"I can't lie to you about your chances, but...
...you have my sympathies"
Howdy!
I’m currently suffering from a dose of man flu and am using the enforced bed rest to catch up on newsletter writing.
It’s been a busy period, starting off with a fantastic double bill at La Grande Ourse of Deborah Bonham and the Chris Slade Timeline. For this particular gig, I was monitor engineer, rather than front of house. Monitor engineer (the person who creates the mixes for the onstage wedges and in-ears) is quite a fun gig, as you get to spend a lot of time engaging directly with the artists, and, if you make them sound good in their monitors, they like you a lot and call you things like, “the lovely Steve”.
Deborah Bonham is the little sister of John Bonham, the legendary drummer of Led Zeppelin, and is a fantastic blues rock singer in her own right. She has a fantastic group of musicians with her who are an absolute joy to work with.
The Chris Slade Timeline is a celebration of drummer Chris Slade’s long career, ranging from Tom Jones to AC/DC. You probably know him best for his drumming on this track.
Chris is well into his 70s now, but still rockin’ the heck out. He’s a sweet guy, too, and we had a nice long chat over dinner about the martial arts we had both studied.
Out of a great set of songs by Deborah Bonham, this is one that particularly caught my ear.
‘Bleeding Muddy Water’ is a great song that I first heard on Mark Lanegan’s Blues Funeral album.
If any of us rockers live long enough, we ultimately become sound guys or put out a blues album. What I love about Blues Funeral is that it gets to the very root of the blues, without resorting to Dobro guitars and retro production. Instead, it sounds modern and fresh, still with its thundering bass lines and synth tones.
This is probably my favourite track on the album.
Graft
It’s not all fun and games in my line of work. This month, I’ve closed the live room of the studio in order to work on the roof insulation. That’s no small task, as the roof is 100 metres squared and almost 7 metres high. As if it’s not hard enough already to climb up and down scaffolding, we’re using rock wool/mineral wool as insulation, so we are having to do it in masks too.
It’s not fun, or glamorous, but it needs to be done.
Luckily, I do have some help. As with much of the building work,I have my friend and neighbour Darren, who is always up for a challenge, but, this time, I also have some help from another composer called Rick, who has come out to help. It’s still slow work, but I wouldn’t have got very far without Darren and Rick’s help.
The French word for “insolation” is “isolation”. My extreme metal drummer and composer friend, Bertrand, sent me this.
Which brings me to this week’s movie, Alien: Romulus (2024). Short review: Quite fun. Starts off a with an Attack the Block (2011) vibe, which eventually gives way to a more or less remake of Alien: Resurrection (1997). Tries to do a bit too much, and there is waaay to much fan service. Having said that, I enjoyed it way more than the prequels.
There was one major disappointment, and, for that, you will need a bit of back story.
If you are a regular reader, you will be familiar with my friend Mike. I met Mike through my friend Barry, who I had met through a friend called Mike Barry. This did cause some confusion at the time, but, fortunately, our creative friend Dave invented new names for everyone. As I remember the names were Wide, Long, Otter and “Pequeña”. I’ll leave you to work out who was who.
Anyhoo, Mike, Barry and I would spend a lot of our time watching horror movies on VHS at Mike’s house. Often we would watch films we particularly loved, like Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1986), multiple times. It also wasn’t unknown for Mike and Barry to watch a film before me, give me all the ‘spoilers’ and then we would all watch together. The slightly humorous part of this was that, often, Mike and Barry’s version of the events in the film were infinitely gorier or funnier than anything that actually appeared on screen. This sometimes led to great disappointment, sometimes to great hilarity.
I bring this up because, last week, Mike sent me this promo picture from Alien: Romulus.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love schnauzers. They really are the greatest dogs. Full of character and fun.
I have literally spent all week telling my wife that the new Alien film has a schnauzer in it, instead of a cat. I may not even have bothered watching the film if it hadn’t been for the schnauzer.
Well, allow me to do a public service announcement, here: THERE ARE NO SCHNAUZERS IN THIS MOVIE! I spent two hours waiting for that furry hero to appear, and it turns out that was a publicity shot with a dog that was on set. This is not a spoiler; I just don’t want you to be disappointed.
Talking of perfect comic timing, which I wasn’t.
So, that’s where I’m up to, right now. Once I’m over the worst of this lurgy, I’ll be back out insulating the studio, until Saturday’s metal gig, where I’ll be doing monitors again. After that, I’ll be making an epic drive to Germany to pick up a friend’s SSL console.
I’d better make the best of this bed rest.
Stay noisy!
Steve
P.S. If you are wondering why I’m so obsessed with ellipses, blame these guys.