As ever, Audio Shrapnel (aka Lez Adams, aka LezDoctor aka The King) excels himself. For example, years ago & still bugging me to this day, there was this Depth Charge-type record Coldcut used to hammer on their KissFM 'Solid Steel' shows, a TV-themed 'Black Beauty' bootleg which 'scaled' (you could play it at 33 or 45, one reason for keeping your vinyl, as Lez sez, "You can't really do that with CDs!) Couldn't find it on Google, then Lez waved his wand:- Horsepower 'Bolt'. Lez has also just compiled the sickest CD snippets of old skool/archive Mike Allen and C-c-c-c-Capital Radio shows including the FIRST EVER Capital Rap show with Westwood where John Sachs hands over "Live from the Limelight!", all pre-Alan Partridge I'll have you know! The shows are pure 'Starbucks Effect', it's not so much the tunes played, it's all the media around them i.e. the DJ chat, adverts, jingles etc. TEARING!!!
Props as well to Tim for sorting my page on 'Myspace'. Had a great time with Tim the other weekend, DJ-ing together for a firing Guy Fawkes night in Newcastle (pictured left/both bleary eyed the morning after).
Good to catch up, swap toons on the train back home & reminisce - geez, was it really '92 when I gently coaxed Tim (then, in full Utah Saints swing) to present MTV's Party Zone while VJ Simone was on holiday? As I mentioned before, Tim really got me thinking about Serrato and the future of DJ-ing, trashing your vinyl etc. Interesting to read in DJ Mag's 'Top 100 DJs of 2005' issue on the train back how practically everyone, when asked about 'Technology' and their set, nearly all 100 had ditched vinyl, were using CDs and/or fully laptop presshah! I think it was only ATB (in the top 10) who still swore by his vinyl and maintained that digitial technology wasn't doing it for him; respect!
Never that into football, maybe I'd raise an eyebrow if England made the World Cup semi's or something but George Best? Not just football or celebrity but a fascinating character:
THE GUARDIAN/25 NOVEMBER 2005 [JOURNALIST: GORDON BURN]
"In the same way that he tended to be a loner rather than a convivial drunk, Best always seemed to have a preference for pubs over people. In the course of his life, a recognisable pattern emerged of him finding a drinking place where he felt comfortable in his skin, and doggedly sticking with it. Through the whole of his heyday at Old Trafford, that place was a sticky-carpeted, city-centre boozer called the Brown Bull. It was rundown and going to the wall when Best first wandered in, but it was soon one of the most happening places in Manchester, solely on the strength of his sudden, stellar celebrity. Best's sometime drinking partner and friend, the sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney, has recalled a night in the Brown Bull straight after Best had played in a European Cup match at Old Trafford: "No one had given much thought to dinner but, by the time the after-hours session was under way, hunger was a problem. At least it was until Best went round taking fish and chip orders from everyone in the bar, then disappeared. He returned half an hour later, not merely with all the orders accurately filled but with plates, knives and forks for everybody. The waiter seemed less like a superstar than the appealing boy who had worked small miracles with a tennis ball on the streets of the Cregagh housing estate in east Belfast."
Eamon Dunphy, a teammate in the early 60s, has described how Best always liked bars that functioned as "a home for those who didn't belong anywhere else ... Bars where human vulnerability was not frowned upon, was, on the contrary, celebrated." Through the eclipse years of the 1980s and 90s, Best could invariably be tracked down to a tiny local tucked away between the river and the Kings Road in London.
At his corner table at the Phene, half-hidden but with an unobstructed view of the door, he didn't invite conversation and, if the look he shot them over his glasses didn't deter unwanted visitors from invading his space, he didn't mind letting them have the rough edge of his tongue. The Phene had practical advantages: his friends lied on his behalf and said he wasn't there when wives, girlfriends and creditors were in hot pursuit on the phone; the bar staff laced his "orange juice" with vodka and tipped brandies into his coffee in the periods when he was supposed to be drying out.
But it had a deeper, totemic kind of significance which left his wife puzzling over "his constant desire to be at the smelly old Phene Arms". The Phene was the centre of his existence and he was content to spend entire days there, the days silting up into weeks and months, with the occasional foray to the betting shop, the off-licence on the corner, now and again (food was never high on the list of priorities) to Pucci's pizzeria on the Kings Road.
A fringe-benefit of his enduring celebrity was that the fire-fighters at Chelsea fire station, which was mid-way between the Phene and another pub he sometimes lay low in, would make him up a bed for the night if they came across him unconscious on a bench or saw him staggering home, looking excessively the worse for wear.
For somebody who, like his friend Rod Stewart, was rarely photographed without at least one generic blonde actress-slash-model in tow, Best was a man who seemed to luxuriate in his own company. Whenever I would see him in the Phene - old man's glasses low on his nose, Daily Mirror crossword propped up protectively in front of him - he'd remind me of the life-lagged narrator of Peter Handke's short novel, The Afternoon of a Writer. After a day spent not getting any words down on the page, the writer of the title habitually hauls his carcass to the local "gin mill" to lose himself: "He recalled certain particulars concerning each one of them. Not a few had told him the whole story of their lives, most of which he had forgotten by the next day ... For today he required no more, no sight or conversation, and above all nothing new. Just to rest, to close his eyes and ears; just to inhale and exhale would be effort enough."
Best's Chelsea neighbours got used to seeing him on the street, sometimes just wandering, with a faraway look in his eye. As if he didn't even see everybody watching him, or they weren't there. After spending some time with the baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, the American writer Gay Talese thought that look was the consequence of fame. It was the same look Talese had seen in the eyes of Greta Garbo: "Because when people got so famous that there was no one else on their level - no one else had a life at that pitch of hyperexistence - then, it was like the other people didn't quite have existence ... they simply weren't there."
Part of the deal with whoever Best happened to be shacked up with was that he could fly off to spend some time on his own with a bottle on a beach somewhere, with no notice given, no questions asked. "I used to love going to Amsterdam, not because I wanted to pay for a woman or smoke dope, I just loved sitting in the old square having a couple of beers and watching the world go by," he wrote. "Maybe 'loner' is too strong a word, but I've always enjoyed being on my own. I can just sit there quietly and am perfectly happy."
It seems remarkable, given his career of drunk-driving, philandering and domestic violence, and his multiple addictions to alcohol, gambling and sex, that Best only went to prison once. That happened in 1984 when, after failing to appear in court on a drunk-driving charge and resisting arrest after the police cornered him in a girlfriend's flat, he served two months. But it's an exchange that took place in the canteen at Southwark crown court before sentencing that has entered Best lore. His friends and defence team were staring into the bottom of their coffee cups, with nothing to say. Then George glanced across at them with a smile. "Well, I suppose that's the knighthood fucked," he said.
The "deathbed" pictures he insisted on the News Of The World publishing days before he died, were shocking.
R.I.P. - a nation salutes you.
(P.S. What a surreal irony - UK 24 hour drinking is licensed/all go as George Best passes away!)
So you're a Mr. Puniverse, don't worry, "It is not a toomerr!!", flex da biceps...of your fingers, click da pic. on the left & watch Californian Guvnor (!) Arnie in a clip, more painfully embarassing than any of those Japanese commercials, celebs try to hide from.......
The chopped up music gets a little meaningless/out of sync but boy oh boy, CueChamp's visual A-Z (note: anally alphabetical!!) of movie titles is motherf*cking TEARING!!! As Craig & I were just saying, cut & paste pop-stars/bedroom DJs from the 80's (Coldcut, Bomb The Bass, S'Express etc.) and even 90s (White Town) have come a long way; we're so in the age of bedroom VJs, net-headz whose creativity can lead to proper 'paid in full full full' jobs/work.
Mr. Angry & P.A. here to briefly vent frustration at our poor postal service, 'Royal Mail' (a shame to complain because about 80% of the time, RM's on point!). Couple of many recent incidents:- Today, X-Files DVD 1 & Vol.2 sent to Oxfordshire RECORDED/SIGNED FOR, arrived ripped open and left on the doorstep; cheers! Then, September 12, we sent a £58 item to Canada, paying an extra £8.66 to ensure delivery via 'Signed For International'. The 'Signed For' bit on the web site assured us we'd have peace of mind with delivery etc.
The Canadian recipient informed us that the item never arrived after about 4 weeks. Mr. Angry's P.A. filled out a 'Damaged, delayed or lost UK & International' form, sent several e-mails, spoke to various Royal Mail personnel, in short further time & money spent trying to resolve this.
Today, just after 8 weeks of the item being sent, Mr. Angry & P.A. received one of those cards from Royal Mail, "Unfortunately, we can't deliver your item because there's an £8.21 fee to pay". We assume this is the missing £58 item sent back mid-September.
Royal Mail's web site slogan reads, "With us it's personal". Mr. Angry & P.A. could be personal about Royal Mail staff we've been dealing with, by naming & shaming, but we don't like to do that because people can lose their jobs etc. so we won't be personal, instead we'll vent our frustration as we said we would by writing this and now we're going to throw darts at our Royal Mail teddy bear.
Thank you & g bless!!!
In answer to all e-mail requests asking where one can view archive
pop videos produced/directed by Green Bandana/James Hyman:
The complete credit list is here. If there is anything specific
you wish to view from the list, select item, then contact.
Until we facilitate uploading everything, here are links to sites hosting clips:
MOBY
"JAMES BOND THEME (DA BOMB REMIX EDIT)"
DIRECTED/PRODUCED BY: GREEN BANDANA
NEW ORDER
"BLUE MONDAY '95"
DIRECTED/PRODUCED BY: GREEN BANDANA
NEW ORDER
"TRUE FAITH '94"
DIRECTED/PRODUCED BY: GREEN BANDANA
UB40
"UNTIL MY DYING DAY (CJ BOLLAND REMIX)"
DIRECTED/PRODUCED BY: GREEN BANDANA
JEAN-MICHEL JARRE
"OXYGENE 8"
DIRECTED/PRODUCED BY: GREEN BANDANA
JOSH WINK
"HIGHER STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS"
DIRECTED/PRODUCED BY: GREEN BANDANA
After a hard day's CD catelogueing (update soon come!), Craig hits me with this.
"What is that!!! I gotta have that in Kill Bill C90!!!!!" (Cliquey catchphrase/in-joke, sorry!!)
Seriously, what is this site all about & why????! Check the site's number of pics - give dem time 4 da reload!!
Check out this tape nut too, love it!!!
Prompted by DJ Tim (more on him later), I just signed up to the latest 'Social Networking' phenomenon, 'MySpace.Com', recently acquired by Murdoch (not the Gorillaz dude!) for over $500 Million. Just like MTV snapping up i-film for considerably less ($49 Million), this obviously has much to do with no. of users and distribution). Within a second I had new friend 'Tom', a bit too matey too quickly though I'm assured it's no homo, just here to help he automatically told me.
Loads of people (usually techno-phobic NON-experienced bloggers) criticize 'blogging', labelling it a waste of time and can't understand the purpose - "Just egotistical self-indulgence" they cry. A shame they don't see the potential of a blog, just like the internet, blogging is a focused diary/digest dispensing information, help, crazyness, above all 'sharing' & 'giving'!! etc. etc.
OK, maybe many are self-indulgent but they work; no different from your favourite newspaper journalist's column, radio presenter's tip of the week, TV broadcaster's weekly 'how to' spot - whatever.
Anyway, Simone's blog, mentioned on this blog several times (here & here to name but a few!!), is seriously worth the 'ree-wind' and another big up. I simply love it. OK, I know Simone very well, having worked with her daily at MTV for nearly 10 years but if I had stumbled across her Belize Blog randomly, I'm sure I'd re-visit it again and again.
Seeing Simone's life with Andy & Lucas etc. in Belize shape & develop is a wonderful read; raw, open & honest, well-written & those sharp pics, particularly of Lucas growing up/playing - gorgeous!!!
I was prompted to write this blog after checking Simone's Belize blog today, reading up on some old Skool MTV presenter nostalgia and boy did those memories come flooding back - those debauched early 90s MTV Europe Music Awards and general day-2-day f*cking about but of course, always getting the job done!!
Thinking back to those days is like the regeneration process in Dr. Who; it really feels like another lifetime!!
Cyber-shouts & love to Steve Blame, Kimsey, Thomas Markert, Enrico (flattered that you just e-mailed to say I inspired you to DJ, :) thanks!!) etc.
Also, shout to my good mate James Gulperin who's just started blogging after I nagged him, as a result of his numerous e-mails, his hilarious banter packed full of our crazy lingo & pop-culture references.
Finally from James Gulperin's embryonic blog to to the 'Blogfather', Jorn Barger (pictured/right), one of the pioneer's of 'blogging' and first to coin the term. Wired Magazine, December 03 reported on reclusive Jorn and this Wired post sadly highlights Jorn living on a dollar a day (!) with his 'spare some change' sign, "Coined the term 'weblog' but never made a dime."
The internet's always given a lot away for free, one needs to be super-smart to capitalize on 'free' - Google & Skype, just 2 examples of market leaders doing just that.
© 2005 Green Bandana Productions Ltd. Website design by Steve Mannion.
