Floods, Fuzzed and Proof that the Sun has not gone out

Well, we have been a bit shameful in neglecting the blog over the past couple of weeks.
Our excuses for this are,

A) That things have been insanely busy with fuzzed with much coding going into the site and deals being chased down as we shuffle rapidly to ready things for launch later this year.

B) That Two Stroke Towers was a victim of the unprecedented floods that the news is endlessly banging on about. With the whole place being covered in several inches of water our attentions have been very much focused on not drowning and making little paper boats that we then race down the hall, Oh that and cleaning up!

C) The floods combined with the endless rain that was endured at Roskilde, had me suspecting that the sun had actually imploded and that we where all doomed, so in an effort to disprove this theory and allay my fears, I went to Spain for a week.

More Fuzzed related goodness will be announced later this week :)

Roskilde 07 - The End

Well I’m sat in Copenhagen Airport, our broadcast from Roskilde Festival’s Radio Station is done for another year and it was by far the biggest roller coaster ride of a trip we've had in our 5 year sojourn presenting a show at the festival.

The weather was mostly to blame this, getting so severe at one point we thought it was game over and early showers all round. We lost the lovely Laura our reporter to the conditions and almost our producer Gry such was the sheer muddy, damp cold misery at some points.

However that's not what I'll remember about this year's festival, When the sun came out over the last few days it was sublime, we had some truly magic moments of broadcasting and forged some great friendships. The show went down a storm and on the last day in a blaze of publicity we auctioned off the Queens of the Stone Age signed guitar we blagged, raising an insane amount of money for charity. Not bad considering we started with a tent peg and a vague idea.

Other highlights included Victoria getting on the front page of the biggest Sunday paper in Denmark with a bunch of naked men, me being forced to do a lap dance in the open air studio while being filmed by TV (it was a highlight for everyone else not me!) and P3 the equivalent of Radio 1 in Denmark ripping off our show!

You can check out photos Here for your amusement.



As for music, disappointing I have to say, it was a line-up that promised much but delivered little, hamstrung I feel by the major acts playing Live Earth on the same day and the sound on the infamous Orange stage being well below par. Here’s a round up.

The Who – Not a huge fan of the aging rocksters, but I have to say I warmed to them, they tried really hard to entertain and seem genuinely grateful to be able to headline festivals and play huge crowds at this stage in their careers.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – A MASSIVE disappointment, might as well not have shown up, the talk of the festival the next day was simply how bad they where. They played at 1am and where very obviously not interested, Even Flea was covered up, head down and the sound was horrific making most of the crowd give up halfway through. The most half hearted attempted at playing a festival I’ve ever witnessed in many many years. The festival should be asking the band for there money back, simple as.

Flaming Lips – Lovely as always, they never disappoint, Wayne Coyne is a great showman and they put more into their show then any other band. Alas they still have less hits then you assume.

Muse – Tried hard but suffered from the curse of the Orange Stage sound desk not being able to cope with guitar music, it was so bad I left early.

Basement Jaxx – Closed the Festival in grand style with a several thousands pounds worth of fireworks, excellent show.

I was on-air during Beirut, and by all accounts they where amazing, so that has annoyed me hugely as after Arcade Fire they where my destination of choice.

Live Earth: "teaching us to wire plugs"

Another weekend, another Wembley benefit concert.  It's getting a little ridiculous really. Patrick is squelching around Roskilde surrounded by naked Scandinavians, and I spend my saturday afternoon sat in my pants watching Madonna on telly.

There's an interesting contrast between Live Eath and last week's tepid Concert For Diana, where as the latter was stale, dull and had all the atmosphere of a village fete (not even a very good village fete either, the kind of fete where you can't even win a goldfish or play splat-the-rat and is covered by local radio stations running themselves out of a rusting pea green caravan brought in 1976, Live Earth at least managed to maintain some sense of occasion.  It felt like event television, which since the Doctor Who series finished has been lacking on BBC one.  The coverage at least felt rough, improvised and held together by the skin of the producers teeth. Shots were wrong, sound feds got bungled, the wrong VT's were shown... essentially all the hall marks of live music concerts.

Not that it was without it's irritants, although they came more from the nature of keeping the coverage of the event running smoothly.  Most annoying was the BBC's decision to cut away from performances in order to keep in their scheduled interviews.  Now the interviews could be split into three catagories.

A) Jonathon Ross interviews a leading comedian or telly person, this would inevitably involve much ribbing of the cause and Wossy trying very hard to keep the tone of the discussions at least semi-serious on the subject of climate change, but not being able to help himself and taking the piss anyway.  However Dara O'Brian, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, Chris Moyles and Steven Merchant were never going to be taking it that seriously. The absolute highlight was watching old Wossy's face when Chris Rock used the word "nigger".  By and large these interviews were quite engaging, and upheld the brilliantly British tendency to take nothing seriously, ever.  I bet the American coverage doesn't have this.

B) Jonathon Ross or Graham Norton interview an ernest world authority on climate change, or young scientist.  Norton generally keeps it together, Wossy struggles to keep a straight face.  The over all message seems to be "don't leave your TV in stand by". Which is fine, except the picture on ours goes funny for half an hour when you turn it on, so leaving it on stand by is a lot easier.  Am I prepared to make the sacrifice? Generally these interviews told us nothing new (although David Baddiel's attempt to play "Climate Change Denial" did make for quite entertaining argument) and felt like an attempt to graft a note of seriousness onto something that seemed to lack focus.

C) Edith Bowman interviews a band backstage. They clearly can't be that bothered, and can't actually hear her questions, which are all a bit obvious anyway.

The first were acceptable, the second grudgingly necessary, the third utterly pointless.  It was fine when they were padding to the next performance, but the majority of the time they were actually at the expense of the music.  Most acts left their biggest hot till last, meaning if we wanted to see Bloc Party doing 'The Prayer', or Metallica doing 'Enter Sandman' we had to hope we could catch it on the hit and miss interactive coverage, which at least showed full sets.  Unfortunately as those full sets were from Joberg, Hamburg, Sydney and Tokyo as well as Wembley, it was very much a case of "Red Button Pot Luck".  What generally made this more frustrating was the distant rumblings of a favourite hit song going on in the back ground while one of our TV trio tried to amke the best of an interview.



As for the performances, they were ht and miss as usual with this sort of event.  Bloc Party were ernest and should shift a few more copies of A Weekend In The City.  'Banquet' admittedly felt a bit wobbly, 'So Here We Are' felt much more substantial and important, and 'The Prayer' was, as ever, ana amazing three minutes of live music.  For those of us who got to see it.  James Blunt seemed to be coked off his tits, but that's to be expected.  Anyone with half an ounce of taste would have picked the red button option and took their chances at this point.  Or there was always the Harry Potter making of on the otherside...even Ben Shepherds utterly inept interview technique is preferable to this googleyed nob jocky.

Does anyone know who Terra Naomi is?

Keane were actually  quite endearing and crowd led sing-alongs of 'Somewhere Only We Know' and 'Bed-Shaped' felt genuine and heartfelt. Which actually came as a surprise.

Who booked the Pussycat Dolls, I mean really? Were Girls Aloud not available?  And has David Tennant got no shame?

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Wembley's Live Earth is that British acts were totally out-classed by big American rock bands.  Metallica were brilliant and Foo Fighters "did a Queen" with a hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck high octane rock show.

Spinal Tap were entertaining though looked a little creaky.  It would be a hard-hearted fool who didn't crack a smile at 'Stonehenge', or Nigel's "Hello Wimbledon!" greeting.  Rob Reiner's slightly cringey intro should have been chopped though.  The finale of 'Big Bottoms' was probably great, but I managed to miss it.



Madonna's headlining slot was an odd one.  No-one in the country, not one single person, wanted to hear her new song. Not one.  I would stake my life on it.  But we got it anyway, and actually it wasn't that bad.  The vaguely sinister looking childrens choir added a note of visual interest, as they murmered blank faced and blank voiced into the Wembley night.  Gogol Bordello's brilliant an unexpected inclusion (I mean really, what the fuck are they doing there?) in an amped up 'La Isla Bonita' was worth sitting through the whole thing for alone.  'Ray Of Light''s  dodgy Courtney-Love-With-Two-Chords impression just about past muster, but the finale of'Hung Up' was wretched and should be struck from memory.  If I want to see a woman pushing 50 doing crotch thrusts over a ghetto blaster I'll go to my Mum's hip-hop dance classes with her again.  At least then I won't have to hear somone abusing Abba so ruthlessly.
So what have we learned?  Well, I for one have learned nothing new about the environment, and I'm pretty sur emost other people didn't either.  I mean really, we KNOW this stuff, we all do.  Whether we put into action or not, or just allow the tide of apathy carry us to Global meltdown will not be aided by a pop concert.
As an event pf it's type it wasn't bad, certainly was massively preferable to the Diana concert last week.  It didn't have the urgency or gravitas of Live Aid, or even the sense of occasion of Live8.  Rather like the now-forgotten Net Aid, this will be a footnote in charity concert history, having made little difference and containing no real memorable moments.

Next week Wembley plays host to "Hull and High Water", a tribute concert for the Yorkshire Floods with reunion performances from Terrorvision and Shed Seven.  Ricky Gervais has already been booked.

Roskilde - Music and Naked People

Well Thankfully it's dried at a little, it's still a mud bath but a manageable one.

The show is going well and you can still listen to it here (if your computer likes it) we've managed in our fair trade competition to blag a guitar signed by Queens of the Stone Age, not bad considering we started with a tent peg last Sunday and had to trade it for something better everyday. So that's all rather splendid.

The big event for the radio station is coming up in in 1/2 an hour 'The Naked Race' is where 20 very liberal Scandinavian guys and girls (even split) race around the campsite in a bid to win a ticket to next years festival. The Press descend down on this like hungry animals, every year it secures the front page picture of all the Sunday papers and it gets a huge amount of tv coverage.

I might just have a quick look outside to see how it's going, I'll post some pictures later :)

As for music here's a quick rundown of the shows I've seen

Beastie Boys - Are sadly past it in a fairly major way, they looked like a group of geography teachers trying to 'get down' last night.

CSS - Are the very opposite, they are simply it right now, Love Foxx is the best front woman I've seen in years, how they have managed to get 20'000 people singing along to their songs in such a sort space of time i'll never know, it's a real achievement.

Arcade Fire - Are quite simply a religious experience and you must take any opportunity to see them live this year. I wish Win Butler would cheer up a bit though.

Klaxons - Really love the music and the set was great, but ego's of the band have grown out of all control and it's creeping into the set, I wanted to stay for the whole thing but the whole attitude they presented on stage grated too much for me to cope!

Roskilde - It's all gone a bit Pete Tong

Right, it was fairly miserable weather wise before yesterday, and then well it went into overdrive. Solid rain covered the festival for the entire day in what was the biggest deluge in the 36 year history of event.

The whole thing came within a hairs breadth of being cancelled by the police, as tens of thousands of people gave in and went home. Our little team bid a retreat to our producers apartment in Copenhagen. However we have returned today albeit in a diminished capacity, our reporter Laura's tent gave up the ghost as did her boots so she's gone back to London to recover, a bummer but tottally understandable, We've also given our producer Gry the day off as frankly the Somme like conditions where just a little too much.

However Victoria and I have returned to find a much drier festival and we're back on air in 30 mins.

Roskilde Festival - Day 4 - Mud, Nudity and Mankinis

Right ok lets get up to speed,

The Team and I (minus Marc bah) have been in Denmark since Saturday. we took the early bird which meant a 3am start, let me give you some advice, NEVER FLY TO OR FROM STANSTED it's a horrible badly organised dive of a place, I won't continue on for fear of frothing at the mouth with rage.

In contrast our destination Copenhagen, is clean well organised and highly pleasant, going away makes you realise sometimes that although London maybe the centre of the universe, that doesn't make it the best. A brief train ride and we're in the small agricultural town of Roskilde, where it decides to pour with rain, an ominous start to 9 days of camping!

Anyway let me tell you about Roskilde, think Glasto in northern Europe, with a whole lot less drugs/crime and 110,000 very good looking, friendly Scandinavians. The line up this year is pretty much the same as it's English counterpart, with some surprisingly good danish acts thrown in.

So I'm here in my 5th year of presenting a radio show at the festival radio station, for an unknown reason they heap praise on the English speaking show we do and keep asking us back. So with a free AAA pass, backstage camping and all the food and drink you can cope with, who am i to say no!

We're on Show number 4/7 today, the first three have started off well and we've settled into a good rhythm, Victoria and i immediately have on air chemistry. It still needs a good deal of fine tuning but it's an interesting dichotomy and the head honchos at the station seem genuinely thrilled with the show (something i still find difficult to adjust too!)

Yesterdays show was a battle of trying not to laugh during links as an insane naked girl danced naked in the mud with a dude in a Borat mankini. God knows what todays show brings. more later

Roskilde festival Radio.... Listen 2-4pm

Right I'm a little behind we're on day 3 already...blimey

I'm just about to go on air but if you fancy you can check out our show on Roskilde Festival Radio from 2-4 every day till Sunday by using this lil link here... roskilde radio, comments on our potential brilliance or utter lameness welcome :)

much more a little later,

Roskilde Festival 07 - A Brief Intro

As Marc has probably explained already, we have this little gig every year at Roskilde Festival (think Glastonbury with better looking people because it's in Denmark) presenting the only English speaking show on the radio. It's a highlight of the year, and a bit of a privilege to be able to do seven two-hour shows of whatever we pretty much like in front of a massive audience of beautiful Scandinavian people.

So this is the 5th year and I'm now being described as a 'veteran' presenter which scares me a little frankly, Marc's not here (work wouldn't let him have the time off major bummer) so I've had to assemble an all new crack team for 07.

So who I hear you cry could possibly fill the shoes of Marc? It's a difficult job as over several years of doing shows together we've developed an almost freakish ability to know where the other is going with something and often exactly what the other is going to say. Well the shoe filling answer is Miss Victoria Hannaford an antipodean blond whirlwind who is a scarily good presenter. She was a presenter at Sydney's notorious Triple J rock station before moving to the UK and the BBC where she works alongside me at Radio 4. Alongside her is field reporter Laura who is our very own punk rock princess getting in amongst it at the festival.

Over the next few days I'll keep you posted with the goings on, if past years are anything to go by it's going to be eventful with a capital E. Pictures and video to come as soon as i figure out how to post all that jazz.

The concert for Diana

What an absolutely perfect tribute to the Queen of Our Hearts.  By which I mean it was a hideously dull, marked by inspired and insipid over-reaction to every aspect, was cliched, boring, pointless, pleasant in it's own way, and was promoted entirely to the most irritating people in society.

Surely we could do better to showcase the premier live music venue in the country? Surely we could have provided better acts, a better cause, a better crowd? But no.  The problem with the concert for Diana is that these stadium-benefits happen an awful lot. Every summer we have gazillions of them, and they're all better than this.

Take Live8, a few years back.  That had Snoop Dogg saying "muthafucka" on live telly. That had Pink Floyd.  It didn't have that much elese going for it admiteedly but, hell, those two factors alone made it worth the ticket price (free, if memory serves).  Go abck a few more years and even her Madje's Golden Jubilee concert at the palace seemed to carry more of a sense of occasion than this turgid musical muck.  At least that had Brian Wilson looking bewildered, and taunted Phil Collins by allowing him onstage and not letting him sing.  Although admittedly, they did let Roger Taylor sing Radio Ga Ga, which is hearly as bad.

What did this have? Well it had potential I suppose. I mean, Kanye West is usually always good value.  Accept here, where he hasn't got the balls to use the word "nigger" despite it being quite proudly displayed in his songs.

It wasn't totally without merit of course.  The 14 year old me, shouting over from 1995, would be mortified to read this, but really, god bless Take That. I mean, how many come back bands can you name who can do this kind of gig, do three songs, and ignore all of their old hits in favour of playing their most recent two singles. That takes class and it takes guts, and it's testimony to skills of one of the most well executed musical come backs ever.  

Okay yes, musically they used to be camp and vaguely fun, and now they're a bit bland and for your Mum, but the principle is sound.

And then I supposed there was Dame Elton, god bless 'im, and his band of very middle aged men who looked like a group of Dad's performing at an unfortunate cousins wedding.  At least he picked his set quite nicely, you can't really argue with 'Your Song', 'Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting' gets by on gusty glam alone, and 'Tiny Dancer' will always be favoured if only for its association with 'Almost Famous' and Ben Folds.  At least the old fruit had the decency not to wheel out Candle In The Wind '97.  Actually won back some respect there. No sign of hispartnerdavidfurnish though.

From a TV point of view this was turgid nonsense too.  The shots were uninspiring, the set was uninspiring, the presenting was uninspiring (forgive me Fearne, you tried your best). For a show meant to be, well, inspiring, it really didn't try very hard.  Quick cuts to the Princes in their box were pointless and sycophantic,  lingering glances of Kate Middleton mouthing along to 'Back For Good' (yes, she was there, we get the significance okay!) were distracting and only a brief appearance from Gillian Anderson created a stir of interest.

The whole thing was so hideously lowest common denominator, that may as well have opened a Morrisons on the way out.

Frankly you were far better off, as I did, turning over and watching Chris Addison and Will Smith riffing at each other gloriously in the Thick of It.  Which I did, although thanks to Elton I missed the gag about the iPod. 

 

Introducing the band

Hello to anyone crazy enough to be actually reading this nonsense torn from the minds of two boys who really should find something better to talk about.  Welcome to the Two Stroke Blog.

A few things to clear up before we continue, and to save time explaining later.

What is Two Stroke?

Two Stroke, or Two Stroke Productions, or Two Stroke TV

or even twostroke.tv is the brainchild of Patrick Charlton (that's him) and Marc Burrows (that's me), University chums, flat mates, colleagues and partners in a very heterosexual way. Two Stroke is a production company aiming to make amazing music based television and web content that is completely in sync with the way we consume music and media, both in new and old ways.  We make music videos, music based TV programmes and radio.  We also have a vague hankering to branch out into comedyand a million other of the facets of popular culture that fascinate us.

What is Fuzzed?

Fuzzed is the principle project of Two Stroke, at least for the moment.  A music television show synced into a profile website, aimed at bringing down the boundaries between musicians and their fans. 

Bands and music fans can upload their profiles and discover and swap music and videos.  Band's videos are voted on weekly, and the the vote determines the stars of next weeks show.

Every week we film a show, filming a band on stage and backstage, giving them and thier fans cameras and letting the stories unfold.

Fuzzed should kick of this year, with luck and skill (and money) and will be preceded by a club night, which will herald its coming, a bit like John the Baptists, or the Silver Surfer.

Who Are Pat and Marc?

Pat and Marc met at University where they stumbled into the University radio station, LCR1350, and almost immediately started making the most irreverent and exciting student radio ever. In their second year they were given the Breakfast Show, which quickly become the best student Breakfast Show ever.  In their third year they got the drive time show. It quickly became the best student drive time show ever.

Around this time Pat was elected co-station manager and promptly licked LCR into a genuinely competitive and exciting real world radio station with non of the student radio tat you normally get. Unfortunately this hasn't lasted, and since Pat relinquished control it has taken the station years to get back to the ammatureish and overly beauracratic geek fest it was before he came along.

Meanwhile Marc was elected Editor of the Student magazine.  He nearly got arrested after his first issue told students to steal things, and it went downhill from there.  What followed was a weekly delivery of excitingly designed spelling mistakes intended to be the best possible companion to student life.  Opinion was divided but Marc was proud, as was his team of good looking hand picked sub editors.

By this point Pat and Marc were sharing a house. This quickly became the most exciting student house ever.

Presently the pair were picked to host the only English speaking radio show at the Roskilde festval. They designed a show intended to be the best Festival Radio show ever to be hosted by two english Students in Denmark. They spent hours devising brilliant features and exciting concepts. Then Marc went off on tour for a week to play bass with his band, had his passport stolen and couldn't go. Pat went on his own and the resulting show won awards in both the UK and Denmark.  Pat would go back and do the show every year, Marc so far has only managed to make it once.

Cut to the present day, and having been firm friends and partners in infamy for nigh on 6 years, Pat and Marc live together (in seperate rooms, no funny business. We're not Burt and Ernie or Morcambe and Wise.) in a West London basement flat where they continue their plots for media domination.  Over the last year they have taken Two Stroke and Fuzzed projects to the Edinburgh TV festival, to Denmark and to Austin Texas, they have met with suits, and hung around with sweaty band types. Something hugely unlikely happens to them at least once a week.

When not conquering the world of media on their own, Pat and Marc have other jobs.  Marc books gigs for comedians as a promotions assistant for Avalon, the countries biggest comedy agency and writes articles, while Patrick presses buttons for BBC Radio.  

Together they will one day rule the world.  Or at least the cool bits. 

 

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away....

There where a couple of floppy haired types call Pat & Marc who where partial to a bit of music, comedy, film and generally geekery. They decided to create a blog to chart their attempts at trying to make a living in the harsh harsh world of the media and generally stuff that they found amusing along the way... this is it.

Er.... Hello is a good place to start i guess, I imagine a little exposition is in order for those out of the loop. I'm Pat (Patrick when in more formal settings) I live in London working at BBC radio 4 making well...radio. Alas as much as the old beeb is fun it's not the be all and end all, that particular honour falls to the company I have started with Marc called Two Stroke Productions.

Over the past 18 months we've made a couple of music videos and some music tv features, for the likes of cd:usa & T4. As we've pottered around the music, tv industries and become obsessed like all our friends with the likes of myspace Youtube and Facebook we kinda felt that maybe there was space for us to do something really new and interesting and thus Fuzzed was born.

This blog is amongst other things a bit of a diary about Fuzzed and it's progress into something we really hope people will love. it's also about all the random stuff we come across and get up to, some good some bad i imagine, I'll let Marc B who as well as being my most excellent friend, co-creator of Two Stroke / Fuzzed and housemate is also the other half of this blog explain more.