Film Director from Scotland. Features include 'Big Gold Dream' - EIFF Audience Award winning documentary on Edinburgh Post-Punk Music. Recently screened on BBC2. 'Teenage Superstars' - EIFF Best Documentary Nominee, Far From the Apple Tree - Feature, EIFF Works-in-Progress, Night Kaleidoscope - experimental feature. Background in Cinematography and very early Digital Imaging. Camera and DIT credits include Outlander, Game of Thrones, World War Z, Trainspotting 2 Collector of old video and film cameras. Experimenting, taking them apart and putting them back together in a different order. Home Film Processing Enthusiast! 35,16,8
The most epic ad of the 80s. The ad remix with the reworked lyrics was my favourite. I have the 3" CD somewhere in the old parents loft but buggered if I can find it.
Martyn Ware has a fantastical perspective regarding Heaven 17. The “millions and millions” of records that Heaven 17 sold (alleged by Martyn) was, by all online sources, closer to less than half a million total. And if he thinks his version of Human League would have been more successful than the “Dare” lineup, he's more than delusional.
Interesting interview, but here's a true story about Dave and the seriously not very good band that I was in at the time. It's late 1978 and we (Dead Trout) had recorded 3 tracks in the same 4 track studio where Teardrops had recorded their EP. It wasn't a great demo and reflected that this was a band that seriously lacked a shared identity and sense of direction. About half of us wanted to be the most experimental, unmusical and unlistenable ensemble imaginable. This was an anti-band, a Dadaist tribute act with no serious ambition or intention to make records. The other half kind of bought into the idea, but had a sneaking desire to make actual music and write recognisable tunes. The Open Eye session and our live performances were a conflict zone between these radically different and contradictory inclinations. A couple of days after the recording, we called in to pick up a cassette of the session from Noddy Knowler, who ran the studio, and we bumped into Dave. He'd come into the session whilst we'd been recording and had been sat listening to the offering as we'd been left the studio in some kind of strange reverie Now. he asked us could we call round to see him in the Zoo Office later in the week. Patrick and myself went to see him and he told us how much he loved the demo and how he'd seen us play at Eric's a few times and would like to sign us to Zoo. He kept alluding to the "melodrama" of our music, which, to be honest wasn't a quality that we immediately recognised. But there was a problem. Bill wanted to sign the Bunnymen, so we were in some kind of competition and we needed to shape up. And there was another problem, Dave had observed that when we played live, it was apparent that only half the band members (there were normally about 10 people on stage) actually appeared to be able to play their instruments. The others would have to go. If we wanted a record deal, we'd have to jettison the non-musicians, and demonstrate that we were serious and committed. This was a bit worrying as Patrick and myself suspected that we were in the surplus to requirement category. We reported back to a couple of other band members, who were also perhaps in the similar jeopardy. Julian (not Cope) who was our viola player (after our fashion) and the self-appointed custodian of the Dead Trout aesthetic pondered for a few moments, before offering the only possible conclusion. "Easy," he said, "let's sack the musicians." The rest, as they say, is history.
I was at their gig at The Vortex London in 1977. Fay looking like a Mary Quant 60's model being showered with gob from the audience, and being completely unfazed.
