Sinister: Getting the Horn

[Mark Hester]

"You're as cold as ice!"  Now I don't usually leave my workplace singing that
particular song, but I was prompted to do so yesterday.  Once I'd got far enough
across our covered courtyard outside our offices to see that it was raining, I
got my umbrella out of my bag and put it up.  I didn't realise, however, that it
was also very windy and inevitably it blew inside out.  Now you would think that
this occurrence would've provoked a look of sympathy, or amusement, or
*something* on the faces of any onlookers, but a woman waiting for her lift who
must have seen me did not display a flicker of emotion at this point.  Totally
impassive.  The epitome of inscrutability.  Weird.

So, B&S are being produced by Trevor Horn, then?  It might work, like it did for
Frankie, Propaganda and TATU.  Does anyone know what Trev is like to work with? 
Well, Geoffrey Downes does for one.  But what kind of reputation has he got in
the studio?  Producers can sometimes be real martinets can't they.....I recall
Damon Albarn saying that Blur had once abandoned recording sessions with XTC's
Andy Partridge, likening his treatment of the band to that of a strict
headmaster.  By now you're probably thinking,  "Pshaw!  There goes Hester, off
on one as usual, always thinking the worst.  For all he knows Trevor Horn could
be a real sweetie, keeping Struan & co. supplied with cups of tea and digestive
biscuits".

Older does not necessarily mean wiser.  Especially where drinking is
concerned....for last night was the night that Content Management (the name of
my department, with 'content' as a noun not an adjective) hit Cowley Road,
possibly the only street in Oxford where you just *can't* do a pub crawl
visiting every pub, so don't even try, silly.  One of the hostelries we visited
was chock full of people from other departments of the company...sometimes I
wonder why we don't just order in a few crates of beer for the offices and not
bother with the moving about bit.  Anyway, we eventually wound up queueing to
enter some dubious bar and chatting to some students from Kansas City who were
most impressed that I knew that their home town wasn't actually in Kansas.  The
fact that I knew absolutely nothing else at all about the place didn't seem to
bother them in the slightest.  Earlier in the day, at lunch, the Big Boss Man
had walk past our table yet again (must be third time in a week) and someone
said "I really *love* working here!" very loudly, in what is becoming a
tradition - maybe we should have a rota for it.

Big Stu I'm not sure Do They Know It's Christmas counts as one of the best songs
of the eighties.  The best *intentions* maybe.  And I don't often find myself
agreeing with Bono, but that "Thank God it's them instead of you" line is very
dubious....

Paul Arathoon, I'm not sure who the Glam Metal Detectives are, but it's a
tremendous name!  Shame he didn't produce "I'm Horny, Horny, Horny" by whoever
it was (I'm sure someone will fill me in).


I hope those of you in Brighton today have/had a super time!  Would have been
there myself were it not for various commitments which mean I have to remain
here in Oxford (shopping, convincing my girlfriend that she really does want to
keep going out with a cynical old drunkard, that kinda thing...)


Mark.

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