Pop Shield

So it’s July, the hollyhocks are high.  Fat pigeons can scarcely stay up in the sky.  I’m up with the lark and down to the poshest hotel in town to a press junket with A-List American film star Douglas Michael.  First off, collect a peli-case of gear from The Mothership.  It’s big and black and got rackety wheels.  It contains microphones, headphones, cabling, power supplies, a record machine and a portable ISDN unit.

Next off go and see the Dave Wrong production crew.  Due to staff sickness I am to be accompanied by their production apprentice, PA.  I have time in hand so I test absolutely everything with the exception of dialling out on the ISDN kit.  I say to Paul ‘it’s all working fine and it should be straightforward but if anything is going to go wrong it will be dialling out of the hotel’.  I’ve heard on the grapevine that there is a fairly low success rate in this particular hotel.  I call London Control and confirm the line details.

PA and I head down to the underground to Embankment.  We reach the hotel with plenty of time in hand.  I eschew the revolving door and opt for a side door into a lobby where a grand piano stands. In the absence of a reception desk, we start to walk through the lounge where all around there are tables of wine glasses filled with cut flowers.  The globe chandelier light is the size of a cow.  I drag the deafening pelicase across the marble floor and onto the sponge carpet where we are directed by a man in a waistcoat to a lift.  He instructs us to get out at the second floor and the doors close.  Shortly afterwards they open on the other side of the lift.  We walk out and are immediately redirected back into the lift by the same man.  Second time in the lift we are joined by another corporation sound engineer with a matching pelicase riding to the second floor. 

We exit the lift and walk towards another man who leads us along a suddenly busy corridor, past umpteen doors of press suites. TV cameras are setting up, and lots of people are sitting around on laptops.  We eventually reach a press office where we meet a lady called Laura who walks us all the way back along several corridors.  She scowls at the noisy case.  “Interviews are taking place in here” she says, stating the bleeding obvious.

We arrive at a room. Laura looks in and says “Do you have someone else with you?”  My paranoia ramps up and I wonder if we really look that incompetent.  Then I realise our Corporation lift-fellow is already setting up.  “You’re in the wrong room” Laura tells him.  He immediately packs up and I hand him a portable recorder operational manual he had left behind.  “Might be needing that…” I say.  Laura tells us we will be joined by a hotel IT specialist soon. 

The room is simply ridiculous.  The pile carpet is nearly a trampoline. There is a velvet chaise longue and the bed has been removed to give extra space, leaving just a floating padded headboard. There’s a marble bathroom with a double sink with white pressed flannels set out in an array.   The toilet has a double decker toilet roll holder: the bottom roll sealed by some kind of insignia sticker and the top one has the little origami triangle thing going on. 

I get to setting up the kit, being steady and meticulous about everything.  I can feel I am overly fussing over precisely how it is all set out, how the cables are laid, etc.  It has more than overtones of my Ryan Berry experience.  I am feeling confident but won’t be happy until the line is established. 

Just as I have finished setting up and testing the equipment, the IT man appears to show us to our ISDN point.  I plug in and test and hear an error message. The man scratches his head and replugs us to another point.  I retest.  No connection. I’ll be back in a moment he says and disappears, presumably to a patch point elsewhere in the hotel, for about ten minutes.  In the meantime I call London Control to confirm I am trying to dial in and to triple-check all the details.

The man reappears and says try again.  I try again.  Error message.  I am on the line to London Control and for good measure obtain an alternative number from then. I try it, no improvement.  To spare you the details this little game of patch-test roulette goes on for some time, with our IT friend disappearing and coming back.  Eventually he gets his IT friend to stay with us on the phone while he stays in the apparatus room playing patch bay battleships. We are in phone contact with the show and we are all preparing to go over to plan B – telephone conversation with local recordings, otherwise known as simul-rec or double-ender.  

As time is up, the IT guy scuttles off just as Douglas Michael is brought into the room.  Plan B it is then. “Ten minutes” says a lady, then leaves Douglas with us.  He is dressed in a gentlemanly summer casual way – linen shirt and slacks.  He puts his glasses and phone on the side bureau.  He sits down in a leather chair with his legs disarmingly astride. We introduce ourselves “Hello I’m Pop from the Corporation recording for Dave Wrong on Nations Favourite”  “Pap” he says? “Pop.” I project. “Unfortunately we have not been able to connect on the ISDN so we’ll do it on the phone and record it locally if that’s ok I say”.  “Sure”  he says.  We wait for the phone to ring, a few seconds which feel like an eternity.  PA answers her phone while I confirm with Douglas that he is happy to hold the phone to one ear whilst holding the mic up to his mouth.  He seems ok with this, I’m sure he’s done it a million times.  I put on my headphones, put the device into record, adjust his mic proximity, knock back the gain, and sit back. 

No further hitches.  The interview wraps in good time before any hassling is required and Douglas shakes our hands, stands up and walks out. Me and PA look at each other with a look that said “what just happened there?”  The IT men are nowhere to be seen.  I play back the start of the recording and it is there.  “Phew.  Let’s get this packed up and get out of here”.  I say.  I call London Control to thank them and before leaving I quickly use the room toilet, making sure I do the ridiculous triangle back again afterwards and don’t touch any of the towels.  I do however wash my hands in the sink and notice the soap is called ‘Inner Calm’.  How apt.

As we walk back through the lobby, PA and I pause to take a quick photograph.  Suddenly a woman apparitions.  “Can I help you?” she says.  “Yes please, the exit”  I reply.  She walks us for a few paces to a set of four of five steps and informs us that someone will help us down the steps.  Never mind I’ve been lugging it up and down the underground up to this point. She asks us if we have had a nice stay.  It’s akin to saying ‘nice suitcase’. A porter in a waistcoat then appears and carries the case down the steps and enquires if we are expecting a car. “Just walking to the tube” we say. He walks us another few paces and hands us over to his two colleagues in suits and top hats who swing open a massive double door for us out onto the street. Another world.  

On the tube we are quiet and drained.  I scour the ISDN manual for error message information. We get back to the Nations Favourite studios, whereupon I plug the record machine into a computer and it fails to recognise it.  Luckily Nick is super helpful and has a card reader to hand.  We try several different options before realising the card format is corrupted in some way. Eventually, after a scrabble for adaptors, we are able to dub the interview out through the line output in real time.  Nick pieces it together.  “Sounds lovely “ he says.  

I return the kit, feed back the various issues to the people who need to know.  Then I head off to Maid Of Orleans to start setting up for a live evening session with 1960’s art school / British blues explosion Stoning Rolls also-rans, The Beautiful People.  It goes pretty well.  By the end of the day I’m all beat.