Seeing as I’ve not had a chance to properly research a ‘Gaseous Brainstorm’ post this week, and am off to Aberdeen for a stag weekend tomorrow morning (weather and liver permitting) I thought I’d delve back into the archives.

Those of you who’ve been reading a while and have particularly good memories might remember I started this series about my (mostly ill-fated) creative efforts but never got round to finishing it.

So far I’ve covered up to around 1999, so there’s a decade still to cover. I couldn’t quite keep it as brief as I’d hoped though, and I’d already written a lengthy series that covered around 1999 to 2004 called ‘I Was a Swivel Chair’ which covers a fair few misspent years in shit jobs, behaving like an utter twat and trying to get a comedy band off the ground (and failing spectacularly). Given that it doesn’t particularly paint me in the best light I was reluctant to revisit it. However I’ve decided to put it up here for a short time so anyone who cares can have a read before it is deleted from the internet forever!

Anyway here’s what’s come so far, and what is still to come, as a reminder or for anyone who wasn’t around at the time.

Next: I Was a Swivel Chair

Read part 1, part 2, part 3

A Novel Idea

In my final year of college I also started writing lyrics and other random stuff in a bit of a creative outpouring, due perhaps to the fact that I’d kept my creativity bottled up for so long (or drowned it in a sea of booze might be more accurate) and increasing desperation about what was going to happen when the student safety net was pulled away from beneath my feet. I also made some attempt to record some music to go along with these lyrics,  though without any of the skill required for such an enterprise. Also my personal life was in a complete and utter mess at the time due to my own stupidity, but that’s another story.

After full-time education ended, unemployment was inevitable. I had the same attitude as Morrissey towards work “I was looking for a job then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now..” However I suddenly found myself in a serious relationship so had a reason to make a bit of an effort.

 In the meantime I decided it would be a good time to write a novel. I spent my days wandering round second-hand bookshops and going to the library, and fixated on Hunter S Thompson. I would see his partner in crime Ralph Steadman’s illustrations everywhere I went – perhaps taunting me about my own childlike drawing skills, though I took it as encouragement to continue on my quest to be a writer.

The novel was to be called the Three Drink Rule, about a borderline alcoholic ex-student who is talked into making a pledge to never have more than three alcoholic drinks – but when he inevitably gives in to temptation, bizarre things happen.. it never quite materialised, though I was to revisit it from time to time, and still think about trying to rewrite it now and again.

STRUGGLING TO PAY THE BILLS AND STAY CREATIVE

After about three months on the breadline I applied for a couple of retail jobs – one in a health food store and one in HMV’s “flagship” music store on Princes St, which had been closed for refurbishment. I got turned down for the health food job and ended up wowing the manager of HMV with my enthusiasm for the Oasis album Definitely Maybe (yeah, I know..  I was young and naïve) though the way he ignored me once i was in the job suggested he later regretted the decision.

After I’d accepted the HMV job, the health food store manager came back and said the job was mine after all, if I wanted it – it was too late though. I wonder how different my life would have turned out if I’d been given that job first, given the people who I met at HMV were to lead to me joining my first band and continuing my heavy drinking habits..

 * Note: For more info on this and the various soul-sucking jobs that followed, my recording of the song Columbo & Coffee and my adventures as part of an unpopular comedy band, you’ll have to read my in-depth tale about it called ‘I Was a Swivel Chair’ which I’ll be republishing on this blog soon.

During the Edinburgh Festival that year I managed to get some ‘work’ writing for the Evening News. I covered a variety of comedy, theatre and music but I was also working full-time.

Just to give you an idea how old I am, this was in the days before everyone had a laptop and email and free broadband in cafes etc so I had to run up to the fringe office on the Royal Mile on my lunch to arrange tickets for the events, and then after the event I had to go home, write the review and then call it in so that it could be published the next day.

My friend Dougie’s mum was one of the people at the Evening News who took these phone calls and transcribed the copy – I was quite embarrassed when I had to read her my review of ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago..’

 This ridiculous ritual soon led to burn-out, and worse, I wasn’t getting paid for the pleasure, mainly due to my own deeply embedded reluctance to ask for money. Then I saw an opportunity to take part in a music video course with Roman “don’t mention my dad” Coppola as part of the International Film Festival, and applied.

Coppola was a really nice and surprisingly humble bloke and had made quite a few music vids including helping Spike Jonze out on Fatboy Slim’s Praise You and Mansun’s Tax Loss video (see his Reel). He guided us through the process of making a music promo from idea to final product.

We had to pitch an idea to someone at Skint Records  - he didn’t think much of mine, and we ended up going with another guy on the course’s idea which was to have a guy in a pink panther suit walk backwards around Edinburgh. After it was filmed we reversed and sped up the footage so it looked like everyone else was going backwards and the panther was strolling about leisurely. It turned out not bad and was apparently shown on MTV and BBC2 – but I couldn’t find it on the web when I looked.

So it was a great course, but had meant I gave up prematurely on being a full-time professional arts journalist. I did go back and write for the Evening News again a year later, and managed to get paid, but that fizzled out as I spent more and more time doing Swivel Chair stuff – including a string of “groundbreaking” music videos…

I don’t think I realised what an opportunity I had at the time to get paid writing work, something which on the whole still eludes me now. Clearly there are limiting beliefs at work in this old gaseous brain of mine…

 Next: The Final Part. Probably.

In the previous installment I talked about what I got up to while I was at college (in between pub crawls). I had also managed to secure a decent bit of work experience with a radio production company called Unique. The course itself made no provision for this, but I was lucky enough to have a cousin who lived in London who could pull a few strings (though he also insisted on getting me paralytically drunk each evening in order to fully demonstrate the ‘work hard play hard’ mentality of the Big City media fraternity). 

 The company produced the Pepsi Chart Show which was networked out to 100+ local radio stations, as well as a number of BBC Radio programmes. The Pepsi Chart Show was presented by Dr Fox, a colourful character who later became a judge on Pop Idol, the precursor to X Factor (and also infamously appeared on a certain controversial episode of Brass Eye, with some dubious facts about crab genetics).

 I got some great experience sitting in on the Richard Allinson show on Radio BBC2, editing sound for a BBC World Service show (the old fashioned razorblade way, as digital editing was not yet widespread), and er.. filing demo CDs (the best of which I was allowed to keep – I came home with a bunch of Super Furry Animals singles). the only contact i had with Dr Fox though, was on one occasion when I forgot to lock the door on the toilet cubicle and he barged in on me.

From this taste of the real world of media work, I wasn’t convinced that I could cope with moving to London and fighting for short-term contracted work, plus the likelihood of a lengthy commute each day to whichever suburb I could afford to rent a room. In retrospect it would probably have been preferable to the rubbish jobs i did end up doing for the last decade, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 Before I left I did have a chat with the boss of the company who was very friendly and helpful, and gave me a lot of good info for my planned dissertation topic on the possible future of the music charts and industry as a whole. He told me to get in touch anytime if I needed anything else. I figured this was a great contact for my future career, and that the dissertation, done well, might really put me on the map.

 When I returned to college however, I was told that my dissertation topic of choice was “not academic” enough for whoever decides on these type of things. I felt gutted, as I had no back-up plan in place. Finally, I decided on the topic of music fanzines. This was apparently academic enough, and actually a very interesting subject as it dealt with issues of fan empowerment and DIY culture which are close to my heart – but in terms of leading to a lucrative media career it seemed like a nail in the coffin.

As it turned out I was one of the first people to write an academic paper on the topic – and my tutor, who was incredibly helpful and supportive, suggested I might be able to get it published, and offered to help me with it. This would have been an amazing opportunity. But where was my head at the time, dear reader? Right up my own arse as it turned out. I, like many others, struggled to discipline myself to write that dissertation and left it to the very last minute. In the end, a couple of nights of jack daniels and coke fuelled typing got it done, and it wasn’t utterly bad – but I never pursued the opportunity to take it any further. I have bolded that sentence, dear reader, because that, in a nutshell, as you might be beginning to work out, is the story of my life.

Next: The world of work = a world of pain (don’t worry, just a couple more installments left!)

This is part 2 of the exclusive serialisation of my unwritten creative memoirs (it might make a bit more sense if you read part one)

FILM OPENINGS

At school in Donegal I was exempt from attending the otherwise compulsory daily Irish Gaelic class due to being born in England. So was a bloke called Mike Deery, who had returned to the school after getting injured whilst on trial at Liverpool FC.

 This was a brilliant opportunity to catch up on homework for any classes later the same day, or more likely doss about in the corridor with the older, more experienced Deery who delighted in repeatedly giving me a dead arm.

 On one such occasion we were sitting about outside the careers office at school and I casually picked up a prospectus featuring an attractive girl with a video camera. This spoke directly to both of my frustrated teenage desires, sex and video cameras, which and sold me on the course instantly. I did very little further research, but a speculative trip to Edinburgh was enough to convince me to move (plus I noticed there were regular gigs by great bands, though they were mainly in Glasgow).  So, I moved here, aged 16 (I turned 17 a couple of weeks after I began my degree).

 Myself and my flatmate did film a great wee video of the Prince of Pain, a masochistic cabaret artist who did unspeakable things to himself on stage, and shared a flat with a large dog and a dwarf called Powertool who lifted weights with his penis. They spoke eloquently and genuinely about their line of work and gave a real insight into their bizarre lives but unfortunately we neglected to plug in a mic so the sound left a lot to be desired.

Also the video tutor was mainly absent due to his involvement in some local TV project and I lacked the “focus and drive” to take advantage of the ageing equipment (computer editing was then a brand new thing – I think we got to see the tutor demonstrate it once). However I did inexplicably receive a good grade for the classic alien abduction short film ‘Abduction Granton’ with its spectacular special effects (actually it was rubbish as you can see below – some of the effects were added several years later but as they say, you can’t polish a turd).

 In my third year of my four year degree I was overcome with desperation and fear at what might befall me once my student days were over. I turned back to writing in earnest and took on the role of film editor for the college magazine (as you can see above, a photo of a very skinny me under the Hollywood sign headed up my first column) and also did some music reviews and at least one interview with a short-lived indie band of the time called Jocasta who I roundly slated in the mag.

 The editor of the college magazine is now a political journalist for a major Scottish newspaper but I wouldn’t want to mention his name here in case it embarrassed him.. Anyway, with dissertations and stuff coming up I had to pack it in after a few issues but it was good experience. Would it help me when I found myself unemployed after college though?

 Next: Desperate times, double measures..

Part 3 

Part 4