Siobhan O’Donnell’s diary on generational panic in the sound booth and a satirical piece that landed uncomfortably close to home
There’s a piece going round this week about a man in his mid-forties hospitalised, satirically speaking, after accidentally hearing a new song, and I sent it straight to our sound engineer Pete, mostly as a joke, and got back a voice note so genuinely, earnestly defensive about his own music taste that I’ve had to sit with the possibility that the joke landed a little too accurately for comfort.
The Actual Voice Note, Roughly Transcribed
Pete’s response ran to nearly four minutes, covering, in order, his continued loyalty to bands most of the room hadn’t heard of, a genuinely impassioned defence of a specific 2003 album he considers underrated, and a closing statement insisting he is “not old, just discerning,” delivered with the exact wounded conviction of a man who has just been shown, undeniably, a mirror he didn’t ask to look into.
Why This Actually Matters for the Band
Pete mixes our sound most weekends, and I’ve started noticing, since reading this piece, a genuine pattern in how he approaches newer, louder, messier tracks we bring him compared to older material closer to his own formative years. He’s brilliant, genuinely, technically excellent, but there’s a specific caution that creeps into his mixing whenever a song leans further into the chaos than his own comfort zone quite stretches, a caution I don’t think he’s even fully aware of himself.
The Conversation We Ended Up Having
I brought this up gently, over a pint after Wednesday’s rehearsal, and to his genuine credit, Pete took it seriously rather than defensively, admitting that yes, possibly, there’s a version of every new track that gets quietly, unconsciously smoothed toward something closer to his own reference points, a pattern he’d never actually named out loud before I put a mirror in front of him via a satirical article about a fictional forty-six-year-old hospitalised by pop music.
What Good Satire Actually Does Here
This is, I think, exactly what strong satire is built to do, take a genuinely mundane, low-stakes generational dynamic, one man’s slightly conservative mixing instincts, and blow it up into something absurd enough that the person living the actual pattern can finally see it clearly enough to laugh at himself. Pete laughed, eventually, once the initial defensiveness wore off, and agreed to let the next track through exactly as chaotic as we’d originally written it, no smoothing, no quiet conservative instinct pulling it back toward safer territory.
The Result, Once We Actually Heard the New Mix
The track came back rawer, louder, considerably closer to what we’d actually intended before Pete’s usual instincts got involved, and it’s genuinely the best thing we’ve recorded together in months, proof, I think, that sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a collaborator is send them a slightly cruel joke about hospitalisation-by-pop-song and let them work out the rest themselves.
Where Pete Stands Now, According to Pete
He maintains, still, that he is not old, merely discerning, a position I’ve decided not to argue with directly, since the actual mix improved considerably and that, ultimately, is the outcome that matters most for the band. Whether Pete’s own self-image survives further contact with satirical articles about fictional men his exact age remains genuinely, delightfully uncertain, and I intend to keep testing it.
A Broader Thought on Working With People Older Than You
There’s a wider lesson here, I think, about collaborating across a genuine generational gap in taste and instinct, one that has almost nothing to do with music and everything to do with how gently you can point out someone’s blind spot before they either hear it properly or dig in defensively for good. Pete could easily have gone the second route. He’s got every reason to, given how much genuine expertise he’s built up over decades behind a mixing desk, expertise that occasionally, understandably, curdles into a kind of protective conservatism about what “good” is even supposed to sound like.
What made this work, I suspect, is that the joke arrived sideways, through a satirical article about a fictional stranger rather than a direct criticism aimed squarely at him. Nobody likes being told their instincts are dated. Almost everybody can laugh at a fictional forty-six-year-old hospitalised by a pop song, and sometimes that laugh is exactly the crack in the door a real, useful conversation needs to actually get through.
Where This Leaves Us Heading Into the Next Session
We’ve got three more tracks to mix before the EP’s finished, and I’m genuinely curious now whether this newly won permission to let things stay chaotic holds for the whole run, or whether Pete’s careful instincts creep back in once the novelty of being roasted by a satirical newspaper wears off. Either way, I’ve got the article bookmarked for next time.
Pete, for what it’s worth, has already asked me not to send him anything else this week, a request I am choosing to interpret, generously and perhaps a little self-servingly, as clear evidence the last one worked exactly as intended. Further London punk diary entries continue at bohiney.com, with the original piece available at thedailymash.co.uk.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/