16 February 2012
Dear all,
The competition winners were pulled yesterday and the “Electric Man” premier tickets were won by “Itsliz” who has still to get in touch! The invitations to the studio were won by Dave Barras, the director of “Electric Man” who’s already coming to the evening’s performance! Quite Fellini considering! 🙂 Accordingly there will be another draw made tonight!
Another “Fellini” moment yesterday when I was in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh in search of leads for the studio at the music store and was meeting Tara’s mother for a coffee. While waiting on her arrival I entered a convenience store and the owner said something about a “movie”. I thought he was referring to “Electric Man” which had featured the Grassmarket and I’d bought cigars from that store during the shoot. I nodded and smiled and exited to find cars queued up the street and police halting the traffic. It turned out that there was a full film crew shooting up the road, a far bigger budget than our humble project;extras milling around with polystyrene cups of steaming coffee at the makeshift catering tables as lights were hoisted,reflector boards and black out frames were erected and camera lenses changed as new set ups moved into place.
I was informed by on set paramedics that they were filming Irvine Welsh’s “Filth” with James Mc Evoy in the leading role. I had a nose about while I was waiting and noticed a middle aged looking guy with hat and trench coat, looking very much like an extra (it turned out he was). I wasn’t quite sure whether my recognition systems were working correctly and walked up to him with “are you who I think you are?” traversed around a questioning smile. “Yeah,know you too ” came back just as Tamara walked up and greeted me and the figure moved off before I had a chance to say anything else. It was Mr Welsh himself looking very different from the last time I’d seen him at Easter Road.We’d both middle aged and he looked far less the angry,edgy, wired figure I remembered from the “Trainspotting” premier after show party.And I was probably more bearded,bulkier, more gray and etched than he remembered me!
I knew he wasn’t a fan as a couple of press comments he’d made about me weren’t exactly complimentary and I knew he detested “Marillion”.
I’d lost touch with his writing quite a few books back having got tired of the formula.”Filth” is allegedly the follow up to “Trainspotting”, which I thought was a brilliant movie. I hope it’s better than “Acid House” that relied on shock rather than a story line to make an impression in my opinion.Interesting to see how it comes out and great to see movie cameras in the capital.
Back to the studio with speaker cable and after a few stressful moments as missing elements were traced and added the sounds filled the control room for the first time for too long a while.
A local sound engineer, Liam Morrison is helping me out with the techy stuff and gradually the live shows are being downloaded onto the system for future listening.It’s going to be a trial and judging from the first listens there’s going to be quite a few disappointments which have already resulted in a reevaluation of the project as regards finished product.
The Polish multi tracks had already thrown up problems with only 2 out of a possible 5 usable for technical reasons. The Manchester “Band on the Wall” sessions also threw up issues and nowhere near represented the performance.I am left with a limited number of multi track recordings and now rely on a sequence of stereo desk recordings to bolster the release.
I have decided that an elaborate box set is no longer in the mix and will be aiming for a multi cd composition taken from an array of sources packaged together with 2 mixed DVD’s, again from various sources at a reduced and more reasonable price to reflect the material.
I have taken what has been said on the Forum on The Company web site into consideration and appreciate current economics together with the desire for every fan to own recordings from the last tour.
I am now looking at a possible 4 cd “best of” from across the tour together with 2 DVD’s, again from various sources, as the primary box set, hopefully bringing this in at around