Pop Shield

Throughout February and March, I spent a couple of months down at Maid Of Orleans spending lots of time with my brothers Eusabio, Mike, The Mixmaster General, Mate and Nick mixing bands day in and day out.

Eusabio likes to get the mood going with an Italian lava lamp. However, this is quarantined with corporation hazard tape before you can blink. ”MOO4 lava lamp incident ref:IN007279” reads the official report, accompanied by the attached photo and a reprimanding email from one of the maintenance engineers. ”A lava lamp that was used during a recent event has found its way into MOO4. It was plugged into a 3pin mains socket, the lamp only has a 2pin socket and would have arched or worse given someone an electric shock. I don’t know who owns it or which bloody numpty plugged it in, but can you make sure the owner takes it away before I put it in a bin.”

The bloody numpty in question of course just goes and borrows a US-UK converter from the maintenance engineers and plugs it straight back in. Vibes are back.

Meanwhile Mate tries in vain to improve the performance of New York’s worst ever band by introducing them to marmite.

We see a lot of American punk bands coming through with names like Ravaged Hell and Glory Temple and Alleged Delerium all with their unique group dynamic ranging from collectivism to despotism. This throws me into the company of almost 100% males and a lot of sore throats.

One band in particular give me and Eu a run for our money. It starts badly from the moment they arrive, broken from the offset, with their grumpy disenfranchised unhelpful roadies. As they set up their conversation focusses on the two preferred subjects of bodily functions and chicks. I can feel my soul shrinking. To be fair, Eu doesn’t fare much better with them. “Would you like to give me some time on the kick, snare and hat,” he asks politely. “Not really.” says the drum tech. Ouch. Then some headphone teething troubles start, and I run back into the studio to talk to the guitarist. I become aware that I am speaking in an accent via a set of speech frequencies that he cannot understand. I can see him filing my words under ‘background noise’ in his mind. He then ignores everything I have said and proceeds to turn all the controls on the box randomly and complain. I look down at his customised pedal board and notice to my horror that each pedal has a different anatomical photo on it, all female. I run away and hide in the cubicle.

Eusabio then nurses the lead singer through a fifty-take patch on the screaming lead vocal. No wonder the guy’s lost his voice. We get through the session. Afterwards Eusabio and I chat. ”I was a bit scared of them.” I admit. ”So was I.” he says. “Did you SEE that pedal board with all the lady bits on it!” I exclaim. “Oh, it’s just a bit of fun.” he says. “Fun? FUN? They were STAMPING on those switches!” I reply.