Multiscreen visuals for the band Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Royal Albert Hall, 13 October 1986 / Hollywood Palace, Los Angeles, 27
October 1986 / Palladium New York, 31 October 1986
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“I edit videos too, you know.” “Yeah, great mate,” we sneered dubiously. “Like the haircut.” (For he had a bog brush haircut) “Yeah, I cut up Blade Runner and stuff like that. It’s quite similar to what you’re doing.” |
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Little did we know that he was Tony James, the band were Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the imminent fifth generation of Rock’n’Roll and that they were about to take over the world.
Later Tony started going out with Janet Street Porter who also knew our work and we went on tour with them. A collection of scratch video makers had been presented to the TV industry in Edinburgh. Janet had asked, “Why aren’t these people working in television?” She subsequently got us in to make stuff for Get Fresh and Peter directed for Network 7. She’d nicked the name from Bruno’s pirate TV station, Network 21, and nicked wholesale scratch ideas like the use of text, subverting footage and general editing style. At least Peter got some work out of it.
When SSS signed for a fictional million pounds they put on three showcase gigs, one in the Albert Hall, one in NY and one LA. We did the visuals. We chopped up all their promos and all Tony’s favourite films into two channels of video. He wrote out a list of what we could and couldn’t show – no mushroom clouds, no black and white. He knew exactly what he wanted.
We had three live cameras and live TV and satellite feeds, going into video walls and projectors. We also had a sound feed to the main desk. For the Albert Hall gig we vision mixed it live from the side of the stage wearing white coats. It was the best gig I’ve done. There were some sublime moments of synchronicity between video and band. We’d cut some bits of film to have sound that came through for the band to play along with. Then we found we had a Mike Tyson fight coming in live on one channel and the Reagan Gorbachev summit from Reykjavik on another. We just kept switching and the band kept playing along as it unfolded. For the NY and LA gigs it didn’t happen because the sound guy wouldn’t put up our feed.
In LA we went to Disneyland with Martin Degville in his full outfit. The people at the gate made him take his gloves off for some reason.