Maida Vale

At first I didn’t hold up much hope for the Maida vale trip, the studios are used for producing music and radio shows, both of which I had no interest in what so ever. The day started at a ridiculous time in the morning as we had to make to London for about 11am. When we arrived at the studios we were split into two groups, music students and our group of media students. We were told that we were going to be sitting in on the Mark Lamar show, watch the Zutons mix a couple tracks, and watch a radio drama being produced. Of all of these, the only one that really interested me was seeing Mark Lamar. My group, the media students, sat in on the radio drama to start with. It was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be, I had no idea of how many people it took for a radio drama to run smoothly. The actors themselves were brilliant. Next up was the Mark Lamar show. We were led into this room with a huge mixing deck, and through a window was Lamar. This, for me, was the best part of the tour and is the only aspect that could tempt me into working on any kind of radio production. I had obviously been aware of Lamar previous to this visit from such shows as ‘Shooting Stars’ and ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’, and was always a fan of his. I was really impressed with his ability to think off his feet, he is genuinely a funny, fast, and intelligent guy. He had a singer and her band in with him. They were from America and on tour playing some kind of country music. I was quite surprised with how well they took some of Lamar’s jibes, (after finishing a song) “that was Laura Cantrell and the testosterone underdogs”, they had obviously done their research on British humour. From there we went to see the Zutons which bored me quite a bit. I don’t really have much of an interest in music, so for me it was just a case of seeing a famous band. To be honest I can only remember two of their songs, Valerie, and the track that follows on that same album. To finish, our guide took us to his department where we were to learn a bit more about the unbelievably boring world of archiving. We were taken through the different stages and each one of us sat in on one of the professionals. I got to edit some of the material, but to honest anyone could have done. To me the job came across as one which requires you to sit in front of a computer logging times and numbers all day. I couldn’t think of anything worse to do. Apart from the boring end, I found the tour of the studios very interesting, however I don’t think the radio industry is right for me. The day was topped off with a glorious United win over Barcelona with a great goal by the ginger king himself….Paul ‘the carrot’ Scholes