Get in the van!

We’re due a Grunge revival, apparently. Kurt burning out was the zenith of no sell-out, we-mean-it-man-ness. Now we’re in an age of people deliberately wanting to sell-out and be “famous”. And some people think that’s just plain wrong and sad. I thought it was just me. Happily not and, hence, get ready for Rock with purpose, soul, integrity, whatever.

Years ago I worked at MTV BN (Before Nirvana). A play list from hell on a loop: Madonna; Michael Jackson; Phil Collins. Really, it would make you spew. Then, “Teen Spirit”. Suddenly guitars were hip again and Rawk filtered into the playlist. What made me laugh was suddenly seeing Sonic Youth with a big video budget played during the day on MTV. Scores of other bands were “discovered” who had been grinding away for years playing small clubs.

Henry Rollins wrote a great book called “Get in the Van” about his days with Black Flag, criss-crossing Reagan’s America for years, playing gigs where no-one else went. Gradually the shows got bigger as word-of-mouth spread and kids, not conned by MTV and the mainstream, started doing it for themselves, creating little scenes. Nirvana were just one of hundreds, inspired by Black Flag and others like them: songs you didn’t hear on the radio, except college radio stations. Black Flag were hardcore and made Crass look wimpy.

The Eighties were a grim time, especially if you didn’t like New Romantics, Stock Aitken Waterman (Kylie wasn’t always cool, you know), and the revival of some dodgy careers, post- Live Aid. I mean, Queen…really?  The UK had the Smiths and shoe-gazers as an alternative. Twee nonsense. Rave came at the end of the decade but that’s another story. Most of the action was bubbling away in the USA.

So, by way of a trip down my memory lane of the 1980s, here are some guitar bands that kept the flame alive. First up, Sonic Youth. Cool art-school New Yorkers who knew their Stockhausen from their Stooges:

Husker Du were the scene’s Cream – a heavy power trio who played hard, fast, melodic rock/punk. They were on SST which was like Sub Pop before Sub Pop, without the money. They actually signed to Warners early on but fizzled out by the time Nirvana broke big. Bob Mould formed Sugar and had proper chart success but the Du were the real thing. Still one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live – this clip doesn’t quite capture the face-melting strength of their riffage, ahem.

J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr were the Neil Young & Crazy Horse of the pack. Another power trio, they wailed and shredded axe. The ultimate slacker band. Great live too.

It wasn’t all boys. Here’s a band with three Susans in the line-up called, er, Band of Susans. Couldn’t find any footage of them. Which is not unusual for the period – cameras and stuff cost money and without the internet back then bands did it the hard way: gigging. Kids today etc. This tune rocks.

The next two are ugly, dirty, druggy, deranged. I loved them. Now they probably seem quite tame but back then, when Bros, New Kids on the Block and Whitney Houston walked the planet, they looked truly dangerous. First up, Ministry, who always made me laugh…

And the Butthole Surfers. Great name, great band…

Here’s a really obscure one: The Mr T Experience. They hail from Berkeley, CA, and, if nothing else, were the big brothers to Green Day, giving them their first gigs and helping them out. MTX were more Ramones  than angry Black Flaggers but the heart’s the same…

The Gun Club were the bastard inbred spawn of the Blues and Rockabilly. I loved them.

There are loads more you can check out. The Replacements. Minutemen. Meat Puppets. Descendents. Mudhoney. REM (first 2 albums). Flaming Lips (years before proper success). Not all of it was pretty but it seemed a decent response to what was going on in the world – Thatcher, Reagan, apartheid, Cold War, Phil Collins etc – and at least they struggled to find their own voice and do something different. Here’s some early Mercury Rev to end with. Enjoy.

Bit of a Blur…

So, The Brits are over. Here’s a link to an article that I found entertaining, not least because an MP wrote it.
www.louderthanwar.com/kerry-mccarthy-mp-has-the-last-word-on-the-brits/
The jist is that  packaged Pop is even more plastic than ever before, even with talent still being out there. Some people feel McCarthy is an Old Rocker stuck in the past: a tune is a tune is a tune and nothing more.
I’ve never been a massive Blur fan but they feel like a proper band, gang mentality and all. What gets lost in the mists of Britpop is just how good a guitarist Graham Coxon is. I first saw Blur when they were Seymour in a pub in north London. A friend was supporting and told us to come along and cheer as lots of A&R men would be there to check out the headliners. On the night they did the baggy shuffle beat du jour, popular thanks to t’Stone Roses. Blur’s first hit is often mistaken for a Charlatans tune…

Pleasant enough. I saw them in 1992 at the Brixton Academy on the Rollercoaster tour with Dinsaur JR and Jesus & Mary Chain. All I remember of their set was video footage of someone having a poo. No, really, a cable being laid in glorious super 8. They looked lost on stage and ragged. Then Brit Pop came along and Parklife. It was huge and, almost overnight, shambling shoe-gazer Indy bands became stars. Before then bands of that ilk would be happy with an NME cover and getting played by John Peel. Now, they were on Top Of The Pops. Who knew?!

Fun tune. It’s been so over played that it’s almost hard to hear it objectively now. The riff is great.
That year I saw them in a small venue in Rome and they were fantastic, not least Mr Coxon. Proper punk rock guitar. Live, the Parklife album was face-melting. Arctic Monkeys are the same: jaunty pop songs on record sound like Led Zeppelin live. I saw them a year later in Florence and the audience was mainly screaming teeange girls. The band looked fed up. The Blur saga is well documented in No Distance Left To Run.
Coxon is a recovering alcoholic who hated all the BritPop nonsense. He just wants to play his guitar. It’s about the music. Over the years I’ve seen him pop up all over the place. Playing psychedelic Sixties songs with Arthur Lee. Popping up on TV playing Syd Barrett songs
Here he is, having listened to Pavement and other quirky left-field US bands…
Getting folkie on yo’ ass…

And here’s some Punk Rock…

Helping out The Modfather…

People as diverse as Johnny Greenwood and Noel Gallagher reckon he’s the best guitarist of his generation. Long may he noodle and shred his axe.

The New Boring. Or, Rock Is Dead Pt. 411

A recent Billboard magazine has “Rock Is Dead” as it’s front cover headline. There’s a part of me – the part who saw The Clash LIVE – who agrees with this. But maybe Rock’s just changed, like everything else in our post-postmodern world. It’s rock, Jim, but not as we know it.
Some speak of The New Boring. Music sales are down and record companies don’t like risk. They want safe, reliable and, well, boring. They love Adeles and Coldplays: nice tunes for uncertain times. Coldplay apparently accounted for about 50% of EMI’s sales last year. That’s a big cash cow and EMI don’t want to frighten the horses. Mylo Xyloto: only the title was weird or different or challenging, not the content. Adele’s shifted plenty units too but, without wishing to appear rude, it’s hardly reinvented the wheel. Even oh-so-edgy Amy Winehouse didn’t exactly push the envelope
The mainstream has always been a bit boring. Englebert Humperdinck had the biggest hit of 1967, not the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Who etc. You know, the good stuff. The silent majority has always liked it’s fluff. Here’s the Hump…

The modern equivalent might be your average X-Factor dross. The triumph of marketing over content. The question today is the same as it’s always been then. If record companies want to play it safe then what competes with The Boring? What makes a difference and adds to the equation today? All the forms are known. The template for “classic” Rock was set over 40 years ago: bass, guitar, drum. All we’ve done over the years is add more bells and whistles. An empty box of tricks.
It’s hard to compete with a past that includes Elvis, Beatles, Rolling Stones – who weren’t destroyed in 1977 as prophecised…

Rock gets scared every now and then by a Strokes, White Stripes or Libertines. What those bands have in common is that they developed under the radar and built up a community, either by playing live or using the MySpaces of this world. This is the stuff of Rock Dreams, like a Beatles at The Cavern or Stones at the Crawdaddy Club. It’s hard to grow outside the Meejah bubble now. We’re so uber-connected, plugged-in and webbed-up that most things seem to get co-opted, chewed up and spat out, faster and faster…

Bands don’t get a chance to develop and grow. I think that’s why all those Stone Roses reunion gigs sold out in record time. They were part of a scene. A secret, special moment, when Rave culture was still underground with a new drug, look, music. That doesn’t happen anymore.

Rock, film, TV and all the other Arts are still finding their way in the Twenty First Century. Technology will lead us down more and more untrodden paths. For example, David Hockney’s new show has canvases created using the “Brush” app on his iPad. Music has an immediacy that makes it connect differently with an audience, which is why live music is still popular. And people will always want to the chase the new, to be entertained by novelty. Florence & The Machine? It’s basically Kate Bush with modern production techniques. The wish to connect is still there though. People want the communal experience.
So, who’s gonna save us from The New Boring? That’s the fun bit. Hearing a tune that makes you stop and go “Yeah!”. Or just tap your toe. Or at least raise a quizzical ear. Scanning the racks and leafing the press, here’s some that seem to be getting ver Kidz excited this year. Me? Sadly, I saw The Clash and that’s my yardstick. The bar was set high…

Merry CRASSmas

Crass. Nasty. Filthy. Anarcho-Punx. Tuneless dirge. They were great. And, bizarrely, they’re more relevant now than when they existed as a band. They get name checked by a wide range of modern bands and, in some quarters, are revered more than the Sex Pistols or The Clash.

Why should we care? Well… (intake of breath) THE WORLD IS FULL OF RUBBISH WITH NO SOUL. What made Crass vital, then and now, is that they walked it like they talked it. They started off as a commune in the 70s (still going) and used the band as a vehicle to disseminate ideas. There’s a link to a documentary at the end of this and I advise you to watch and learn kids.

OK. they weren’t always great musically but, from inception to execution, the band were needle sharp in delivering a polemic. The graphics by Gee Vaucher are still powerful today. They used video at live gigs, showing footage that just wasn’t seen anywhere else: war atrocities; police brutality; porn; news reports. Eve Libertine on the Penis Envy LP is a million miles from Florence and her feckin Machine and all the rest of the current crop but has more soul and honesty.

All this was before t’Interweb and desktop publishing. They got their message out through gigging, pamphlets, and their record label. They weren’t in it for RocknRoll. The message is in the grooves. They put a cap on how much their records could be sold for. Any money made, after costs, was ploughed back into the label so they could put out more music, usually doing one-off deals with umpteen bands who wouldn’t have got a sniff otherwise. The whole package – sound, look, language – was tight and precise. All that shit about Branding in the modern age? They had it then, but not to shift another mobile phone or whatever piece of pointless consumerism: community, trust, consistency and authenticity was what they created. Do you really want to live in a world where “X-Factor” is deemed a viable source of culture? Oh, but it’s only a bit of fun, say some. Is it? Crass were refreshing in their opposition to the mainstream: they’d have ripped “X-Factor” to shreds (and rightly so, ahem).

They were activists and basically started the Stop The City movement in the early 80s. Ah, the 1980s. I’m old enough now that I work with people born in the 80s (and later) who have no knowledge of Thatcher, Reagan, Miners’ Strike, Falklands etc etc Twas a heavy time and Crass vented righteous spleen.

The politics might be contrary, naive, deluded, unrealistic. Or spot on, depending on your viewpoint. But at least they had an opinion and stood up tall to shout about it. The band split in 1984. Where are the bands today taking  a stance? Coldplay? Helping kiddies’ charities… and appearing on the live final of “X-Factor” 2011. Also, did you know, a recent bit of research reckons that 80% of UK rock bands are made up of public school kids. 30 years ago it was 8%. Rock is now a rich person’s play thing. Nuff said.

And, believe, we need people like Crass more than ever to point out the evil that men do. You’re Already Dead, as one of their charming ditties had it.

So, do yourself a favour, have a root around the Web and read up on this lot. There’s loads on Youtube. Your ears might take a battering – you can’t help but applaud the conviction though.
http://www.minimovies.org/documentaires/view/crass/full%20movie

Viva Zappa!

This week I saw Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank, play Frank’s music. Un-feckin-believable. It’s been so long since I heard music that worked on all levels. It’s “clever”, sure, but has heart, soul and humour too.

So, my mission today is spread the word. Dweezil and his band played the whole of Zappa Sr’s “Apostrophe” album. This was Zappa’s biggest “commercial” hit and, as Dweezil said, is as good a place as any to start. 

Zappa died age 53 in 1993 of prostrate cancer. He released umpteen albums over his career and pretty much recorded everything he ever played in his studio. He had his own studio from the Sixties onwards so that he didn’t have to rely on a record company. He is the ultimate Outsider Artist, doing it his way and not eating shit.

A lot of his work has a vicious streak of satire and counter-culture humour shot through it, (though he hated drugs, except his beloved ciggies). He’s nobody’s fool. Here he is addressing the Senate about censorship ( gets going about 4 minutes in).

The music is varied ranging from spot-on spoofs of other people to jazz to doo-wop to freak out to rock to pop to, well, everything really. He’s a product of the country that spawned him: the melting pot with all its myriad cultural nuances, influences and music. He reminds me of something like Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. A completely American thing: it couldn’t have been created anywhere else but still has universal appeal.

Here are a couple of things that formed his world view: stuff that he grew up listening to with his old school friend, Captain Beefheart… 

From dirty rocknroll to modern classical from 1931… 

There’s a mountain of Zappa on Youtube ranging from goofy stuff like ‘Joe’s Garage” to the orchestral “Peaches en Regalia”. Dive in and immerse yourself…. 

Frank sure could shred axe. His music will grow in stature. Unlike U2…

Glasto and beyond…

Summertime. It’s wet. As predictable as festivals in the calendar. When I were a lad there were only two festivals: Reading and Glastonbury. Now they’re everywhere, like cow-pats in a field. A band like the Vaccines will play 35 different festivals this year: they get paid, get exposure, and all they have to do it is show up. Why spend money on your own tour?

Last saturday I went to the 2000 Trees festival in Gloucestershire. Now in it’s fifth year, it’s USP is showcasing “new and underground British” rock. Three tents, 5.000 people limit, music over by 11PM. The bands were a mix of nu-folk, metal, indie. Amplifier looked Wire at Nuremberg.  Frightened Rabbit played heartfelt strumming. Los Campesinos! played it for laughs. Travelling Band shades of Neil Young. Wave Pictures a quirky, poppy mini-The Fall.

It was fun. Small, and a bit amateur compared to the big boys like a V or Glasto, but enjoyable. Festivals are part of the mainstream now. It’s druggy 1960s beginnings left long behind. It’s a Daily Mail-safe experience. I used to go to Stonehenge Festival (before the Tories stopped it) and that was heavy with a capital H. The Peace Convoy wasn’t a glossy lifestyle option; it was real Life and twice as ugly.

At it’s core though, festivals provide something that is sorely missing from the modern mechanical routine. You can download a song, but you can’t download an experience. Even if it rains, the bands are pish, and you’ve lost your money, tent and mind, a festival is still an experience. It’s camping on acid. A real time thrill. Can’t buy a thrill – not even with the high ticket prices.

For this reason Michael Eavis should be given a knighthood or made a Lord. Every festival since Glastonbury owes him a debt for laying the groundwork. Good man.

Numerous films have covered different festivals. Some are long and boring, much like a festival itself. A few capture some of the sparks that fly. As social documents they show the changes – PAs, corporate sponsorship, better lightshows – and the similarities – mass singalongs, mashed yoof, endless tents.
Here’s an early one (and a stylish film in it’s own right)…

If you’ve never seen Woodstock, do. No rain! No rain! Martin Scorsese edited it and when it won an Oscar he got funding for his first film , Mean Streets.  Here’s one of my fave bits; Santana. No, don’t run away! It’s fun. The drummer’s only 19 too…

The original Glastonbury Fayre in 1971 is calmer in comparison…

A fave Glasto moment of mine. I was there!

And so on. The haircuts change but the feeling’s the same. Here’s one I made earlier: a documentary about the Avalon Field at Glasto 1999…

Poly Styrene RIP

When I were a lad there weren’t too many lady rockers. Patti Smith. I don’t count Joan Jett and The Runaways, sorry. So, Patti was about it. Then Punk came and suddenly we had The Slits, Siouxsie Sioux and her Banshees, Pauline Murray in Penetration, Gaye Advert in The Adverts and Poly Styrene with X-Ray Spex.

Poly was great. Songs about consumerism, identity, race. But with driving punky poppy tunes. Even a saxophone; a distinctly non-Punk instrument. Debbie Harry and Blondie were older, slicker and had, well, Debbie. Poly was a spotty teenager. A mixed race spotty teenager. With teeth braces, raised by a single Mum in Brixton in the Seventies. And she made it onto Top of The Pops! Not easy in an age of Buck’s Fizz, Abba, Fleetwood Mac and Laura Ashley floral prints. Can you imagine the balls, self-belief and sheer will-to-achieve she must’ve had? Her dress sense alone must have attracted unwanted attention. Her voice was the classic mangled-cat screech. The National Front were far more active than anything the BNP gets up to today and seeing anybody of colour on 1970s TV screens was rare. The “Black and White Minstrel Show” only came off-air in 1978 fer feck’s sake!

Despite those barriers the image she projected was positive and infectious. The true spirit of Punk: Do it yourself. The band’s music is fun and feisty but the lyrics are so sharp it’s scary.

The Riot Grrls of the Nineties had her as a pin-up. Every PJ Harvey, Florence & The Machine, Amy Winehouse, Spice Girl etc. ever since owes a little something to Poly. Have a root around on Youtube and check out Germ Free Adolescents, Warrior in Woolworths, Identity, The Day The World Turned Day-Glo. This isn’t stuff churned out of a Brit School. It’s real, funny, life-affirming.

Poly Styrene. One of the people who, in a small but perfectly formed way, helped create the modern world. No lie.

Real talent.

Hey Puppies! Hope 2011 has been rockin’ so far. This is my first post for a while after Crimbo, New Year, Man Flu etc.

Today’s lesson/rant is The Real, The Authentic, Soul Connection. That sounds a bit abstruse and worthy but here goes…

Recently I saw Richard Thompson. A fine guitarist and the man that made Fairport Convention great. He’s folky, tinged with rock. Indeed he does a version of “Hey Joe” in the style of Hendrix. I went with the wife, who likes his melancholy acoustic stuff, but this set was balls out electric. My wife doesn’t usually like my “noisy” stuff at home but, in the live setting, Thompson worked his axe beautifully and she “got” it. “Phenomenal” she said. Here’s some “folkie” Richard>

Thompson has his own voice. Literally, with his singing, and with his guitar style. People go on about Clapton but I find him too academic and muso. A fact reconfirmed to me when I caught 5 minutes of Eric and Stevie Winwood live at Madison Square Garden on TV recently. FFS! Turgid.

In recent years I’ve been going back through my record collection. It struck me that I hadn’t heard a voice in years that really grabbed me, that “spoke”. The stuff that comes out of the Brit Academy or X Factor just leaves me cold. Cynical manipulation. Where’s the love? So, just for shits and giggles, here are some great voices. I’m not going for your Elvises, Beatles or Jaggers here. Rather, voices that aren’t everyday hits but have charm, warmth, feeling GODAMMIT!

First up, Howling Wolf. When you see and hear this guy you know he ain’t fooling. Check out his song “Spoonful” too and for comparison, if you can stand it, hear Clapton’s Cream absolutely sodomise it.

This lady had her own documentary on BBC4 recently. Watch it. Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Testify!

Elvis fans will know the name Junior Parker. He wrote Mystery Train which Elvis covered for Sun Records. His voice is liquid honey: it oozes, free and easy.

To show off his voice even more, check this. The Beatles never sounded better. Word!

There are dozens more I could pick – Little Walter; Muddy Waters; Chuck Berry; Bo Diddley; Johnny Guitar Watson – and you’ve probably worked out I’m getting into my Blues. My own prediction is that the Blues is due another revival soon – an antidote to Cowell and all that plastic shite out there.

Here’s a voice on the mellower tip. Singer-songwriter is a description that conjours up images of James Blunt and the like. When it’s done right…
To round things out, let’s link back to Richard Thompson and the voice of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny. When I hear a voice like hers I wonder how things like Cheryl Cole exist…

And if you’ve never heard it, buy “Leige & Leif”. Here’s Sandy again…

(Couldn’t embed this one but follow the link. My favourite song from this guy… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8y3aUgDY6c )

It was 30 years ago today…

John Lennon. He was in The Beatles. I’m old enough to remember Glam Rock and Punk, real time, in the 1970s. The Sixties were less than a decade old but the shadow cast by those early rock Gods was long. Top of the pile was The Beatles. Even people who didn’t like The Beatles liked The Beatles. They were beyond mere Pop. Iconic. Mythic.

I love Rock and Pop in all its myriad forms and that includes the Mop-tops. When Lennon released Double Fantasy in 1980 it was front page news. OK, it wasn’t a brilliant album but it was him, Lennon, a Beatle. And, shh, you never know The Beatles might still get back together. Unlike Elvis, who was dead by then.

Lennon’s death was a Kennedy or Diana moment: people remember where they were. I was in my first term of A-levels (proper A-levels!). That Monday, just after 7AM, my Mum came into my bedroom with a cup of tea. She’d never done that before (or after) so I knew something was up. “John Lennon’s been shot in New York. He’s dead”. She looked teary. She was born in 1940 so was the same age as him.

My Mum knew I’d be sad about it. Elvis’ death had been horrible. I was, and am, a fan of the King and, no lie, I was ill the day after his death. Why would anyone shoot a Beatle though? More than that I had a real sense of how big The Beatles were. My Mum grew up with opera and was busy raising kids in the Sixties. The Swinging Sixties passed her, and millions like her, by. But everyone knew The Beatles. They were like the Queen. Just there.

So, for her to bring me that cup of tea was a real sign of the impact of his murder. It wasn’t just Lennon’s death, it was the death of an era. What he and The Beatles represented was freedom, joy, creativity: part of collective and personal history. A part of my Mum died that day. The world was just that little bit sadder.

For younger readers, ahem, check it out with your parents. Ask them where they were when they heard. No offence but when, say, Bono dies it wont have the same impact. The Beatles’ legacy can be irksome. For example, all the hoo-ha about their back catalogue finally being available on iTunes. But there can, and never will, be another Beatles. Ever. Lennon being shot just makes the story that much more potent and incredible.

Promax 2010. It’s That Time Again.

I’ve been to about 10 Promaxes (Promaxi?) and missed Bonfire Night for a decade. Now November brings Promax and fireworks. We’ve evolved. I remember my first Promax in 1996BC or so. That year’s theme was Branding, a new and excitingly different concept back then. I spent the whole conference meeting BBC employees who snorted derisively, “Branding? We’re the BBC. Everyone knows who we are”. Look at ‘em now…

Those first conferences were held at the Lancaster Gate Hotel and had delegates from all over Europe. Since then it’s become more UK centric as our Euro-pals do their own thing. A shame in some ways as it was often inspiring and humbling when you saw stuff from, say, ProSeiben in Germany. There is a world beyond our shores.

At that first conference I won a music quiz hosted by Tommy Vance. It got down to a tie-breaker, decided by Tommy. I won a portable CD player, an expensive bit of kit then. Famous faces have always been one of the joys of Promax and a measure of its worth in that they can get celebs to turn up. Over the years I’ve seen everyone from Will Self, Alistair Campbell, Dave Stewart, Michael Nyman, Max Clifford, Martin Parr, Chris Smith (Minister of Culture, the week he was outed) and Malcolm Maclaren. Sadly there are no women in that quick list. Is that just me or was that the way it was? Answers on a postcard.

Maclaren was great. He rolled up hungover and spoke without notes. He spoke about things being Authentic or Karaoke. Tony Blair, recently elected, was a Karaoke Prime Minister. Be truthful, original, creative. Creativity is the subtext of all Promax events of course. Sir John Hegarty (of Bartle Bogle Etc fame) spoke one year, full of piss and vinegar. He’d just done an advert where to get a certain “look” they spat and trampled on the film rushes and got an effect that no amount of filters or plug-ins could ever achieve. And it was basically free: creativity doesn’t cost.

Before finding the Mermaid Theatre as a venue Promax moved to the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre. I travelled there one Saturday on the number 24 bus. Going past South Africa House I saw Nelson Mandela stepping out of a cab. Arriving at the venue, the Queen pulled up to go into the Methodist Hall next door. Radiant in yellow (her, not me), I was less than 10 feet from her. If I’d had a gun…

Speaking of guns, still one of my most memorable moments was a session done by Jim Stokoe called “Psychocandy”. He started his talk by, without warning, firing a starting pistol. A few years later he did the same session and asked if anybody had seen him before do that session and if so what did they remember? “You fired a gun”. Always start your promo with an explosion. It’s true.

Promax is a great chance to see work and technology that you’ve never seen before. I saw a session once about motion tracking where the guy rewrote an advert on the side of a travelling bus. Space age talk about “string” and “vectors”. For younger readers, the Quantel Henry was once the most expensive piece of Graphics kit in the world and could hold TWO MINUTES OF FOOTAGE! Your average iPod now has 100 times more capacity.
As channels have proliferated there’s work from all over the place. It’s always satisfying to see a ‘small’ channel like Bravo win Gold. The love of the under dog. Other times it’s stuff that has already become part of the national consciousness, like the Beeb’s “Perfect Day”. Some years Sky wins big. Channel 5 had a good year once. Channel 4 always does well. ITV seems to suffer routinely.

Occasionally, if you’re lucky, you might get sent abroad. I managed a Promax in Toronto, Berlin and LA. Too much to say about those except that watching the World Cup in LA after a late night hot-tub was fun. As was shaking hands with The Who’s John Entwhistle. He died the next day. Not my fault, I swear.

But hey, it’s not all work. Free booze is on offer and the chance to see your workmates suited and booted, especially the women folk. Nothing like a black dress and a special event to make everyone feel sexy. One year I met a German woman and gave her a late night tour of London, taking in Tower Bridge and Primrose Hill. We emailed after and that was it. Until I ran into her at Promax Berlin a few years later and she was really angry with me. Why didn’t you write etc? Weird. Especially as we were in a former Stasi building eating from a free oyster bar. (Note to self: possible band name, “Stasi Oysters”). That’s my only tip to youngsters: try to control your hormones. Otherwise you could face Day After Xmas Office Party Shame. But then again, you’re only young once…

Promo to the Max. Have a good ‘un. See you there.