to hold his Korrekt SM58 microphone around his ankles during a radio interview it’s flame-haired, granola-voiced alleged lothario Rick Buckley from 80’s soul sensations Simples.  I last saw it happen in Aberdeen in 2005 when Rick was ‘in conversation’ and song in front of a live audience.  I had a terrible cold but was not prepared to miss a day of recording for it.   Later on, I might have wished I had.  The holding of said SM58 at waist height during a long recorded conversation about song writing precipitated the infiltration of the front row by various broadcast personnel.  All trying to catch the singer’s eye whilst manically performing the international sign for ‘put it closer to your mouth’. In the end, the producer had to go up on stage and stop the recording to ask Rick to speak into the microphone, which is a pretty embarrassing thing to have to ask a soul singer to do.  But not half as embarrassing as tripping and falling off the side of the stage backwards, which is what the poor producer did.

Today we are recording jazz with Boogie Bugle at Maid of Orleans.  We are here owing to a technical failure of the mixing desk in Bugle’s own studio, a desk which once belonged to Michael George many moons ago.  We set up for the house band plus a guest artist, for which I rig an SM58 and pop a yellow wind shield on it.  Mike rigs a cable – he chooses a yellow one too – just for Rick, he says.  Rick arrives, looks at the pop shield and says “Well, that can go for a start!” and removes it.  He then proceeds to turn his voice up really loud in his headphones and compensate by pulling right back from the mic so sadly the better take has loads of spill on it.  Oh dear.  Money might be tight, but Rick’s not right and tight on the mic.