POST #9 — Booked to play Harrods

We went back.

Same studio, same Neve 8078, same Steve Abu Nab running the desk, same idea as the summer before: track it live in the room, drums and bass straight to tape.

Two days for one song this time, instead of three days for three. Partly because we wanted to spend more time on this song, but also because in a studio, it takes at least half a day to set-up and get a good sound from a drum kit. We left with a rough monitor mix on a CD-R and the feeling that we’d just made the best thing we’d ever made.1

Here’s a video from the studio of me being silly and Jonno and I arguing about playing to a click track. 2

By the early hours of 7 February — 12:59am, to be exact — Jonno’s Foxes February Newsletter went out to the mailing list.

“And finally....having spent 2 wonderful days at The Way Studio (www.thewaystudio.com) our new track ‘Lover, Killer’ will be available on myspace in a few days. This track really will knock your socks off!”

A song. Two wonderful days. And the next problem was a problem we didn’t know we had yet. Which is the best kind of problem really.

You don’t hear much about mastering engineers. Most of the world doesn’t know they exist. What they do is take the finished mix of a song and apply a final layer of sonic polish so it sounds good on every system — every speaker, every car stereo, every pair of cheap earbuds. It’s the difference, in practice, between a track that sounds like a demo and a track that sounds like a record.

For ‘Lover, Killer’ we decided to massively upgrade to Mandy Parnell at Electric Mastering, in Westbourne Studios, W10 — along with the three songs we’d recorded with Steve the previous August. It was the master of our first EP. Four tracks: Lover, Killer, Suzy, She’s a Cow, Run. Twenty minutes of music. Our first proper record.

Mandy Parnell was one of the best mastering engineers in the country. She’d trained at the SAE Institute, then worked at The Exchange. She would, over the years to come, master records by Björk (Biophilia, Vulnicura, Utopia), Aphex Twin (Syro), The xx, Sigur Rós, Brian Eno, Feist, The Knife, Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds. She would later found Black Saloon Studios in Walthamstow. She would win the MPG’s Mastering Engineer of the Year award several times. She would be one of the most respected mastering engineers of her generation.

She also, it turned out, had the kind of ears that catch things nobody else can hear.

My diary, 6 February 2007:

“The mastering of ‘Lover, Killer’ has been delayed – I went to see Mandy last night at Electric Mastering and she said that because the files had been compressed she felt they’d lost a slight amount of sound quality, so I’ve emailed Steve from The Way to ask him to post the tracks rather than email, and we’re going back to try this Thursday, with Jonno in tow.”

The Way had emailed the mix files over to her. Somewhere in transit - or perhaps before then - they’d been compressed. To most people on most playback systems, the resulting files would have sounded fine — but Mandy wasn’t most people.

Looking back, she could quite easily have thought this is just another unsigned band and most people won’t notice the difference, I’m not getting paid any extra, I’ll master what I’ve got and get on with my day.

She didn’t.

Two days later, on the morning of Thursday 8 February, Steve from The Way sent her this:

Subject: Attn - Mandy - re: The Foxes mastering

“Hi Foxes/ Mandy,

Sorry this email comes late, I planned to send yesterday but we couldn’t get onto the computer to get the other version of Lover, Killer.

We have done some tests and the muffled issue is not to do with ftp transfer.. The songs are as good as they get I’m afraid, so please do the best you can with them.

All the best,

Steve Abu Nab”

The songs are as good as they get I’m afraid — the muffled issue isn’t the transfer. So it’s the source. So was it in fact a studio problem? Was it the case that they were still working out the issues with the new desk and studio set-up and the recording wasn’t perfect? Maybe — but we were too inexperienced to ask if this was the case and to demand money back or another recording - and to be fair, it sounded great to us and everyone who heard it. Do YOU think those early songs sound muffled?! In the end, we got them to post a physical copy just in case.

From: Phil Vernol info@electricmastering.com

To: The Foxes thefoxesband@hotmail.com

Date: 26 March 2007, 17:06

Subject: Re: Attn - Mandy - re: The Foxes mastering

“Hi Nigel,

No problem I’ll pass on your thanks to Mandy & ask her to run us off a CD for the office.

Best wishes,

Phil”

A CD for the office.

That’s a real compliment. Mastering engineers hear A LOT of music passing through their studios — most of it forgettable — so the idea that someone there wants a copy of yours to listen to again is a genuinely lovely thing.

The master itself had been finished and burned five days earlier, on 21 March. I still have the disc and the SADiE PQ printout that came with it.

Lover, Killer: three minutes and nineteen seconds. Suzy: five forty-nine. She’s a Cow: four thirty-three. Run: six thirteen. Nineteen minutes and fifty-four seconds of music. Our first proper record.

It had cost us months of work, several thousand pounds, the patience of one of the country’s best mastering engineers, and ALL the remaining money from four blokes in their twenties who were still very much working day jobs.

And it was good.

We didn’t fully grasp what we had yet, or what it would do with us. But we’d find out shortly….

While Lover, Killer was sitting in Mandy’s mastering suite waiting for the proper files to arrive in the post, the band was doing what bands do — which is, mostly, gigging (and rehearsing and arguing).

The weekend of 10/11 February was the first proper double-header of the year. Saturday night: The Amersham, main support for Eddie and the Hot Rods3, another Jim Driver gig. Sunday afternoon and evening: The Electric Sound Café at The Clapham Grand — an all-dayer running from the early afternoon to late evening, run by Alex himself (and friend Stuart Thomas - no relation).

Here’s the strange thing. There are gigs from these days I can recall VIVIDLY, simple moments I can replay in detail in my head. The Eddie and the Hot Rods gig is not one of them. I have no memory of it. I know it happened because we played it; because the diary mentions it; and there are a few blurry photos AND because months later, in May 2007, a fan email landed in our Yahoo inbox:

“How are you doing? Don’t know if you remember me, but I was one of the guys in the front at your show this year in Feb at the Amersham with Eddie and the Hot Rods, was great!”

I’ll take “was great.” From a guy who was actually there. Thanks Luc.

The pre-Sunday-gig planning, meanwhile, was already strained. From my 6 February diary entry:

“Oh, the other big point of contention (or at least, it will be) is whether or not we do a covers set at The Electric Sound Café — Alex wants us to play at the end, which wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have just ONE rehearsal before the gig (and the one supporting Eddie and the Hotrods) because of Al’s skiing trip. I just don’t see how it will be of any benefit, especially when we really need to rehearse Dancing, and the new song and make sure we’re tight after over a week of not playing. No point in playing a load of under-rehearsed covers and ruining the evening. Jonno’s going to speak to him and I’m sure we’ll all have a nice big argument at rehearsal on Friday. We’ll see what happens.”

In the end (literally) we DID play a covers set - but I was so worried about people being confused about The Foxes and a “covers band” that I changed my clothes AND wore camouflage on my face. What was I thinking?!

Yes. That Harrods.

A man called Sebastian Merrick from a company called Big Time TV was producing a “Born to Rock” exhibition — live music, art, fashion — to be staged at Harrods, in Knightsbridge. I sent in our pitch on 30 January, in what I would call my finest band-promotion prose:

From: The Foxes (thefoxesband@hotmail.com) Date: 30 January 2007, 10:24 To: borntorock@bigtime.tv Subject: The Foxes: Born to Rock.

“Dear Born to Rock.

We’re very intererested in playing at Harrods for Born to Rock — we rehearse four times a week and are a VERY tight, melodic and energetic band. As a London band, we’d be honoured to play in such an London institution as Harrods.

We’re called The Foxes and had our first gig May 2006 having met in a car crash.”

I will draw your attention to several key features of that email:

1. “Intererested” is not a word.

2. “Such an London” is a proper sentence.

3. We had not, at any point, met in a car crash. I made that up because I thought it would make us memorable.

It worked. Sebastian emailed back almost immediately and we had a phone call. By 7 February I could write:

“WE’VE GOT THE HARRODS GIG! With a bit of polite pestering, Sebastian has given us the gig to play at Harrods next Tuesday — lots of friends and people from work are coming, and it’s got a great response from Myspace — people are seriously impressed (and of course, we’ve said that Harrods asked us) — could really do things for us…but then, so could anything. Al phoned from France very excited.”

…..it was all cancelled.

A few days before, Harrods had to pull all live music after complaints — apparently a small number of well-heeled customers had objected to live bands in the store the previous weekend, and the council got involved.

I broke the news to a friend a couple of days later:

“The Harrods gig was cancelled unfortunately, as they had to cancel ALL live music at the store after complaints and the council getting involved. A shame, but it was nice to have been asked I suppose. I was really looking forward to wearing ripped jeans in the store too!”

So Harrods. We never played there. But for about a week, we got to say we were going to and everyone got excited.

Sometimes, in the music business, the phantom gig is, temporarily, worth as much as the real one.

Diary, 16 March: “Ah well! Nice to have got it anyway.”

That little stretch — late January to late March 2007 — looks like the bit of the film where the montage starts. The band finally in motion.

Next week: The man who came to see us and REALLY didn’t like how we looked OR sounded…and what we did about it. I know, that’s such a tease…

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