Martin Rushent – Production Credit Where Due

My wife refuses to watch “Hi Fidelity”, she says it reminds her too much of what life with me is like. I’m not sure, but I’ll assume that’s a good thing.

In (sort of) honour of the story, here is a list of Martin Rushent records that no self respecting collection should be without (at least in my opinion). A great feature of his productions were that they sounded really loud, despite the limitations of pressing them on vinyl. CD manufacturers please take note, just making the volume higher than other discs doesn’t make your release any better.

During 2011, after Martin’s death Lauren Laverne on BBC 6Music ran a half hour tribute to him, these (as far as I remember) were all included. It was like having 30 minutes of radio just from one section of my collection. Fabulous.

Here they are, in no particular order, other than the one in which they occurred to me…

• Intaferon – Getoutoflondon.
  I’ve  played this track regularly ever since it came out in 1983. A record that gets better the louder you can hear it. Great clear production and a fantastic stream of lyrical content that, even armed with the words on the back of the sleeve, it’s difficult to sing along with.
• Pete Shelley – Homosapien.
  From a couple of years earlier, 1981, but still with the same clean, loud sound and more acoustic guitars, I guess after 4 1/2 years of punk, acoustic seemed radical. Who cares, it sounded great then and, with that driving electro bass thump underneath it, it still does. This has been remixed and re-recorded, but the original still knock spots off the other versions.
• The League Unlimited Orchestra – Hard Times.
  Martin is rightly remembered for the production work on the Human League LP Dare, but I have always thought that the remix album  he produced afterwards had tracks on it that were even better. Without having to fit in with the lyrics, the music could be turned up louder.
• Altered Images – Happy Birthday.
  It wasn’t just because everybody fancied Clare Grogan; I dare say some people still watch Eastenders every week hoping she’ll turn up again. This sounds as happy and carefree as it did when it became another of Martin’s 1981 hits (I use the word hits in its loosest term here, just because not everything here made the charts, doesn’t mean I can’t call it a hit). I’d much rather hear this than Stevie Wonder’s song of the same title.
• The Stranglers – No More Heroes
  There were many great Stranglers tracks in those few years, but this one is probably now played more than any of the others, at least on the radio. Punks who could play their instruments and read books; no wonder everybody hated them . This track shows off Martin’s production style again, with plenty of space around the instruments. Even though the result can still seem like being battered with a sledgehammer, listen to it closely and it becomes obvious how much thought was put into the way this should sound.

How CDs Ruined Albums

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a diatribe against the sound quality of CDs, which some people say is vastly inferior to that of vinyl, rather this is my view of a drop in quality control of the contents that occurred when CDs came on to the market.

Through the late 60s, the emphasis in rock & roll records (pop, rock, call it what you will) changed from the single to the LP format. This required a group or performer to fill two 12” sides of vinyl with music. The most that can comfortably be fitted into such a space, without compromising sound quality, is about 40 minutes. Divide that into 4 minute songs and you require 10 of them, as songs were growing longer by this time, an LP often could contain only 7 or 8 tracks. Whoever was recording often had more than this in preparation, so they had the luxury of recording up to an hours worth of material and then choosing the best parts for release on the album. The remainder were either abandoned, kept for use on a later album after some rework, or relegated to the B side of singles.

When the CD was announced, its running length was to be 75 minutes, based on the premise that the labels wanted to be able to publish Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on a single disc.

Previously, any rock or pop album that extended to this sort of length would have to be a 2 disc package, an expense that only some groups could justify, especially for a studio recording. After CDs became the norm for album releases, everybody realised that there was 30-40 minutes of space still available on the disc.Perhaps they felt that the public was being short-changed by not filling the disc to its max, but very soon, album lengths increased to 50, 60 and 70 minutes, meaning that much of the dross that previously would have been left in the studio as sub-standard, was crammed on to the new format, in the belief that somehow they were offering better value for money. I can imagine what the music press would have made of a situation in the 70s and 80s where every new LP that was released was a double album.

More groups should think about the quality of the product that they’re releasing, rather than how much space they must fill. I’d rather hear a cracking 40 minute album that makes me want to put it on again, rather than working my way through a 72 minute opus that leaves me desperate for some relief when I’m only three quarters of the way through it. The Ramones had released three LPs by the end of 1977, not one of which was longer than 30 minutes and each of which is considered a classic.

Short and Sweet

“Ring ring” or whatever the mobile equivalent is…

Caller: “Hello, I’m from …….. we believe you may be entitled to a refund of £1500″

Me: “OK”

Caller: “Have you had a loan or finance within the last 10 years?”

Me: “No.”

Caller: “Oh.”

The High Street of the Future?

This morning, I saw a report on the BBC about the current state of UK High Street shopping. Essentially, the story told that, though shopper footfall in inner city high street areas has fallen over recent years, those shopping areas outside of major cities and in smaller provincial towns (the report specifically targeted Rotherham) has actually risen. As this is contrary to every other recent report, that have all majored on the national decrease in footfall in high street shops with the rise of ‘out of town’ shopping centres, they were struggling to come up with an explanation.

I’ve long held the belief that, since the advent of internet supermarket shopping, that there would be a massive change in people’s shopping habits. The changes reported today may be a first hint that this is actually happening. Then again, it may not, who knows?

My belief runs as follows. In the 80s, 90s & 00s, supermarkets rose to a level in the UK market that couldn’t be sustained without some radical thinking. There were fewer and fewer locations available to build a large supermarket, and more brands vying for them. Then the internet became fast enough for on;line shopping to become a viable alternative. Amazon are the internet store first thought of by most people. They have expanded from their original focus on books, CDs and DVDs to the point where they now stock a range of goods that cannot be matched in a traditional bricks and mortar store. The supermarkets followed this route with their own online shopping offerings. Early on, there would be problems with distribution and lack of the requested items being delivered, but as these online stores grow in size, all of these should be overcome and will, I believe, result n the following shopping scenario.

Most of the weekly shopping for non-perishable and preserved goods will be done from an online store. The distributions centres for these will become larger and larger and their deliveries more efficient, allowing the customers to be confident in the delivery time promised.

Fresh food items will then be bought locally, from high street shops and local markets, where the customers are able to examine the goods on offer and select exactly which piece of meat, or fruit and veg items they want.

The supermarkets will be squeezed at the bulk end of their market by the distribution centres, which will be able to stock a much wider range of such goods. They will also then face pressure from below from local shops and markets, sourcing goods more locally and appealing to people who no longer wish to drive long distances at the weekend to pick out their weekly food shopping. The local shops will probably even be able to bandy together and offer a combined delivery service, meaning that you would not even have to carry bags around from one shop to the next, just go in, make your selection and then go home and wait for it all to be delivered.

If this all were to come true, then the pattern of the past decades would be reversed; supermarkets would cease to exist, huge out of town distribution centres would carry the bulk goods, and food shopping would all be done locally. Will it happen? I don’t know, but then the future has always been like that.

New Phone Please?

A while back, I wrote about receiving calls from a company claiming to have received notification about a virus on my PC. Though there are reports of this scam still going around, they appear to have stopped targeting our number. Hopefully they’ve realised that I’m just going to keep their operators on line for as long as possible.

Well, yesterday, I received a new call, not a scam this time I suspect, but still (to my mind at least) a dubious method of selling a product or service. This came from a company claiming to be called Global Telecom (there’s a website at http://www.global-telecom.co.uk/ and they are welcome to assure me that they are not the perpetrators of this call). The caller told me that, because I have been such a good customer and always paid my bills on time, I was entitled to a brand new Nokia mobile phone.

Now, as I’ve never had any dealings with Global telecom before, other than to insist to a previous operator who cold-called me that they remove our number from their records and respect TPS registrations, I was somewhat miffed and asked where they’d got the number from. Evidently it had not been deleted from their records, as was promised last time, so I told him that whoever works there was either incompetent, or had deliberately ignored both my instructions and the law and that I would be taking this matter further.

I’ve been assured by them again that our number has been deleted and we will not be called in the future, but remember this. If you are registered with the TPS, you should not receive cold calls from marketing companies (Yes, I know there are foreign based automated systems that it does not stop). And if you receive a call from a company you’ve never heard of before, telling you what a good customer you’ve been in the past, be suspicious. If you were a customer of theirs, you would have some form of billing information available, or at least a letter from them saying that they’ve taken over your service by buying out your existing supplier.

If you are interested in changing a service (gas, electric, phone, whatever) ignore whoever calls you and do some research using one of the various comparison web sites that abound on the internet these days instead. It may take a little longer, but you will be better informed about what you are about to do.

A Walk in the Bush

This article originally appeared on the Robin Pope Safaris web site as part of their “It’s Monday” series of newsletters.

Where do I begin describing our time spent with RPS on mobile camp this year? We had been on a safari holiday before, so the basic instructions “Stay sitting in the car” “Don’t get out without permission” etc were already known to us, but on mobile camp this all paled into insignificance beside the exhilaration of being on the same level as the animals.

Kathy hoped to see a leopard this time around, and would have been happy glimpsing a tail disappearing into a bush. Imagine her face when, as dusk approached on our first full day, we parked beside a female leopard waiting for darkness so she could begin her nightly hunt.

Transferring to mobile camp, we were unsure what to expect. The camp-sites and staff however far exceeded any expectations we could have brought with us. Touring Alfred’s “kitchen”, after tasting the wonderful meals, bread and cakes that had been cooked there showed us just how talented everyone involved in mobiles really is.

Seeing game up close while walking is of course, much more difficult. The game was not used to our presence and either viewed us with disdain, or saw us as a potential threat. There are other treats though that you don’t get while in a car. Sitting silently under a bush at a waterhole for nearly an hour having tea, we were treated to close up views of impala and warthog just a few metres away. At such a time, you dare not even take a photo for fear of scaring them off. The Go-Away bird knew we were there, but he could not work out what we wanted, so we remained hidden from everyone else.

Being at ground level, rather than elevated in a car, you can appreciate just how big an elephant is. To be trumpeted at and mock charged, even if only a few steps towards us, forces adrenalin round the system in a manner we’re not used to experiencing. Later, skirting round a clearing to get a good view of one elephant, we came across the site of a second one, eating and drinking at the far bank of the river, completely oblivious to our presence. With the sun’s golden rays coming in from a low angle, it made a glorious sight.

Not everything you see on mobiles is in the far distance. While having our morning tea, we spotted vultures circling over some trees in the distance and determined to set off in that direction, hoping to find evidence at least of a kill, or better still, lions in the vicinity. As we walked along the river bank, a Bateleur eagle swooped low overhead, followed shortly afterwards by a juvenile Fish eagle. photographing something like this may seem easy for the professionals, but for the rest of us, you have to snap with whatever camera mode you happen currently to be using.

Our walk brought us within 200m of a lion pride, the leader of which growled at us and mock-charged until we left. Being on foot, with no protection other than the ranger’s rifle brings home to you just how vulnerable we are in this environment and how precarious life is on a daily basis.

Journeying on to Tena Tena, we headed out early across the plain to reach the hot springs. We were lucky enough to find two lionesses and a young cub who had been missing from the Nsefu pride for some time. Seeing this little one playing in the bush and attempting to stalk our car made for a delightful stop as the sun came up that morning.

Returning to camp later that day, we encountered a small family group of elephants, one of whom took exception to our being there and chased us (as Simon predicted) along the road. The following morning, we set out to visit Kawaza village and were chased by the same large female, though this time it was obvious that she was protecting a youngster. The little one was estimated to be about 2-3 days old, still wobbly on its legs and unsure where to suckle from. Back at camp discussing these encounters, it was thought that we were chased by this little baby’s grandma; she is not normally so aggressive and will need retraining at the end of the season. That evening we saw them again, but this time stayed at least 500m away. We wanted to avoid continually upsetting a mother and her new baby even if they do make a particularly photogenic pair.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time with RPS this year and intend to return in the not too distant future. Our thanks go out to all the staff in the permanent and particularly in the mobile camps. Such efficient behind the scenes teamwork allows everyone to relax and enjoy their stay, whether it be just for a few days, or an extended break like ours. There is so much to see, every day brings a new sight or adventure. You cannot help but marvel at the enthusiasm and care with which the scouts, rangers and all the RPS staff love and respect the animals and South Luangwa.

More photos from our drives and walks can be seen at http://www.simnkaff.com/gallery2/v/Trips/RPS2010/

A Different Big Yellow Box

It even provides a useful local storage facility.

Well, I never did! I decided to stop for a few minutes to make coffee and was treated to the sight of a lorry unloading outside our house. It soon became apparent that they were leaving us this brand new, full, salt bin. It’s certainly caused quite a stir around the close as nobody was expecting it. We’ve been living here for over a decade now (doesn’t time fly) during which the council have never gritted our little road, causing us all sorts of worries when it does snow as we must negotiate the icy slope down towards the South Circular. So, to whoever it was in the council who decided to send these out (and I saw their lorry had a number of other such bins ready to be deployed in advance of the expected harsh weekend), well done.

Of course, we’re now running a sweep to see how long it remains in place, intact, full and ready for use, but it seems as if the council may actually be aware that we exist.