The Sheffield Scenester

Back on January 15th we covered the ten band gig at The Leadmill, in fact we stuck around all day chatting to the bands as they came in for sound checks and unloaded their equipment. We also interviewed the majority of them at various stages during the day and whilst chatting to Tivoli, lead singer Lee McMahon asked if we wanted to come down and cover a video shoot for their new single ‘The Messenger’ which they were doing at Yellow Arches. Never having done anything like this, we jumped at the chance and so, a few of weeks later, with camera and the trusty notepad in hand we arrived raring to go; this is our chronological dairy as it happens, all persons named in this article are real people and all events portrayed actually happened (no animals were hurt during the recording), enjoy:

3:30: We arrived at Yellow Arch Studios to spend a day with The Tivoli on the video shoot of their soon to be released single ‘The Messenger’, the room itself was more of a huge hallway than anything else with one half of it crammed with Richard Hawley guitars and other equipment that he’s stockpiled away down here. At the far end however Tivoli band members, Lee McMahon, Damian Baughan and Gareth Eaton (Russ unfortunately was yet to finish work) were beginning to set their area up for the forthcoming shoot. With them was Lee ‘Fez’ Foster, their lighting engineer for the day, who had his son along to assist him, meantime however Fez was explaining how everything worked….most of this was way over our heads but, his young ‘un seemed to get it!

When it came to putting up the huge banner that Tivoli had specially made, it turned out this was more of an education than anything else, they may be outstanding musicians but DIY seemed well beyond their grasp at times. Lee, being the bravest, balanced precariously on the top rung of a ladder and tried to bang a few nails in with a pair of pliers, Damien steadied the ladder leaving Gareth to give vocal support while looking on with a slightly bewildered expression……the phrase “To me, to you!” sprang to mind at one point! They did see the funny side of it as a continual stream of jokes about 60 Minute Makeover and Charlie Dimmock kept spirits up. Having finally got all the nails in place it was time to hang the banner and miraculously it turned out they’d measured it all correctly, kudos to Gareth for that one!

Putting the banner up was a mammoth task in itself, after all this thing was big enough to carpet most front rooms with enough spare to do the landing as well, but up it had to be. So with Lee working through numerous show-tunes at this point, primarily a selection from the musical Oliver, ‘Consider Yourself’ being my particular favourite, and after several attempts…it did have the disadvantage of being too heavy for the nails ….they did eventually get it up, admittedly a few signs of agitation were beginning to show during this process but they kept a lid on it!

4:30: Now this seemed a good a time as any to break for lunch and right on queue a veritable array of food arrived courtesy of Lee’s mum, Gillian, The huge buffet was too good to resist so everybody tucked in and as is typical there was too much for everyone, if only we’d thought of a doggie bag!!

5:30: The Tivoli’s videographer, Leigh Nicholson, had already arrived to start filming, but before all that the band had to set up there instruments so while Damian screwed his guitar together, Gareth slowly assembled his drum kit, this was quite a tranquil scene to behold it has to be said. Once that was sorted, numerous light checks had to be done as well as decisions needed to be made about what lighting to use from an effects point of view as well as how camera friendly it will be. So while all four band members (by now Russ had arrived from work), Fez and Leigh went into a huge discussion about which spectrum evokes the mood of the song, and whether they can film it or not, plus what lighting effects they wanted at what point during the song itself. With ideas flying in from all directions we took it upon ourselves to grab a breathe of fresh air and let the creative juices flow unimpaired, it was all a question of artistic integrity compromising with technological reality and we really didn’t want to get in the way of that!

7:00: By the time we came back several people had arrived to join in the fun as they had posted on Facebook asking for people to come down, the free buffet proved too tempting for some! Meanwhile it was time to start shooting and so with a few adjustments to wardrobe, for the sake of continuity and some last minute furniture removal, they started! The filming process itself began with a rough take as they played the whole song through to see what it came out like on film, this seemed to go okay so they continued with individual based shots, initially starting with Lee. At this point he tried with his hood up to give himself a menacing vigilante look…but ended up doing a skit from ‘Life Of Brian’ and so opted for the hood down. Leigh then worked her way round to covering Russ before moving onto a full band shot, this created a bit of a headache due to the narrowness of the room itself coupled with the amount of equipment that was being stored there. So a good quarter of an hour was spent improvising a stand out of lighting cases and anything else that came to hand, but such is the fun of these occasions. Once that hiccup was sorted everything was ready to go again and as we heard ‘The Messenger’ for the umpteenth time surprisingly the mood in camp became lighter, Lee came out with the immortal joke “What’s the difference between a drummer and a drum machine? You can only punch a drum machine once!” which even Gareth found funny. Mid way through filming another Lee close up Joolz Vernon began riding on some kid’s plastic car causing another re-shoot as Lee tried to stop bursting into hysterics! Close ups of Damian and Gareth followed though how they kept a straight face while Lee and Joolz sat off camera mocking them we’ll never know!

8:30: With only a few shots left to do, everyone decided to take a break for the toilet, a fag or just a drink so we thought it would be a good time to ask the lads on their thoughts on the day and how it went, this was what they had to say for themselves;

Scenester: Tell us about the video that you’re filming today?

Lee: Its for the song ‘The Messenger’, it’s the new single and is out on March 5th and to promote it on the same evening we’ll be doing a gig at the O2 Academy to launch it……as well as a new website www.TheTivoli.co.uk , you can buy a world of wonders on there, T shirts, CD’s…….I’ve got all the plugging in already (lol). We’ve decided to release this next track because we just want to push on this year and see where we can take it and Russ thought this would be quite a good way of pushing. But when the video is all done you’ll be able to watch it on our new website, I don’t know if I mentioned this but its www.TheTivoli.co.uk . In fact everything to do with the single you’ll be able to find on www.TheTivoli.co.uk.
Gareth: We just want to capture the aggression in the song and so it’s quite a simple set up……
Russ: We got our lighting engineer Lee ‘Fez’ Foster to come down and set this rig up which looks fantastic…..

Scenester: And how about the banner hanging across the back of the stage?

Lee: We had it made….. put it up and Damian took it down three times…..
Russ: And I just turned up when it was all finished!

Scenester: So what else have you got planned in the next few weeks?

Lee: We’re just really geared towards promoting the single really, and we’re playing at Great Western Studios in London with The Cartels on April 15th.

Scenester: So how did Leigh Nicholson become involved with the video shoot?

Gareth: Leigh has been involved with us from day one; she’s documented everything that we’ve ever done, up and down the country she’s travelled with us…….
Lee: Can I just clarify, are you talking about me, cos there are three Lee’s in the building but Leigh is our official videographer……
Gareth: She’s filmed absolutely everything, if we wanted to put some form of documentary together it would probably be the longest DVD in the world!

Scenester: We neglected to ask if you could buy it from www.TheTivoli.co.uk, Why did you pick ‘The Messenger’?

Russ: It’s the only one we know how to play!.......(LOL)
Gareth: It’s the most ready as well out of all the tunes we’ve got…..
Lee: It’s aggressive, it’s hard hitting, it’s……
Gareth: …..different to anything that’s out there!
Leigh: It’s exactly what’s going on at the moment around us!
Gareth: It’ll be available to buy on iTunes and HMV, all the main digital distributers as well as being available through our website……… www.TheTivoli.co.uk.

Scenester: So how has the shoot been for you so far?

Lee: To be fair it’s been good, because you don’t get to experience things like this and I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I thought it would be a bit boring going through the same song over and over and over, but it’s a good laugh you know but it helps that we’ve got a good bunch of people here today.

Scenester: Sorry what did you say the website was…?

Lee:

And for us that was the end of a really long, but fun day, so thank you to The Tivoli for asking us down, we look forward to the launch night, and a big thank you to Gillian for a fantastic buffet!

Words by Gail and Geoff Buckthorpe
Photography by Mickelmas Youngus, Geoff and Gail Buckthorpe