I was interviewed a few weeks ago by a couple of journalism students from the University of Huddersfield, who were doing an assignment to make a short film on the subject of music photography.
Caution: contains jazz, and much arm-waving.
What Jessie Did Next...
...being the inane ramblings of a mundane Yorkshire bird.
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A rollercoaster of a year and, frankly, a bloody awful one. Major things happened this year in my life and although I’m not going into them publicly, it’s left me a shattered wreck of the person I was. 2014 doesn’t hold much promise either. I left my New Year’s Day entry for 2013 hoping friendships wouldn’t change and in actual fact nothing could have been further from reality.
So instead of going into it, here’s 12 music videos and a brief note why each one.
January
January’s choice happened at about 3am on 1st January 2013 in the aftermath of our (then annual) New Year’s Eve party, with a friend in a Freddie Mercury outfit dancing with a hoover.
February
I photographed Spizz Energi at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds. Wasn’t too bad, but the reviewer was a bit confused as to why I’d shown up there.
March
Space singing Burn Down The School. They were being supported by a friend’s band and this one turned out to be a fantastic gig to photograph as well. Bern did a review with pics by moi.
April
I discovered Adam Buxton’s BUG and went to the National Media Museum for a lecture on the evolution of music video. This is one of the more brilliant ones.
May
One of the highlights of Live At Leeds 2013 for me was Darwin Deez. This video was actually also part of the BUG lecture but deserves to be here in its own right.
June
All hell breaks loose and I make some serious life decisions. This was playing on the dancefloor on my first night ‘out’.
July
Dutch Uncles performing Bellio. A highlight of Tramlines 2013. I spent a lot of time this Summer talking to Joe Sheerin of Leeds-List who tolerated me talking a lot of stuff at him. We sat sidestage and watched Dutch Uncles groove as it got colder on The Green.
August
By August, I was photographing festivals almost every weekend and gradually coming out of my shell. This one reminds me of Beacons 2013 – my first camping festival in years – not because John Grant was there but because it was playing in the car both to the festival and back from it.
September
The final festival of the year was Bingley Music Live. I ended up talking with Nile Rodgers backstage for a short while; I was in a bad place psychologically, and he helped. So it can be claimed that 1st September 2013 was the day Nile Rodgers saved my life.
October
The last time I went to a gig and ‘maled-up’ for it. I was a wreck. I tried though, I did honestly try and get through it, but it was very difficult.
November
Finally caught They Might Be Giants. Had fun. It took place on Transgender Day Of Remembrance, and I bought a purple band t-shirt.
December
A song from a friend’s band who don’t perform any more, and this was one of the last songs they wrote a few years ago. For some reason I latched onto it again in December, and danced to it in the kitchen on Christmas Eve. You should always dance in the kitchen – it’s law. If you watch the video carefully, you can see my head bobbing up and down in front of the stage – I was photographing it.
And there you have it. 12 videos, 12 months.
Apparently here in the UK we’re due a heck of a storm over the next 36 hours, and all hell will break loose. Me, I’m old enough to remember Hurricane Charley hitting our east coast in August 1986 – I was camping at a place called Beadnall in Northumberland, and my enduring memory of that holiday was holding onto the tent frame hoping it wouldn’t fly away. Now that was a storm.
You might also be old enough to remember that storm which ‘ace’ BBC weatherman Michael Fish didn’t predict, as well.
For a while I’ve lusted after a GoPro – tiny little self-contained wide-angle HD video cameras which can be strapped to cars, bikes, helmets, all sorts of things. They’re the cameras used for programmes like Top Gear, or where they’re strapped to some bloke skydiving out of a plane to get a point-of-view film; fun stuff and with my impending projects involving music videos I could sort-of justify it.
The GoPro Hero 3HD though has got horrendous reviews: from heat issues to random reboots or even just resembling a very expensive brick (you just need to look at Amazon for a litany of woe), so I wasn’t going to fork out the thick end of £400 for the setup I’d like (including the waterproof case et al).
Anyway, a week ago I went to Focus On Imaging, the big pro-sumer photography show at Birmingham NEC. Among the stands exhibiting was a dealer who were selling the Jobo JIB4 action camera – essentially a GoPro clone – which piqued my curiosity. I spent a while discussing with the dealer and came away with one including waterproof case, a pile of mounts, extra battery booster, a remote control and a lens cloth for a penny shy of £200. Winner.
So what’s it like? Tiny and fun! It’ll do 50fps at 1080p PAL (and a higher framerate of 120fps at WXGA), 170-degree wide-angle, and on exploring the menu system I discovered it had a time-lapse feature which automatically welds sequential JPEGs together to output an MP4 movie: I can squish about an hour’s capture into just under two and a half minutes.
Experiment time! I’ve spent a couple of commutes from home to work (and back) tweaking but this morning I had the first day of decent weather across the M62. So then, here you go – Wrenthorpe to Salford in 4 minutes:
(Just in case you can’t see that, there’s a link to the YouTube video here)
I think I probably need to clamp it to the roof-rack in its waterproof case – that way I’m not having to wash the windscreen all the time; I don’t feel quite brave enough for that yet! More experiments to follow, no doubt…
There came a flurry of news just before bedtime last night that high-street chain HMV was going into administration. It’s been on the cards since at least 2007 and while it’s extremely unfortunate that mismanagement of the administration led to staff finding out via the media (accompanied by scuttlebutt and faux-sadness on Twitter) I can’t say I’m surprised in the slightest.
This morning there’s a lot of punditry flying around regarding HMV’s business model, competitors, the inevitable comparisons with online vendors (and HMV’s own failed foray into online sales some years ago), the links to piracy, MP3s, iTunes, and tons more. Yet however you look at it HMV’s business model is completely and utterly flawed: the chart CDs stocked are sold cheaper in bulk to Asda so margins are nonexistent, racks are full of ‘classic’ albums you can find chucked out in Oxfam, there’s very little (if any) stock of local music, and when you want something out-of-the-ordinary you’re bang out of luck unless you want to order it in and wait a week. Just like Jessops before them, they’re box-shifters with stock even Del Boy would find hard to pass on.
It hasn’t always been so. Contrast it with the mid-90s when HMV stocked dance vinyl and had entire racks of ‘interesting stuff the staff found’ complete with a small sticker telling you what it was like – comments like ‘big farty bass and a synth line your mum will hate‘. That was brilliant – it’s how I discovered artists such as A Tribe Called Quest and labels such as FFRR, but that disappeared at the turn of the century and I found other outlets.
(Exception to the rule: the last CD I bought from HMV was This Sporting Life by Skint & Demoralised. I bought it there because I knew one of the lads worked at the Wakefield shop and if anywhere would have a copy, they would…)
I’ll admit I’m a marginal case: I like physical media. I browse CDs, I play vinyl, I buy from small shops such as Crash and Jumbo, I order from independent online stores such as HTFR or Norman Records where possible, and I pester local record labels for CDs rather than downloads. I love exploring liner notes and artwork just as much as listening to the music. The local independent record shop in Cottingham made a fortune out of me in my Uni days, and when we lived in London my wife used to curse because I’d go to Tower Records (RIP), browse the bargain bins and return at 11:30pm with two carrier bags full of stuff I quite liked the look of. Controversially nowadays I also use Amazon – most commonly at music festivals and gigs where I’ll 1-click order a load of the support act’s CDs (well, when they’re not on the merch stand anyway) – but it’s still physical media. I guess I’m in a minority now; not ‘down with the kids’.
The folks who have the bargain-bin physical media philosophy bang-on are That’s Entertainment, which is where your Music Magpie CDs end up (it tickles me that they spotted an opportunity to have a pop at HMV in Manchester). There’s one in the Ridings Centre in Wakefield where I can spend a happy (but costly) hour digging and finding CDs I didn’t even know I wanted, sometimes at five for a fiver. They participated in a small way in Record Store Day last year and it’s somewhere even my kids with their limited pocket money can buy a computer game or a bit of music. Winner.
Will I miss HMV if it does completely disappear? Nah, I can’t even think of a company who might want to pick the chain up other than for the HMV.com domain name. Perhaps it’ll leave a void which can be filled once again by the small shops it killed in the late 80s and early 90s, and although I doubt Wakefield would provide enough business to support it it’d be nice to see a JAT or EGS return to Wakefield’s streets. While browsing Twitter I came across @charlottegore who hit the nail on the head in one sentence: “HMV are a company that wasted lots of money paying rent to keep unsold CDs and DVDs on public display in prime locations.”
No flowers.
Edit: There’s another perspective from Banquet Records which is well worth a read (thanks Martin for pointing me to that).
I’ve started podcasting the local music scene again for Wakefield Music Collective. This is Podcast #6 (I suppose it’s a season-2 opener but I don’t know when it’ll end up on hiatus again) and is probably worth a listen although I’m using a new vocal mic (a Yeti Blue) which is a bit harsh. You can subscribe using iTunes as well as grabbing the MP3 directly from themusiccollective.co.uk.
I’m also involved in Clarence Music Festival again this year and applications are open for bands to put themselves forward to play. Anything goes so it’s worth a shot and this is the first year you can apply online (as opposed to the past 21 years where you had to put in a promo pack by post). Find out more here.
I feel a tiny bit sorry for Jessops after the announcement they’d gone into administration, but surprised it’s taken this long for it to happen. Jessops is (was?) a bit like PC World where you went in an emergency and paid the ‘now’ tax, but as my good friend Mike Hughes points out, why do that when you can get it delivered the next morning from an online retailer for substantially less dosh?
I’ve bought from Jessops in the past: my Canon 5D Mark II came from them when they were in very short supply and (for some reason) the shop in Leeds had two in-stock where everyone else was quoting several weeks’ lead time; I also vaguely recall reasonable experiences buying an EOS 30D from them in an emergency when my 10D packed up a few days before travelling: the Leeds shop staff didn’t mind me taking the body outside and doing a CCD dirt check on it so I could get the cleanest unit after it turned out the one I bought was mucky. More recently the Wakefield shop (sadly now an empty unit) was staffed by a couple of people who knew what they were on about, so it was occasionally nice to pop in for a chinwag: shades of its former life as local independent Richards’ Cameras.
They were purely box-shifters however, and their long-term returns and repair process sucked golf balls through pipette tubing. Long-time readers of this blog will probably recall the fun I had when my 5D Mark II developed hot pixels and they lost the repair; a few months ago when I totalled a flashgun my heart sank when I found out that MoreThan wanted to send it to Jessops to be fixed; true to form it took three months for it to be returned. I should really blog about the whole insurance experience but that’s a story for another day…
I digress. We don’t have an independent now in Wakefield so I can’t shop locally, however here’s where I get my stuff from:
For film, chemicals, and darkroom bits and bobs I first try Dale Photographic in Leeds. They’re upstairs in the Merrion Centre, our last local bastion of independence, their secondhand shelf is occasionally good for a prod around (although they still haven’t found me a Bronica or Mamiya 6×6 body, and they’re more Nikon than Canon). Prices for digital kit are usually more expensive than online but they can be good for a ‘need it now’ purchase.
If the chemicals or film aren’t available from Dale, I’ll go try RK Photographic or First Call Photographic on t’interwebs. Although in the latter case the postage can be quite punitive if you only order a few little bits, they’re good for niche things such as C41 chemicals or empty film cans for bulk purchasing.
For camera bodies and things I could really do with taking back in person if they don’t work or develop a soon-after-purchase fault, I go to Calumet Photographic (our nearest branch is in Manchester). I’ve had splendid experiences with the staff there helping me with bits, chasing around to see if they can obtain me something that’s in short supply, or just having a chat when I saw Lynese (who runs the Twitter feed) at events. They also do ‘open days’ where you can go play with kit and talk to specialists in that particular area.
Finally, if I’m buying lenses and I know what I want (because obviously I’ll have tested it out with a week’s rental from Lenses4Hire), I’ll just go to Amazon. I think I found Bristol Cameras this way, and obtained things like my 17-35mm f/2.8 L-series glass via there. Check the feedback and returns policy though!
While Jessops going under isn’t surprising and their box-shifter role was usurped by other companies who could do it cheaper and better, it will still leave me without a place to go in an emergency if I’m stuck in somewhere without a ‘real’ camera shop because they had retail units everywhere. That bit’s tedious, at least.
Oh dear oh dear, Instagram, bad move. As widely reported elsewhere in the past 24 hours, the biggest photo-sharing platform on the planet – acquired some months ago for $1bn by Facebook – has released new T&Cs. From their blog it looks like a good thing: “our updated terms of service help protect you, and prevent spam and abuse as we grow.” Bravo!
Except it’s not. There’s a couple of important points hidden here under the ‘Rights’ section:
Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf.
You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.
Quite a few journalists have pointed out this gives Instagram the rights to monetise your photos without any compensation – C|Net have the best article on it that I’ve seen so far. Bad times.
Of course what you might say is “hah, who’s interested in my holiday snaps?”. I suspect Internet blogger Poppy Dinsey asked the same question before her blog images were hijacked to advertise a porn site. It happens, and it could happen to your photos, crap filters and all. And in a rare invocation of think of the childrennnnnnn it could happen to pics of your kids too. Heck, a friend’s just pointed out that if you’ve popped up some photos and you happen to be a teacher, you’ll now be in flagrant breach of the DPA too (although what part I don’t know, I haven’t investigated that yet).
Being pragmatic here, I think it’ll get retracted or at least an opt-out added – it’s not the first photo hosting service to have tried this. But just in case they don’t, Wired have published steps to downloading then removing your Instagram account.
More concerning is that this sets a precedent for Facebook: There’s been rumours about them doing it for a while (and that’s all they’ve been – rumours) but given who owns Instagram I can only think it’s a matter of time before the rumour become reality despite denials in late November. That for me is the bigger worry: as a photographer I use Facebook to promote my work. My images are of suitably low resolution and are watermarked (most of the time), but even with that ‘protection’ I don’t want to worry that Facebook will put that into an advert – that’s what people pay me for.
Finally, it feels like it’s a blow for the whole ‘cloud’ concept. If a company can retrospectively apply copyright (Instagram’s T&Cs will come into effect in January but apply to your entire image archive) then what hope for other cloud providers? Will Dropbox do it? What about Flickr? YouTube? Tumblr? For creative people will the only ‘safe’ option now be to run your own site?
What a mess. I’m so glad I’m not in that industry any more.
Update: BBC News have an article about it now.
My calendar has been a mess for a while – or rather, the organisation of calendars. For years I’ve had several devices and keeping them in synchronisation was a nightmare – from my original Palm Vx handheld right up to the iPad and iPhone I now use it’s been tricky, not helped by absence of decent CalDAV software or support for calendar servers on the devices I’ve used. Add into the mix almost 20 years of historic calendar data (where sometimes I do need to find the last time I saw a particular client for instance) and it’s a recipe for disaster.
When Apple released MobileMe it got a bit better. Around 2004ish I managed to export my calendar from the Palm software using Missing Sync and into iCal, and thus into MobileMe. Through that I frigged it to talk to my phone at the time, a Nokia E70 (I think). Then when iCloud came along I ported it and my iPad, iPhone, Mac and the web stuff was all integrated. Hoorah.
Then this week it all went tits-up. I decided to merge two work calendars so Nicky could share them, by exporting both calendars as ICS files and then importing them into a new calendar. Of course, connectivity at a client’s this week has been very flakey as they’re moving offices and iCloud seemed not to like this when it attempted to sync the new entries which manifested itself as the iCal client app giving me 403 errors (“UID already exists”). No amount of Googling and buggering about with Apple Support would fix it so I took matters into my own hands.
Problem 1 – Getting the calendar entries in without having to retype 20 years of historical data: the ICS ‘UID’ field on iCloud is unique to the group of calendars it seems, which are grouped under one username. The solution was to export the ICS file (without connectivity, so iCloud didn’t attempt to be clever) and run a small perl script which would append “JFIX-” to the UID and then re-import. This then gave me a new calendar with new entries, which I could then sync with iCloud (it took about an hour for it to stop ‘Updating…’). So far so good, but after an hour I discovered…
Problem 2 – events appearing in iCloud and iCal don’t propogate to iPad or iPhone: Turns out that UID needs to be hexadecimal for it to work properly, so I re-ran my perl script to append ‘ABCD-‘ instead. This createdanother set of UIDs which I could import into a new calendar. This worked fine, and has propagated to all my iDevices.
In Googling this by the way I found a series of touted solutions, one of which was to use grep to remove UID lines altogether. iCloud really hates this and goes on a duplication fest, adding in events sometimes up to 15 times (but most likely adding between 5 and 10). I also worked out after a while that the easiest way of finding out what’s really in iCloud is to look on the web client, as this is what gets sent to the phones, iPads, etc. If it’s not there, it’s not going to propagate or be visible.
Lesson learned though is: (a) be prepared for a nightmare if you want to en-masse move events from one calendar to another, and (b) make sure your connectivity is rock-solid and don’t be impatient.
Right, that’s that then, I don’t have to keep it a secret any more! It’s been hard to avoid if you’re linked up with me on Twitter or Facebook but: this week’s Come Dine With Me from Wakefield featured yours-truly. You can get the episodes in the UK on 4OD here: Angie, me, Donna, Jake, Francesca (proper sorry about the rights restrictions, non-UK people).
The recipes on the Channel 4 website are similar to the dishes I cooked but for completeness here are my own versions: Pan-fried Thai Scallops Glazed With Lemon & Coriander, Woodland Venison With Blackberries, Roast Potato Stack & Chanteney Carrots, Chocolate Truffle Torte with Home-made Vanilla Ice-Cream. I’m not having you all round for tea so you’d better learn to cook them yourself, perhaps you can work out how to stop them being “bland and boring”. *cough*
There were a lot of people who helped me out on the whole thing but because I had to keep it secret most of them didn’t know. Regardless, I thought it would be only fair to acknowledge their general awesomeness here:
- First off, my long-suffering wife Nicky who put up with the daftness of it all and just kept out of the way when she needed to. She was very tolerant, especially since “my” day was the day of our 13th wedding anniversary (which we still haven’t celebrated and N reminds me about that a lot). I also want to remind everyone Nicky weeded the driveway, lest she forgets to mention it for the umpteenth time 😉
- My kids Ben and Ellie, who managed to keep it all hush-hush at school (the daughter almost at the peril of losing her best mate), and who ate the dish when I invented it therefore qualifying as the first set of guinea pigs.
- Our mates Jayne and Phil who mucked in so much with sorting the house out and were, frankly, utterly ace: Phil was the best handyman ever (he claims responsibility for the semi-permanent lights in the sunlounge and the disco ball which we fitted after a skinful). Jayne ironed my shirts when I had to go do work instead, then they kindly allowed me to experiment on them for test run #2.
- Mum, who did a shedload of ironing so the front room didn’t look like a Chinese laundry, and made sure I ate properly on the Monday lunchtime when I was somewhere on the ceiling about the state of the house.
- Ruby Macintosh who sang the same song over and over again in The Hop, looking photogenic while I got filmed waving a camera around. Lloyd from Cowshed who got drunk in the kitchen while waiting for Ruby to finish and enjoyed the smell of the balsamic as I did test run #3 – he didn’t give me any hints and tips, it was all my own work 😛
- Sarah at Ossett Brewery and Fish and Genevieve at The Hop Wakefield who let us use The Jam Inn and The Hop for filming.
- People who supplied me stuff but (of course) didn’t know what it was for: the long-suffering lady upstairs at Peter Maturi in Leeds who tolerated me wandering around for an hour trying to work out place settings and destroying her display. Kitchen’s on Game & Fishmonger Row on Leeds Market who I bought out of venison several times and R Bethell fishmonger a few doors away who sold me lots and lots of scallops. My local greengrocer at Newton Bar who is very very good indeed. Dan from Choco House who wazzed me over some hand-made after-dinner mints. Butterflies school uniform shop on Northgate, Wakefield, who managed to find me a QEGS school blazer at the very last minute on Friday (and honourable mentions to the poor assistant in Asda who caught me trying on school uniforms and didn’t call security). Bierhuis Ossett for a selection of splendid ales as a prezzie for Jake. David Brown Engraving who did the Dad Dancing trophy and had the good grace to stop enquiring after what CDWM stood for. Last but not least Nice & Naughty Leeds (that’s a Facebook link so vaguely safe-for-work) who were the source of the gold disco pants and found me a fresh pair especially for t’telly (they’re these ones – warning the link features a man in pants).
- The day itself: Mum (again) who rescued me the first time I locked myself out by bringing keys round and stopping about for half an hour to do some washing up while I gyrated in the sunlounge. The next-door neighbours who lent me a ladder the second time I locked myself out. Dad in Australia who brought me off the ceiling in the silly hours of Wednesday morning (thank goodness for family in different timezones). Tillybods sarnie shop up the road who were a total oasis on the Tuesday lunchtime when I was in a state of near-collapse – their sarnies are brill.
- My bandmates in Obvious Pseudonym who were happy to be on telly again. You can get a copy of Dad Dancing on iTunes.
- Alan the PD who stepped back when I got stroppy with him at a critical moment, and the rest of the production team who were pretty bloody ace from the first phone conversation right up to getting us out of the house on Friday intact.
- My clients at the time who were very understanding and generous in their flexibility, especially my coworkers in Ossett who put up with me looking exhausted and wired.
- …and finally, Lucy who bullied me into doing it in the first place – it’s all her fault.
I think I’ve got everyone in there. If I missed you out, sorry, I’m rubbish.
It was a fun experience of course (if a bit intense at times), the best host won (easily!) and I’ve made three great pals who it’s been lovely to compare notes with, and I’m sure we’ll continue going out for drinks together. If you’re after insights and Director’s Cut type stuff, the only bit it’s probably safe to mention is this short jingle which I penned for when Donna and Angie explored the studio on Tuesday. I don’t think the DAW behaved for it, which is probably a good thing really.
So what’s next, shall I do Bargain Hunt? Or shall I just let normal service resume for a while… 😛
I do a lot of different ice-creams, and you do need an ice-cream maker for this one (I love my Cuisinart one but any will do). Best place for vanilla pods is actually eBay where you can get shrink-wrap Madagascan ones for a lot cheaper than the Supercook ones you get in the supermarket. You can also cheat by using a sachet of vanilla sugar and leaving the vanilla pod stage out. My notes from the day tell me this is recipe #8 without the chill stage… 😉
- Put the canister from the machine into the freezer a day before you want to make the ice cream.
- Next day, pour about 200ml cream and 300ml semi-skimmed milk into a medium heavy-based pan, and tip in 60g of golden caster sugar. Slit a vanilla pod down its length with a small sharp knife and scoop out as many of the tiny black seeds as you can into the cream mixture. Cut the pod into three and drop it into the pan.
- Heat the cream and milk over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until it almost boils – you’ll see a few bubbles at the edge. Take off the heat and set aside for 30 minutes so the vanilla can infuse.
- Put 3 large egg yolks into a bowl with another 50g golden caster sugar and beat with an electric hand beater for about 2 minutes until the mixture has thickened, is paler in colour and falls in thick ribbons when you lift the beaters. Using a measuring jug, scoop out about 125ml/4fl oz of the cream mixture and beat into the egg yolks to slacken them. Reheat the cream until it just comes to the boil, take off the heat and stir in the egg yolk mixture.
- Return the pan to a low heat and cook, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon, for 8-10 minutes, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Watch that it doesn’t boil – as soon as you see any bubbles about to burst to the surface, it should be thick enough, so take the pan off the heat so the mixture doesn’t curdle.
- Put a greaseproof circle on the mixture so a skin doesn’t form and put the bowl in the fridge for 3-4 hours, preferably overnight, so it gets really cold.
- Get the ice cream machine running, scoop out the vanilla pod pieces from the mix, then slowly pour in the cold custard. Leave it to churn for 10-30 minutes (depending on your machine). When it stops, it is probably too soft to eat, so spoon into a plastic container, cover with cling film, then a lid, and freeze for a minimum of an hour. (It will keep in the freezer for 3 months but don’t take it out, then refreeze.) Remove from the freezer 15 minutes before serving.
Enjoy!
Easily the recipe I’ve been asked about the most. The one on telly didn’t have the brandy in because I didn’t want Jake to explode…
- Break about 250g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) into small chunks in a large pyrex bowl. Spoon in 2tbsp of golden syrup and fold in about a quarter of a 568ml carton of double cream.
- Stand the bowl over (not in) a large-based pan of hot water over a low heat and leave until the chocolate has melted, and add in 2tsp of brandy (this needs mixing in quickly or it’ll curdle). Remove the bowl from the pan and stir again so it’s silky smooth. Leave to cool but do not refrigerate!
- Line your cake tin (an 8″ size is perfect) with greaseproof paper – you can do this while you are waiting for the chocolate to cool. I used a spring-loaded cake tin which made it a lot easier to get the torte out afterwards. Remember it’ll take the shape of the tin, wrinkles and all.
- Pour the rest of the cream into a very large bowl and add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Whip until the cream will stand in soft peaks which disappear after about 1-2s.
- Fold the cream and chocolate mix together by pouring the chocolate into the cream, then use a whisk on a slow setting to beat it together properly.
- Pour it all into the tin and level the surface with the back of the spoon. Put the tin in the fridge and leave to firm up – you can get away with doing this in 2h but I prefer to leave it overnight.
- Before you serve, dust with cocoa on the top.
- Unclip and remove the side of the tin and remove the greaseproof. Slice and arrange and serve. Nom!
This serves about 8 portions because it’s so rich, and goes really well with fresh raspberries and vanilla ice-cream (which is how I served it on the show). The camera crew had quite a bit later on in the week 🙂
The full title for this was Woodland Venison With Blackberries, Roast Potato Stack & Chanteney Carrots but I guess there’s a space issue with that.
I can’t remember on timing, but experiment a bit. You can get excellent venison shoulder steaks from Leeds Market (the farm shop up Fishmongers Row is where I got mine) and it’s less expensive and tastier (in my daughter’s opinion anyway) than beef.
- Chop the spuds into Jenga blocks and season with Herbes De Provence, and soak in salt water
- Roughly chop rosemary needles and garlic and set aside to go in the spuds when roasted.
- Wash the carrots and place in cold water.
- Get a small saucepan for the jus, and add in about 4tbsp of balsamic. Add beef stock (about a pint), redcurrant jelly, pepper, a handful of blackberries, and heat gently. Leave it simmering but not boiling – the aim is to reduce it to bring the flavours together. Will take an hour or so.
- Parboil the spuds (about 20 minutes).
- Heat oven to as hot as it’ll go (warp factor 9 Mr Scott!) and prepare a roasting tin with goose fat. Put the tin in the oven.
- Take the venison out of the fridge – it needs to reach room temperature.
- Parboil the carrots.
- When the spuds are parboiled, put them in the goose fat and sprinkle with chopped garlic (about half a bulb) and roughly chopped rosemary needles. WEAR PROTECTION, HOT FAT HURTS 😛 Turn the oven down to 240C.
- The spuds will take about 30-40 minutes to roast. In this time you’re doing the venison.
- Season the venison with pepper and Herbes De Provence.
- Prepare a frying pan to searing hot and wang in a small knob of butter.
- Place the venison shoulder steaks in the pan and turn after about a minute to seal both sides. Do not cover the pan!
- Now sear the venison until it is cooked but still pink in the middle and then set aside under tinfoil to rest for a few minutes. Pour the jus in the frying pan to deglaze and leave it on a low heat. This is the point where you can go eat your starter 🙂
- (optional dependent on timing) Just before serving, sear for approx. a minute again while you pass the jus through a sieve.
- Slice each piece of venison and arrange on plate.
- Throw the rosemary and garlic into the roasted potatoes and shake, then empty out onto a plate with kitchen roll to de-grease.
- Plate up with the jenga spuds in a stack, three carrots per person, three (warm) blackberries and dribble the jus over, being careful to throw it over the side of the plate and onto the work surface.
- Go next door and stress about what your guests think of it while you hit the wine.
Enjoy 🙂
And now, a song courtesy of Tenpole Tudor:
(thanks Chris ;))
As the recipes on the C4 site aren’t the ‘real’ ones, I’ll post what I actually did – here you go…
- Prepare the glaze, mixing together chopped fresh coriander, a small amount of rice wine, groundnut oil, a chopped red birdeye chilli (leave the seeds in for a bit of heat), sesame oil, juice of two limes, juice of one lemon, and a teaspoon of soy sauce. Refrigerate for an hour.
- Fry the king scallops in a frying pan (3 per person) with a little bit of hot groundnut oil for about 3 minutes, turning halfway through. Just seal them, you don’t want them to be rubbery do you?
- When the scallops are almost done, add the glaze to the pan and leave to reduce for about 2 minutes. They’ll bubble a bit, don’t let them go dry.
- Drain off the excess into a small bowl, fry the scallops a little longer so they’re drier, and then plate up.
- Drizzle a tablespoon of the excess juice over the scallops and serve with chopped coriander, lemon wedge, and wilted pak choi.
I prefer to leave the coral on the scallops, but you may want to chop them off.
“So, I’m in Wakefield. Where do you recommend I should go?” “Leeds.”
Back in September the Wakefield music ‘scene’ (such as it is) exploded a bit, triggered by a contentious blog article on Wakefield Music Collective written by Dean Freeman of Rhubarb Bomb. A week or two later Wakefield Express published an op-ed piece by the same author, bemoaning the fact that pub-goers preferred seeing a cover band to heading upstairs and seeing an ‘originals’ band. A more recent edition of the Express gave over a whole page to three well thought-out responses from a local musician, the part-owner of the sort of venue Dean was laying into, and a punter. This is not about that fight.
My first memory of a Wakefield gig was seeing Frank White down at the Post Haste (now the Snooty Fox) in the early 80s when I can’t have been more than 9 years old and I was a Wakefield Jazz regular until 1993ish. My experience of the more recent ‘scene’ has therefore been principally rooted in the years since Nicky and I moved back up North: roughly 10 years during which I’ve photographed a lot of bands (signed and unsigned), performed with a few, promoted some gigs, been balls-deep in organising festivals and danced at more gigs than I care to count. I’ve yet to come across any area which is like Wakefield. Why?
The Wakefield music scene is unique maybe because Wakefield music fans (and most of its musicians) like to think “big”: after all we’re deemed to be a city if only for the looming presence of Wakefield Cathedral. We’re a town really though – quite small in the grand scheme of things: there are a couple of venues but nothing you’d call sizable. Geographically we’re a satellite, little more than a dormitory of Leeds in terms of the inhabitants and just a few junctions down the M1. Heck, even the inhabitants (me included) refer to it as ‘town’. We don’t have a University from which students thirst for big acts, and although Westgate is frequently full of partygoers from outside town few of them seem to make it further than the nightclubs.
A common complaint from the musos is the absence of a decent-size venue to attract “big” acts: the closest we have to a ‘national-class’ venue is The Hop with an upstairs cap of about 200 people, competent sound guys and good management. Unless you count the club venues (of which Balne Lane WMC has been the usual venue for big acts such as The Fall or Glasvegas albeit more out of necessity) or Mustang Sally (which has been talked into hosting large gigs on occasion) then I suppose the next size up is Wakefield Theatre Royal. Black Flag Warehouse on Smyth Street showed promise but soon after opening it nosedived, cancelling gigs due to horrendous ticket sales and went spectacularly bust several times over. We might have Unity Hall in a couple of years and although I made a small investment to bootstrap it I’m not optimistic about the ability to sell tickets to keep it going while it builds up a reputation.
Why is this? Well, I think partially the bands. Wakefield’s “think big” attitude doesn’t help the acts themselves – it’s all too easy to just play gig after gig in the city on a support slot and convince yourself you’re brill. Those sorts of nights attract the ‘friends and family’ audience for sure, but if I had a penny for every time I’d been asked to go support a band who are playing at one venue tonight, a venue nearby little more than a week later, and another Wakefield City Centre venue in two weeks time I’d be a rich man; I’m not going to go to all those gigs and I certainly won’t shell out for the same set time after time. Last year’s Long Division Festival 2012 had some terrific acts on but I’ve heard from more than a few people the complaint that save for a couple of really good headliners it had been filled out with every single Wakefield band signed to one of our local record labels (I discovered the extent of this when I was involved in organising Clarence Park Music Festival and trying to find a local indie act which hadn’t played Long Division – it was extremely difficult).
If you’re looking for a success story then look no further than the group who had the good sense to get out of the city as quickly as they could instead of getting trapped in the whirlpool: The Cribs. Regardless of what you think of their music, you have to admit the following in Wakefield is one of near-religious fanaticism: a sighting of a Jarman brother at a gig or a festival quickly leads to rumours that there might be a secret gig in town. Other bands could easily get to this stage, but it’s a matter of getting out of the comfort zone of perpetual support slots at the local venues. Bands want their fans to come to them in Wakefield, maybe because it’s a bit more effort to get a gig elsewhere, or maybe they just don’t want to risk playing to empty rooms.
T’was ever thus though: if you read I’ll Go to T’foot of Our Stage: The Story of Yorkshire Pop Music written by Craig Ferguson, Wakefield is rarely mentioned save for Be Bop Deluxe. Players Club in the 90s played the same acts over and over again (I remember a poster for a band called The Mad Egyptians stating “bollocks, it’s just cos they’re sick of playing at Players”).
So what’s the answer? Well in my humble opinion it needs to start with the bands. Get the bands playing outside Wakefield, and the city becomes more known for its acts. As it becomes more known for its acts, people are more likely to travel in to see someone they’ve never heard of. Although we have a hell of a lot of talent in the area promoters need to stop putting on the same local acts all the time: there’s tons of bands in Leeds, Sheffield, Huddersfield, Manchester and all over the place who’d like a gig elsewhere. Hell, while I was doing stuff with Wakefield Music Collective our incoming mailbox was chock full of requests-to-play, so it’s definitely not that difficult. Apply a simple rule: if the act’s played locally within the last 3 months, don’t put them on unless you’re really desperate, or even better do an act-swap with another venue in another city.
That quote at the top by the way is a genuine response from an audience member at The Hop’s monthly Kill For A Seat comedy night. As tongue in cheek as it was, I fear they may have a point.
Yorkshire lass, born-and-bred. Photographs stuff, writes software, makes music, cooks, dances round the kitchen. Happy lesbinum, wife, and parent to three. Proud to have a rainbow family.
Musician, composer and producer, under the monicker of The Bleeding Obvious.
Regularly seen performing live – gig list here. Been on TV and radio in various capacities.
I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon
By day I work as a systems architect for a marine technology company. More details about all that on LinkedIn.
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