Pop Shield

As is my crazy life, I set the alarm for 0330 this morning to head to Wobegon House for It Was Better In The Sixties!

This will be my final time working on the show, because it’s going self-op next week. Sniff. This means that instead of having an sound operator who waggles their fingers around a bit whilst mostly helping with the all-important duties of smiling at the presenter’s jokes, the producer now has to single-handedly set up the whole operation whilst following unfathomable instructions on a laminate, produce the show, and grin twice as hard at the presenter whilst simulteously managing them, being responsible for absolutely everything, oh – and checking the texts and emails. With no-one else in the building to help out in case of technical trouble. Nice.

For me and my fellow audio butlers, it’s adieu to basking in the glow of Pop’s “Lovely levels, *insert name*!” flattery. No more smiling at his antiquated gags, squinting in the harsh studio lights like an excavated mole. Or waving ‘merrily’ whilst Pop points his phone at your blinking face and tells you you are being broadcast to his fans via Interspace Live. And possibly a little less of listening over and over again to the song Blue Castanets which has been broadcast on every third episode of the show for the past thirty-nine years. Yes, Peter Piper.

Now. Whilst, I adore Pop Pickering like everyone else (and love the show obviously), I’m not so keen on the time-slot. As I remarked to Guy: “I don’t mind getting up early, but I DON’T LIKE GETTING UP YESTERDAY!”

And, of course all you nerds are going to be shouting “but the day ends at 23:59:59!!!!” True. Or at least that applies if you’re booking a Corporation minicab. Naturally, as Cinderella will confirm, the day really finishes at the stroke of midnight. But you try telling that to the local bus driver at Mudstock Festival this year, who turned up onsite a full twenty-four hours late to an early morning mass collection of staff. Because to normal people 0130 is still yesterday.

While I’m at it, what you REALLY don’t want is the misfortune of starting on a night shift at Telly Central on the Saturday night before the change from BST to GMT. In this eventuality, when you hit 0200 – at the precise moment you start to look forward to the appearance of a Killing Station breakfast on the approaching horizon – you witness the hands of all the broadcast clocks around the room whizzing around backwards like you’re in some kind of horror movie. Which you are, because you’ve got to work an extra hour, whilst the world sleeps in their delicious beds, which you won’t get paid for.

In Little Sister Radio of course, any clock change just means more bimbly temporal confusion generally resulting in it being 1600, teatime, but that’s fine because everyone and everything is lovely.

I digress, as usual. Anyway, I have fond memories of working on It Was Better In The Sixties! (back in the noughties, when it was better) with Right Honourable Reverend Quince. In the Good Old Days, the studio producer was Peter “The Acquisitor” Piper and the show was presented by Matthew Briers. In those days it was not only a more civilised start time, but prerecorded each week on Veterans Day, Tuesday. Matthew would appear and sit in a chair to the left of the cubicle mixing desk while you set up. You would record the first hour (the ‘A-side’) in two chunks, leaving a gap for the trail. Then Peter Piper would pull out a smashing array of packaged sandwiches and offer you a choice (often a split pack so one tuna mayo, one chicken salad). Then you would record the ‘B-side’ in two further chunks, and receive unnecessarily high praise for performing a few basic edits and a fade to time on ‘Shoe Stomper‘. All very nice. Anyway, I say ‘Good Old Days’ but I’ll skip over the bit where the Corporation announced Matthew dead on the news, when in fact he wasn’t. Quite. But we’ll move on.

On these bookings with Quincey, I learnt a huge amount about mono and stereo recording, how to EQ effectively and how to diagnose bad remastering. Incidentally, Reverend was spotted out last night at Cali and Suzie’s leaving do. Sadly I couldn’t be there, but these are the sacrifices you have to make when you have to get up for work YESTERDAY. Hello ladies!

And so, like a 1980’s TV pop show video transition, my mind casts back to the final moments of Quincey’s Corporation leaving do. If I’d been there last night, I would have been sure to tell him that the fault was subsequently rectified.

We had the lovely Tom Burgers in from The Shysters today on Little Sister Radio. He is an utter joy of a man. I’ve bumped into him several times over the years. He’s the kind of guy who immediately feels like a brother.

One year, I had a lovely – if chaotic – birthday when The Shysters came in with rather too much gear and did a loud old session for Barry Bang. Another time, in 2010, I worked with The Shysters at Telly Central when we beamed Tom’s smashing bowl cut to Japan in super-hi definition. This was a pioneering 16x HD quality experimental broadcast which was a precursor for the giant Olympic viewing screens. I cannot think of a better haircut to be shown off by 7680×4320 pixels.

This morning, Tom’s new supergroup of a band are performing songs from his new album for Sunderland’s finest, Laurel La Hardy. I go down to reception and meet everyone. “Saw your thing on InterFace about the thing on Twaddle about falling off your bike into a hedge!”, I say to Tom. “Hilarious!” “Yes, it just took off”, he smiles. “It was true too!” We then start chatting about the touching McFox guy’s wedding speech video song and how that went viral overnight. Then it’s time to head upstairs to Sister Towers and get set up, during which time Toby produces an overripe banana. I discover that Tom and I share a preference for slightly under ripe bananas. As if that isn’t abstract enough, somehow, in the lull before going on air I get stuck into a conversation with Shysters guitarist Colin Marks about how often the sun rises and sun sets at the North Pole. In case you were wondering, here is the answer….

The sun at the North Pole is continuously above the horizon during the summer and continuously below the horizon during the winter. Sunrise is just before the March equinox (around March 19); the sun then takes three months to reach its highest point of near 23½° elevation at the summer solstice (around June 21), after which time it begins to sink, reaching sunset just after the September equinox (around September 24). When the sun is visible in the polar sky, it appears to move in a horizontal circle above the horizon. This circle gradually rises from near the horizon just after the vernal equinox to its maximum elevation (in degrees) above the horizon at summer solstice and then sinks back toward the horizon before sinking below it at the autumnal equinox.

Meanwhile, back on the fourth floor, it’s time to go on air. I go around and ask everyone to turn off their phones. Tom is a Twaddle King and so it is not without some jitteriness that he presses and holds the top button to shut it down.

It’s a charming session, complete with a trio of violins. The only mishap being that someone stands on the switch of the 4-way strip powering the strings headphones amp just before going on air cutting their monitoring feed. Maso Mercury tiptoes in mid-interview to tell us about it, but I misattribute the reason to a different feed issue and the players end up having no option to work acoustically. It doesn’t matter, they play absolutely beautifully anyway and wise old wizard Shane from Alpacas At Altitude guide them safely through it on his nylon string.

Once the transmission is over, we all say our thanks and goodbyes and Tom, ever humble, gathers up all the remaining bags, coats and instrument cases before leaving the room. I can testify to anyone who has ever doubted it, if anyone indeed has, that the man does his fair share of roadie-ing. I have a photo to prove it.

Totes amazeballs, as they say.

There is a little postscript to this story which I picked up on from Tom’s Twaddle feed. Outside on the street, as they leave, a girl approaches him and asks if it would be OK to have a photo. “Of course!” he replies. “Great!” she says, and hands him her camera as she sidles up to jacket-flapper Calvin Jocker. Tom takes the photo. “Thanks Mister!” she says.