Pop Shield

You may remember, that I have a recurrent nightmare where I am trying to record to or playback from a non-compliant (and frequently edible) format such as ‘sandwich’ or ‘marmite’.

Today I awoke from an anxiety dream. I had been sent to Germany on an aeroplane to mix a live concert by the space rockers “Choose”.  My colleagues Runabout and G have decided we are going to record on a new state of the art multi-track format However they are a bit vague about it since they have decided to focus their efforts on hacking into the local TV network and hijacking it with World Cup footage. As far as I can work out, the ground-breaking new format looks pretty much like a jar of crane flies.

During the load out from the aeroplane hold, the lid of the format jar comes undone and several flies escape.  I try to catch them and stuff them back in.

We arrive at the venue just in time to witness on giant screens that the audience are already in place. The artist is coming out onto the stage. We start to try and record the concert without any time to rig or test the gear.

In a panic, I open the drawer of the ‘crane fly recorder’ to load up a fly. But I discover our outside broadcast engineer has already placed one in there.  Out it flits.  I quickly but carefully catch it and stuff the spindly aphid back in the drawer. But its wings are too big for the aperture and now I’m risking killing the fly. The opinion seems to be that you have to multitrack onto a live fly (-otherwise it’s a dead format, right?)

Just then, Mike phones. He suggests we ignore all contractual commitments and mix straight to stereo. “Tell the record company ‘this is what the engineer had intended’” he says. Then I wake up in a sweat.  Argh!