It’s normal to leave things to the last shred of time on the last day. I’m not saying it’s hugely practical, or popular, but it’s really just a natural phenomenon, no different to floods, earthquakes and typhoons. we had been shoveling the project deeper and deeper towards our goal of completion, aiming to finish it a day before.
We met that deadline, but typically, problems had to show up. First one being good ol’ mister perfectionism and the other, a slow and incremental build up of fatigue that snuck up behind us whilst we were dodging the clock and diving over cups of coffee and black tea. I was working on the new and improved album cover, whilst Zach and Jamie, who both made the band The Magic Lantern Duo (Jamie being it’s brainchild) were trying to master the music. The album cover needed a redesign, Zach had liked the cover a lot, Jaime liked the picture but thought it was too complicated and didn’t focus on the play enough.
“It doesn’t?” I said as I ate some chinese noodles, cooked by my housemate
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Jaime took a drag of coffee, he said sympathetically, “Well, it does kinda”.
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He took another look at the cover, “it needs more focus on the clam, because it’s called half man/half clam, like maybe get rid of all the fish, and this bendy line, and the waves, but make the clam larger in the center, just flat against some colour, really simple”
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Taking note of the points, we wished each other good luck as he left to master the tracks with Zack. We both wanted to get it perfect.
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About an hour later, a frustrated looking Jaime came into my room to see how I was doing,
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Looking over my shoulder he squinted at the image, “Yeah, I like the clam”, He looked like he needed more coffee.
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I put down my tea, “I thought the album was mastered already, like yesterday”
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Jaime sighed, “yeah, but there are still a lot of problems with it, it was done but still some bits of it are too loud, and others too quiet, we haven’t even played it to an audience yet, so there are still potential problems we’ve gotta second guess”, he pointed to a general part of the picture, “hey, we could put a fishbowl in there, around the clam”. Sounds pretty cool, I said.
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About five hours later, a new album cover was done, Jaime had said the “THIS. IS. FFUCKING AMAZING!” line, and so 50 copies of it were printed out, including sticker labels for the CD design. Both Jaime and Zack looked tired and their eyes were droopy, I knew that by this point neither of them had slept at all in the last 48 hours. The mastering was not finished, so we bagged the laptop, a small guillotine for the album covers, our suitcases of instruments and equipment, some coats, and some hats, then dragged ourselves out the door. Jaime updated me on the way to Kings Cross. The play was a production of Freefall theatres, and was predicted to have quite a good turnout, “about 30 or 50 tickets had been sold” he said.
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“Yeah, hey check out the sleeping man”, He pointed at Zach who was sleeping whilst hunched forward in a seated position, “I better wake him, we’re almost there”.
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We met up with Thilo, the puppeteer in the production, and after squeezing all the instruments into a rented car, we departed for Ipswich. We had one guitar squeezed between us in the back seat, which proved useful as an arm-rest, just like a bloody old fashioned stage carriage. I don’t recall how long the journey was, since I was asleep for most of the way. Ipswich looked quite grey that day, and it didn’t take long before the rain started tinkling down. We duly arrived at The New Wolsey Theatre
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After a nap, a meal and a debriefing, Zack continued with the mastering of the audio, setting up his laptop in dressing room 1. I sat there listening to the whole album, through the laptop speakers. Except for the odd annoying sound, or peaking volume, it sounded fine.
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Since I was also hired to film the production, I had to work out how to go about doing this. It didn’t look like a complex set up, everything was going to happen on one central platform. This much was obvious from just seeing the bare floor and the lack of sets and props behind the curtain. Kate, the director, explained that they were going to have a dress rehearsal at 5pm, before the start of the show, so I could get my close ups then. I found my roosting spot, and set up shop at the foot of the platform.
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