May 2007 Archives
The
Sixth Doctor is visiting Belfast!
A
fantastic day is in store on Sunday 27th May when Colin Baker will be steering
a steady path from Gallifrey to attend the Genesis event in the Park Avenue
Hotel. Louise Jameson aka Leela (Companion 1977/78) will be joining Colin along
with Annette Badland who portrayed Margaret Blaine, a Slitheen who came up
against Christopher Eccles ton's Doctor in the last series.
The Carrick Biz caught up with
Carrickfergus resident Thomas Needham who is organising this convention of Dr
Who fans. Thomas and his colleague,
Denis Rush originally started by attending fans' conventions in England They
decided that many of these cult shows had enough followers in Northern Ireland
to enable them to organise similar events here. Previous attempts by others to
arrange events in Belfast had limited success or failed when some high-profile
guests didn't show up.
The first event they staged in
December 2001at the Holiday Inn. Virginia Hey, one of the lead actors in
Farscape, did a Q&A session, signed autographs and posed for photos. Their
first full-day event in September 2002
brought over three actors - the much-love 'Crimelords Of Sunnydale' from the
highly popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Their most recent all-day event in November
2005 Serenity: Two by Two brought Jewel Staite and Jonathan Woodward along to
theOdyssey Pavilion celebrate the short-lived Joss Whedon TV series Firefly
and its spinoff film Serenity.
Since then they have built up a contact list
of interested folk who are likely to come along. Interest in British Science
Fiction has revived greatly since Dr Who returned to our
television screens. Momentum is building
up in anticipation of this forthcoming event. Thomas hopes that this will bring
a good crowd along to the Park Avenue Hotel in East Belfast on the day. They
organisers, UT Events, have good contacts with some of the producers of the
show and hope to have some original props on display.
What goes on at one of these all-day events?
Things typically kick off with a question and answer session with the guests.
The chairman usually primes the pump with a question before opening things up
to the audience. There will be time for one free autograph and a photo-session
where fans can pay to have their picture taken with one of the guests. While
this is going on other fans can browse stalls for DVDs, audiobooks, videos and
related merchandising or watch an old show on a big projection screen.
After dinner there is a fancy-dress
competition, and a quiz with some great prizes. After a closing ceremony the
event is rounded of in the late evening by a disco that runs through to
midnight.
This convention was originally planned to
take place in April. However, former Doctor Colin Baker and former companion
Louise Jameson are appearing together at the Grand Opera House in Bedroom
Farce in the week running up to the event - from May 21st to 25th.
Full details of the play can be had from the Box Office on 028 9024 1919 or www.goh.co.uk.
END OF TAPE
Last month’s announcement by the High Street electrical goods chain Currys that it is to stop selling compact cassette tapes seems to be the beginning of the end for this much loved audio format. More significantly, given that there are an estimated 500 million audiocassettes in cupboards and drawers up and down the country, Currys will no longer stock hi-fi systems that can play tapes.
it’s a bad business, I think, that one chain store should be allowed to determine whether a particular recording format should live or die. I certainly hope that the humble compact cassette will be around for a few years yet.
The Dutch company Philips introduced the compact cassette in 1963. The company’s decision to license the format free-of-charge to all comers allowed it to become the standard, portable alternative to vinyl records for most people – with the added advantage that a tape could be used all over again if the user got bored with it.
Prior to its introduction, the only way for home users to record music was through very fiddly – and very large – reel-to-reel tape recorders. I bought one of these monsters once in a little second-hand shop in Bridgend, South Wales. I just about managed to get it to fit into a suitcase. The arrival of the compact cassette changed all that.
The popularity of recordable cassettes greatly concerned the music industry. In 1988 CBS Records sued Amstrad for producing equipment that made copying cassettes easier, a high-speed double cassette deck. CBS lost as the House of Lords ruled that the production and sale of such equipment was not an infringement of copyright as manufacturers and retailers cannot be held responsible for the use put to their equipment by its buyers.
At this time, LPs and commercially recorded audiocassettes often carried a logo on the packaging whingeing that ‘home taping is killing music and its illegal’. In an argument that prefigured today’s claims over downloading the industry’s pressure group, the BPI tried to stamp out the practice., even arguing for a swingeing tax surcharge on blank tapes. They never got their way.
As it turned out, home taping never did ‘kill music’. Home taping allowed people to make up their own compilation tapes, either for their own pleasure while out driving in the car or often it was put together to impress a loved one. Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity immortalised this common process in the public imagination. People used to test their skills on the pause button in order to cut out the DJ’s inane prattling over the end of songs, especially on the Top Twenty shows on Sunday evenings. Few radio presenters were as considerate as the late great John Peel. He deliberately played songs through to the end to allow home taping by his legions of devoted fans.
The emergence in 1979 of Sony’s Walkman personal stereo and its many imitators gave new life to the format. In the 1980’s cassettes outsold vinyl records. Runners and dog walkers could take their music with them. Ghetto-blasters and boomboxes allowed lovers of loud ‘in-your-face’ music to share their musical tastes with the rest of the neighbourhood – often whether they wanted to hear it or not!
Sadly, the era of prerecorded music cassettes has had its day. From a peak of 83 million sales in 1989, the BPI say that under 100,000 were sold last year. However, the cassette lives on in audiobook format.
