The musical lifestyle is by nature essentially nomadic, within which the artist wanders from stage to studio, town to town. I suppose us Corporation engineers are engaged in a microcosmic version of this, moving from one situation to another within an ever-changing technical landscape.
On my recent travels I encountered my good colleague, Herbert Floppenwanger. Herbert says to me “I’ve been reading your blog, Pop. I keep wondering if you’ve written anything about me in it, and if so, what I might be called. “Oh, I probably would just call you ’Jules’” I say to Herbert Floppenwanger. “That’s what I do with most people”.
The next day, I have a booking with the outlandish 70s rock bassist Luci Quango. We are set to record links for a fascinating documentary about women who were working at a US guitar factory during the second world war. I am a little overexcited about working with the equally excitable Luci. This is because she once taught me how to dance the Mashed Potato, and I am in need of a refresher. I meet her and her producer at reception, and as we ride up in the small lift we are already in full fling. For anyone who would like to know how to dance the mashed potato, I wouldn’t bother. It involves pivoting both feet in and out and simultaneously shuffling from one leg to another whilst flicking alternative legs in the air and bouncing up and down all at the same time. Highly confusing and I cannot claim to have mastered it. “Next time round we’ll do the Hully Gully” says Luci. “OK. You’re on.”
After the recording, Mark comes into the studio. “I was thinking of you the other day”, he says, “as I had a complete nightmare with that awful guy at the Patronising Equipment Centre”. I asked him for some equipment and his attitude was appalling. I actually had to shout at him ‘YOU ARE A VERY RUDE AND UNHELPFUL MAN!” “Oh dear, Mark. I’m not surprised. I’ve had the same a few times recently. You know, you go to the service counter and ask the assistant for some equipment, and he looks at you like you’ve just asked him to fill in an unemployment benefit application form in Chinese whilst holding a pen between his teeth. Poor you. I’ll give you the email address of who to complain to. I’m keeping it on record for a special occasion.” I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.
On the subject of travelling, I recently bumped into Henry whilst derigging from recording a band called The Wild Wandering Hobos. “We enjoyed a repeat airing of one of your sessions last night.” he says. “Oh, really?” I reply, wondering if that could be possible. “Who was it?”. “Trailer Trash” he replies, to which we both smile. “Crazy band, but there’s definitely something there. Although I had to stop Gabriel from telling the whole saga on air.” says Henry, who had witnessed some of what had happened during this notorious session. I agreed that it was probably a diplomatic idea not to broadcast what had occurred over the airwaves. But I guess that there’s nothing to stop me from doing it here…so let us begin.
So, I’d been asked to mix a session with the band Trailer Trash for Carl Suet’s Manchester-based show on Little Sister Radio. My phone rings about an hour before the load-in. It’s Reception. “Hi, we have somebody from Trailer Trash here, can you come down and meet him please?”. “Oh, well he’s very early and I’m a bit busy at the moment. Can you ask him to come back at 5.30pm please?” I reply. “I tried that,” says the receptionist, “but he says he has to talk to you.” “Oh, I see. Okay, give me five minutes, I’ll be on my way…” I drop what I’m doing and pop down to reception. Sitting on the sofa is a grubby young man with bug-like eyes and his front teeth missing. He looks like he could benefit from a nice hot dinner, a deep bath and a good night’s sleep. “You’re an hour early”, I say, “so, can you amuse yourself and come back at 5.30pm?”. “Can’t I come upstairs?” he asks. “I’ve got nowhere to go, and I haven’t got any money. I don’t know where the others are, they didn’t tell me the right time. I’ve run out of credit on my phone. Can I use your phone to call them?”. “Oh, OK, I say.” And pass him my mobile. He calls his bandmates and has a moan at them. You don’t get this kind of behaviour from the internationally famous musical guests at The Nations Favourite. Guests like, say, Laurie Atmos, whose entourage present you with other demands. Like: For this small acoustic radio session consisting of solo voice and acoustic piano, we insist that you connect all of this hired outboard to your very inflexible and limited general purpose broadcast desk and send these esoteric effects back to these in-ear monitors, post fade, in stereo, to the detriment of the broadcast.
Speaking of which, the other day I was working with a singer who reinforced the old adage “Never work with animals, children or Belgian jazz musicians”. Unfortunately, in spite of being an exceptionally talented musician and producer, the chanteuse in question was not able to hang up the producer hat and concentrate on performing and give me a chance to do my job. To my consternation, she became utterly obsessed in the pursuit of the complete and utter obliteration of compression and 180Hz in her headphones whilst relaying all her demands in French to her ‘inginieur’ who is standing beside me bending my ear. Having removed the offending frequency from no less than four points in the complex signal path, including the reverb returns, I invite her to come and have a listen to the thinned vocal. My aim is for her to hear that it might be all a tad OTT; especially considering the lack of Q controls in this set up. She listens. Ah yes, so you were right, she says, via her sonic interpreter. Put it back as it was. Small victories.
I’ve come across this kind of quirk a couple of times before. At NOMAD Festival, the Zimbabwean Mbira queen Ella Mvesi spent her entire soundcheck asking for all treble to be removed from the monitors and complaining in her incredibly deep voice there was still “TOO MUCH TREBLE!!!! I DON’T LIKE TREBLE”. She sure hates treble. Meanwhile ailing country singer Dwight Darling has the opposite problem. When he came and performed in our theatre he spent the entire sound-check focussing on the obliteration of all bass from the monitors and eventually the entire house PA. He just hates bass.
Of course, not all musicians are quite so difficult and some of the best, aren’t. Just the other day, the wonderfully gentle and eccentric Welsh troubadour Rhys Jones comes in for a session. He opens a carrier bag, takes out a wind-up metronome, asks me in his sing song voice to mic it up and swim it in big church reverb to sound like a grandfather clock. He strums along to it, and he is happy. The metronome keeps breaking down during sound-check, but it manages to hold it together for the live transmission. After we come off air, Rhys shows me the contents of a large, checked laundry bag. It’s a four-foot high felt puppet folded in half. The puppet is based on a relative of his who was an 18th century explorer, about which he has just written a concept album. I guess Rhys considers this chap as a kindred spirit. Enough so that he has recreated him in stuffed felt and taken to carrying him around wherever he goes. “You sure the old boy is ok in there?” I ask “He looks a bit cramped. Does he need a stretch?“ To which Rhys gets him out and rests him for a while on the Little Sister sofa, fondly extending his hand out onto the armrest.
Meanwhile, back to Trailer Trash. I have taken pity on our band member and invited him to come and sit on the self-same sofa while I set up for the session. The rest of the band arrive in dribs and drabs along with their drunk girlfriends, with glazed eyes, asking for food. I invite them to help themselves to tea and coffee. It is not long before they are examining the shared fridge contents. “Can I have this?” one of them says, pulling out a can of cola. “No, I think that probably belongs to somebody who might want it.” I say. One of them starts eating some honey left behind by some vocalist or another. Later, I find the drummer up to his scrawny elbow in a box of some poor unsuspecting newsreader’s breakfast cereal. I am working alone, thankfully in another room. “Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out down there!” jokes John, my fellow engineer up the line in Manchester. The band argue their way through the rehearsal. They fail to get their heads around the clinical environment of the studio headphones, being more habituated to deafening pub and club monitors. Somehow, I manage to hold everything together and eventually we fall on air. Afterwards, they head out into the young night leaving a pretty spectacular smell in their wake. But Henry’s right, those guys definitely had something.
Pop Shield 