Today was the day that Ken left: luckily it wasn’t Barbie
from whom he took his cue to leave. Ken
is a member of the team I usually work with (that is when I’m not
seconded). He has been in the company for
the last 18 months on a temp contract.
He was in our team for about 6 weeks, and has now moved onto pastures new. As is customary when a member of a department’s team leaves,
the rest of the team put their hands in their pockets and pull them out again with
nothing…no that’s not right, I mean, they put their hands in their pockets and produce
a bunch of flowers…no, wrong again; let me try this one more time…they put their
hands in their pockets, take money out and put it towards a leaving present, got
it that time, I knew I’d remember the chain of events leading up to the presentation
and consequent humiliation of the departing individual eventually; a pity then
that I was not remembered at the time of said presentation. As I am working in a different area of the
company building to normal I instructed my manager to let me know when the
ritual humiliation was about to begin, and I would race round to the other side
to catch sight of this awful spectacle (the giving of card & present, not
Ken). As loyal as I can be, I took time
out this morning to visit my sorely missed team in order to sign the leaving
card with some witty repartee. Unfortunately
I was unable to muster anything up so simply wrote ‘Great working with you Ken,
good luck in your new job’.
But did I take part in this over zealous attempt to thank
him for all his hard work? No, and you know why? because I was not informed of
the time to go round. Looks like Ken is
not the only one that’s left: in the eyes of my other ‘team’ I may have as
well. I have gone from the ‘missed’ to the ‘missed out’!
On a lighter note, I met my friend Graham for lunch today,
so that we could discuss our venture into the world of music. For the last few months we have been spending
our spare time making Re-edits of songs. If you are not aware of this musical
art form (it sounds better than craze), let me give you a quick guide through
it;
The Re-edit is like the musical equivalent of putting an
extension on the back of your house: it looks fine but a bit more might be
nice!
Essentially you take a recorded song that is stored in your
hard drive, place it into sound editing software (such as Audacity) and cut and
paste certain parts of the song into a different order, or by repeating key
phrases that fit together by corresponding notes, and therefore make it longer.
Having been created in the 1970’s as a way of playing
exclusive mixes to club dwellers, the 12” single became a selling point for
artists into the 1980’s and beyond. They
often contained different ‘versions’ or ‘mixes’ to the standard 7” single we
spent our pocket money on as kids. This modern
tradition of creating re-mixes (or Re-edits, or sometimes known as Re-cuts) has,
in the last 10 years or so crossed over into the homes of many fans of the
genre. At times it feels sacrilegious to
mess around with songs that already sound perfect, but it is a fun way of
enjoying them like we did the first time. We are not trying to, by any means, better
the originals but simply to enjoy them in a longer format.
Feel free to check out our mixes at Soundcloud.com/Redspidermixes. Feedback welcomed.
No comments:
Post a Comment