Pop Shield

Well. That was one of my favourite days in a LONG TIME! I was at Maid of Orleans, working on a new booking for me, Extended Planet Jazz. Not least, because my day involved a lot of lovely people spanning the musical genres, job roles, different areas of technical knowledge and the best of good old fashioned Corporation cross-pollination.

Takes a jazz band to unite the building.

Me and Martin both got booked onto this session, and one of us is supernumary, which is a fancy name for an extra person. We’re a bit confused. It’s probably Latin. This never happens. Me and Martin meet walking along the boulevard. He has sleepy eyes because his daughter has moved in with her flipping cat that he’s allergic to. I just never got the hang of these plane trees, at any time of year.

Despite this, on arrival we both start gambolling around the building and grinning like the keen audio gazelles we are. Before he has even gone to the toilet, Martin is saying “Oh, I’ve got a question for you!“ and we are off. With one hand helping and assisting Gilly, to the best of our abilities, and with the other, telling clarinet jokes and swapping tips and tricks. Discussing desk modes and reverb engines, jackfield patching, mic assemblies, classic drum micing techniques.

Once we’ve caught wind that our good friend Sir Roger Andrews, Head Of Everything, is in the next door studio, the circle is complete. We suck him into our jazz vortex and things really start to get going. I feel like a junior member of the world’s most excitable – and possibly most misguided – supergroup. And, since Gilly’s supposed to be at the receiving end of mentoring today (if he can get a word in edgeways) this gig is basically in aid of charity. Which makes all the self-indulgence and glee all the more acceptable, right?

I’m not sure this was the intention of the supernumary nature of the booking, but it’s a rare and fine treat. The holy grail. I even get the time to take the vintage MD box up to PK to fix. As with most things, he brown-labels it as “suspicious”. Sure enough, its rugged cable has been run over a million times via by the even more rugged PA speaker on wheels that lives right next to it.

Given we usually live in parallel universes, there’s a possibiliy that Martin doesn’t yet know about Mudstock’s mid-summer Secret Santa gifting Marv those bespoke Christopher Mulligatawny Fridge Magnets. He’s gonna love that. I tell him, but immediately become aware that Peter is signalling to us that the jazz musicians are trying to listen back. Since I have spent my career telling everyone at the back of the control room to shut up, I get it. Within the hour Martin has regaled the story straight back to Peter. You cannot keep a cat in a bag.

Martin and I turn our attention to cat chat. “My daughter’s cat keeps sitting in our fruit bowl. Driving me MAD!” he says. “No way!” I exclaim! “My cat does the exact same! Drives me MENTAL! But at the same time – god, it’s so cute!” I reply. “I’ll send you a photo!” “Yes please” says Martin. “I mean, who doesn’t love a cat photo?”

In and amongst all this we both try and give Gilly lots of support, but also some space too. We can see he that he is smashing this, but I’m not sure that he knows this. Without drawing too much attention, I point out some workflow stuff on the big mixing desk with thousands of buttons and chat about phase checks on the drum channels. Then I try and diffuse any tension this information has caused by telling him an anecdote about the jazz band’s tour bus getting stuck in traffic in the road outside the building.

“Oh! Did it?” said Gilly, on cue.

“Yes, it resulted in a massive jam.” I reply.

“Did it really?” Gilly says.

I look at him pointedly and raise my eyebrows.

“Oh!! Ahaha!! Thanks, I needed that!” I can see he’s feeling under pressure despite the cool exterior.

During the course of the day Peter mentions he has procured a mini SD card to take the audio away on, but that he is lacking a card reader. You can hear the cogs whirr as Martin and I mentally scuttle in multiple directions to our various parishes to make it so.

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, Martin, Peter, Ted, Stephan, Roger and I conjure up all kinds of treats for our guests from all corners of the vast corridors of Maid Of Orleans. Piano, Hammond organ, bass amp, guitar amp, music stands, lamps. We even pull off the rabbit in the hat trick. This is in the form of retrieving an acoustic guitar belonging to Sir Roger Andrews from Room 101.

One of the illusions that goes a little less well is when the lovely musicians gather in the control room to listen to playback. Whereupon they unanimously insist that they can hear distortion on one of two sax microphones we have put out.

Various cables and leads and mics and desk channels and speakers get swapped in and out until the only particles left in common reside within the actual instrument and the the sax player.

We do another hundred takes and overdubs but yet the band are still insisting there is an audible fault on the sax mic.

It’s only when three audio engineers and an experienced producer – who has been intently listening on lovely headphones with his eyes closed – get together behind a closed door that an alternative take on the situation starts to unravel.

“To be honest I couldn’t hear anything wrong”

“I’m telling you it’s coming from the mouthpiece of the instrument “

“That’s a relief. I couldn’t get what they were talking about either”

“I thought it was just me! I was too embarrassed to say!“

“We’ve been properly had. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes!”

We get around the issue by EQing the second sax mic to an agreed sound, and don’t mention it again. The whole situation is a little shame-inducing.

The sax player asks me about the legacy equipment remaining from Ray’s Bionic Glock Shop, and I feel compelled to help as much as possible. I tell him I will fetch the resident expert. I head off on the five mile round trip to retrieve Sir Roger Andrews, only to discover that has teleported himself and his giant rucksack out of the building.

Now, normally you can’t find Roger and he appears when you phone him. But there has been a strange fault at play today. Me and Martin have successfully located him in MOO4 all afternoon, excitably asking questions about SlowTools edit groups and soloing to large monitors. My phone rings and it’s Roger phoning to say that we won’t be able to find him, but that he has taken the key to Room 101 with him. Which, as we all know, is attached to a brass candlestick and cannot logically happen. Luckily, he’s left the door on the latch, so we return his precious acoustic guitar at the end of the session. This is done in the tradional style: Don sunglasses, open the door, hold breath, just fling it in. Slip the door catch as you go.

In return for all the day’s acts of good will, the keyboard player takes the time to properly explain the drawbars on the MOO3 Hammond organ to Peter and I, which had been bugging me for ages.

Talking of embarrassment, Peter tells us about his little incident with trying to get hold of an SD card. Peter is a polite man. As is his type, he occasionally breaks into Latin. Much like Christopher Mulliatawny did once did at a meeting when I was trying to persuade a group of people to spend some money on some much needed equipment. On that occasion, the Latin worked in my favour as no one understood what was being explained. There was a misunderstanding, followed by a conversation to clear that up, followed by an objection which was raised to something I hadn’t been proposing in the first place. Once this issue was resolved, we returned to the original point. By which time everyone was so confused and relieved that there were no further objections and the thing got passed. Yes, exactly.

Anyway. Peter finishes his SD card anecdote.

“So I went down to the Patronising Equipment Centre and said to them “I’d like an STD please.” Which is a tad awkward.”