transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 34 – Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen and Freddie Mercury (reissue)

In time for the platinum jubilee, enjoy this remastered reissue of lost episode 34 in which film doctors Paula Blair and Andrew Shail talk about the Queen and Freddie Mercury biopic from 2018 (BBFC cert. 12A). We get into the film’s troubled production context, Andrew’s love of the band’s music and its significance in film culture, and we touch on the depiction of Mercury’s sexuality, persona and AIDS, the amalgamated supporting characters, the narrative structure and much more.
Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.
Original episode with auto-captions
Edited by Paula Blair with Audacity. New intro recorded with Zencastr on 15 April 2022.

Automated Transcript

hello I’m cold up there and you’re listening to the audio facial cultures the podcast that explores lots of different areas and found the arts and media I’ve got a cheekily time to re issue for you today the last of our lost episodes is number thirty four after fresh showed if the screening chats with Dr Andrew she’ll way back in twenty eighteen I thank the Ximen wraps today in the Freddie Mercury and queen biopic west a troubled production history the timing of this re release it’s a bit tongue in cheek and won’t matter told if you’re playing this at any other point in the future but this falls in the wake of Queen Elizabeth the second’s platinum jubilee I’m not trying to be political hello it’s no secret that I wouldn’t mind having a go at some sort of children %HESITATION Chris say on these islands but here we are it seems like as good a week is Anne T. celebrates a British institution for me I choose not to be bisexual son of Parsi Indian parents whose four octave range singing voice and flamboyant stage persona made him perhaps the greatest rock performer of all time but that’s just me before catching up with four years younger Poland and Andre a massive thank you to our champion patrons over it PhD on dot com forward slash AP cultures he enjoyed lots of extra goodies and return for their support I really appreciate Charlotte’s for AV cultures part on socials as well especially if they’ve got a confidence boost her and store I can always use those for example at the suit one hundred and twelve gas John badger reached out on Twitter but his guest experience saying holy cari if I didn’t know me I think I was mildly intelligence your editing skills are on point I couldn’t be more pleased thank you you’re very welcome John ideal for quality service I may not be able to pay myself for my guests but quality phone conversation are guaranteed if you’re interested in being part of the show as a guest to worse to have your feet background alright head over to the contacts and cancels features that audio visual cultures dot com for night the show must go on so let’s go stone cold crazy and write the wild winds with this discussion of Bahamian Rhapsody swearing this button mainly including from the film or things to be a mercury is known to have Sadam performed we also discussed the film’s imagining of mercury sexuality and its diagnosis and of course we spend a lot of time on the music and depictions of the performances in the film J. enjoy and I cried and sometimes picking up do you want %HESITATION I don’t because I think it’s been a thing for both we yes it’s my choice yes we can the Bahamian up city which once cinematically amazing as well as having for me that is fiction you can always it’s going to one six I still love the cinema the woman next to me holding service because they were when it was one of those so much for this story that Friday sequence is made you want to get up and dance so I didn’t remember you know it was great we made a rather silly mistake of going well it’ll be at three thirty H. Sunday off the main screen tell me no need to book ahead seven point eight six seven seven this comes doing really well this room with a fantastic soundtrack of course but also from six AM to you can see queen in the studio recording their first album really experimental stereo and circles in order to show that that being really telling the sun did you know what to do of course the same standard effects have to be replicated in my answer there was all this flipping the sound from the because that’s my my brain works these days in the opening credits when I saw Bryan singer’s name he’s probably the obvious choice but also he’s just a name at the minute because he’s one of the many people he said here’s one of those but I don’t really know the details a good few people I have been completely switch yeah for this goes to the graphic pretty much three yeah this customer doing just inserting himself in the Freddie Mac for this he was in almost every show he was physically ready from the first one we see and he’s getting ready to go out and listen to a little because of the way up to the very long climactic scene live right everyone gets twenty real time I think it was even that’s why he makes the words differently in the version of a thing that you did and they did not rami Malek the same slightly different ways that was very did they do that thing with by that point according to what I have been getting ready for so many times yeah given the switchboard the pharmacist is very easy to she gin and tonics one but to do it and it was the thing about somebody like Freddie Mercury so treating he was this one of I think it may take a couple I think for quite awhile there were rumors that one might have taken on the role of Freddie Mercury great so I think it took them a long time to find Freddie it’s important when you’re doing a this is what these real people bring lots of with the message John deacon rule really that’s fine walking across the really well done cinematographic Freddie’s head injuries reduce stress and these extra Charlotte reviews he’s on stage some of the show’s kind of extreme close up which you can only do by completely computer generated in focus yeah there is going on with having it going the instruments almost twenty three that’s our bus where underneath it went on before the storm runs right up said Brian may’s guitar I think it is control in the next couple of shots coming out I come like a drunk looking down on them and it was what I’m submitting it was a it was different from we will rock you stem from it was thanks to so many of them they had so many out there so many there was one glaring omission for me and then I realize they’re saving it the stock may know I understanding it of course there has also the show must go on that was one of the tracks on that album I think it’s awesome response he was and of course someone says the show must go on so even though that was not the clean up of banks and stuff in the last few months they did the eight story having him realize he’s got it and then having the crisis these going to just make music thank for this and it’s happening fast and this time he knows his time is limited so it’s very we need to have come and find me when it’s ready and realize I can dance strong this was a bit of a brave posing and as the walking off stage of the live in concert in nineteen when he lived for six and a beta six years contains these and I just became old enough to go and see I’ve always loved playing music by the time I was really aware I didn’t think anything about and I dare say going nine the huge presence of queens in mine came with me was my older brother maybe it was just yeah I’m from the south going okay so we know about this green which is eighty three known about more nineteen seventies going in the nineteen eighties at the end of it we it’s very few hits from that album they did in the early nineteen eighties and the queen yeah Highlander the queen does movie soundtracks there’s so many different queens and queen I love the jokes about finding love with my account please there was always conflict what to do with businesses while you can have a single which is over six minutes long which is perhaps how the problem I’m having my as expected of a DM all right his name okay so while yeah okay sorry this reminds the wings well doing this we want songs that kids are going to be had a specific statement that maybe not seasonal it’s going to be the and then some you know I would become a song somebody’s six German children many references fine where we needed to see if on the way like a rock the way that these relationships whether whether it’s not really ready to do another in the long term he was there was a new version with somebody I didn’t get he wants it to be perfect and then moves on to situation where they just good friends by six having this is going from strength knowing it’s not someone who comes in you know he says merry I think this is Friday afternoon for a while but you yeah she dismissed that’s never any acting yeah he seems Neil yeah I think this guy told me it was his minders manager every day nothing about it I do you know if any of us I don’t know about that I didn’t know anything about it so anyway the character he’s quite an emotionally manipulative controlling relationship the calling of the city and state almost and take them away from clean every this CBS summer to do so it seems like he thinks on his face I’m not sure I’ve taken that up right it seems like he gets wind of this offer he gives it to the manager John rates and says it should come from here so it’s all John ready for anything sorry is it could go either way and his idea returns are not some of it gets really hurt that they’re trying to break away from the and so but then it ends up later on doing it because this guy Paul is obviously one trying to siphon away from history France %HESITATION okay because yeah one of the best number I was really just an instance of an the case was over it was welcome to the forty in some in some of the albums yeah this is going to cost was this is somebody gives me an extra seven when the the recording an album right it wasn’t a modern thing that happened when I was three different events and six okay yeah re release do you have a sense the firm says this is Anthony from breaking get changing the dressing up okay London then you wouldn’t have thought that you she had a mistake three from the also this is the having this yeah we get you can get around it by just not having sex in fact with NATO’s so there’s no signs of heroin use or anything like cocaine use their hands heavy drug use going on get rid I think it he’s been led into this it’s almost like he’s call has wanted all the things in the failed the state becomes his best you know he’s a puppet master name Freddy gets Weissman merry comes once the reality it must have been but it’s just %HESITATION thing of all land when Freddie gets my stamp click on the one night stand or any Germany when merry called for five minutes from England fires on the spot like it’s sort of a seven everyone seeing again there’s always a knowledge base of things are you know you’ve gone wrong that’s when all the freaks come but that’s all taxes and I’m not the case Intel type thing you know he gets his money for doing all the media and by Friday my has anybody you don’t know to what extent anything straight actually station so maybe it’s a moment fading sorry for Friday that things happen it’s hard to know what the trees and hippos now could save this film which was finally ready we in a sense he was a ticket to the final when it came to do yeah yeah there you have it you’ve been taken apart just torn off to one side has been very Katie being quite confirmed with my family often really split yeah keep seeming to think that she needs it belongs to him yeah because the noise makes on this day we also have to point out that the way the film seems to make it ideal for families to get back together after Freddie has this crisis in Germany while buttons and pull in the license he’s in a relationship and also realizing the second going from nixes really wants to get nineteen point zero twenty one respond to the small people are comedy quartet whenever they recorded together since a breeding whenever there’s conflict one just needs to make it yeah everything’s fine so this one is complete another one bites the dust it’s just about getting anyone to do any work getting a physical fight and then I think it’s off screen it’s just John deacon yeah right yeah and I go three great wait wait wait a minute so there were these moments always gonna go wrong is going to come back together because their rooms didn’t even we would like to do and then of course when we get back together shortly before live eight and almost certainly didn’t happen because they messed it up together so you thank %HESITATION occasion either her sure more than a week Anthony it’s a working again a moment and I’m sorry the comedy of the film in dramas like this is really essential to have this moments here and there and a few years yeah it works very well and it’s very tightly times and everything the Christ really with it because it was great seeing it with I meant for the people who were clearly how can a day on not only does one is sure one moment of the woman next to me said during the summer end of it when they were recorded along to the on from the house and I was trying to persuade the executive of the MI paste by minus to release but he knows these online and I was and it wasn’t what it was before do this all right now but it’s going to be new yeah pretty plays a bit of opera it’s going to be a musical theater it’s going to be fantastic and he goes no one listens to all and the woman next to me when I heard from a seventy mistake you’re talking to the screen the screen is if there’s no one else yeah but yeah it was it was amazing the moment it was raining we watched it at home well I think I got really excited and saying things are going so I and we’re gonna be out of this building in about three minutes thank you well I am saying that we shades D. another proper operating as well a bit later when we got time to make some stuff I think is I think we’re going to need to get some details that we aren’t able to do at the moment one question for you %HESITATION did you cry I welled up a fair few times I have to say me too the jets that’s the kind of film where I’d wanna fill me with a disabled people see how much they are always the weather and I want to see when and where they only have get a free opening credits the twentieth century fox yes I did a special version of the twenty three folks from with cinemascope extension which was a rock version %HESITATION with lead guitarist Rafiq Bhatia I’d like to know thank you it wouldn’t surprise me Brian made today I think so I think this is why we need to go except from if you’re using the number for your records he was a British citizen from birth probably something to do with the fact that his father was he worked at the British colonial office in Zanzibar also that he was he was a member of several other bands before he introduced himself to smile that’s one of those ways in which they’re simplifying reforms of Larry you rex I just realized that I completely missed the Kenny Everett at the mouth I was in I didn’t realize that but I was a kid so slow why here even talking to the media on your part because I was like this is familiar I think that this is supposed to be somebody who I know come look at who it is but yeah it’s can well and the apparently that was a big part of the union reps to getting after it was but they were already made is there a quite flamboyant and that it was ever who first put that someone intent on national radio station on capitol Monday in the capital radio itself haven’t actually accepted the song ever it just pretended to accidentally play it John McCain ever played the some thirty six times in one day I thought there was something to do with it being a baby science to something else that’s the way that you tend to get someone to get airplay that doesn’t fit with the I could quite possibly spending mostly just reading stuff about thirty minutes server very firmly two three we’ve been reading about mowing get some clarification so interesting actually the production context it does seem to have been quite a dog for a long process yeah seconds with the director because we have both noticed at Baxter Fletcher was in there executive producer credit is often quite a waiting list of executive producers from yeah and this can mean quite a few things by inductively just case it turns out that he got an executive producer credit because he directed something like the last quarter of principal photography and of course started on editing as well did a lot post production director stuff as well after Bryan singer has what seems to be a family crisis yeah because I think I think a remember reasonably things like that but it’s just one of those fleeting things that you read and didn’t really pay much attention to it time and we’re also constantly having production news about films that’s all no it’s going to be coming out for several years yeah that we don’t get a heads up so we set the stuff for some catering and then suddenly there’s a film being released so it seems that this film has been in production one from another well the it’s been being made because this pre production in one form or another since twenty ten and so we’re quite lucky to finally got a film out of the big team of people who were involved in this which included Jim beach repairs in the film police who has played in the film very well by Tom Holland that someone that doesn’t do much actual using his face but I think then it’s just the person who you cost is people who want for express via place those people very well he’s become a real stalwart I think if British film he’s been in so many days and take up also should have been found here is fighting and that part I think it for sure members wasn’t he the real reason he won and prior to the carribean in the second and third seconds ones that’s my first memory of him yeah but yes he’s good at playing those characters that was nice actually to CM as one of the back bone characters and Bahamian upstate it was nice to see him as a guy in his reading here about a research project undertaken in twenty sixteen to understand the appeal behind Freddie mercury’s voice which president for that he definitely had a vocal range of just over three octaves which is quite some right and that he has a fast of a broader than the other thing is that we get from having a scientific explanation of why this guy’s voice was quite amazing okay put the sounds on me we’re in a situation of being really unable to tell with this part of the sounds are it seems to have been placing a layer of forty are from old recordings of Freddie mercury’s voice on top of what we’re getting from Ron Maddox force them certain points where it’s running Malick singing and then certain points where it gets a decidedly different quality of because he’s trying to sound as much like Freddie Mac as possible so the real uncertainty about his voice to getting anyone what of course Dr Barone I have decided to compare the size of our queen collections mine’s quite fragmented though because a fellow friends it’s just a few songs from lots of different albums I thought it was from someone else’s special collection sweet lady one of the lessons and so much of the upper this is the one with the line that’s really killed in the phone right one of them says this you call me sweet like I’m some kind of cheese some of the lyrics to some of the lesser known songs sound weird but it’s not like the lyrics to that mornin songs on tweet it we just got used to these very weird things that you say in a big operatic voice when singing the songs and you do rarely sang the songs particularly doing karaoke other Beltre’s it’s safe you can call them this because a lot of things to get serious I think to try and give things a better border where they basically think it by the film as biopic genre it feels like the wrong term sub genre feels like it doesn’t do it enough justice but the biopic as a mode of storytelling in film is something I find really fascinating the overwhelming narrative and biopics generally tends to be the great and history services but this one central character he’s the hero or anti hero of the thing I think what I really liked about this is that it’s not titled Friday it’s not type of mercury X. title but he may not say I’m not very much Freddie mercury’s songs but it does mean is more about the bonds and they are such a huge feature and so much is made of the bands in the film especially them all referring to each other’s family they find their paper I find their tribe that’s part of the look of the film when someone refers to green is very friendly and Freddie goes then all my family in the early stages not these people are my family and then after you go through a crisis and it goes back and he arranges this reunion with them then he says your my faithful that calls back to the very first meeting I have with people from nine AM Miami Freddie says where the mess but don’t fret and the other members of the band talk about as being a fun night because none of us fat and the people that we are doing this for don’t fret wear a different kind of family so at Kohl’s box that so Friday and sept and say that but he’s part of that discussion they are saying that my hands the films about queen back coming as clean as they could possibly get you off the first trying lots of different ways of doing it and getting it right at some points and not getting it right now points and I suppose that there’s generally fit with the stress of what I’ve seen and I do get the sense that we’ve got lots of moments when we’re getting a fictionalized account which you might be trying to make everyone appeared to be better people than they actually were and it definitely begin the fictionalized accounts which is making it one appeared to be a lot more power I think in the way they speaking yeah the people nevertheless even for the metric that monologue about fruit flies wow I think it is it’s done between two people who are looking at each other yeah definitely come here it’s an extremely heavy rain I mean turn around sell dying poor suffering in taming taming ran looking away from each other and talking quite quietly and intimately away from the other person and they must be made or so parts also Freddie’s clearly not while it also seems to be something of a rule now the you start films in media Raz for a minute or so and then you go back and start to the beginning that’s just how you do it but I suppose it’s not even the media rights because that means in the middle Steinman we’re talking still in the midst right near the edge well it’s like the CODESA and music acts establishing the same addressing the endpoint and then going back and then you can actually at the end our first few moments on this front America waking up in the morning of the live it comes at the cost a couple of times and then that’s it and then suddenly after stadium he’s getting ready to go on stage or anything from hauling waiting I’m just about to go on stage and then reflect back to him working as a baggage handler Heathrow in nineteen seventy until often going to be about getting back up to this moment I serve right from the beginning it’s made clear that yeah you will note that this is going to be a story about someone getting it I’m more sure that we know that you know and we’re gonna get back but first let’s go and do a story about people making music the most fun bits were when the band and playing time to come up with something that’s catchy when they sell a van and pay for a couple of days in a recording studio and I just making stuff up as they go along and the recording the album that’s called queen might even between two actually well it’s got seven seas around it because that’s the seven seas rise I first hit and it’s one that most people haven’t even heard of and it’s very hard not much guitar and that was really enjoyable certain people experimenting insuring how big they were on stereo such that they will actually start to where the tapes out they recording is they’ve been recorded over so many times and they apparently they would know what that this the point would have to stop re recording and recording lies of sound on these types because if you held it up you could see through it and I just love this idea that the recording medium suffers from having some which pertain to it might just start to disintegrate where is the way we record now the recording medium we don’t think of it as something that has material now it sells them quite virtue of this nightmare is burned from the very earliest appointment a recording being really into using stereo which wasn’t new technology in your average person’s home music system hysteria been around in cinema since the shift to white screen star had been normal since four track stereo sound a bit normal since and being that band here basically pine in the music video while I’m running please bring a song which laments the death of radio because of the size of the music the foreign army radio Gaga and being around that was huge on getting audiences to be part of that case they hit those three not stereo music video %HESITATION mornings in part I. gigs and they didn’t even do the music video bet with any sort of pain let’s invent music without having that account of an invention story they just had it so that one of those magical realist moments occurred where the couple of images from the Bahamian up the video just appeared in the background is one of the scenes and I was there you know over the noise that they invented music video on we got a lot of boxes we were talking earlier record number eight the audience participation because I was saying that I haven’t made a trade with me before hi much of their work was involving the audience I remember being at the fourteen or so and being just totally captivated by we were rocky and it’s such a simple notate the thump class you know from from clap read that rest is really important well let’s step four four one three three four the sound is yeah it just hadn’t dawned on me but then maybe that’s because I was too young for crane to fully appreciate crane by the time I was aware of them U. S. hearing queen songs on the radio their songs were on and films on compilation albums I was getting and that would see the occasional video if I was watchin MTV VH one or one of the music channels as a teenager so it that participation but just haven’t really checked with me and tell me anything on the phone today and of course we were rocking it sends me in London and they make the narrative %HESITATION I’m not really fascinating it’s nice to see that story of the pond really laughing and interacting with their audience so much because so many biopics and even fiction films about musicians and bands so much Batman and upping the adoration but not really thinking about it their fans not really having much relations with them but this was so different and even as an audience member saying the Salem he felt like part of it and there was so much participation actually in the audience you people clapping and stomping their fates and speaking to the screen and you know and it was a code violation that I think Sakshi exact %HESITATION and if I’m like that when you’re engaging directly with them and they audiences that are way fast and each other those legendary Mexico around about the different versions that for you would do if the federal yeah you’ve got saying we have we we did we went to this concert well okay while this comes that way did it so that there was twenty five not so we have to remember that back when I was a look at this okay there’s also some very things we say at the end he would of course at some point guard now the going is over but we have to do it in some way so if I simply say well you’re good and he would often say you fuckers it good and then probably like once or twice he just went fuck you as if the guy %HESITATION content do you or do you assume that evidently it no he done that well before it was something to do with it bye bye I’ve got a D. V. D. some of queen during a concert in Montreal in the late seventies he stops awfully close by them hello this is wrong he’s just wearing these tiny shorts it’s not so hot AP just shedding light on for their dynamic case made hi Amy so can addicts is the for you to use the person maybe that’s why I felt some degree of affinity with anything alive is because he would not stay still loves the kids really fidgety anyway I think even relative to other kids at risk but you see that and someone he’s become the superstar and has managed to make something graceful and beautiful and engaging articles mace ments there was a point I think it was with the miracle album in nineteen eighty nine well one of the songs that they did and also just while I’m on this page the cover for the album %HESITATION yeah I really did not want to have to stick together so that between them they have one two three five five online there’s no K. all his views but we seem to have pretty much resigned to just wander into it what details eyes anyway one of songs is the miracle the video for that they didn’t use the bans the use these for kids I think the bond to pay for about the last ten seconds of the song service for kids and they do the entire song as queen in each one of these kids whose London has learned how to do the person that I think so because they want to learn how to do it right to take a look at what he’s learned how to do John deacon has just learned how to stand very still complete and expressive one is not available to take residents about Spain he does with the the customer is not happy for the victory of the problems from testicular across the states back and forth a part of the band said when they finished watching over from happening because a banner that read the music that was being found they said can we do an anti tool for okay this story many of the songs I have not heard of such a long time they did want to three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen if you count the soundtrack to Flash Gordon and of course the kind of magic which is essentially the soundtrack to highland fifteen albums including the made in half an hour when the when the recording and fuss free months of Freddie mercury’s death that’s well over a hundred solution can we name more than twenty of the top of our heads that’s one of the things I suppose about this was that it said you know these fifteen green songs that you know your going to happen now that was the big when he learns he’s got aids they play a little bit of wants to live forever without making any mention at all of them having recorded kind of magic because that seems to be what they were recording when they did a lot of it comes out yeah we must not get the satisfaction figures mixed up with reality it’s easy to see that as a documentary Hey Mike Sanders %HESITATION talking about earlier silences the characterization of everybody like a lot of people’s characters you’re pretty flash story but also you know it’s brilliant to have more representation of north and Irish slash the people onscreen but it would just be lovely if it gets really not all psychopaths and manipulators our system thing or if both are better life class but you’re saying it seems like people I can the characters like camera mocha nations with lots of people I’m looking very yes it seems that a lot of the people who are real life people a link in the process to clean up the mess the several of them you are cleared customs in player will printer as the manager well pretty much ready made it public in November nineteen ninety one and a half days but it was an open secret by that point %HESITATION the cashier full friends are supposed to represent them in life if they refused TV footage as if that was a very yeah another piece of actual TV footage with somebody real quick before breaking away but as for her that she was not to care it could just be representative of that kind of thing happening in celebrity culture the towels for lots of money story nineteen seventy four press conference where he was going to be with them yeah they really pressed the issue with that press conference of their with the journalist he was really trying to press him about his sexuality and of course it’s a much bigger deal than the night but %HESITATION so it feels like it could be very speaking to today because we’re still not a point where it doesn’t matter and people are still forced to commemorate that moment my brain many strange women women well then he simply not panic when amazing well zing that’s quite a while speaking in this room the terrorists a sunfish an ATM sign mid summer murders when he playing Brian main said anybody wanna talk about music M. three times you know I like to listen to the actual recording about yeah that would be fascinating is that screen which is now going wouldn’t it be great if people just hands yeah about what we do yeah you know and also the humor coming through as well because people are pressing Friday by and seeming like he’s been ill and Brian may saying what a cold glass break anybody’s interested and Freddie sank there for members of this bond I’m not the leader of the band there four of us here in your own asking me questions why aren’t you asking anybody else cautions was quite as compact way of getting across quite a lot of points you know and maybe quite skating towards the press but also I think it’s probably reflective of what has happened since then because it feels like it’s gone much worse difficult home magazines you you go in there shall be no you go and get your messages and you just say these things attached to or women’s magazines and stuff and it’s just these snaps private moments of people having a holiday and they were in a bikini on a beach or people snapped in private moments on the night of eight this is trying to be human BN’s and paparazzi aren’t even allowed to have interviews with these people and the quote from information from patient list people divulging yeah selves and their relationships with other people we do really we have collectively as a culture about the private lives of other people so yeah this from was costing about asking this court brutal question of why do we have so much money because people buy their first names that sound a bit I think even the family members living in might have been Friday himself he says you know we belong to them the longer they both but it’s outside of them belongs to the people hello it represents that hadn’t mystic sites on the performance of the hedonism because it does feel like a performance it feels that you know that it’s just the the lavish party that he picks on many has Sydney bakeries but also the really intimate things like they might have copped city has the temple they have their own room and this massive Haris there’s not a huge amount of time spent on any of that but there’s enough shot reverse shots between him Nick Hans you get loads of Kate cops show up and the firm because it’s showing me that there also his farm lane police cannot stop it’s Friday there are few moments when their cats were looking straight at the camera with my cats got like with the crossed in the corner I wanted to just be cursed see that side of him DST pop outside of his life it’s performing side of his life said going to the masochistic gay clubs in Germany side of his life but he had this domestic life that was laughing and yes it was very lavish because laughing at this price that and the faction one of the music videos where it takes the form of this huge %HESITATION he’s not quite the right right right but %HESITATION GS stick policy where everyone’s wearing mosques in huge flamboyant gay and it seems that that’s the kind of stuff you wanted to help you didn’t want didn’t want to have you do wanna do debauchery yeah the flamboyant yeah German things being exciting and people wearing suits uniforms many of us would maybe have a fee is at some point of our lives who will try something because we just want to be different or we wanna CMI that kind of person so you try something you push your limits and then maybe after %HESITATION you go to one this is for me I’m not being true to myself and so you come back again and it seems like that may have been his thing certainly in the film version of Friday that was what happened and it seems like he was groomed and so not by this character poll but seems to have been manufactured items seven people so to see how easy that somebody can be and then the pressures of what Iran and he got somebody Kansi harping on EA and if you’re factoring with your band mates all the time anyway and it’s a perfect storm of things this man to somebody he’s manipulative enough can just quietly chip away chip away chip away convention or something you’re not and it’s inching his Friday his younger shoppers much more assertive your call first tries it on with him when he’s working really disrupts embarking yes ready that piano he’s singing he’s writing music holds your hand and insects I know he Freddie Mercury and Freddie saying you don’t know me at all this is all you see of me is that side of things and then the power relationship with switch to Brian yeah the firm’s leopard the film the director was saying you know how does this sound that you’re used to well that’s where the sound comes from in some places this is how creativity I like seeing creativity represented in films because sometimes it’s creativity with someone just a total genius senators could have just completely thought of this thing back genius thing it mystifies this in some places went to the other in the spectrum where that knowledge I’ve been dreaming upstate the first I’m here is because of the sound bridge over a talk about to cry and then it goes to the cook seems to be going on at this farm so it places that they got these ideas from hearing the cries cokes while they were working from okay this use that sense so there’s a list of people when they created only do is they just listen to their surroundings we just watch their surroundings and then write down what goes on so with that account of creativity we get a lot in the experience I have yeah nothing you just don’t think I remember you just set up on both go on yeah yeah it’s also a really comment it’s a nice light comedy sign bridge missile you know because everybody really laugh the thought saying because it takes you off guard you know because you’re expecting the protest art and then you hear you’re going to hire me it will be mostly noises the in quite a few queen songs even late in their career Brian made as their X. and Roger Taylor upset does not the lead singers are singers one for example is it wants to live forever how often are ex and he wants to live forever a Brian may for the record and gives the best idea serial found at some point this call is squeaky voice that goes on in a lot of queen songs and dance Roger Taney yeah got a quality to it which is not quite as wide ranging as Freddie mercury’s but it’s still a Queenstown but then the film did also go you know sometimes the songs just come out of Freddie stern it really comes up with the first couple of lines of beaming up states I’m just sitting in a gathering of bang bang bang bangs it out and it comes out of him like he’s puking Mike this is involuntary thing that has happened to me is finished if shaking and so that’s the kind of midway point it’s not him getting the sounds from his surroundings and it’s not him having %HESITATION I’m completely in control moment it’s kind of a free between which I think is probably more accurate neither of these extremes I’m trying to find out more about the accuracy of the Munich episode but it’s a very private thing you know and it feels more like an imagining of that period of his life and then you don’t know how much of that has been imposed I think you were saying earlier it feels like the stereotypical with the heteronormative fearful thought culture could pay card to know right away and then we don’t know exactly what parts Bryan singer was involved way we don’t know what Stam dexter Fletcher might have them that would be very different from Bryan singer it is runs from threat to have been there during the production process make for a fascinating account of how films function the taxes that you’re having done sunshine on nice deal he’s directed back musical things before so he would have had that energy especially because that’s based on the Proclaimers songs but it’s a bit like mamma mia and that it’s the characters that are singing the songs so it’s you know it’s not by the bandits by characters and then a burst into the song’s scene %HESITATION their plight to this story so those bank great things the crowd getting involved I imagine that could be him but then Bryan singer has dealt with massive scale stuff and lots of CG I have the stuff is welding the superhero films I think it was important to get in somebody who wasn’t just going to point cameras axes he added this film because it being able to create these virtual cameras that can go anywhere being able to create these subjective Schultz where something happens in the background is clearly just happening in somebody’s had been willing to do that I think it’s quite important to give this the drama which they deserve Sir I think you know surprising twist but nonetheless a good choice actually it is left and which bits of this reflection bits in which yeah the rainy wonderful snow in net maybe it’s an archives yeah accessing it yeah because I mean even just that idea of Willis directors completed most of the film but has not gone a while so what do we date they have to get somebody else and then you’re a director in your really good director in your own rights but it’s not your fans a director for hire Nagy he has to finish it and try and have some sort of continuity with what’s already been done I mean that must be really difficult we hear more about this these days about people getting rotating partway through a project yeah directing from somebody else because I have been with soda in it of course you have a large three seven dexter Fletcher she’s missed rooms finely guessing may yeah seven years it’s a film about green it’s mostly down to about two thirds of its done somebody needs to bring it on home you would quite happily both directed in the start of somebody else and just take an executive producer credit with you just to get the film made all up so let me hear about what’s happening with the Terry Gilliam version of going to help you find I finally being made yeah that’s right but it seems that it has finally been made but then there’s a legal battle happening over whether it can be released and I think at this point this phone’s been waiting in the pipeline for so long however you want he’s standing right getting this thing released do it daily for the sake of the film for the sake of all Americans all these people’s lives that’s the thing it’s hundreds of people’s labor goes into they sayings and whatever’s going on with Bryan singer fees have stuff out and then in the past while this is a film that people need to say because this is a by Friday it’s about playing and try to understand the phone belongs to all of us it’s one of those it’s a story that belongs to all of us and Freddie is still so very low that crowded that we ran alone tells you that because Susan manning I think an older cried and I would strongly suspect a lot of those people who are fans in the day you know that young people and the day you have to work the band and probably saw them life and everything like that woman we spoke to the setting aside years using the Antares the other ninety chat whether at the end and she just loved it so much I mean I think if they put it on straight away again to the south American to after quicken books of his manager to see how I was doing in the states because the relationship between the U. S. fans I’m quite okay from the green that was mentioned in the film queen broke the U. S. quite early but then as the phone went out stopped touring in the US because of the video for I want to make correct very stressed I wouldn’t show that they’re too conservative and it was fascinating that saying my Freddy the man space because he gets the blame of but it wasn’t his idea yeah because it was Roger wasn’t sure it was he wrote the song and it was his idea to have some %HESITATION cross straps you in play women but it all gets in the presses or they’ll get to the end and scarecrows on Friday in the states it’s only been out for three days but it’s done pretty amazingly at estimated fifty million for these first three days that’s quite alright fifty million for a film with a budget of fifty two million on its opening weekend it’s been awesome appetizers the firm has every reason to do amazing cameos well judging by today I would say a while here because of the high on the show for the Tyneside to be thought popped on a Sunday afternoon when did it come out in the case and I think just a few days ago the danger does this count as its opening weekend here at hospital if you need to check I do have with people some critics have been Smith they have may I think there are bets where the added and then sings my dipping back row play other bets where the C. GI helping the cinematography was Belfius for me especially that could go injuries the bus but sewers and into the tour bus in there any ass I’m not window transition in the from one screen I thought you know that would elect Kate maybe fifteen years ago LX nine back it’s fifteen years old stop transition and could have been a lot smoother but then maybe so much of their budget went on reconstructing Wembley because it was an eighty five because it took the lion’s head sets what we just did that because of the front but the rest was computer generated yep and that would have been a lot of the C. T. I. puts it would it not something that bag and not many people on the stage he’ll just to give it a day at work it’s opening weekend was last weekend this is its second weekend in the UK days during storms I would say this is been raining on them to standards to have a center near its maternity have lost touch with night but I was very good friends say when I worked in Tesco years ago she was just the hugest queen and Freddie Mercury fun and the whole world to see George Friday and would follow some of the tribute bands and it always goes in them I’m trying to remember if the tribute act that she’s going to say the tribute act I was trying to remember the name of his flash Harry and the peace to Northern Ireland I know that people like her would be the first in line for this film %HESITATION probably see it multiple times I would say this is one okay a lot of repeat custom this whole podcast episode on the center is in at the %HESITATION what films have you seen more than once at the cinema Ghostbusters twenty sixteen how many times twice and that the right one and three times and some of them because I’ve never seen a no more than once in the cinema it just fails even when they’re amazing I just have the patience to wait yeah I think the second US marshals that’s all I think I saw twice invalid code on which one was up the spy who shagged me without a for sure our website maybe it was a spatial let’s guess is another Mike Myers thank it was the one way faster Graham first name is Gordon powers count on international man of mystery nine ninety seven that was spacious rooms at this price segment in the third one was Austin powers in Goldmember the other two I think I saw a lot of sense and I think also the fact from twice in the cinema there’s probably others have sentencing minimums I seen dawn of the dead and site specific screenings of the film festival twice once was a Halloween screening and consequent shopping center so you’re and shopping malls schools one thing down on that initial come off and it was a mid night thing as for the phone this is two hundred people most of us made up of some thank you and the other time was all planned that alive sign track record in water from homes and nursing well there’s a green connection here because not only is this the band he gas %HESITATION soundtrack albums for film this is a band whose music was it just the music of Freddie mercury’s used as positive Giorgio Marin his soundtrack for metropolis all right I don’t know actually in queens the first quite big fans of a cinema and so called music videos include little snippets yeah references to other films and the music video for radio guy got a bit of help from the top this is the group who when they had the opportunity they’d like to orchestrate some sort of visual track to go with along with the music but he was like I think even maybe sign tracks because this is some fan here hurry interests is a mess and I think I’m becoming more aware of it more interested but certainly maybe sign checks done by pop bands or contemporary banned the use of non classical and rock offers not kind of thing but also there’s the phenomenon of the west and shows and stuff because she’s saying we will rock a yeah I can do something that will reward but looking into because the norm with friends doing maybe some soundtrack seems to be that rather than it being a band comes in and watches an unaccompanied version of fast on composing music yeah it’s the early on in the writing of the film and gets a concept towards hearing comes up with a song and then if %HESITATION trying gets released well before the films come out then the passenger cabin mates online which will include one of those tracks and a bunch of other ones as well so it’s this often quite messy choppy prices so that it’s not quite the same as you get a composer and and you go OK sometimes go put music on this so often it’s about because if you’re gonna use the name of the bond in marketing the best thing to do is to have something by that band specifically to do with that film ready to release well before the fed meeting us at the same explosion marketing yes I’m ready if late to pre sell the phone but also nine it’s become so common to use already existing music assign track me say so not just temp tracks anymore but said bill told them so the likes of mamma mia and sunshine on the street you using the music of a specific plans to build a whole narrative around isn’t this stage play we rocky isn’t it that like that yes not exclusively clean but it’s not rock opera thing is that we are is we can take a bunch of queens arms of a gonna have characters in a narrative where every now and then one of them has to stop and sing a song about the situation also happens to be a quick so I’m just going to work out there was a bit when I thought this music is from the future of the time when things are happening in the storage space because it was one forty but it helps me was having one of his first big lavish parties and the music off of this didn’t come up until about ten years later it was kind of touches but it was what that was sampled from most none it wasn’t and see how far it was heat sample thought you’ve got and you have a mixed up with vanilla ice MC hammer born Stanley Kirk Burrell let’s work out the timings on this coming soon okay conducts this %HESITATION you can’t touch this nineteen nineties so yeah we were getting a piece of nice Cummins okay federalist use the baseline from under pressure completely with permission as part of his made in nineteen ninety yeah I know that I was talking of a baby contestants will not and then it was it seemed to be officially it was music somebody was playing at Freddy’s party that was supposed to be happening in something like nineteen seventy nine but you know this is music from nineteen ninety but then of course I realize no one’s hearing this music at this party this is just incidental non digested music but I also so is it weird that they’re using popular music from future history space as non biogenic music not samples from the disco chart I don’t think so okay I have to look this up okay all right the some samples the permanent opening riff of the Rick James song super freak yeah that’s what I saw you’re going to tell different just do something I just do the thing okay friend what is super freak nine eight one that’s what I was trying okay so we can all right then we’ll go back and have this because I can sell it no no in the sense read the credits okay Rick I’ve mixed up to preclude the context okay sorry since nineteen eighty one might still have been in the future when I was supposed to be happening maybe that was there any any specific not long after that that that old because the party goes to Munich in numbers nineteen eighty four that’s a pretty discography data raises nineteen seventy six news of the world nineteen seventy seven jazz nineteen seventy eight the game nineteen eighty plus gold in nineteen eighty and then hot space which is the poppy one nineteen two okay it roughly fits with that this is a highly compressed gases and tiny okay will not actually move to pieces of music and that rendition of bohemian Rhapsody from stone cold classics compassion is at the very first green of my arms his greatest hits one how did that happen I want to know how it is that people get const as real life figures and also have an acting career I just checked the bios of each of the people who played the names of queen everyone of them has an acting career %HESITATION in Leicester’s one in several places because rami Malek isn’t a Gyptian prince in the night to the museum films very posh well spoken prince was over then have some career and it’s been picked as these people who they look exactly like it seems like astonishing lock %HESITATION just great head makeup and prosthetics well I would say so yeah widen somebody’s knows a bit the picture of physically lands yeah maybe yeah he looked very different but the big Brian may hair you can believe it Brian may have a million five reserves a dramatization a few years back all of the early career of the punk fans up to that point when they have that TV interview about life of Brian okay where Malcolm Muggeridge was addicted to them the six because he got to play the Parsons with total spitting images of the Balkans when they’re young I suppose it’s just a matter of you get people he really wants to play the part and then they can alter the face shape just low bat makeup of prosthetics and hat yes residual current sevens world but %HESITATION everyone’s saying wins wasn’t feeling a little bit betrayed because I thought is queen a head banging okay so this one of the tracks has about a two minute bit in it which is head banging but is anything else that they do hate that he felt slightly between the trash like green have been taken out if the needs that they have for themselves and claimed as it happened which they never will never work and this is still operatic it is mixing them but yet again wins well that was an early beginning of my awareness of Clinton and then also that same as parity and a space from coal loaded weapons I was respectively who is a member of the menu Estevez ready for you yeah and they have a party that scene from Wayne’s world the car is from the makers the naked gun yeah from China yeah I can picture the diagram right now if the relationship is a lot going on yeah there’s a lot of things that are making it because even talking about it from the movies are there there is some some research on that %HESITATION dawn of the dead in terms of thirty ten yes queen what do you think for the benefit of anyone who might actually decide whether to go and see this phone off depending upon what we say I got to a fake that anybody got some touches me tells me I haven’t seen the films that you’re talking about it so I’ll listen to the episode when I’ve seen the film because we are pretty spoilery maybe it’s different Mrs likes of a biopic but then if you didn’t know the life story of someone that is going to be spoilery at such an enjoyable film is really rising it’s everything you want like and that’s all the songs probably the economical are going to be in their candy floss the elements of it but none of it is okay now here’s another song that you like that you really want us to play for you everything is motivated the axe ready well earliest it’s from the main piece of cinema okay perhaps we’re getting an account of reality which is less interesting than an actual truthful one would have been in places where there is this big pressure on all the surviving members of queen in the making of a film like this which is that this is as critical as of Freddie’s memory as they were gonna let any film bait it does say that he’s not perfect it wasn’t easy parking and all my fellow this time but they’re quite special I think he gave the world something I can miss alive at a time when we could record him come away and say about boys but the voice is gonna last for as long as humanity can prisoners were constantly copying recordings from one medium to the neck yeah that’s fine because of the way that it’s going to last but that’s the beauty of it is well to capture that idea from recording on tape and the the lettering on the tape and the tape spring nights and then referring to all of that and that we’re not doing that anymore because the kids that attacks sure my signs and then dot texture being on the final as well when I was coming I thought so much a part of music for men I think that’s one of the reasons why me being an old person nine being a twentieth century person as that I think I get really bored with a lot of contemporaneously naive because to clean I like the Scott Tunis I like that I can hear it the media being ace and the twentieth century in this room excited about the technologies involved with those of people throwing vinyl at each other yeah this is a physical object thrown around the room and the sufferings being around yeah it’s not carrying signs on my back selecting a few files someone recording the missing a lot of tapes on reels back in full force of personal voting looking at the rewinding it so having the way it anticipation off of things that said putting candles on microphones throwing coins on the drums during the year on the job that was the thing there’s so many shots of Roger Taylor smacking drum water coming up from the phone book the film plays it was lunch the day after Houston’s Devin the sound in a second phase you Hey it’s catching the light so it is something visually exciting it’s almost explosive it’s like fireworks it’s it’s another health benefit going on was definitely part of the queen yeah that’s what I thought it was worth the drums officers contractually that’s a probably be I well after its bond sentiments anymore if you haven’t seen it on the run is over and send them back really recommend checking out or even if you don’t clean funny probably with the body and the glasses are not entirely rose tinted no they’re not from %HESITATION I think the best biopics are like in the summer the costumes

transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 108 – 2021 End of Year Guest Showcase

This special episode presents a great big round-up of all our fabulous guests from 2021. It’s been a fantastic year and we’ve got great things on the way in 2022. For now, join me in enjoying hearing from our 2021 guests again who are:
02:44 Justin McAleece
03:45 Mustafa Sherif
06:24 Shea Donovan
07:39 Clinton Kirkpatrick
09:03 Todd Zimmermann, Katrina Michaels and Debra Beardsley
14:14 Nisan Arikan and Lars Henriks
18:29 Derrik Jordan
19:53 Dan Hughes
22:01 Dr Gary D. Rhodes
28:55 Nathan Ragland
31:22 Chloe Gibson
33:44 Dr Rabya Mughal
38:04 Dr Troy Hall
40:16 Pam Munter
42:28 Dominic Sim
44:25 Daniel Hess
47:50 Beau L’Amour
50:16 Dr Fiona Noble
53:39 Mariae Smiarowska
55:34 Tom Jennings
56:09 Mackenzie Finklea
57:42 Brendon Connelly
58:33 Dave Lewis
01:00:01 Katie Chonacas
Edited by Paula Blair with Audacity.
Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703
hello and welcome to see this twenty eight twenty one and if you're gassed showcase we made it very another year we had some really fantastic guests here on audio visual cultures through quite the past year whether you've recently joined us or you're just here for the good parts this recap of highlights is free a I'm Paula Blair and in making audio visual cultures I investigate a wide range of areas and audio visual media and the creative industries these include cinema television streaming live performance music audio production and the visual arts and much more anything you can think of that might be considered audio and or visual culture that's what we're in today so the issue has been going since March twenty eighteen and we've covered a lot of topics since then in the past year I've re branded the podcast opened its own dedicated YouTube channel and have been learning more and more ways of making improvements and sign quality editing my performances and interfere and communicator on how to get the show right there and better ways are incredible patrons at Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures have been instrumental and supporting all that work and I can keep going but cite them and there are loads of exclusive extras and early releases on pitching on so please stay find a satire and consider giving regular support to sustain and improve this show fires are our hosts a cast have also been tremendous and offering training and tools to facilitate marketing in rage so banks thanks to them as well if you follow AV cultures part on the socials you may have seen this year Spotify rocked three which we learned we've been dying noted in twenty two two countries in the past year which I'm really bowled over by I am I'm just so grateful anyone's listening a toll but the idea that strangers and countries I've never been to your last thing not so exciting and I'm really grateful massive thanks to everyone where ever and higher for your last name we've got more great things coming your way and twenty twenty two so I really hope you stick with us for the rest of this episode we're going to go through some highlights of twenty twenty one we hit the ground running and January with two fascinating discussions with filmmaker Justin McAleese and urban planner missed office Shareef was both in different ways talking about storytelling hopefully when you get on sat a lot of your decisions are already made because you've made them with the producer the director or the writer whoever happens to be in your you know what you're trying to accomplish and I mean really that's what it comes down to it's not like oh what do I want to do in this situation that's like very forced tear sort of concept you want to be like what serves the story what will help the director accomplished the most amount of information in the least amount of time it really that's what you're trying to do David Fincher American director has a quote you know like basically my job as directors deciding what information to give out when and that's really what directing is about and and by proxy that's what cinematography is about is putting people with a sense of what the context is what the vital information about a frame is in where to leave their eyes and how to feel about it so consciously without even attempting to tell them why do you feel about a certain way with the actors of the dialogue or the action or any of that stuff just like you know one second and you're like oh I get what this is when when I was young and now may bind to hold but anyway so I I'm listening to Ted talk on YouTube I was very inspired by that and it what makes it Ted talks special is the way they tell the story it's not like a lecturing university or a TV program that's why it's so special and I was like okay but how about mixing this kind of story is and then the plot casting and urban planning and also L. like after work are you doing I am part of statics Stockholm team and what we do is like I do content researching medical select co coaching people how they talk and giving feedback about their speech I was trying to combine that not makes a boring lecture and not to like sort of stand up comedy or something you know I want something like as a how white would love to listen to we all know that's it why we like TV shows and seriousness as a storytelling like it's art and culture is about storytelling so I wanted to do with the podcast says something like this like this format is not going to be like a feeling that you're in the police station like a question and answer you know like okay what's your name what do you do what's your project because there are many puts us like this and when you hear when you listen to them you you feel sometimes bad for the kids to be back home but give him some time to briefing notes express himself or something like this so I decided and I tried my best to that leave the platform open to the guest because it's not like Mustafa sherry fair podcast it's urbanistic out and ideal for many suggest that people are the storytellers because I'm listening to them and learning I can start my own show and talk but today most urbanised case listening and learning because this is the goal every guest is the storyteller I just leave them to talk just like how you doing now like you just you know leave the flow and that's always a good flow when you give people the the freedom to express themselves and always I don like control so much for the questions just like a main questions and then see what happened because in the end what comes from heart ghost others people's hearts so it says that there is like it and aim why I say the guess is a storyteller because the format of the ports gas is a kind of story to inspire us because the aim in the end it's about us getting inspired by people and hopefully we transform this inspiration to actual action in our offices when we really work with the projects in February I had the great pleasure of connecting with artists and performers Shay Donovan hello we got into some tough topics there was a lot of joy and positivity and her approach to working online during Oct nine part of my philosophy a little bit here has been to kind of resist adapting existing work to the digital space which I see a lot of people do beautifully and I think there's a need for that and that's a great way to exercise practice that that's your you know what you're feeling called to do but I think for me what I've been enjoys creating work specifically within these restrictions like being very intentional about embrace those restrictions and those obstacles and maybe mine them for a different way of making work rather than trying to adapt my normal practice within the constraints of the digital space I've been enjoying creating collaborating in new ways just in fun March was a bumper Munson database three fantastic episodes as well as celebrating the podcasts third anniversary with a special offer on P. Treon and freshening up the branding I had a great time talking with artist Clinton Kirkpatrick then producer towards MMN archer Katrina Michaels I'm production manager tab appeared safe from all duties entertainment followed by filmmakers large hand rakes and Nissan R. A. can here's Clinton toss could train at Debra Larson Nissan talking about creating characters and world building yes it's kind of like for me you know there is a lot of I realized a lot of hard storytelling and even one during the line of my research and my own destinations like all right Bach to your soul G. S. and then within the solar cheap what creation myths are I'm actually in the process of investigating various creation myths that have existed throughout human history in all different cultures what I'm doing is I'm checking pieces of the box you know whether it is modern day creation mess or Egyptian creation myths or whatever creation method is misty slow characters to come into my work I've read this creation myth recently where you these logs all from the sky and they create this ball you marshy area and then from this the first Youmans cute today I'm just like this is the right way you know it is the heart of storytelling heart arts for me that is my work is people look at my work and I'm like what is not or your moderator I listen to it all over the years really care either but it's like I listen to it all but I always think if you take the time any artist we have to see what they're doing to walk to invest it up but certainly for me when you start to investigate what might work as smaller practices there is a whole lot where you know there's a whole lot of world's arms you know hello world see arms there's a lot more still to come you know when we created this to really give it that immersive experience we asked all of our performers not only bring their characters to life but bring their characters to reality in the fact that we asked for Facebook pages to be created or Instagram accounts or linked in or you know we wanted to give them an online presence that our audience could go and find these characters in the real world each of their characters has a website that is dedicated to their characters professional backstory so for those audience members that want to really go down the rabbit hole to really explore their opportunities to find hints of these characters living in the on the internet so and I know between you've got some fun stories of guests that have reached out to you but I want you to speak if you can the creation process of trying to help build this character not just when you are on stage for that hour and a half but that lives in the real world I mean it was a fascinating experience to me because I am used to the rub us %HESITATION for instructing my character based on the clues in the tax and healing back to the technical in this case I'm creating the taxed the text is nearing it's it's very it's a flip of that kind of process but the exciting thing about being engaged in that creation is that you know the material so well my carrot so what's in the box and I can rattle off the drinks menu and like you know when in doubt to give extra Fulda to rely on and I have a lot of fun my car is a mystery themes box so I got to come up with the most terribly punny names such as the George all Mancini on the picture of Dorian gray Bruce Rankin steam %HESITATION %HESITATION %HESITATION %HESITATION bill and I have so much fun and so then I can make a game throughout the show all kind of assigning a signature cocktail to aghast and you know that he's here a lot had to go back to you it's fun and it's it is interesting having online presence with the character of I've had people reach out to me through my character my keys Instagram and I think Jim would leave like they think I am ninety there are elements of me he and Maggie had but I've not bought Tenda musician on the lot I got but it's it but it's really like someone was asking when my next gig was and I was like I mean but we've actually from my apartment that that okay it's funny how it's fabulous it's state like how much they invested in the lead in the wild and I think having those clients to you you know we have like will also %HESITATION connected on social media and things and having this carrot to how those elements as well grounds %HESITATION as a human one of the videos of my characters Instagram is me playing accordion and I haven't you know people reach out to me asking about the accordion which I will always happily talk about you know it's a great way to connect and %HESITATION I find like I did it creates another layer of emotion about it integrates in that technology even beyond the shot we had a really robust writing team when you're first coming up with this I mean we all kind of sat around a table are set into meetings just trying to like nail down the concept nail down the story you know we had thirty plot points that came and went and then the amount of research we have an entire told that talks about all of these libraries these historical libraries that are actual actual places you know they had actual significance in history and we had to pull all of that material just so that we could get back home to the performers so that when they had that fodder to keep pulling from as well but we didn't you know Todd night we we didn't just great this it was such a collaborative effort we were getting materials every day I remember you know our writing team would send us a draft of one scene it while at the same time somebody would send me a draft a character you know like Katrina would send me at the bar menu you know and then the next day somebody else send me a song I think between even wrote an entire song it had a clue it fell by the wayside as we change the gameplay my hustle but I once long and then there's another song that carries with links to another one who's a history teacher %HESITATION and I needed to see that was a pneumonic device about the toll limit and I up it's working credible it's all about last so it's gonna be talking I will I will pay you know and during the pandemic which is been such a time of you know we've all had to go inside of our bubble right a lot of us were missing that creative outlet so I think that pulling in all of these performers and what not to and allowed everybody to find a quick creative outlet in a time where were all very frustrated because we can't live our not our lives as normally as we want right so I don't even think we asked people with some of the stuff that got created you know I just said Hey could you have a little ditty because I think that Maggie you know I think a tree to your character and this other character they know each other and they went to school together or something and next day I have a page long twelve verses of the Ptolemaic empire you know so like it really gave us all a chance to be really creative you know and push the boundaries of how can we keep telling stories in a new imagine of way and just make everybody laughs because everything is so twenty twenty right then we did this D. I. Y. A. thing again with a little more budget this time via %HESITATION worked for an acting school we worked with their students on a movie together based on on their character vicious because we your last and me we are also from the acting department so we could work with that and we are making films we could work with that so the second movie with the together %HESITATION was also on many many festivals and was %HESITATION sorry how do you say and that his English is better than it was discovered it was discovered from a release Emmons and you have to write it really is %HESITATION %HESITATION yes get released in the U. S. yes it's behind bars yeah the Blu ray yes SRS and I'm also I was really proud of that and really happy about it the second movie is about seven girls in the pharmacy and then maybe %HESITATION cherished florist so it's it's kind of fantastical but very very subtle and it was the first time for us that we've worked with a non sambal and those were seven girls who were like in their twenties early twenties early twenties they were just finishing drama school not so easy but it was fun and it was also it for us we learned a lot to work with a big group I work very closely with the actors four of them M. when we were developing Leon I think and you said and I had just started hanging out again and I don't know I I was thinking about how to do a lo fi science fiction project that was still having it was still dreaming about getting into cinemas and making something that that woods translates to a wider audience so I was thinking about how how can I use John ready to do that that was on my mind and then I think we just had a really long conversation about death because that's the fun guy I am I basically just took that conversation which was really long and turned it into a script so that would be these two characters in that center which I think I because Nissan and Leon is not me but that would be a lot of the stuff in that that we had discussed that's how that sort of came about so so so I in that sense worked with Nissan to come up with it all and then %HESITATION for back it means and later permeates actually we started working with this acting school like Nissan said I was a teacher about and I get sort of bored with teaching acting and not doing anything so I started developing characters with the students I had originally planned this was Nissan's idea to to make short films with them so they could use that all the demo reels and and in case of the beckons group we quickly realized all right this is not the short film this is possibly a future and %HESITATION yeah I mean they came up with that characters had different exercises to improvise and to come up with characters intuitively plus with characters that would fit them and would be what they would need in the demo rear to %HESITATION and then what I would have them improvise with each other and come up with scenes and then slowly we would all see all right this is a possible setting like all the characters you came up with would probably do community service at some point they're all pretty antisocial and then we would support the characters and situations together and see how do these incorrect and then we would think all right you too make an interesting committed you'll so let's think about that and I think we had half a year it was really luxurious and our kids bed hobby yelp of just playing around and then I would go and they have seen all the stuff they would have come up with themselves and then I would just read the script according to that and %HESITATION mid was more compressed with the next thing we did with that school with over many ex but it's really similar to it then we may do a web series together also called the acting students we worked a lot with that school to find out projects where we would have them improvise all the dialogue on sets and I would just go okay now that thing you said was funny do that again so yeah from this very close work with the actress the characters and I look I think I mean I like that and I like the results yeah me too we got musical in April with host of the world fusion show Derek Jordan and me session down he's he talked about modeling Siri and lasts an ideal locked on circumstances we used to do live improvisations when I was working at B. C. T. V. N. properly but because the lock down it's been closed so we've done various workarounds one is that I will get my artists to record a solo video of them playing and then I will basically play along with that and try to pretend that's life sometimes well depending on how good I'm able to do that you would think it is live a lot of the times most the time see I seem to be able to pull that off but now that we're in lockdown mode I stopped doing the live or this kind of improvisation over top with her video the new format that I'm using is just taking pre recorded videos from my casts %HESITATION and that's been the last few shows just because I wanted to keep the show going I felt it was more important to keep the show going so I'm not doing a live music right now but we'll get back to it I mean things will open up again we'll be able to do that again but we have great audio engineer and we have three cameras at BCTV so its quality is very high somewhat limited now more at my soon calls but it's still fun and it's still I get to showcase these fantastic artists and I feel like the workaround is better than not doing the show it also I'm just trying to keep everything going forward what has your lock sign experience pain as a musician well in this league panic those laws my money is gone for more than a day most welcome and I'm still going to a new routine so I thought well this is a fun clothes look on as the %HESITATION I have the rest of my life %HESITATION gig of the form and %HESITATION you know we'll be doing it when I'm eighty the way in the out to the local public realm panicking so you take him two years out three years out even I've seen it all but in the grand scheme of things is not nothing too big so I thought well a mother trying you last time I have to try to be as productive as I can be and %HESITATION flex new muscles reading when you do a loss against you and you end up just being all of heart and soul of %HESITATION during the same thing all the time is is so can be very relentless off from twenty three I've done lot tunings here pretty much solid for the past ten years so that's my target I'm sorry it's good to kind of step wife not really in the cry of them wrote music and talking to people %HESITATION AA or podcasts and training people is good you can't convert them selves in in a frying pan lot harder and musician or filmmaker will put costs social media personal really bubble as things went quiet people that is very cold for what you do not tell you what you should be creative and try and log me off my music but I see a above that mediates its to me to be cry if it's an issue of free lost all lock and navigate myself that's more important to me they're not you play music as much as I love playing music well hello I lost all the Arkham controlling BB king mackerel basically nothing my strife people strive for that because it all has no point being in a high jump playing music well %HESITATION on paper they sound amazing but the end of the day you're welcome to somebody else in your control involvement %HESITATION which is always good we went stateside in may with a fabulous catch up with my old pal from queen's university Belfast Dr Gary Rhodes and my new friends fellow arts podcaster Neeson rocklands can you remind me so happily of my arrival in Ireland but also so I try to be unflappable that's impossible and one of the spookiest moments and not a horror film spooky but I guess you'd say nervous moments was when I walked in to teach that course because I felt a little out of place not only is it immigrate myself and living in another country for the first time but I felt I felt a little %HESITATION I would never want to be seen presumptuous in teaching a course on Irish cinema in Ireland I had taught Irish semi actually America previous a couple of times what I ate that was a bit nervous actually going in to teach all of you because I thought gosh I feel ill at ease real ill informed maybe you know to take all that long since as an American and in Belfast what I suppose my interest would be two fold in and one I think it started with horror and they're certainly these tremendous connections between horror and Ireland Irish literature Irish folklore from obviously the bean she threw a film I saw and I I don't think a lot of Irish film scholars I don't know that any of never really talked about it much but when I was ten twelve years old I I was in love with horror movies I was also in love with Francis Ford Coppola who directed the godfather films in Apocalypse Now and early in his career he had made a film called dementia thirteen race early nineteen sixties and it was a gothic horror story set in Ireland it was actually shot in Ireland and you know it's readily available on YouTube it's rather well known film in terms of cold blood studies because it was basically a second film but I think Irish film studies it's completely unknown connections go deeper I mean stoker was Anglo Irish they're such a great tradition of Irish gothic novels and as I grew my interest in horror I grew in my interest at heart literature as well as horror films so there's all these fantastic connections and Irish horror stories on film but the other thing to happen to me when I was a teenager was by about the age of thirteen and of course you know I grew up in the state of Oklahoma I grew up in a town that I will in American terms certainly most mmhm we probably consider small town twenty five thousand people I grew up in I guess I'm trying to think of the the best way to say it but it probably a and is a native American everything you know kind of a masculine type culture in terms or that parameters and so John Huston's films spoke to me greatly as a teenager his films like the Maltese falcon an African queen and these films with Humphrey Bogart who was one of the great cinema tough guys and you know his later films like the man who would be king with Sean Connery and Michael Caine and you know you can kind of see probably quickly understand maybe or or see that you know kind of okay a lot of his films in his life %HESITATION I became fast about Houston's life he was quite an explorer and hunter and you know very masculine and all that very much human waves kind of hit me way of twentieth century American cinema and he was deeply interested in Irish literature and by the time I was in high school he was making his film the debt based on choice and there was a credible documentary film made about it Houston and showed the behind the scenes footage showed in talking at length this is before the kind of making of featurettes we know today by by a large number some examples but they weren't it was before DVD it was before that cottage industry so to speak so I S. I became entranced by the time I was sixteen and seventeen I became entranced with James Joyce and the dead when Houston said in his mind it was probably the greatest short story ever written in the English language that spoke volumes to me the film version he made which I found to be quite faithful I'm talking at length for question and now maybe wearing what but my interest came from these different angles from horror as well as Joyce and then about that same time Beckett because I was also one of my other favorites as a teenager was a Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett had made keeping film yeah you know later in king's life of course and and a kind of although guard film and I was I was also getting in transfer you know it's easy to romanticize thing when you're a teenager and I you know the passion for it all and I was and I was getting interested in basket because of then his work with Keaton and I was particularly intrigued because Kevin brown will have made this incredible documentary about Keaton and had forty two Keaton's saying you know you didn't even understand the film he made with that you know which I think yes he's one of the yeah exactly here is what the genius filmmakers in my mind he he said he didn't quite understand it but he liked packet and everything so I was coming in Ireland for all these different directions to conclude I would say that in the night you know in the nineteen nineties America really when their kids always had this love affair with Ireland is regrettable exceptions during some immigration periods baby in the nineteenth century and so forth but there's a lot of love affairs in in the later twentieth century certainly from you know everybody you know celebrating St Patrick's day to the nineties when the commitments particularly the film version you too there was a particular love affair with I mean it happened different times before in the sixties I think with JFK for a lot of people but in the nineties it was like it was Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan's films were exploding onto the scene not my left footed one you know at the academy award and Chris I was graduating from high school and about to start university right at that moment then there's you too and I particularly fell in love like I heard it on the radio and I was driving I mean I remember the moment so clearly I was driving down I. forty in Oklahoma City are your state that runs around a lot of America and I'm burning down the highway in an old car the only one I could afford at the time I'm burning on the highway and this voice comes on the radio this ban what I didn't know the name and I had to ask a friend later that day who is singing this and it was the cranberry so you're gonna set but you know I heard including that kind of Irish weighed in at the end of the song which went from the Irish but meeting pop music even more Irish sound at the end of it just seem to speak to me in ways and again as a more romantic young person a romantic maybe more the German sense of that term my great grandfather was from Ireland scored so on Cherokee and mainly that but I'm you know I have a McCord whose family was actually from the north of Ireland even America from Cork and I had many once is a little tiny child very memories on more work well on all of that and so I had that connection to Ireland as well so forgive this long biography ladies that I fell in love with this and then I fell in love with an Irish woman who was in America and all roads lead you know what I had to leave but I had to leave and it was this tremendous love affair I cannot tell you how achingly I miss Carrickfergus one of my favorite places how much I've missed the Belfast city centre the people there there's so many Dunluce there were so many places I like to go and go repeatedly I just unending love affair there's nothing ever wrong with having back position with that stuff if you're not judging the culture around you then you're just being ignorant to whatever's going on and being ignorant not understand the culture is not going to nourish you as someone that appreciates the culture and you're being a producer like you know if you're going to make content you know make sure you make it was a good purpose I mean if you think you're producing the content these extra help culture one way or another %HESITATION by the stop you I think part of us being podcast assisting our podcast is preserving the cultural little bit so the way we're sort of helping with people understanding and analyzing the culture I'm sure you have it on several occasions I've gone back to like you know seeing how movies were like the fifties and sixties and seventies stuff and seeing the mentality that the world had then and see how different it is now well the stuff that we're making right now can you imagine what people you know twenty fifty a hundred years from now if they go back and find the stumble upon this L. as wow this is what their culture was like during this kind of situation and how much you wanna bet that like at least two or three generations from now people are gonna be curious on how people were during cove it there go back these podcasts and stuff be like wow this is how they got your cove it we talked about before but like you said it yourself would like the public access TV will you ever come back and see some of those old public access TV's and see just like how they did their stuff you know how they would set up their shows I get getting that look into like their realities and such you know like if we're watching like movies in the seventies some like that how much like the Cold War may have influence on the make certain movies and such like that's something that we're never going to experience but like as an analyst we can look back and how they're making movies in the seventies such realized okay this is how they got through the potential existential dread that they could die tomorrow from nuclear warfare going back to like the thirties and such seeing all those like the classic Looney Tunes and such are like the classic cartoons where they they influence are they inspire people hate you should go to war or you should help people you know it invest in the military in such as nail if you go back like that's how they got through the potential jet that they could be aerated by Germany tomorrow you know that's something to help them yeah as an analyst you're always going to be looking back and so we're making stuff right now that other analysts chemistry look back on then it's going to benefit society at the in the day Jan was all about creativity with artistically week absent a K. eight slayer one artwork and doctor Rabaa Mikhail I researcher with University College London's community covert project definitely so I mean I can't say you know it's it's always been enjoyable and definitely being able to have people to do it because of Hobbs you know the office and the spectrum what people saw knocking down its costs awful and you know I want to start selling at comic conventions that was a really difficult time because you get like really hot streaks up point and then it's like oh you know like I'm I'm just here to sell like my outlook on the effort you know for minimalism issue some people are just unfortunate very nice I think you know especially when you are on the PP should always want to encourage people to us I've always believed in my positive reinforcement opposition positive like pushing people you know like I'm always happy to criticize someone in a positive way if someone says tell me everything that's wrong with this also well we'll bill as long as you let me tell you what's wrong with it as well but yeah it is great and also in Leeds as well one of the amazing conventions I mean it's most target now but fall festival thought was I could not festival and that was one of the first proper conventions I want Sir I used to go like religious in a best friend of must win sisterhood and offered them as well and but I'll go on just look all the emission outlook connection with plan for like Olean although she's all these amazing comic out as far as criminal we need to do this when you know any upon this of them would call themselves such an amazing time G. situation out work I actually met should should a lovely woman called Valentina and she ended up I think I'm ever at fault double on the gun shows at work was so inspiring that was another Austin's been amazing to me Schendel designing my first ever thought it was she designed it for men gosh you're so lovely she's helped with my outlook as well and she thought about what she moved back to Italy I like I miss all the time which moved up to a million and she still bought a shirt she was like and it only shows the only on the phone so so when all of a sudden jaw crusher men's and basketball advise yeah I think I think it's really important personally I try to match all the also Paul I don't and never will I mean I myself to forget about all of my friends so I do not stray if Boston Celtic forget also it works my hooks yeah I think especially if you wanted to start out just dole so critical of yourself that's probably adversity given to myself even non if all the advice because people think that have to be perfect straight away in a society where we feel we have to do everything right the first time it's not all I'm sure to give an opponent diminishes and shows a lot of people produce all the mission on this quiet Walmington on the people really thought about working for the sometimes I don't like as much like so many people out there think oh gosh you know you really really good tomorrow you know so hi Kim imposter syndrome will be all see some of the actions that we've been doing with participants have been around people's experiences of lock down their experiences of pandemic their experiences may be accessing subsidized or experiencing loneliness or isolation or the anxiety that comes with the pandemic and expressing that through all forms sorry we've run a couple of very very interesting workshops the bathroom is run by somebody called Marana he works with us he is actually PhD student he's whacking on interventions with people with dementia and say she doesn't so very interesting things such as embroidery said the mindfulness that comes with android jury analysts say the find my skills and you know everything that comes with doing this very very intricate and still full think for a long period of time hello webshop was on collage and we looked at how we might be able to express our feelings food medium of college and denied that might involve looking at lots of old magazines and you know dissipate pad over things that you might have lying around and looking at maybe what the newspapers and thinking about thinking about white why you're picking them out and say you know when you see somebody's collection piece of paper they might have used to set in color they might be used to set some pictures that might be sets and what's to bring the picture together save it might look like a complete mess of the picture it might not be completely as that sixty correct it might look wonderful that's beside the point well the points of the clutch is is to look at that and think how does this reflect my experience and in looking at reflecting my experience how do I tend to talk about my expense had I frame my experience and if I can have this old narrative around the experience then maybe I might be able to address the issues that come up during the experience for example my college in particular I happen and I thought this is very very interesting I was thinking why are you doing this myself my clutch looked at that Meghan and Harry into G. and I picked up pictures of Meghan and Harry and for some reason I also picked out what's that what to do with the interview was around understanding and telling my side of the story and your family and these kinds of things and and and I'm picking these things out and thinking why I picked these things out maybe I'm thinking about my family maybe I'm thinking about my %HESITATION laid the I. eight projects myself well the way that I am talking about how I experienced things and when you look at these and then you look at %HESITATION everybody's colleges and you ask everybody to talk about the colors you can see some very very very interesting stories you know you have about people's experiences and rather than sitting down and doing a traditional interview with somebody which we might do in reception you know it might be very very structured when you got somebody to express their opinion through the medium of all his meeting the college you might get a lot more rich states if not you might get a lot more interesting data from that goal you might get more of a glimpse of the passage rather than excessive structured ons is that they might want to tell you just to tell you save we won these elections just for that practice to understand how people have been experiencing quite a bit and that's one of the things that we've been doing is part of that committee got the project we will say it does not focus groups of people so we've spoken G. as well because they subscribe as in people that work in the community %HESITATION whacking intoxication and community people lacking in that close our teas and social activists and teachers to Austin about well what do you think of the various constipation what can we do to make these things much more accessible for people with what do you think of the other issues around what's happening you know on these patients stuff yeah and as well as that would diagnoses like traditional Quincy black which we have to take we headed back to the states in July for excellent conversations with Dr Charlie hole and palm Munter to talk about their newly published pics funny rules and feeding feed him what I would just really you know like to thank you again for giving me a chance to talk about my mom and to really promote the family rules book just so it's so important to those of us who have been care givers with people who suffered with Alzheimer's and dementia I understand that it's not easy in a row to be on we have to find ways we all have to find our own ways to get those memories back we know that our loved ones are not going to remember them no matter how much we want them to have moments when they'll remember them but they won't be the same and of those memories when they're stolen from you find a way to get them back in this was just my way of giving those memories back to my my children my grandchildren my brother and his family a way for them to kind of remember %HESITATION you know Graham on the way in which they wouldn't remember her normally yes and so now when you see and hear Fanny rules you'll know that I'm talking about my mom well when the power if you think about it I mean they're such a great strong you know conversation about that is the fact that here we have an individual with a twelfth grade U. S. education %HESITATION which means no college no formal education beyond that who is wise beyond her years I mean things that she would tell me one of those conversations that she would tell me is about being mediocre she says don't be mediocre don't be lukewarm just want to be hot you want to be called she said because mediocre is just a block and it just settles for whatever and so I took that message and I think crafted into this one and it's that mediocre settles to the bottom and complains about the view and I never wanted to be a person who complained about the view I wanted to celebrate the view and so she would also tell me that I could be anything I wanted to be so if you want to understand how I can actually move from this or town in West Virginia and I actually received two post graduate degrees end up with a PhD you know all of this is because the fact that this woman said I can be whatever I wanted to be but whatever I wanted to be be the best of it that I can't and she didn't put any parameters on it she said if you want to be a janitor you want to sweep floors she said that be the best floor sweeper there AS and Fannie told me that I needed to clean in the corners because she said it could floor sweeper will clean the corners because anybody can sweep in the middle %HESITATION I've been a feminist since I was about eight and try to get girls and the little league that was impossible back then so I'm hoping that it will ring that bell loudly this is what we do to women and what we've always done it women in this business and we need to rethink that %HESITATION because it's not worth it no people shelf life it shouldn't be a matter of shelf life it should be a matter of what they can contribute and for how long my publicist you telling me the lot of the people who are reviewing it are women so I would guess that's the natural audience I mean the subtitle is women of a certain age in Hollywood but I think anyone who is curious about how things work you don't have to be a film historian to be curious about how Harvey Weinstein could happen and video such an ogre for so many years how did he get away with that kill the casting couch she goes all the way back home it was on a normal accepted event info woman wanted to be up on that screen triggered a light on the couch first it was just %HESITATION unfortunately and given I don't know that that's true anymore I don't think it is certainly there are rules predators out there but it's not as widespread as it once was and I think anybody who cares about the issue will be curious about the stores at least I hope so it was fun to write because of the feminist background I I'll say that because I was a clinical psychologist for so many years I felt that I could get inside their heads and give the reader %HESITATION some idea about how women think about these things how they process that kind of a precedence and disappointment %HESITATION barrel aging process itself you know if we know some of them did pretty well without I think the strength of my writing is always the internal dialogue it's not so much what happens is how the the woman processes the information and that was extremely fun to write because I think I know more about that probably than anything having been in practice so many years I took some time off in August and released some back up material while I was away from the computer June and July were really busy with recordings and normal service resumed with guests focusing on positivity and creativity respectively Dominic Sam and Daniel Hass hi Michelle younger generation because I'm pretty all right now I'm I'm around forty rise hotels and I can see people young so things like that so that's what I want to say and I want to tell people of course is not good to hear it sometimes the younger people feel like it's that nagging your nagging me right now I'm gonna want to bring it out it either more reality form that this things that's happened it happens to everyone so I want to talk about it happens to everyone we cannot hide it we can we have to break break through the wall and share it the man is difficult for me like for example it's hard for me to show my feelings to my wife sometimes she said you know you don't hold my hands anymore than that %HESITATION why don't I hold my hold on the hold is in well I don't know why it's just it's not like I'm I'm a touchy feely kind of guy you know it's hard to open up sometimes so doing this part because actually helped me as well because I feel like if I do good out there good will come back if I motivate people I will motivate myself as well just like there was a a youtuber dive was watching the other day he told us he said everyone has the same amount of time in the week what we do in that time brings a success %HESITATION differs between different people so if I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is I look at myself on and go to Instagram or whatever instead I could have used that if you know a few seconds and morning when I wake up look in the mirror and say I'm gonna do well today so in that actually brings a little bill impact to your own life and two into anyone's life right or if you're if you're a kid and you in the house if you wake up in the morning instead of going down there say Hey mom what's for breakfast you could say Hey mom good morning right Houston well things like that I mean there's just one tiny thing that can actually bright as a person's life but if my kid if you wake up the monies that had that good morning %HESITATION I feel good you know I feel good and not not a whole good but still good right in just one step up on once they would build upon upon just one tiny happen as a but not happen this eventually I feel like eventually everything will fall into place and everything will picks up from there see details like this the seven habits habits it's been an interesting Sir journey for man and not some space because like I said it was really my my good friend do is a lot more in depth with film I've always grown up watching films and really enjoying cinema but for me it was wasn't something I really thought about getting into what was interesting was I feel like what I sort of looked back and found with everything is that for me personally I think that the storytelling aspect is really where I feel like I've always had the most deaths and success wins but I've always kind of struggled with the transition from page to screen as far as like visualizing what angle is to use and constraining myself to like okay fine but the tripod here with this sort of lands like this is a result I'm going to get I can't do it in my head so %HESITATION you know for a long time I I really was telling myself okay you know I really wanna do writing and directing and I can take on both but with the project that I did in twenty eighteen I really found that you know while I can do it and I can make it happen I feel like it's better for me to have the right people by my side that can actually translate what I'm writing better than even I feel like I can and again maybe that some kind of like weird mental hurdle which in ten years I'll figure out that like it's just me serve protecting myself from actually making the films as a director myself but at least at this stage in my life I'm sort of feeling like where I need to go with things is finding really good directors who can translate the writing and the way in which I can write the writing if that makes sense it's one of those things were as I'm writing something I only see it as kind of a stage play where is like everything just kind of a flat canvas and it's all sort of coming to life around me but I'm not seeing like you know okay when this person's talking like this if if I have this sort of camera movement or something like that none of that enters into my mind even the least bit I think with you know as time's gone on I just sort of made that mental jump so it's been nice because as I look back on everything a lot of the films that I've made or worked on you know I was either more is like as co directors somebody that was there just one set hoping things go smoothly you know maybe more as a producer or something like that and there's always been in my mind the best films that I've made with a good team and not one of those things where you know when I tried to make on I feel like they work and I feel like they have a good message to them but as far as how everything comes out on the screen there's not a lot of refinement you know I feel like I'm more of this let's just have a camera free flowing and stuff like that and that always just doesn't work as fast as it could for something that's just more visualized by someone who can make that transition more than I can in September %HESITATION do you drama producer boleh more help to celebrate our one hundredth episode entry nerd style with fascinating stories about adopting his father's literary works while also contributing to the advancement sent audio technologies and modes of production we then heard from Dr Fiona noble about her researching contemporary Spanish cinema I'm talking about alternative approaches to the academic so they I have to say mystically lucky in that I'm pretty good with the theory of things but not so good with the practice and so I have gained producer editor who is amazing %HESITATION figure out ways of executing the crazy ideas that I come up with and I had his passed away a few years ago but I have this wonderful wonderful engineer what you believe yourself to a stop not only was he triggered recordings but he could just build devices that hi imagine during you need to have the particular thing that we were talking about do you go back so I like working in stereo I like doing as much with the stereo space as I possibly can one of the hardest things was to figure you know do I want to block actors around in the stereo spaced and then somehow walk the production or the creation of sound effects in some way that tracks them and when you put all this stuff in the same recording board line up and sound like it's the same spot this isn't very difficult to do of course the more you utilize the stereo space the more difficult it is and I want to get really clean dialogue tracks I like to not worry about anything but the voices when I'm in the studio that's the only thing I want to deal with I record all my voice is moderate but I need a visual tracks they can be hand around the stereo proceeding on waste with both panting you know so panning and volume and a little bit of reverb to create you know are they from the back of a culture to use things like that but then how to make the sound effects follow rob so I was talking to Howard our engineer and there's some kind of a joke it's only funny to engineers I don't really understand it but they would make this joke about it monophonic Kampot meeting some sometimes you would cancel liberal left to right which of course you can't do it I had heard him say that a couple of times and I was like how hard we've worked with MS technology which I'll explain in a second I want you to build me a monophonic camp and so she did the way you talk about three months later he came back with more acts okay so this is the pattern and over here we've got one of the lot one of the dogs is the volume which is you know basically does your in and out of this does your back and forth and okay now explain how this thing works yeah that's such a good question I think that was one of the key points that came back for and I'd submit the first draft of the manuscript to the publisher is and the talks about four I needed to do to prove that threat and the idea of subversive Spanish cinema city the big not that it wasn't there but that you know just by adding things like and the conclusions each chapter unexploded back you can prove that threads together and the artists such readers on their anonymous obviously they are such pertinent questions that really made me think about the significance of the title and how it related to what I was talking about it because I think if you look at the carcass of material for the big and the filling car pass it probably looks quite mainstream in some ways I'm not necessarily looking hot experimental filmmaking in Spain that's not part of what that be extinct there's some really interesting things happening in kind of alternative cinematic practice says worst filmmaking practice in Spain especially kind of post economic crisis that's not my forte told us not something I'm particularly knowledgeable back to somebody like Rebecca north send you she has the blog nobody knows entity where she talks about Spanish cinema I don't know how active she is barking at the minute she's from the northeast actually and I don't know if you've ever come across %HESITATION but she's a really knowledgeable person I buy alternatives Spanish cinema practices that's not what this because it's not a private kind of we cannot what's happening with the mainstream if that makes sense it's more about looking hot you know the key players all Spanish cinema there are some films in there that are less well known there are some filmmakers you know the likes of petrol model of our who is probably you know the most well known Spanish filmmaker certainly in the U. K. ET bought depict deals rather with subversive nests within those kind of mainstream contacts and looking out hi %HESITATION the positional filmmakers we're working under Franco's the likes of Carlos Salazar or at least customer Langat London about a name he's the uncle off have yet course people like them your last identifying filmmaker is under Frankel working June the dictatorship shooting about a strict censorship conditions that there were at the time so it's looking at those kind of precursors to what's happening in contemporary manifestations of performance and that presentations of performance in Kentucky sponsor and kind of seeing the offense comes through you from those oppositional filmmakers into the present day and what that looks like and how you can become %HESITATION means all speaking out against the common additives or the dominant ideas in society October so a reunion with merry at Spiro sketchy I previously spoke today at the twenty eighteen late shows this time we discussed her ad member French performance landing I also reached out to other friends of artist Sally match and a bunch of us recorded memories of Sally for an episode released ahead of commemorative events marking the first anniversary of her death in case you missed the hidden track at the end well here southeast coast companion and collaborator Tom Jennings reciting his first the North Sea fought in a way I found it in some ways liberating because I'm going to have number %HESITATION while I'm on an island in the Atlantic and that's why %HESITATION that and and the hard to get my head around them has but also very exciting I've got somebody producing will be in Africa during the time of the production and it's and my director is in Ireland it's just kind of also beautiful that I'm someone who's very international and I've traveled a lot and I have friends all over the world for me it's always been about you know other time zones and languages etcetera so it feels like the world is kind of stepped up to accepting that is more common than normal in every day and that excites me because it's just really creating that feeling of collectivity globally and %HESITATION I personally love that so in a way it is deliberating the strike while B. R. R. your chili but streaming islands you they can go worldwide and research that I think is a worldwide competition and %HESITATION we're having an yes it's exciting it's exciting to have that but I performed live for the first time the other week here on the island we had a little open Mike at the cafe and actually there's a lot of performers on the Simons strangely enough and it's the first time I'd perform live the new year and a half last time was in Newcastle actually enough and he was just so exciting for everyone just like all you know we have been sharing this moment an audience it's been difficult yet challenging but if we can find a way to have a balance in the future it's kind of interesting it does open up a lot of possibilities I know there's a lot of companies have in the states and in other countries you know been working digitally already for years they were kind of ahead of the game a little bit if you will yeah it's an interesting chance yet like I'm saying I think it's about the balance I want it all to go online forever now they really don't but how can we find a way to you know make a hybrid form or medium it's interesting we're definitely it's been a learning curve imagine a moderate offshore breeze when the tide begins to wane with the lapping of tiny waves blown back against the grain battles in the sun crackle as they shift this way and that while you stroll along the shoreline with Sally chewing the North Sea fast in November I never did like this museum and Stacy asked McKenzie frankly and caught up with Brandon Conley talking about detecting world a cheese your own adventure calendar that we have very much enjoyed this month's I do really enjoy this topic I like talking about the British Museum because truthfully I have a love hate relationship with that because the very first time I got to visit the British Museum was in the summer of twenty eighteen so I had not yet finished my degree I was the summer before my senior year of budding anthropologist just like jumping in my seat waiting in line to get into the British Museum because it is you're absolutely right this global institution where you can see thousands of years of human culture across the world in one place started walking through and seeing all of the things and wondering where they came from and how they came to be into that institution and learning more about the ways in which those objects were acquired and then some of the contentions regarding the fact that a lot of those objects have been requested to be formally returned and subsequently denied so the more I learned the more that the magic was kind of stripped away from me so it's been really wonderful institution I absolutely believe that something like that should exist but at the same time yeah you have really big ethical questions that need to be answered and yes people do challenge me on this topic they will often say well especially in the case of the British Museum if they started giving things back they have to give everything back and then they have nothing left which is such an exaggeration and far from the truth but I think that certainly concessions do you need to be made very simply the start you told a few items you have in your infantry unless you go through the store you will lose on the choir of right and so the my simple level keeping a record of well I have a small lamb well I I you know I I'm carrying this style the other not to spoil it I need to objecting counted but you keep the title of those the next can influence the choices that are available to you at different points so for example if you got a big cocaine to come across a big gulp padlock you can unlock it and if you don't you can help so at the most basic level yes you're actually do a physical symptoms but there are other things you may wish to record and write down old drawl at various points finally in December I had a delightful time with the of the last of the Cinemalaya Neil's podcast and learn lows but life as a jobbing actor in the U. S. film and television industries from Kate H. anarchists yeah it's I mean it's funny you say it's like kind of like a research project which I mean that I think that's a perfect example of what it is because %HESITATION I went to school for history I'm a trained ademas historian because you know that's not my field and I want to sound too pretentious in there I'm not gonna call myself when the film historian but %HESITATION you know I did study anyway %HESITATION anyway you are to no sales the story no one but no I am I studied history went to school for history because as I said before was a lifelong passion and I really do think that film is a good way of introducing not exactly educating because obviously you know there's too much Hollywood stuff like the last tool which is in the army %HESITATION but now which is actually funny like to go on a limb that little tangent armor medieval representations of armor are better in the first half of the cinema rather than what is going on today unfortunately but I think it's a great way to really see what people are into and see what they're not into and then see how they can relate it back to our world tangy and how to understand what we're doing wrong or what we did do wrong in the past whether it be through art or social movements and how we can fix that today and I think through filmmaking that introduces a lot of topics that are can be often difficult and can really meet people not make people but can really make them feel comfortable enough to talk about those issues so all of it is being an open vessel so to be comedy to be drama and just really being open and so when you're open and you know your team is setting you up for these projects and you're going out for these projects and you're up and you're down and you're crying you're vulnerable you're happy in your court you're sad the most important thing is just to be true to your authentic self you have your bass line and then you have people you study with Susan Batson B. A. T. S. O. and she is an amazing book called truth she's doing virtual people can you drop ins for twenty dollars a day Monday through Friday she has a lot of international people who study with her she's Nicole Kidman's acting coach for over twenty years you'll have been noticed I sure Madonna %HESITATION brushy coach is all these people for their films so being trained by the crown telegram right so you can be trained at what level and and it's like the best investment you're gonna make is in yourself with your time to follow the the food you eat the coaches you study with the podcast you listen to the people we associate with so all of that goes hand in hand with the characters I choose because based on life it's not just linear and I could tap into different experiences that I personally experience or that I've observed to being a great observer I love observing and so something directly hasn't happened to me I can with Google you can research it you can watch some like minded movies you can check out the director projects that they did a part for T. that's for films or TV shows you know the tone of the show grey's anatomy it's always sunny cold case you know the tone of the show you know the casting director like no other body work %HESITATION in there do great work you have to build a relationship with the casting director they keep bringing you when they like your work so if they want you on the show it's just a matter of time before it happens you just have to keep up and just show up and do great work and then make sure you're taking care of your body mind and spirit because they like I said they're very hand in hand with one another you know doing different characters is like it's always sunny it's like corky it's far sign in and they're like oh they like that then you can that's permission to play to take that a step further and discover where you can go when you get on set you've already done the preparation so everything I'm telling you studying coaching researching that's the tone of the show that's the preparation of the character before you show up when you get to set you already know your lines you already know your character and it's an opportunity to get out of your head and get more into your got into the intelligence of your body and to play and be professional because there's the takes a village and there's hundreds of people on set and especially now we want to be very mindful of staying within the parameters of everyone doing their job to make a party is you know the hair stylist like if they ask you your opinion cool but they're already communicating with directors and assistants and people and everyone has the domino effect of how they're showing up in everyone's doing their best so you know when you have the character you that's your ultimate time where you get to play and have a lot of fun well what a year it's been and it's because of you the listener supper still going and approaching four years of learning more and more of a different landscapes and audio visual cultures but I want you to tell me what have you enjoyed what would you like to hear more off and learn to fight and what might be missing that we haven't touched on yet and I know there's lots of topics that we haven't touched on and we're working our way Brian tape let me know by email to the audio visual cultures at G. mail dot com MSH eighty cultures part on any of the socials it's been a tree privilege to speak to so many interesting guests from such a diversity of backgrounds and I'm really looking forward to what twenty twenty to bring I'm always happy to hear from folks who'd like to cast on the show and I'll be back nagging at my artist friends to come speak to you because their class and she really need to know about them for night mind yourselves and catch you next time
transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 107 – Surviving and Thriving in Hollywood with Katie Chonacas

hello you're very welcome to this episode of audio visual cultures the podcast explores different areas across the arts media and creative industries I'm Paul the bladder and state I am presenting C. I really energetic and insightful conversation with actor performer and podcaster Katie Chen knock S. I feel so privileged to talk to him later learned from her vast experience working in film and television and loads of other areas right there in LA and further afield like so many of S. hyphen watch and loads more television since he became more confined to your home the St RT twenty twenty and I from recognizing so many actors having recurring appearances sends remembering them some shows I lost in the nineteen nineties and two thousands Kitty has guest starred and hides supporting roles in a while surf productions the titles of which I'm sure you're going to be familiar with Katie talks candidly about her experiences and I learned so much from her up by a high you know works and I am so excited to be able to share that with you nine as ever huge hello and special sign keys here patrons over Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures it's because if you see an all year right there listening that we keep going and keep getting fantastic ass I Katie to learn from the shoes really gaining traction more and more people like Katie are getting in touch it's not just me hustling for casts people getting you're getting in touch and they wanna share what they know was piles which really brilliant to be able to hop up top for for people and I'm really really receptive to hearing from our listeners about what kinds of things he wants he Europe bites and what kind of people you want to hear from I really welcome suggestions on our socials and tear email all of thought is going to be below in the show notes for more ways to support the show and so let us know what you saying cans to find all the important links you'll need to check a kiddies reckon so shows to check out the show notes and you get everything you need for night I'm gonna pass over it to my conversation with Katie I'm sure you look at low tied up at a certain age adds Katie channel yes I am so thrilled to welcome you to the audio visual cultures thank you for being my guests today hi are you dating thank you Paul I'm so grateful to be here I love the name of your podcast yes yes I'm doing great I am in Los Angeles I'm so happy to be here I feel so invigorated for when I first came to Hollywood at the end of two thousand one it's the same standard G. and the same excitement except now I have two decades of a body of work so I'm all about sowing seeds and %HESITATION it's really beautiful because I'm in the moment of now of enjoying reap what you sell and the fruits of my labor and still being very young in my career and successful in my career but seeing it in a whole new way which is really really exciting well that's great to hear that so positive because I'm really hoping that myself so many listeners can really learn from all of your experience that you just mentioned so if you're happy Kitty it's clear from your profile and everything you just said she record crossed a lot of different areas you're beside an LA mostly he's done loads of stuff you make a call passcode she's all over the place which really encapsulates everything that you do as well in television and film and lots of different areas would you be happy C. give us a bit of an overview in your words to fight the sort of work that you do need to different areas of work that you date just step gives a better picture and then we'll get into some finer details sure so couple things that you just said about adding value to you and your listeners and then my podcast so I wanted to start my podcast eight years ago I don't know how to get on the train tracks now we're going to be in season four and I can take my two decades of experience and really pay it forward so with ethics morals and values with arts and entertainment with spirituality because they all go hand in hand because we're human beings and to be a great actor you know we get to a great listener and be in tune with our emotional beings and are the language of our body the intelligence of our body and we do that through the soul is through the heart in through feelings and the mind is very important and it's analytical and it's a tool so it's not everything you know so through education and mental health and breaking down things that the whole world has opened up to now specially what we've all gone through collectively I think we can have more understanding more compassion that really everyone's going through something and we don't and we all went through some stuff together but that was always happening but I think it's just more apparent now so what do we do with all that right so we're aware of it but we can apply it to the campus we can apply it to our craft we can apply it to %HESITATION voiceovers video games commercials animation you apply all those emotions which is an energy the good the bad the ugly everything in between and you put it on to the character you put the work into the character into the intention of the character so when I was a kid I wanted some wisdom I wanted someone leading me along the way when I was twelve I wanted to know things I was a seeker I remember yearning for that desire that information to notify highway and I remembered I was going to be that for others I didn't know the word podcasting back then I didn't know any of those things but along my journey I found out about podcasting I wanted to get on the train tracks and so now I am and I can pay it forward with that two decades of experience not to say Hey I'm right %HESITATION I'm wrong I could say Hey this is my experience this is what I experienced and what Madonna did what Mariah Carey did what everyone did all of Meryl Streep Reese Witherspoon what they did in their careers is done and I can look at their anchors and I can look at their successes and some other failures because people are being more open to those things out and I couldn't have it as a road map to leave me with my target anchor where I want to go however with technology social media and the twenty first century business is different we've evolved as human beings I'm not doing what someone did in the eighties like up we're not doing what someone did in the sixties or the fifties what can I do in the twenty first century and does not have it as my baseline with authentic to me as a human first and then as an artist and then you know go into the twenty first century and being able to hit it shift in scale pivot shift in scale so when I came here in two thousand one with my little girl dreams in my blueprint like I had my base of what I stood for what I wanted what I wanted to be a part of and then boom I worked with deniro Pacino Nicolas Cage the top thirty five filmmaker in the world Werner Herzog I was on minecraft story mode like Nancy Drew books they put him into you know a video game app and I ended up being Nancy drew's best friend in playing for other characters you know with these power house boss ladies out of Seattle who have her interactive and they have a bunch of other %HESITATION projects that they're involved in they brought Nancy drew back as tech later it was cool for female identifying humans to be involved in tact it wasn't just a male dominated gender thing so we're demystifying gender is right and what roles people's play I am really like grasping our head around and having a full understanding of what this means and I'm on the forefront of it all and I always have been on the pulse I've always been a seeker I've always been a person with that huge big white canvas and knowing the mark of it all the good bad the ugly but being able to jump out of the campus and look at it and let it cleanse itself as life dies and then be able to start a new and fresh right from an analytical perspective not emotional non attachment so I can serve my best self and the higher self for why I'm here for all of humanity so let's just start there it's got a lot to start with where do you get your energy from this amazing lives it's god's grace we all have it is is if we choose to be tapped into it or not and I'm definitely captain in a way from a very young age when I was twelve and wanting to be that seeker and knowing my purpose and I feel lake along the journey I got in stock in a lot of other people probably can identify my purpose with a purpose of Austin %HESITATION my purpose that up I think we're here we have also meant multiple purposes I don't think there's just one purpose there is great man that I saw along the way his name's not coming to me but he was like in his eighties or nineties and he was like so many people are so the user so in a rush to find their purpose but it's a discovery in its an unfolding on the journey to acknowledging to appreciate the purpose is that you may have so you may have been a two decade of innate desire to join your curiosity of what you want to do right I like to utilize my voice I like to show up here even if it's just you and me are if it's fifty million people and to be a positive inspirational and make an impact one person at a time and I'm a mac or a person some like Britney spears Taylor swift all over the place but how is that really going to happen on a micro level between you and I apologize and I'm gonna go leave my life and it's a transfer of energy and you're gonna go lead your life and I hope we had some kind of exchange in this lifetime where we made an impact and so for the person to ning and I hope that same thing for you as well that's why we watch movies that's why the video games we played whether we're conscious of it or not it feels good it's a feel good because it's a positive conscious thing and it's something I'm gonna teach my children one day or share with my family or my partner or is it it is a a pleasure words an addiction that's actually making me suffer more and it's actually feeding the beast within me that's not going to have me involved so we get to be mindful and track what's running our systems their systems and patterns running and what's beats are you feeding right so I always have the Hackett HJC K. hacked and be mindful like am I going to direct you where this is going to sell me or is this actually not the filming so that takes me to the projects I take on like my voice over agency crime telegram I just went out for this campaign like I go out for all these the biggest thing you can think of like top tier that's who I'm applying to because that's the ethics my morals and my values and that's what I strive and work towards and that's the bar that I set for myself and so we had to check in with the bars we set for ourselves and raise those bars and even raise it a little higher to go out of our stretch or look in and say Hey this bar is way too high I can't even obtain this goal which is a detriment and I went through how could I give people in the industry a chance or other people chance but I wasn't even giving myself a chance it was pretty difficult and that was something I got to learn and grow through and then you know you feel the guilt you feel the emotions you feel all those things but then what I do with those instead of just letting them sit there attached and not healing that I hold my own hand I say it's okay little K. I take all those emotions that was nasty from a family member are nasty from a relationship or nasty from whatever happened in the personal and I take all that and I'm like bro and I'm going to take it and I put it into the craft of acting so that's how it never goes wasted nothing is ever wasted anything anything that happens even on like the the the worst thing anything that happens it's never wasted it was supposed to be and it doesn't have to be right away there's some big trauma things that happen and sometimes someone will never be the voice and they can never see themselves being the voice of that which is okay and you don't have to be but you hold the space of knowing and we all go through different journeys but what do we do with that is that our choice is because it's our lives and works here and it's a gift that we're here some partially positive words there can't eat I mean as you mentioned you shared scenes with so many well known names and Hollywood's actors on direct shares you Farkas Werner Herzog which is incredible it's really exciting and I'd love to hear a bit more about your experience of being a supporting cast member and finding a character you know you've worked in quite a lot of TV shows as well so sings a cold case and CSI you know where you're you're maybe and for an episode and that's S. N. you know I'd love to hear the experience of the chopping actor tango sings Heidi pack up a character how do you make a character convincing IT work across these movies and then these drama series but then go into something like it's always sunny in Philadelphia you know how what's that like for you yeah I think he'll be here for on well said so all of it is being an open vessels so to be comedy to be drama and just really being open and so when you're open and you know your team is setting you up for these projects and you're going out for these projects and you're up and you're down and you're crying you're vulnerable you're happy in your court you're sad the most important thing is just to be true to your authentic self you have your bass line and then you have people you study with Susan Batson B. A. T. S. O. and has an amazing book called truth she's doing virtual people can you drop ins for twenty dollars a day Monday through Friday she has a lot of international people who study with her she's Nicole Kidman's acting coach for over twenty years you'll have been noticed I sure Madonna %HESITATION brushy coach is all these people for their films so being trained by the crown telegram right so you can be trained at what level and and it's like the best investment you're gonna make is in yourself with your time to follow the the food you eat the coaches you study with the podcast you listen to the people we associate with so all of that goes hand in hand with the characters I choose because based on life it's not just linear and I could tap into different experiences that I personally experience or that I've observed to being a great observer I love observing and so something directly hasn't happened to me I can with Google you can research it you can watch some like minded movies you can check out the director projects that they've been apart for T. that's for films or TV shows you know the tone of the show grey's anatomy it's always sunny cold case you know the tone of the show you know the casting director like no other body work %HESITATION in there do great work you have to build a relationship with the casting director they keep bringing when they like your work so if they want you on the show it's just a matter of time before it happens you just have to keep up and just show up and do great work and then make sure you're taking care of your body mind and spirit because they like I said they're very hand in hand with one another you know doing different characters is like it's always sunny it's like corky it's fine and and they're like oh they like that then you can that's permission to play to take that a step further and discover where you can go when you get on set you've already done the preparation so everything I'm telling you studying coaching researching that's the tone of the show that's the preparation of the character before you show up when you get to set you already know your lines you already know your character and it's an opportunity to get out of your head and get more into your got into the intelligence of your body and to play and be professional because there's the takes a village and there's hundreds of people on set and especially now we want to be very mindful of staying within the parameters of everyone doing their job to make a party is you know the hair stylist like if they ask you your opinion cool but they're already communicating with directors and assistants and people and everyone has the domino effect of how they're showing up in everyone's doing their best so you know when you have the character you that's your ultimate time where you get to play and have a lot of fun guest star roles are amazing because it's like I said it's a domino effect once you book one it's like oh she's on set in New Mexico now she's on site here okay we want to work on this %HESITATION she's working on this Sharon stone fifty seven Werner Herzog like the producer calls once a personally invite you to be a part of the valley tenant port of call New Orleans with Nicolas Cage and like I I'm like Joan Crawford in my hotel room like waiting for his call any calls and I'm just like jaw dropping these inviting and everything and from that moment of yes that was my moment of fantasy in play and I was just thinking about Nicholas cage and then I knew are seen together you know because like I I did the audition I met burner then I had and I had like a month to prepare so I was able to like really fantasize in play and and do those things leading up manifesting to the moment of meeting him and when I met him he was just like whoa like he was so taken aback because I was so prepared he is Nicholas cage so he serves people and I'm who I am so I showed up and I know who he is so I showed up and he was like whoa and I served him and like it was that transfer of energy like I needed an impact and I wanted him to always remember me and asked to have that and to this day people email me message me on social media talk to me like that movie was epic oh my god you with Nicolas Cage like people are just like going off like you stole that movie blah blah blah like it I remember on sat my friend Sam Pressman his %HESITATION family I met him on the set his family were the producers Pressman films they do a bunch of great films he told me you know %HESITATION Nicholas cage he he wanted the whole entire movie to shoot the gun to shoot the gun and the scene we did although it's in the beginning of the movie it's we shot it at the end of you know the twenty three shooting days however many shooting days it was and he was able Werner let him shoot the guns upper hand shooting that god was amazing and for me working with Nicholas cage was amazing so we both had something that we both collectively wanted for our characters which made it so impactful which is why so many people come to me all the time about that movie and they're just like it's just legendary you know but not only about that said in that movie all the preparation a manifestation of knowing who I am discovering who I am knowing how I start raise in a bar for myself higher than I can even reach because I wanted something bigger than I ever knew like we need to do that not dream big with had in our clouds but raise the bar and show up and get to work and work doesn't always have to be tough and hard and Yang Yang Yang do do do work human beings they can come through god's grace of yen and being gentle and being more relaxed than I am right now I'm a bit hyped up but they can be the opposite and I I definitely learned that the hard way most people do things not all say most people but they're just hustling %HESITATION they're dot dot dot dot so it's like you have your list of what you need to do do it but we can handle it with grace we can show up to a new place in a new way gentler with one another right with the male and female you know all genders yeah but lastly I want to say about what you just asked is %HESITATION it's really exciting bopping from one show to another but then it's like a lot of up and a lot of down which is very difficult and especially when you're auditioning a lot so now where I am in my career I wanted and I wanted it before but it didn't happen and what I want now again and I'm going until it happens is to be a household name so I want to be a household name so I'm not bopping around it yeah I can do different shows but instead of like getting up getting down getting up getting down and on to the next and you know getting the great paycheck I want to have a consistent show consistent money get loyal consistent fans buy a home on the beach have a family how the sustainable life have a beautiful career have a stable family because it can be a lot up and down and it's cool when you're kidding you're fifteen or twenty but now I'm at this stage in my life where it's like you know the up and downs it can be a motion only detrimental it can be so hard I I I can just start crying because I'm such an open vessel we are doing it on your own and you're doing it by yourself when you feel like you're all alone you know because it's your journey and no no one has same like journey stability is so important so it's important to have the emotional stability of our friendships and our partners even if they don't understand is that they hold space and they don't drag you down or have you explain yourself and then suck from your life force energy that it's exciting because it takes so much because you're not getting paid hourly to do this you know I mean it's a career it's a marathon at I. raditi empathize with stop precarity all that kind of life and %HESITATION I think that send a lot of industries but you know you hear a lot of factors like yourself saying that kind of thing you high top fade is you not knowing from one week or months the next if you're gonna have to work and I really do a selfie there %HESITATION I said styles in my life where I had thought as well %HESITATION and it's really really tough eve eve side a lot as well about you know how you're able to keep going and so you can keep your own well being your mental health and and everything and Jack and I mean it seems that certainly from nesting here podcast it seems like you've got an amazing team arranging as well so if you're doing on your own but it sounds like you've got incredible network of friends and I was wondering if he had thought to sell on the importance of Saudi birds of support networks and collaboration and those sorts of things you're right you're totally right exactly I have %HESITATION music partner Nikki Scorpio %HESITATION you know we started the sophisticated cycles it streaming everywhere we have a YouTube channel we met in twenty twelve so while he's been loyal to the bone and he's a very rare rare rare individual %HESITATION that I met Ali Sondra levy my producing partner on a trip in Nicaragua when I was with my sister and and twenty fourteen and %HESITATION by god's grace I said yes and I showed up and we may be became friends and we've been producing content for the last five years together as a collective with Nikki Scorpio so energetically that's there and I can call her and have a divine feminine female that I can call and ask questions to where before I would be more isolated to myself feeling like I'm doing it all alone but now I have the courage is Hey %HESITATION instead of just doing what I would normally Katie would do in the past before I had someone like Ali Sandra I'll call up and say Hey so it is really an Instagram is that this %HESITATION Hey this business person said this to me and then she has a different background and I admire and respect %HESITATION she's like oh that's nothing %HESITATION just block that person %HESITATION just give them option a B. or C. %HESITATION just tell him you're not interested if it's not gonna be desert you know this is your you know bass raider this is your you know these are your parameters and I'm like oh because she's just so like a sort of in that way and so she teaches me so I put around myself around people who I admire respect the choices they make the consistency of the quality things of their doing I would see a team of eighteen people my voice over team I'm with all the voices vox creme dela creme top five voice over agency in the world I have the acting agency in LA I've been acting agency in Atlanta I'm acting agency in New Mexico I have a management team in LA New Mexico during the pandemic I got a new management team then there in LA New Mexico during the pandemic I got a new onscreen union acting agency in New Mexico because Netflix did a deal there for ten years there's a lot of things being shot New Mexico so I amber and I'm represented in New York so I'm represented in all major markets everything self tape and self recording with the voice oversee can be anywhere in the sound quality pre studio you can be anywhere and record and just send in the auditions and they use source connect to book you so I have a team who sends me up for projects I just have to make sure I'm taking care of my personal health my instrument which is my voice because I'm a recall and every day recording artist podcasting voice overs music poetry so I need to make sure I'm taking care of my health because I have a team of eighteen people who call me and put me up for projects and you have twenty four hour notice sometimes you have twelve hour notice with voiceover sometimes you have in a rush an hour notice %HESITATION three hour notice and it's a turnaround so I need to be doing what I need to be doing to take care of myself so I can be prepared to show up because there are so many other people who will just show up in Philly and and take the spot you know any means %HESITATION we really need to take care of our body mind health and nurture our relationships some of the people but on my podcast she's all over the place I met Joey from the blind boys of Alabama is the president of the blind boys and they started you know late their gospel and they were holding their legendary they won so many Grammys and they've been in so many movies and they're amazing and you know he's been my friend since two thousand and four you know a lot when I met him at the Grammys and had I nurture these relationships I don't call people just when I want something when I'm thinking about them like Hey I was thinking about you how are you like it's a transfer of energy it's like a garden and you plant seeds you plant seeds and then every three months I take a break and I just rake away the duds and then I sell more seats and I look at the beautiful ones that are budding and I dated date weekly I check in and I need a water those I. water those and they grow and grow and they've been growing like I said in the beginning of the the show is you know you reap what you sow so I've been selling seeds since day one but since for my work environment for the workplace I've been sowing seeds when I came to Hollywood before I came to Hollywood in Michigan but you know the Hollywood lifestyle and work place was at the end of two thousand and one I started selling seats our network meet people go to IMDb everyone gave you business cards back then they don't now everything's digital which is cool but save the environment right one paper at a time but I would go home with a stack of from an event of fifty business cards and I would just go to IMDb I movie database and I would just type in the person and you could see okay they've done nothing died thrown away thrown away thrown away thrown away because they're lying to you they're saying %HESITATION I produces I direct this but they're just wanting to sleep with you pray and you take advantage of you she does that out those people then you look at the other people at all they're doing this movie they're doing this movie but they're like movies with like porn stars are there movies like scenes here movies so it's like that's not what I want for my I self that's how you know that I self and check in with the quality of the bar that you set for yourself of who you want to work with so I throw those away I want to be a part of those projects and then it's like oh okay this one George Clooney movie okay I'll keep this producer card I want to nurse that relationship it's not manipulative it's a smart business move because I see this vision for myself and I know my talent I can be an added value to your project let's create together so that's how we come to the mat each and every time how can I serve on minister by showing up and being the best me when I got when we first got on here you said oh my god look at all the energy I can offer that people want to be around that magnetic joyful energy because it's the infinite source however when you have it you just need to know how to channel it because it can be a lot for some people it can be too much and that's okay too well we're not made for everyone we're made to be us and we can align with who were gonna line with and we can't people please you can only truly be ourselves and people are like oh that's not for me great I'm glad it's not for you you can get out of the way to leave space on the white canvas for more people like you who want to show up and dance with me because I wanted to dance and I want to be in I mean that's what I want to do on a smile and be enjoyed dance so we need to show up how we show up and not feel guilty about that be happy about how we show up and just keep discovering we're going to keep showing up in new ways were so young we'd love to be part of the conversation with AP cultures called on Instagram Facebook and Twitter and we also have discord you've mentioned there and there is a lot going on over in the states at the moment waste crazy workers and maybe send television trying to really fight for their rights as labour's as a work force you know certainly as that as a cast member I'm sure you face your own challenges and just protecting your rights and just keeping well %HESITATION all if he you know and I I just wondered if you had any observations on that or just in hi y'all look after each other yeah I can yeah one thousand percent I remember my first commercial that I ever did in California's like two thousand and three or something I did a commercial call for Marshalls and I was I was I was like a daughter what are my dear friends Carlos Arguello he's a cinematographer and he was a cinematographer on that commercial and he's gone on to be he was like the cinematographer for pretty little liars for like so many years at Warner brothers it's a pretty little liars without it was Ashley Benson the four girls I think it's called pretty little liars that show %HESITATION I'm marathon it but these incidents are from that night and he's great he's been a great friend and he's a crew member I'm friends with a lot of crew because I produce I direct %HESITATION I shoot myself I'm into tack I'm into the the cameras like month which line is is that a lot of people use already it's from Germany like you know the crew so import into filling the basic needs of a crew and through the union I've employed a lot of people to you know do the full production of my projects but being a professional sense at Warner brothers and paramount and being on other people projects like huge huge budget projects and small budget projects I'll always remember call us Aguayo because when we were done we were wrapped I went around to all the crewmembers and thank them and say thing and I said thank you good job thank you and I went around and he tells me to this day he health and that's why he became my friend he said he tells people if you went around and he's like no actor does that you went around and you think all the crew members and you are wrapped and it's like for me to acknowledge that when I was young but I was doing it from my joy I was just excited to be on set working and seeing everyone doing smart hardworking everyone making the marks and doing their jobs it takes a lot so I think to acknowledge one another and for me is really important and I see a lot of actors I worked with Danny Pino and you know a lot of people there like really cool with the krill and they talk to one incident level and they have that bond in the kinship same thing with hair and make up you know like hair make up or like the actors like go to thank you they're like their best friend they know more about them than like maybe some of their friends actually you know all these people become our friends but it's really important to acknowledge and have that say great experience with one another and for me as an actor sometimes I'm just observing the crew and I'll hear crew talking I feel comfortable talking to front of me like my friend not not an easy he's a cinematographer he he just a machine gun Kelly's new song Megan fox is the leader of it he has work is just brilliant but it's so cold so beyond commercial censored like different sets of people the grip the lighting the crew people they're like yeah yeah the job tomorrow so it does not available Hey you got a guy that yeah I got a guy here outside use number that up and so did the crew really stays together like when the deep he shows up he brings his crew and and they go to job to job like a family with one another they really had each other's backs and them if someone's not available the help of filling or something and they trust they have that kinship and they trust one another and it's very deep rooted so all levels of entertainment and people who show up on to the set I have a job to do and there's this fine line of respect in this trust that's quietly created with who you are discovering who you are knowing who you are so you can be that value for someone else so %HESITATION great great topic that you brought up thank you thank you to Katie you've been so generous with your time and your energy engine and you've been so informative and ma'am I really appreciate it the story Hey let you go because I know you have other engagements need to count on that do you have upcoming projects or things that are going to be alright when the steps is going to be alright that you would like to see just point artists nurse awards yes and where we can find you and socials and website and all those sorts of details yes definitely out should not cause dot com my website definitely check out she's all over the place podcast by can you hear this %HESITATION season four will be up and running and so I check out you know all the seasons of she's all over the place podcast as a %HESITATION musician as a producer director on screen actor voice over talent I created a project called %HESITATION Dreamland eleven eleven so it's going to be streaming everywhere and it's dubs that music so I don't know if you're into electronic music but it's not set in for the tracks I'm doing spoken word poetry and I'm talking about divine femininity and how the divine femininity is not only for females but it's for all genders into claim and reclaim our powers and I'm doing that through my voice and then you know putting it on my social media %HESITATION a lot of directors producers and people entertainment they follow me so then they can see me on screen and then call my agency to book me on a film and hear my voice and then called my agency to book me on a voiceover so it's the way in the twenty first century to get out there and pave the way to create something and push short bits of things on social media so people can see your talent your work %HESITATION otherwise you know it's not show closet it's you know show business and we need to show these people and you know Sarah Jane Sherman she's at a great casting director in group huge in animation Sarah Jane Sherman I she wrote on her Twitter like couple weeks ago she's like if someone isn't you know giving you the opportunities carve your own name make your own lane and that's what I've been doing since day one of my career and it's more you know apparently never heard that it's what we need to do we get ninety percent of the booking the agents get ten percent what we need to do more work and just can expect our agents to do the work you know our job our job is to get the job they give us the meetings we need to prepare and do things to be able to get the jobs but yeah I'm on all social media you know Katie Chagas in August you can buy it from my website jobs dot com but I love tick tock Instagram Twitter all of them linkedin that's amazing candidate I can't thank you enough for this just upset whirlwinds of a conversation it's been really great fun I've learned those to me and a really short period of time %HESITATION I'm grateful raging I struggle all my gosh thank you my pleasure and I do coaching one on one so if anyone wants to do private coaching I've industry coaching they can reach me from my website to %HESITATION but there's great information on the podcast as well it really means a lot Paul and that makes me really satisfied and happy to know that we made an impact in added value %HESITATION that's great thank you candy %HESITATION and olive said letting somebody in the show notes wherever anybody says things so there's no excuse to go and check it out thanks so much Carrie thank you Paula I
transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 90 – Just Keep Going with Dan Hughes

automated transcript

this is audiovisual cultures the podcast that explores different areas of the arts and cultural production with me paula blair visit patreon.com forward slash av cultures to find out more and to join the pod well hello i hope everybody is doing well out there we’re having a bit of a music theme this april it turns out on audiovisual cultures i’d like to extend a really warm welcome to my guest this time dan hughes dan would you like to say hi and tell us a little bit about yourself hi there uh thank you very much for having me come on i’m a professional musician i’ve been doing it for 10 about 10 years maybe maybe a bit more than that and i’m i’m in a musical project called dht and i compose music and i tour and gig and do different kind of stuff and work based on a working musician whereabouts do we find you today dan i am in sunny northamptonshire which is about an hour outside of london between birmingham and london sort of east midlands yeah so we’ve got quite a lot we can get into you’ve given us a little bit of an instruction there to the different you’ve got quite a few different areas of your practice so we might take some of those and have a deeper look at them and then we might get into well the big issue of our times the enforced lockdown and how that’s impacted you and that sort of thing i think before we do that if we just get a bigger picture of your work so you’re singer-songwriter guitarist and your composer would you like to tell us a bit about your singing and the live aspect of your work sure so i started um playing my father played guitar so yeah i still played the guitars through that and as a teenager and then my late teens i started playing in bands and then um i went to study music in brighton when i was 16 and i was lucky enough to audition and get into a place called bim uh which is uh now scattered all around europe and i’m lucky enough to be taught by and some fantastic guitar players and then sort of since then i left when i was about 20 21 and then literally i’ve just gigged as much as i could uh within that time and making records and sometimes doing teaching and touring and just collectively lots of different stuff how would you describe the music that you would play or write that’s a good question i’d say like very rhythmic and melody driven stuff usually quite soul-driven maybe and euphoric so quite like positive stuff with a groove base and try and add some maybe some humor into it as well there’s lots of dots it’s very difficult to describe your own music i don’t know it’s like um very sort of maybe um kind of earnest in some respects and the fact that it’s just um i just try to try and write honestly yeah well i suppose then you know in your songwriting what would you write about you know what kind of topics what kind of themes come up life really things that happened maybe when i’ve been traveling gigging or some things that pop up in a conversation or um for instance i’m working on something at the moment called joanna which i found the inspiration for that after um connecting was with somebody from linkedin i just thought that name’s unusual so i thought i’ll write a song about it and and you do songwriting for a band is very different songwriting for a project where someone commissions you to write like they set you a narrative that you have to write towards whereas when you write for yourself you write because you feel maybe a bit more emotionally connected to it so would you say there was an element of storytelling do you think you get an idea for a story sparked by something and does it take you that way or is it emotion based is that what lead you when you’re writing songs for yourself i think it’s very melody driven my music as opposed to lyrics lyrics are important obviously but um very rarely do i write the words and then write the music it’s usually the music and then the words fall into the melody if that makes sense yeah no i think that’s useful do you think then the the music the sound of the music the melody do you think then that’s evoking feelings that would maybe stir something is that or the idea yeah like so i i i always think i come from a place where the melody is more important like i’m not necessarily like a bob dylan kind of writer where i write lots of verses and fit as many words in like i’m more about the melody like i want the listener to be walking down the street or driving in the car and then all of a sudden that melody hits their head as opposed to um i don’t know i i always think there’s a lot there’s too much depression stuff in the world already it’s like that no one needs to hear negativity in songs i like people to feel happy when they listen to this stuff all right i think that’s a really nice answer so the aim is to try and make something that can draw a smile or just distract somebody from a problem for a moment or something like that yeah like like i have a sort of euphoric feeling my favorite artist have the ability to when you listen to their music almost take you away to a different world which i would like to always like to try and capture that makes sense i think so yeah and maybe that helps us move into then more of the composition side and perhaps the projects that you were talking about because you you know your profile says that you you also compose for likes of film television and podcasts and other media there must be a real difference for you between you getting an idea for a melody and you being maybe commissioned to do something and tools okay so i want the listener to maybe feel oh this is inquisitive or this is a sad one or this is happy but not kitsch you know like how does that work for you i think in some ways um when you get commissioned for stuff it’s a lot difficult because uh it’s like you’re trying to get in the mind of the person that you’re being commissioned for to try and figure out what they want so it’s like trying to find out what somebody wants in their mind is very difficult like it’s hard enough trying to get songs out your own mind but it’s harder to get songs out of other people’s minds that you never even met so it can be a challenge at times but it’s really enjoyable i like it and i really enjoy like hearing my music on different projects it gives me a sense of um pride that something i’ve written has been used for different things do you have any examples you know do you get commissioned to do maybe adverts or is it maybe the likes of someone one day it might be a jingle the next day it might be music that’s designed to go underneath the voice or you know how what kind of thing would it would you be doing exactly it can be literally anything from doing like a video for an independent film or a podcast or working for ecologists or lots of different avenues predominantly it’s been podcast really it seems to be there but i think podcasts are so in vogue there’s a lot of them and um there seems to be a bit more work doing that kind of thing and also obviously film it’s a lot of it’s budget dependent so lots of people write films but they don’t necessarily come out especially in california there’s a lot of wannabe film directors that want to are trying to crack it and um don’t so you end up writing for projects and they don’t necessarily come out whereas podcasts tend to all get used eventually yeah i think they’re probably more avenues for being able to put our stuff out when it’s audio at the moment how do those commissions work do people get in touch with you or is it a mixture do you have to hustle very much or are you how is it working at the moment i would like to tell you that i just sit there and the emails flood in but really they do not so i have to email every day every day contacts and um sometimes contact them again and again and um um it’s like selling anything it’s a massive game of rejection almost all the time you get it like basically if you don’t like rejection don’t bother doing that job because almost all the time you’ll get rejected most people will say no but it’s that five percent that make it worth it you know you only need that um five ten percent of people just to like what you’re doing then you’re successful at it i think that’s an important area actually because we don’t talk enough about rejection and i think i’ve seen more actors including quite famous people talking about this more recently where actually most of what they do is getting rejected even people you’d be surprised at you know we only talk about our successes really and those are measured in quite arbitrary ways if you do anything that’s worthwhile then rejection’s almost a natural part of it if you’re putting yourself out there to try and succeed at something then rejection is almost sort of like the main ingredient of success because success is something you learn from not something that you that defeats you you have to get up and just fight again really yes and it could be many different factors involved in either a success or a rejection as well it’s not necessarily something personal and it’s quite easy to take it personal i think so i think i think certainly on early on when i was doing what i was doing i take it very personally and get upset about it but the more the longer i’ve been doing it the less i sort of get phased by it really do you find it easier to just go oh okay that’s fine file it move on to the next thing yeah i think i think you have to otherwise you just be like a blubbering mess that you love you have to just get on with it but you’ve tried out so many different things as a musician you know as a jobbing musician as well as you say can you give us any examples of any other things you’ve done you know when you’ve been able to gig around and things you told me before that you were flat out before everything went into lockdown so you must have been doing a lot of traveling and lots of different venues and i mean is there anything sort of weird and wonderful you can tell us about well yeah definitely well the past sort of like nine ten months before the lockdown um i was just digging around the midlands area really and that sort of become very tiresome in places because he was doing it a lot so in a way the lockdown was quite a blessing because it made me have a bit of a break but before then the year before that i gigged in the i had a residency in hull to belgium on a ferry for about three months um which was interesting and then i after that i went to the caribbean for six months and did a residency there and then um for the past four years five years i’ve been gigging out in the far east so i’ve been going to south korea and japan and um touring the records i make out there what’s reception like in these different areas you know hire your live audiences or um if you’re touring with a record that you’ve made you an album or something you know how do you find from place to place it’s how you received i mean the far east is amazing some of the best gigs i’ve ever done have been out there and the crowds are so good so good so kind and generous and nice and um just fantastic really there’s an amazing part of the world that holds a special place in my heart for sure the audiences there are amazing some of the gigs i’ve done have been insane like i’ve done a lot of major festivals out there and i’ve played um i did i guess one gig in front of a thousand people in this small village for the government and it was like insane it was just amazing yeah it’s wow so good i’m quite curious about the residency on on a ferry so was it transit so it wasn’t you know how long was it was it sort of eight hours or something like that and you were entertainment it was overnight ferry from hull to amsterdam and held to belgium okay i don’t think it’s there anymore actually i think it’s they’ve stopped it but um yeah i mean what what kind of things you want to know about about him what did they expect from you i mean were you doing were you doing your own music or were you having to do covers and things you know how did it work that kind of gig is predominantly covers sometimes you’ll do stuff i’d want to maybe throw some my own stuff in there when nobody else is there maybe or less people there those kind of jobs are very corporate to us yeah it was all right it wasn’t great it was okay it was experience and it was going from doing your own thing and being freelanced to being strictly employed and especially in a situation where you don’t like it’s not like a nine to five like you get to end your day and then go home you spend 24 hours on a boat so you’re working all the time it can be intense there’s a lot of real sort of bitter uh musicians that get on that boat that gets stuck in that gig forever and um that can be quite a negative experience to hang out with people that are sort of disillusioned by that kind of life i think i think those kind of things that are better to kind of dip your toe in when you need money and then try and leave as quick as you can you know don’t make it a lifestyle make it something you use for yourself i think yeah yeah i mean is it something you do they tell you what songs their audiences you or their passengers might want or that they like themselves or do you get to choose what you think you’re comfortable with you know is it an opportunity for you to play songs you really love and really inspire you for example i always try and play songs that are even the covers i do like their songs that i feel connected to because if i don’t then i’m just lying i think it’s a balancing act from making them do what you want so sort of doing enough to get them off your back but then also doing your own thing as well like a balancing knack between the two like you can’t go and play avant-garde jazz or play being pro rock or or heavy rock or anything like that but you sort of like play the game enough for them to sort of amaze your player top 40 hit and then go and play something you want you like contrast it a little bit going from something like that i mean you mentioned that actually being enforced to stay at home and and not be able to have a choice to do that sort of work anymore and the gigs have stopped certainly in in an in-person sense what has your lock zone experience been as a musician well initially panic because i was like my money’s gone what am i gonna do probably like most the world and then i still got into a new routine so i i thought well this is a fun i kind of looked and looked upon it as that um i have the rest of my life to gig and perform and um you know i’ll probably be doing it when i’m 80 they’ll be wheeling me out to the local pub or something and i’ll be playing a gig so taking two years out three years out even hopefully not but in the grand scheme of things it’s not nothing too big so i thought well i might as well try and utilize the time i have to try and be as productive as i can be and um flex new muscles really when you do lots of gigs you end up you end up just being on autopilot and sort of um doing the same thing all the time it’s this sort of can be very relentless from 23 i’ve done like 200 gigs a year pretty much so for the past 10 years so that’s very tiring um so it’s good to kind of step away from that really and be creative and write music and talk to people like you on podcasts and creating new people is good yeah it’s strange that um we were speaking earlier certainly me making this it’s opened up a lot of the world to me and as you say just this ability to make new connections and to after that initial panic to be forced to go okay well look there are creative solutions that are possible here there are things we can do that opportunity that the circumstances have enforced but in a way gifted to us it’s that chance to okay i mean what if you were on the verge of a burn out or something because as you say you’ve been grafting away and pushing yourself maybe and when you are freelance and you just have to take a gig a gig is a gig and you’re you’re just taking it when it comes you know there’s not really much time to to stop and have a rest have a holiday that sort of stuff so you know it’s good that you’ve had a positive response at least to try and use the time really well well i i think um you know above you know people kind of put themselves in a frame of being like either a musician or a filmmaker or podcast social media person or really above all those things with creative people they’re just vehicles for what you do above that you you should be creative and try and like for me i play music but actually above that it really is is for me to be creative and to pursue like a free lifestyle like and navigate myself that’s more important to me than actually playing music as much as i love playing music like i want a lifestyle that i can control and be the king maker of basically and i think most creative people strive for that because they’re like there’s a little point being in i’ve had jobs playing music where um on paper they sound amazing but at the end of the day you’re working for somebody else and you’re in a controlled environment which isn’t always good yeah not creativity it’s not always something that can be forced um you know if somebody’s arched over you you know saying right come on write this or it has to be nurtured it has to come from somewhere and sometimes you just actually need to procrastinate or rest or think about something entirely different for a while and then it’ll come to you you know and i think if you have a sensibility where you don’t work you can’t maybe work you might not be wired to work in a uniform nine to five way but if you have that space you might actually produce something i mean has this been a time where you’ve been able to reflect and maybe do writing or maybe try different things yes i’ll compose like um before gigging i found very difficult to find time to flex the right in muscle because it’s a different muscle when you’re performing it’s a different outlook on your performance whereas if you’re creative it’s a different muscle so like going from one another it can be very distracting because you you aren’t sort of in that vein of creativity whereas a lot down has sort of provided that kind of chance to be more creative i think sure sure there are a lot of musicians who’ve still managed to find online platforms for doing live work i mean have you been able to pick up any teaching or any live stuff yes i’ve been really fortunate to have a few students before lockdown came down like a handful of them and touched what they’ve stayed throughout they’ve been fantastic it’s been an absolute blessing for them to be still coming to lessons and i really enjoy teaching them so i’ve been doing that and obviously been doing my composition side of things so those two things have been the two main things really i think um i’ve done some like livestream stuff for other bands that i’ve played for but i haven’t really gone out the way to to do live stream stuff really because um i don’t know it’s kind of like a force side to i think as much as anyone can do you have any ideas for the future for when we might begin to emerge from all of this or are you taking it as it comes and you’re you’re still just concentrating on unnourishing that creativity at the moment well regarding gates i think it still hasn’t opened up yet enough to see where the land lies within it’s a good question some days you feel like i suppose like anybody sometimes you feel like one thing and the other day to feel like another i think i i think it’s still element of it happens to be a waiting game to see where the land lies and see where you can kind of um if you can carve out a living again and hopefully live music will return and come back stronger i hope i hope i really hope i think so i think there’s a i think there’s definitely a hunger for it but probably the likes of singing isn’t the safest thing at the moment so maybe hoping for good weather and do some outdoor stuff where people can spread out yeah like i have a few gigs in the summer books and stuff like that so that’s that’s all good but i think it’s just a case of just continuing on what i’m doing really and see where that takes me and and then um just wait for just keep keep hustling and reaching out to people and seeing where things lead everything changes with a phone call in an email when you’re freelance like that you’ve got to have that mentality that all it takes is for one phone call to turn up and then that will change that can change your life mm-hmm yeah definitely so dan i was wondering as well because we before we started recording we got into this a little bit but i was wondering if you wanted to we don’t have to but if you wanted to maybe speak to we were talking about you know just the landscape for freelance creatives at the moment in the uk and um if you had anything you’d like to say because i mean this podcast it’s about the work and it’s about practice and practitioners but i mean it’s also about well the other factors involved with that is what are the things that enable that creativity and it is things like um you know funding structures and distribution platforms and things i think you know we were talking a bit as well but you know maybe our audiences are different kinds of audiences they might have some preconceptions about what it is that we do and how we get paid and things and that we get paid at all it can be a misconception you know i just wondered if you had anything you would like to say about you know free or cheap labor or the support or lack thereof that people like us have had or you know if there’s anything at all you’d want to speak to because i think it’s all relevant and important and people really need to know well i think it’s massively important to make people aware of that situation because i don’t think it’s made aware enough really creative people provide opportunities and provide jobs and provide avenues for people to be able to create a life i think the way that a society treats creative people is a reflection on how they treat people in society in general so if the powers that be treat creative people or uh people that um try and push the boundaries badly then it’s just a reflection on how they how they end up treating everybody else really and i think like in britain there’s kind of an attitude of a lot of the time when it’s well i’m all right jack so it doesn’t matter about you and that’s not really the truth because everybody needs to succeed it’s not just about certain sections of society succeeding everybody has to have the opportunity to better themselves i think and i feel like that it’s getting harder to do that in the uk and i think the self-employment help has been really bad like i’ve known people that are whom who are self-employed i haven’t had a penny of help throughout the whole time which is awful i’m really quite passionate about the way seven more people have been treated yeah i feel the same so many of us just didn’t qualify at all for the self-employed scheme and even this latest round of it i think there there’s a massive delay in even releasing it for this lockdown that we’re in at the moment in spring 2021 yeah it’s been like a month and a half isn’t it yeah which is insane even the amount of money that you even even like i’ve been lucky enough to qualify for it but even the money that you get for the qualification of it is pathetic compared to how people have that have been followed they’re getting basically full 80 to full pay and we’re getting i think the average person that gets self-employment help check is around 1400 quid for three months it’s crap it’s not good you can’t live off that can you no no no so i mean i think that again that’s important for people to be aware of because we’ve all been consuming culture so much throughout lockedown especially people where maybe they haven’t been continuing to work if they have been furloughed so many people have gone to streaming sites or youtube and you know the content providers are um still beavering away working at everything and trying to put stuff out there for people i think there’s just an assumption that you’re recompensed for that or you do it for the love of it and that’s enough nourishment for you but it doesn’t pay rent yeah yeah like exposure plays the bills doesn’t it apparently yeah so it’s been a really tough climate i think and i’ve been really lucky on making the podcast where you know i’ve had a lot of people who are maybe at a point in their careers where they’re relatively successful and they’ve reached out to me and said oh i’ll be a guest on your podcast and that’s been a huge help to me actually because that’s exposed me to people who know them and like their work so then i’ve had some more lessons because of that and that’s been really kind i think certainly in the podcasting worlds where there’s so many of us who are indie podcasters we’ve been trying to help each other out a little bit more by guessing on each other’s podcasts and we’re all doing this for free nobody’s getting paid for it well i think um independent and alternate alternative culture is where the real art is made it’s where the real music is where the real podcast is where the real creativity comes from like all the best bands and all the best movements that have come from independent or alternative avenues so that needs to be protected otherwise we’re going to get a world of justin bieber’s and corporate rock no absolutely so i mean it’s just this constant battle to survive you know so i just think it’s it was important really to say something about that and i’m a real yeah i think there needs to be a a a conversation with about how the streaming platforms work if we’re heading towards more of an automated world then we need to have a fairer chunk of the pie really and that’s not being greedy like something you create you know because i don’t know how much the stream earns you like naught point naught naught naught naught naught one pi one p or something ridiculous like it needs to be more than that if we’re living in more of a content driven society well then content needs to be valued more not being devalued well it is valued but it it reaches the wrong people’s pockets it hits you know they’ve got the ceo of spotify and far too much money for what he gets and i think there’s an element of creative people are obsessed about numbers and views on facebook and likes and stuff like that it’s more of an ego thing like i i would rather us get better paid than have to than have a hundred thousand views on on youtube yeah totally agree completely um yeah because there’s some there’s something visible and performative almost about the likes so that’s something i try not to worry about is uh oh nobody’s paid attention to this in social media well actually maybe lots maybe hundreds thousands of people have seen this but they’re just not hitting that button you know and it’s the quality of the engagement i think from your viewers your listeners that sort of stuff isn’t it rather than the in mind yeah and all all it takes is one person to listen to your podcast to listen to your music that gets affected by it then you know if you’re making something but then that one person is affected by it that’s a huge thing that may not translate to money but if people are uh moved by it and they love it and then that’s isn’t that the ultimate kind of compliment yeah and i think it’s nice as well if when we are moved by something we’ve spent some time with it’s really nice to let that person know you know the person who made it recently i’ve had just some really really lovely encouraging feedback from the odd person and you think oh gosh that’s just made my day that’s made that whole thing worthwhile yes okay so it’s not going to pay any bills it’s not going to buy me food but it makes me want to keep going which is really important i think just because you are being creative doesn’t mean you’re not necessarily desperate for downloads or you want to be massively like i certainly didn’t get into music because i thought i’d want to be famous but i am famous but i would do it because i’m looking to be famous i’m doing it because i love music like somebody loves fixing cars or i think if you do something you love then eventually things do work out i hope that’s it you just have to keep plugging away and hopefully it does work out for us a previous guest i’ve had on said just do good work just make sure your work is really good and it will come right that was somebody who had struggled in audio drama body fiction for about 14 years before it’s finally just clicked and he was getting requests that he couldn’t even keep up with and finally start to get money for projects and stuff yeah like you hit veins of success do you know what i mean like um before locked out i had a vein of success gigging like i was and indeed but there was periods of times before then when it was like a desert and there was nothing or very struggling normal i think the key to success is just keep going and sometimes success isn’t what you think it is so in your mind you think there’s a destination that you can arrive one day and be like yeah i’ve made it i said i’m done i’m finished but like even when you arrive at that point you just keep wanting other things so like i remember when i came back from brighton and i didn’t have any gigs i was thinking oh man if i didn’t if i could get one gig a week and then like five years down the line i was getting like seven days a week and then you think if only i had a night off you know i mean you never kind of win you it’s like a feast of famine i think yeah

dan is there anything we haven’t chatted about so far today that you you really wanted to get into that you really wanted to talk about i just released a new uh ep well collaborated with a girl from taiwan well she’s an artist and she’s called sea drop we met online and we did a remote ep it’s the first time i did a remote ep we both sort of composed the tracks together some of the tracks are in uh cantonese some of them are in english and it’s like almost like a concept album about um wake up in the morning to going to bed at night we both sing on it so it’s like uh conversations it’s almost like a conversation between the two of us and it’s it’s i’m really proud of it it’s a good uh record that sounds brilliant and where abouts can people find that uh you can find it um through my uh website

http://www.danhusemusic.com but you can also find it on my own facebook which you can find it through my website which is dan hughes music and spotify it’s dht and the record’s called breaking the day brilliant sounds great that international collaboration that’s been made possible from your house has just been amazing i think this past while yeah it’s a crazy concept that you get to be able to collaborate with people that you never gonna meet also also i’m working on um i’m helping translate at the moment um a beatles book from english to korean and hopefully that’s going to come out at some point too do you speak korean then not very well that you can help with the meanings of things i can help with the meanings yeah i i can speak a little bit not loads enough to get by you kind of need to when you when you go out that part of the world because some places you go there’s no english excellent stuff yeah so you’ve told us about your website that’s brilliant and um do you have any other socials or anything you want to point people towards all the socials are on my website anyway but facebook is probably my main and youtuber my main two social media platforms well dan hughes thank you so much it’s been a really lovely conversation i hope you’ve had something out of it as well yeah thank you very much for um having me um as a guest yeah you’ve been most welcome thank you so um i’ll put your website that’ll be in the show notes wherever this is going out so people can have no excuse but to go and look at your work fantastic thank you so much for having me

this has been a cozy peapod production with me paula blair the music is common ground by airton used under a non-commercial 3.0 creative commons license and is available at ccmixter.org we are av culturespod on facebook instagram and twitter and you can also join the conversation on discord if you’ve enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe and your favorite podcast app including youtube if you find auto captions useful and please share with your networks you’ll find links and ways to contact us at audiovisualculture.wordpress.com we’re always really happy to hear from potential guests and ways to improve the show as well as supporting the pod and receiving member benefits over on patreon you can also help at buymeacoffee.com forward slash p e a blair thanks so much for listening catch you next time

transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 89 – The World Fusion Show with Derrik Jordan

automated transcript

this is audiovisual cultures the podcast that explores different areas of the arts and cultural production with me paula blair visit patreon.com forward slash av cultures to find out more and to join the pod i am really excited to welcome today derek jordan to audio visual cultures podcast we have not dealt with music nearly enough on this show so we’re going to try and rectify that in quite a big way today so i’m really really delighted to welcome derek hello derek how are you today hi paul i’m great how are you i’m doing okay thanks it’s lovely to see your beautiful backdrop i know on the audio people won’t see this but i’ll try and get a lovely screenshot of you for materials but yes you’ve got a really beautiful backdrop that really expresses what you’re here to talk about today so we’re going to talk about your show the world fusion show but just before we get into that is it okay if i ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about you because i know you’ve got an extensive background in music in a lot of ways so if it’s okay i’ll let you talk us through some of that okay i’ll try not to rant too much but yeah i’ve been in music really my whole life i was inspired when i was a teenager well even earlier nine years old i heard the beatles on the ed sullivan show i saw them and just begged my mom to get me a guitar and i got a guitar the next week and started playing and of course i was terrible i was just you know a kid but very inspired by what i’d heard and then i got into a lot of other music over time as a teenager like jimi hendrix and james taylor and eventually stevie wonder and i always got into i really wanted to write songs that was my initial interest in music and playing in bands so you know hey who wouldn’t want to be like the beatles and have all those screaming girls and all that so i started out that way and then ended up going to college bennington college in vermont in the u.s where i met my mentor a master drummer named milford graves who also was a herbalist acupuncturist martial artist and scientist teacher very strong and intense mind who was really about bringing together many different disciplines and that’s kind of what he left his students with this idea that you had to be into everything you couldn’t just do one thing so i got very interested in drumming by meeting him at bennington because he was a master drummer but really when i first heard him play the congas the hand drums i felt like he was talking on the drum and i didn’t really know that was possible i was a singer-songwriter i had no idea about drumming and this kind of expression so i really wanted to learn that so i started studying with him and also continued to work on composition with other people at bennington and writing songs every day and playing in bands and i was very busy with music in college and then continued on in that thing but also after leaving bennington moved back to new york to continue my studies with milford graves and then also got into more writing music and bands and eventually came back to vermont playing in more bands and eventually went back to new york commuting to sing jingles and work in the songwriting world in new york i’ve just been doing many many jobs including writing for orchestra all kinds of chamber groups but always utilizing this world music world fusion influence that milford gave me exposed me to african indian brazilian really opened up the world of world music to me and i just kept walking down that road that’s really why i have the world fusion show which we’ve now done for almost four years and i get to interview and bring wonderful musicians from all over the planet and share their world fusion music i’m not a traditionalist i never have been that interested in traditional music of any kind i’m really interested in how the different musics are blended together and there’s so many ways to do that and world fusion is that and so that’s what i present in my show that’s wonderful thanks eric i’m hoping that in a bit we can try and get into what you really mean by that fusion to see if you can tease that out for us a little bit but before we get into nitty gritty can you just outline a little bit more the world fusion show and of course that will have changed massively how you can even make that at the moment and it’s great that you’ve continued to still do that and it’s so much of it is available on youtube which is wonderful but could you just outline the world fusion show a little bit for us and tell us a bit about the format and the guests and how it works well the show is as i say in my intro we um really showcase world fusion composers musicians and innovators in world fusion and world fusion is so many different things it’s not just one thing like it could be for instance a steel pan player who plays bach or writes for orchestra and composes in different ways that’s one way so using a world music instrument in a non-traditional way would be a way of showing world fusion i generally don’t have jazz musicians on or people who specifically do reggae or country bluegrass a particular kind of music i avoid different american styles blues jazz this kind of thing because it’s too specific and it doesn’t draw on the connection to world cultures there’s a are some exceptions i’m gonna be having a person a singer who’s from new orleans in the near future because new orleans is kind of world fusion i mean it’s like the nature of that music is a hodgepodge of many different styles but yeah we showcase all these wonderful people but there’s so many ways to present it and and i really love being able to share these guests who bring their unique styles to our audience now we do a new show every two weeks and this far and we’ve now hit episode number 98 which is i mean i’m like we’re gonna hit a hundred like real soon i’m really excited about this i’m gonna have to celebrate that we’re able to do this and yeah the format is i interview my guests and they provide videos of their music which we share excerpts of and then the other part of the show that people even seem to like the best is because i play 20 different instruments i’ll jam with my guests and i’ll play i mean i play violin percussion all different kinds of strings we really try to showcase and we improvise together on the show and that’s a lot of fun because i don’t know what’s going to happen and neither do they so that’s been kind of a nice thing to do and really demonstrates the fusion part and and most of my guests are also very good improvisers and so that’s a lot of fun for me and that’s really the most creative part for me in the show and challenging sometimes some of my guests are so good that i have to you know really study their music to be able to play with them and it’s a challenge sometimes it’s really enjoyable as well and i think hugely informative that you take time during the show to speak to them about their personal lives and so many of your guests are from such a range of places and i think places that you wouldn’t even associate necessarily with music culture in any way because it’d be a struggle for any lay person who isn’t an expert certainly depend on what kind of music would come from certain places so it’s really amazing that you take that time to really talk through with your guests their backgrounds and and how they’ve come to the music that they play and how they’ve come to be in a band if it’s a band that they’re part of and how they’ve come together and that sort of thing i mean how do you go about finding people for your show are a lot of people that you’ve picked up along the way because you yourself are a performer and you’ve done all of these things or how does that work well it’s it works in many ways and i use the internet of course to find people like facebook i also have many friends people i’ve played with over the years one of my best ways to find exceptional guests is to ask my guests who’ve been on the show who are the most amazing players who their favorites are so i’ll use that as well as a great example of what you were saying one of my recent guests is a group called olox and i don’t know if you saw this one but they are really unusual because the woman it’s a duo and the woman is from siberia okay and i mean it gets 90 degrees below zero in the winter right okay it’s like i can’t even imagine living there but she spent her youth out in nature imitating bird sounds and animal sounds which she does and she does what they call neo-shamanic music her partner is an armenian guy named andreas and he’s also a singer and plays percussion and they have a really unique style they were actually on america’s got talent and that’s how i bumped into them on the internet and they blew away the judges and the audience and i reached out to them and they said yes i was so happy to share their music and in the interview serena who’s the female singer she describes her amazing background and a lot of her culture and it’s a horse culture and how she’s connected and they’re dependent co-dependent on the horses for food shelter clothing everything so you get a little deeper with my show into something like you’re seeing the background cultures of people especially someone like serena and i just think it’s really interesting so it’s not the show is not a general music show it’s a little nerdy we get into cool interesting deeper aspects of the music and the cultures that people represent well we love nerdy on this show as well you’re good we’re in the right place then yeah we love getting into real detail and stuff so that’s why i was so fascinated because i think it really helped especially if you’re encountering music you’ve just never heard before or that you could have even imagined existed it’s so helpful actually to the viewer to go through those people’s backgrounds and the mixture of where they’ve come from it just feels like it makes the music make more sense in a way because you can start to hear the melding of things if that makes sense you get i mean i’m not an expert at all but that’s how it sounded to me because i did watch some of that episode and the stories are really fascinating you know and i was starting then because with my analytical brain i’m starting to think well their stories are helping me you know learn from a non-musical background why the melding is making sense if that makes sense see well it creates a context it informs the listener and then when you hear the music you’re that much more drawn in because you have a reference for where this might be coming from and bring your own imagination to it as well of course can i get you to help me work through that idea of the fusion then so you’ve got this category of world music which you’ve explained really nicely which seems to be stuff that’s from all over the world and you’re trying to have less focus on anything that seems to be purely us but then there’s this fusion element where it’s mixings of these different kinds of music so i mean would you have another kind of example is it different styles is it different specific instruments what exactly is the fusion element of it right well sometimes it’s a people will play an instrument that we’re familiar with like the violin right but they might use it in ways that we’re not normally hearing it like i’ve got a wonderful guest laith sadiq who is a violinist who’s from jordan and he plays really very you know strong arabic influence in his music but we have so many people a group i’m thinking of again with 98 shows there’s a lot i could come up with a lot of examples but a group called cotico brass they play ghanaian fusion so they are three ghanaian percussionists and one american percussionist who studied a lot in ghana and then they have a bass player from antiqua a keyboard player from japan to and two horn players from the us and they bring these elements together and play kind of a funky somewhat fella if you know fela kuti from nigeria funky dance music with horns so it’s they’re fairly a dance band and they live in boston and they play very popular dance parties there so they really are high-energy dance music but have this very strong canaan percussive element and one of their drummers from ghana actually grew up in the royal palace in ghana and was part of the traditional ghanaian musical heritage so they very authentic traditional elements but then these other non-traditional elements from other countries so there’s so many like i said there’s so many ways to do world music world fusion right where you blend in any number of ways it could be the instrument it could be the style and how you’re trying to incorporate various styles into your music i look for people really who are trying to do something original for me it has to be something that moves me the hardest part of my job is saying no to people if i don’t feel like they’re reached the standard that i’m trying to share with my audience as she brought it up there just to ask about your audience do you know much about the background of the audience again is it itself a mixture of people is it a mixture of people who would be experts as well as people like me who just dip in a night of things and are willing to try stuff you know who is your demographic if you like i’m not sure i can answer that very well we actually won a national award for best entertainment and art series in public access tv which is a lovely thing except public access tv doesn’t measure their viewership they don’t have any numbers to give me or analysis of their demographic but i have been shown on over a hundred public access tv stations in 26 states i know that i can’t break it down for you beyond that we also have a podcast for the show on soundcloud and itunes i have some numbers for that over 60 000 listeners various listeners my most popular episode on the youtube channel which is called the world fusion show of course is has 13 000 views so that’s great and that continues to go up that was a show an episode we did with masamba joke who’s a world famous senegalese talking drummer the drummer is called the tama drum he was actually featured on the black panther soundtrack and you can hear his tamadrum from the first scene to the last scene in the black panther and masamba has been a for decades a member of baba mal’s band which he’s played in like 120 different countries around the world he’s really well known and basically his drone functions as the way we think of the lead guitar in a rock band it’s the foil to the singer to baba mall so baba will sing and then hold the mic up to the tama drum and masamba will play kind of the way the lead guitar player would play to take a lead to answer the solo it’s very it’s similar but of course different because it’s not a guitar and the thomas has a long history of playing and i’ve played with masamba here in the u.s and in senegal he’s a friend and we’ve done a lot of work together and he’s just a great guy now there’s so many ways that we bring the music together so before you were able to do studio sessions with a lot of artists and obviously that will have changed with recent events is it the case now that the artists are sending you videos of their older work are they recording things remotely and putting it together i mean how does it work these days for you yeah it is working like that we used to do live improvisations when i was working at bctv in brattleboro but because of the lockdown it’s been closed so we’ve done various workarounds one is that i will get my artists to record a solo video of them playing and then i will basically play along with that and try to pretend that it’s live sometimes well depending on how good i’m able to do that you would think it is live a lot of the times most the time i’m see i seem to be able to pull that off but now that we’re in lockdown mode i’ve stopped doing the live or this kind of improvisation overdub with their video the new format that i’m using is just taking pre-recorded videos from my guests and that’s been the last few shows just because i wanted to keep the show going i felt it was more important to keep the show going so i’m not doing the live music right now but we’ll get back to it i mean things will open up again and we’ll be able to do that again but we have great audio engineer and we have three cameras at pc tv so it’s the quality is very high somewhat limited now more with my zoom costs but it’s still fun and it’s still i get to showcase these fantastic artists and i feel like the workaround is better than not doing the show at all so i’m just trying to keep everything going forward sure but when you would have been in the studio would you have had an audience with you or would it have been just the crew that you were working with yeah just my crew i have a video producer who does the camera work and switches between cameras he’s very good and i have a great audio engineer i’ve worked with for many years now we’ve done so many shows that we’ve got our thing down at this point pretty well i mean i was nervous in the beginning because even though i’ve done music in so many ways i wasn’t sure i would be very good at interviewing people and i think i was a little nervous in the beginning about that but you know i also have been a schoolteacher teaching music for 14 years so i’m comfortable standing in front of people and talking and somewhat expert at my field so i thought okay this is a good thing and let’s see if i can just draw on that my comfortableness in front of middle school and high school kids right and that worked out well and eventually i calmed down and i became less nervous and it’s you know part of it’s just being an improviser to having improvised my whole life doing music improvising it’s sort of the same job when you’re interviewing and improvising and reacting and trying to pick up on what people are saying i mean i i will do an interview a pre-interview with my guests just to get my questions together it goes a lot smoother when i do that so i have a script basically of questions that i’m gonna ask but i go off script a lot you know if someone might say something during the interview i’ll say cool let’s like go there and find out what that’s about because it just feels more casual and more interesting to do it that way yes i find if you’re having a conversation it’s more relaxing and enjoyable and sometimes you can get more out of people as well i was wondering as well because as you mentioned you play a lot of instruments yourself i’ve always been very envious of people who have that natural ability with music obviously you work incredibly hard at it as well but i think there has to be just something in you that means that you can you know i had an uncle who could just pick up any instrument and make beautiful signs with it it’s an incredible gift to have but i was wondering when you do have the opportunity to jam or improvise with other musicians how do you choose which instrument to play yeah no right it’s a good question right so because i have a lot of choices well of course my guest usually plays one instrument not always but most of the time they’re quite good at one instrument and so i will try to think about what might complement them and when we do the live music part of the show i will always play more than one so we have usually two or more pieces that we’ll do together at the end of every show and i will use a different instrument for each piece and i always record usually a third piece as well which we use in a future episode for a sampler show so i do sampler shows i think we’ve done eight of them now where they’re only the live music i don’t do interviews it’s just a way to show our audience all the variety of guests we have but they’re always music that were not featured on previous shows so it’s a way to enhance the listening experience for people and to show more about the combinations of instruments and stuff i don’t play wind instruments i’m not very good at it but i uh during the lockdown i decided to challenge myself so i’ve been i’ve been practicing the trombone

and it’s extremely difficult for me to play the trombone i i’m just so bad at it but i’ve made some progress you know i’m i’m starting to make some progress it’s interesting um so i’m i don’t know if i’ll ever play it on my show but i’m working at it and uh maybe someday i i will well the other point is to have fun with it as well it’s this idea of beginner’s mind and i think that as an improviser that’s a great way and a way that i like to approach music in general as a composer and as a player with a beginner’s mind always thinking you know i’m not so good i’m not such an expert i don’t really know what to do and not to fall back on things that are so comfortable and try to push myself a bit when you’re composing music yourself would you refer to the pieces you compose as fusion or world fusion do you try and compose to that how does that work or do you take commissions are you asked to do specific things or is it something you get ideas and you have to get them dying you how does your composition work yeah that’s great question i am very influenced by many different styles of music around the world so for instance if i’m writing for orchestra or chamber groups i might really try to take a specific style like let’s say brazilian or specific african style of course there are many african styles indian what a flamenco various things latin styles and try to incorporate specific elements of that style into the work i’m doing so i’m actually not that interested in classical music although i love bach and some classical composers i’m not really that interested in doing that or using the orchestra to present that i’m more interested in the combination in the fusion trying to get them to play these very syncopated world rhythms uh phrases scales harmonies and try to bring that in to the work sometimes it’s more obvious than others i have a piece a premiere that’s coming out in a month with a string orchestra that is called a suite for an imaginary country and what it is is three pieces that are world fusion but it’s not exactly clear what the influences are in these pieces and that’s kind of fun because it’s like in the cracks it’s like something not neither this nor that and that’s a piece for string orchestra that’s going to be a video presentation here in brattleboro and that’ll come out if there’s no live audience it’s going to be done as we are a lot of times now as a video performance that will then be shared later a video situation i’ve been doing a bunch of those things with different groups that i work with it’s interesting it’s certainly not like playing for a live audience you don’t have that interaction but it’s better than nothing and we’re getting the music out this way yeah absolutely i feel like i have to ask while it comes to mind do you ever get any irish music in any of the fusions that you deal with would you consider that as part of world music or is that a bit too western it’s very western you’re right yeah i would love to but so far all the irish people that i’ve heard are doing very specifically traditional irish music if i could find some irish musicians that are making a fusion i would be interested in doing that so i’m i’m open to it but i just haven’t heard it yet i’ll keep an eye and if i hear of anybody doing something that might be of interest to you i’ll point them your way i’d love to know yeah things that way you talk quite a lot about inclusion through the diversity of the music which is a really lovely important sentiment all of us in i suppose what we call white western countries i mean they are not that we are all mixtures of everything and it’s really important to really be able to reflect and celebrate that so it feels like that’s what your show is really important for as well it really just demonstrates and shows how much that’s happening and how much it exists in the world it’s true that’s really the purpose of the show is to embrace the world in all its various ways and expose people to music they might not have bumped into in their normal listening people i think are a lot more diverse in terms of their interests musically and culturally then we give credit for and sometimes they just haven’t been exposed to it but of course now with the internet there’s a lot more opportunity to hear these kinds of things is there anything else you think is really important that you really wanted to put out there and say today about your work about your show well like i say i’ve done so many things over the years i used to sing jingles in new york you know i was a professional singer i used to sing demos songwriters would hire me to sing demos to present i actually sang a demo that was recorded by celine dion so i used to work with really high level songwriters and i had worked with wonderful people in the city when i was commuting down there for about nine years and wrote and did a lot of songwriting collaboration with people also you know there’s so many different chapters of my life i’m in this chapter now where i’m doing my show and in some ways it brings many aspects of my career together which is nice you know that i get to bring it all together this way it’s a beautiful way to share the diversity as you said i don’t know really what else to add i mean i think i would just say please invite your audience to go to the youtube channel world fusion show and click on the episodes we’ve got 98 episodes up there and um i actually am about to do two episodes celebrating my mentor milford graves who is i was saying earlier as an african-american man who has deeply deeply impacted so many people in fact he um his last work and perhaps in some ways maybe his most lasting work was work on heart research he was a scientist and recorded heartbeats and was actually did a work with some scientists and doctors in bologna italy and did a um incredible performance where he played the drums and had human stem cells on stage and videotaped them differentiating because of the sound and rhythms of his playing and actually he has a patent on that process and these doctors and scientists that were working with him were completely blown away by this work that he’d done over many years in researching heartbeats and how they were affected by drumming and rhythms and tone of drumming so milford was really a free thinker an extraordinary person he had many obituaries you can look them up in rolling stone magazine in the guardian in all kinds of important magazines commemorating his life and the work that he was doing but he’s known mostly as a drummer and as a free jazz drummer even but he was so much more than that he got me interested in herbalism and i used to go out in the woods to identify plants i spent many years trying to find wild american ginseng and finally after many years found it and brought him to this very large patch of 100 plants and got to show him this amazing find that i had made so i was felt able to give back to him in my own ways in various ways but he was so instrumental and when you hear these episodes celebrating his life you’ll see all these amazing people talking about how he impacted their lives and it’s just i’m so grateful to be able to share that in this way with people yeah that sounds like a really fitting tribute so those will be the next two episodes for you those will be april 99 and 100.

yeah it’s pretty exciting that’s really beautiful it’s such an odd year i think whether it’s to do with the pandemic or not so many of us have lost somebody special but it’s so special as well to be able to give that kind of tribute to somebody that’s really wonderful yeah i agree i’m just so grateful to be able to do that and it’s just beautiful to hear each individual give their own testimony about because he impacted people so deeply and in so many ways but also very similar ways to this idea of to be really expert at something that you need to sort of know so much in such depth about your subject and in so many ways and not limit yourself to just one aspect of the study i love what you said right at the beginning that milford graves had told you that i did be into everything i feel like that’s a really important sentiment as well because to just be a musician but to be a musician a scientist but also somebody who cares that much about other people to put all of that knowledge together and to put it to such good in the world that’s gonna have a lasting legacy that’s really really beautiful that’s right and you know paula i feel like that now that he’s passed that i am trying to carry on his legacy and i’m able to do that in many ways but certainly through the show the world fusion show it’s one way i can share some you know important aspect of what nova taught me great as well as the world fusion show on youtube do you have anywhere else you would like to point people to find out more about your work so your website and that sort of thing my website derrickjordan.com dereca spell d-e-r-r-i-k and derrickjordan.com just go there i have like 17 cds i do a lot of cds for other people as well as lots of cds of my original music and all kinds of world music styles and it’s really a lot to look through and you can listen to and check out the music and see what you like and tell your friends and please uh i’d ask your guests to share the show the world fusion show and my music with their friends and uh if they find something they like and they want to share brilliant yeah we absolutely will do that well derek jordan it’s been i’ve learned loads talking to you today and um it’s been really lovely conversation i hope you’ve got something out of it as well yeah i can’t thank you enough for your time it’s been great thank you so much and for this opportunity to share my music and my work with your audience it’s really nice

this has been a cozy peapod production with me paula blair the music is common ground by airton used under a non-commercial 3.0 creative commons license and is available at ccmixter.org we are av cultures pod on facebook instagram and twitter and you can also join the conversation on discord if you’ve enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe and your favorite podcast app including youtube if you find auto captions useful and please share with your networks you’ll find links and ways to contact us at audiovisualcultures.wordpress we’re always really happy to hear from potential guests and ways to improve the show as well as supporting the pod and receiving member benefits over on patreon you can also help at buy me a coffee dot com forward slash pea blair thanks so much for listening catch you next time