My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): Getting The Big Box Of CDs

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Anyone who's read previous entries here will realise that the world of ROCK is a constant whirl-y-gig of glamour and excitement, a non-stop sled ride through the snow-bound hills of sexy thrills. Sometimes, however, one has to calm down a little bit and do some Administrative Tasks to grease the blades on said sled and re-arrange the metaphorical stirrups on... er... the reindeer of KICKING ASS.

One such occasion was the completion of our first album, when after several months of LARKS in Studios double-tracking backwards guitars and cross-fading the paradiddles it was time to get down to the serious business of mastering and manufacturing. Having recorded and mixed it all with the MIGHTY Mr Kev Reverb in Leicester it seemed like a good idea to do the mastering somewhere else. JARGON EXPLAINED: "mixing" is when you fiddle about with the volume, effects, and general STUFF for all the individual recorded sounds, whereas "mastering" is when you shove the whole thing through a MAGIC BOX to make it sound more exciting. It's generally thought of as a Good Idea to get a fresh pair of EARS around it, so Frankie and I headed over to The Hive in Derby to get it sorted out.

It was a strange experience for us as The Hive was VERY CLEAN INDEED. At Kev's studio you had to move magazines, fag ash, cardboard boxes and pot plants out of the way before you could sit on the dilapidated sofa, and the walls were festooned with pictures of Elvis Presley and local Club Singers, also TAT from the market, signed pictures of various bands who'd played there, and STAINS. It was GRATE, but a complete world away from the Sound Baffles and Acoustically Adjusted Mouldings of The Hive, where you weren't even allowed to SMOKE. I sat quietly in the corner, feeling like an East End Orphan being giving tea up at The Manor House, AFEARED lest I sully the doilies with my soot-soiled paws.

Once it was DONE, however, all that was left to do was wait for CA$H to pay for it. Some bands finance their first album with constant touring, others by taking out massive bank loans and still others by nefarious dealings on the dark side of the economy. Ours was paid for by the writing of a guide to best database practice for the local health authority, called "Making Data Work For You (and not the other way round)". And if you think THAT sounds Rock And Roll, just wait for the Film Adaptation!

THUS we were ready to send it off for manufacturing. CD Manufacturing is a funny old business, it's a massive industry which processes millions of copies of thousands of different albums and singles every year but seems to be run almost entirely by the kind of people who Dodgy Plumbers, Naughty Estate Agents and Nigerian Email Scammers would regard as a BIT SHIFTY. I HAVE put out CDs where everything has gone according to plan, items promised have been delivered on time1, costs have remained as specified and telephone calls have been answered, but it has been RARE.

The manufacture of THIS album was one of the worst I've ever had. You'd think it'd be simple - they need to make 500 copies of a CD, and have ENORMOUS machines designed to do exactly this, but for some reason it tends to take LONGER to for them to sort it out that in would if you sat and did them one by one at work, even allowing for having to pretend to be busy when people walk by. Cover artwork, no matter how closely you comply with templates, ALWAYS needs adjustment ("It's the bleed", they will say) and they always seems to end up charging thirty quid and taking 24 hours to do the three mouse clicks that change the colours from CMYK to RGB.

As you can tell from my slip into TERMINOLOGY, it gets RATHER FRUSTRATING. Worst of all is the process of getting the damn things delivered. After a MONTH of phone calls and (these days) emails the company will FINALLY say they're ready and agree a date for the CDs to arrive.

They do not arrive. More telephone calls, more time taken off work, more agreed times (and offers from the delivery company to deliver it on a weekend IF you pay them an extra fifty quid) and more ENTIRE DAYS are then spent sitting in COMPLETE SILENCE so as not to miss the knock at the door, JUMPING every time someone tiptoes down the street and RUSHING to the window to see if it's your lorry until you eventually give up hope at eight o'clock (three hours after the last possible delivery time, with you by now CONVINCED the lorry has gone over a cliff) and go to the pub, GIRDING yourself to go through the whole process again. It is, I suppose, like CHILDBIRTH: a lengthy painful unpredictable process than can go on for AGES during which you vow NEVER EVER EVER to do anything like it again, until your creation eventually arrive and you look it in the eyes and think "Aah, it's got my barcode!"

The labour in this case went on for a FORTNIGHT, including a SATURDAY when I got up at 7am to wait for twelve hours to no avail, so my JOY when the albums eventually arrived was unparalleled in the history of GLEE, and I spent the next month giving away copies to friends and acquaintances, whose reaction, once I'd got used to it, was Almost Complimentary: "But... this sounds quite good?!? How did that happen?" It was only when I'd sent all the promo copies out and flogged a few at gigs that I started to notice something odd.

I'd stacked all the boxes in my hallway, and one Sunday morning it struck me that, surely, there were too many of them? I counted and, as stated on the outside, each box contained 100 CDs. I'd not got rid of THAT many, so that should have meant there were still all five boxes left but, no matter how many times I walked round and counted them all, there were TEN of them.

They'd sent me twice as many as I'd ordered. Being an honest sort I would, of course, in usual circumstances have rung them straight away to point out the error, but as they'd pissed me around SO much I thought I'd wait and see what happened. A month later I got a very chummy email saying they'd just noticed that they'd sent me twice as many and, as they were so lovely, had decided NOT to charge me the full cost for the whole extra batch. "Just give us a call and we'll work out a price!" they said.

Being nothing if not forgiving, I replied almost immediately. "I don't need another 500 copies", I said, "So you're welcome to come and collect them. Let me know what time you're coming and I'll do my very VERY best to be at home."

I never heard from them again. VICTORY!

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