Pop Shield

It’s 1915 on a Wednesday evening and I close the faders on the Nations Favourite and scamper over to The Mothership. “You’re in the wrong building!” jests Colin as I present my pass at reception. “So are you!” comes my reply. I head to 70A where I have a seemingly innocuous booking on ABC1 which involves indenting speech miss for a round table discussion programmed Conundrum.

It is ages since I’ve done this one and it feels comfy yet formal. I chat with Philip about his trip to China and about the auto recorder. We test miss and feeds to the headphones and set up the repeat recording and plug in Mark’s ancient TV earpiece thing. In the control room, I notice the studio talkback button looks faulty and phone the maintenance engineers to ask two of them to come and fix it later. Journalist, newsreader and presenter Mark Albike comes in and brandishes crisps at me, this is his normal Wednesday evening routine. Off mic/camera, come to think of it, I have never once seen this man without a bag of crisps in his hands.

It is only once Mark is settled in his seat with one minute to go to the live trail that he comments that he can hear everything happening in the cubicle in his headpiece. Not good. We hush the gathered troops for the trail. Once that’s past, we have fifteen minutes until on air to set about fixing the talkback. We reset the desk with no effect – beyond having to dial in a shed load of mic settings again. I call the maintenance engineers back and Andy and his colleague appears. He stabs at the talkback key with a screwdriver to no avail. I unplug the talkback mic and Phillip wiggles the loudspeaker DIM knob. The talkback resets itself. Phew. As soon as the programme is safely on air, I trot off into the winter darkness.

There is a relaxed office space sandwiched in-between the transmission studios within the basement of soon-to-be-defunct Ye Olde House which doubles as a pop-up pop studio.

This is the place that boy bands, pop princesses, acoustic guitarists and shaky egg shakers unite to perform stripped-down versions of their top hits at levels slightly louder than the printer. Accompanied, if you’re unlucky, by the dibberty-dib of a mobile that’s been left on.

I have enduring memories of coming here as a trainee alone in the dead of night and excitedly/nervously playing out CDRs of DJ Reel’s show from the wrong studio with little training and no instructions. On the flipside, no one ever minded or criticised. Confused and sleepy, you were eventually rewarded by the last-minute smiling faces of the early breakfast crew.

Tonight, Nick Waterfall and I head down to this infamous spot to record a late-night live session for the last time before doors close. Our challenge, if we are obliged to accept: a lot of the equipment has already moved to the shiny new space in The Mothership. Speakers gone, PPMs gone, outboard gone…

Nevertheless, there is still a mixing desk, mics and XLR cables, a quirky Japanese reverb unit and some headphones. It’s business time! Of sorts. Ipso Facto meets Kryptic Factor.

Nick brings a rack of some of his favoured compressors. This is a GOOD THING as the artist in question is capable of delivering a dynamic range this radio station has arguably never experienced before. A dynamic range that would put Radio Tea to shame! Pre-network processing, anyway.

Monitoring is conveniently via another mixing desk 180° behind us. Nick spends half the soundcheck spinning around like a whirling dervish between front and back while I uselessly call out meter readings: “Peaking five and a half!”. He balances the music on a combination of headphones and the fixed speakers behind him, which I waste no time in christening ‘The Rearfields’.

And so, we come off air at the end of the session. Close the faders, finalise the CDs, coil the cables, pack away, put the mixer to bed. With that, The Lounge Is Dead. Long Live The Lounge!

How odd that one of the potentially best recordings of the year should prove to be, well, so dysfunctional.  Families on the road can be, I guess.

There are a few things necessary to secure a well-received live concert and broadcast which the industry take for granted.  We do things in a certain way for a reason and when convention is broken it can almost seem to be a lesson in how not to go about things.  For example:-

Do not randomly switch between mic and line levels on your handheld RF mics after each has been tested by three systems.

If you want a three-hour soundcheck to pay off, put the monitor engineer behind the console and not behind the lead singer’s mic.

Avoid holding two microphone capsules together and announcing to all sound professionals in the venue that you are doing an important check for phase correlation.

Probably best not go mental about the lack of salad dressing.

Think twice before throwing the freelance patch monkey onto the FOH desk five minutes after the gig has started having banned him from the board during s/check.

Perhaps best for the band not to collude with the assembled audience in the event that the singer may complain about sound levels in the house.

Do not take numerous scheduled breaks during the concert for banjo tuning accompanied by announcements to the audience.

Actually, why not?  And if the audience are denied all bass frequencies in order to keep the artist happy and able to hear the key stuff so be it. And in the scheme of it all we’ll remember and honour the unusual circumstances.

It is nearly 10am and I have arrived at The Mothership to record links for a radio documentary.  When I reach the studio, the compact cheeky cockney treasure Joan Britain is already there.  She and the producer are sitting in swivel chairs discussing the script.

I say hello and go to offer a handshake to Joan by way of introduction.  But darn it, I’ve gone for the wrong gesture. It is clear that Joan will not settle for less than a lovey double-kiss. Now, here is a lady with wonderfully coiffed lofty hair and high heels.  These no doubt help enormously to increase her diminutive stature whilst afoot.  However, neither of them do anything to help this tall engineer in cowboy boots and a rucksack reach the tiny low-slung swivelling target.  To make it worse I’m not entirely sure whether I am aiming for Joan’s cheek or for the air immediately to the left and right of her cheek.  I have to summon all my powers of balance to not end up in her lap.   Thanks to pilates, I succeed.

We set up for recording. “Are you happy to wear headphones?” I say to Joan, looking at the high hair.

“Of course, darlin’!” She replies and puts them on TOP of her head in the neat little place between the top of the fringe and the bottom of the high bit.  Not under the chin like some other coiffed lovies I can mention.  This is how to tell if a celebrity is a good sport or not.  Somebody who doesn’t mind ruffling up their High Barnet with a pair of Desperate Dans.  Love a duck.

When endearing/irritating attention-deficit twins Jodward came in 50% of them/it was the coolest ever in the good sporting headphone challenge. Like totally. One of the Jehn or Odwards put his headphones on top of his six-inch-high hair, and it still bounced back up twenty minutes later.  The other Jehn or Odward was, like, a total loser right because he went under the chin right.  Then they totally stole all the grapes from our fruit bowl.  Help.

Anyway, back to lovely Joan. In an unconventional twist, the producer opts to convey all his instructions to Joan on the talkback through me. It is hard not to feed a fraud giving feedback after every one of the thirty or so links including emphasis, pronunciation and so on on a subject about which I know nothing.  I lurch between overenthusiastic and a weird ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ tone.   Lucky for me she is excellent and brings much colour to the story. “Good!“, I say. “Great!”, “Lovely!”, “Nice!” I vary. And occasionally “One more, please” in the style of a doctor discussing a terminal prognosis.  And of course, I studiously avoid the elephant command in the room: “Carry on!”

Today I arrived at the theatre to work on a radio comedy show in front of a live audience.  Imagine my delight to discover one of the guests was going to be with a 1970s ventriloquist sensation called Nigel De Saucie and his puppet sidekick Cookie The Dog.

We didn’t put an extra mic out for the dog and I kind of regretted it.  I feels it gave the game away to the audience.  I’m not sure if radio’s quite the right medium for ventriloquism anyway.  Believe me, it won’t catch on.