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Wizz also operated
under the name Scene & Heard, namely at The
Taste Experience with help from Gary Goodman.
Update - January
2003
I started out doing an Art foundation course in Loughton Essex and
specialised in Fine Art by the end of the course I was building
"Environments" and incorporated slide projections and
sound recordings and mirrors, water, liquid ,objects, transforming
rooms etc. I went on to do a Degree in Fine Art at N.E.L.P now University
of East London. They advertised a mixed media course and had their
own film dept. In the second year I was getting disillusioned with
the pressure to specialise in one particular area. I really wanted
to incorporate lots of different media not
specialise in one. Anyway I ended up in the film dept as they seemed
the most open minded, and I was fiddling with film and slide projectors
and taking lots of acid, not to mention partying and gigging.
Scene and Heard
I was living in South London in a co-op and some of my friends knew
Doctor and the medics, they said I would love them. I saw them at
Woolwich tramshed and saw John Brodel and his wife Suzy doing a
lightshow as Shiva
Photonics and realised that was what I should be doing,I was
totally off
my head and blown away and even wondered on stage during their set.
I met Wiz at Glastonbury festival in 1984? through friends from
college and then later in the year I ran into him at New Cross Gate
Station. He was studying photography at ULU and was also doing some
stuff with slide projectors. I went to a party where he had three
Kodak carousel
projectors and a dissolve unit. He was thinking of starting a lightshow
with a guy called Sim who worked for an audio visual company and
Scene and Heard was born. The first Gig we had or I remember us
doing was Ring of Roses at the Ambulance Station Squat in Old Kent
Rd. After we went to the Crypt in Deptford where Ozrics and Magic
Mushroom Band were playing at an all nighter, Shiva
Photonics and Poris were doing lights, It was a good night with
a brilliant atmosphere.
The Crypt was a good club and Alice
in Wonderland or the Doctor had been running a Psychedelic night
there on a Saturday. I think Wiz got talking to the Ex Copper Andy
that was promoting nights there but had fallen out with Christian
or Clive and as they had
no lightshow on a Saturday, we took over.
We didn't have much equipment to start with but we soon bought some
Optikinetics bits and
some home-made stuff. My dad was a photographer for the Govt and
I used his accounts and equipment to get loads of trippy artwork
and imagery shot and developed. God knows what some of those companies
must of thought! it must of looked as though the govt were up to
some brainwashing! Between me, Wiz and Sim we amassed a large, varied
and interesting slide library.
Soon we were DJ'ing and doing lights on every Saturday at the Crypt
and although we never advertised we always seemed to be working,
most of the week too. At the start neither of us had a car and we
would borrow an old cortina and try and fit gear in the back, boot
and on the roof!! I then bought an old BMC laundry van, amazingly
the guys that owned it had an old lightshow/disco and we ended up
buying their old equipment. It was all pretty home built and included
a kids coloured metal xylophone that "played" the home
built light boxes. It was definitely one of those times where everything
just seemed to flow and there was lots of synchronicity. I remember
going to one of the early Mystery
Tours in Chiselhurst caves that was a fantastic night too, again
Shiva Photonics
were there with lasers as well.
I also Remember filming, with friends from my college crewing, on
a film that one of them was making of the Alice
Mystery tour in a Warehouse just south of the river.
I never heard what happened to this film I think Christian and the
guy that was making it fell out over money don't know if it ever
saw light.
Over the next year we would become a firm part of the Revival that
was going on. We worked almost constantly at clubs, Student bars,
odd nights and with many bands. We did many/all of the Alice
in Wonderland events and
Mystery Tours, some Doctor and the Medics gigs, Clubs like The
Taste Experience, and Alice
in Wonderland (Greek St), Klub Foot Clarendon, Club 00 mankind,
Pigeon Toed Orange Peel, plus many others. I seem to remember that
in London ,anyway, at this time, there were three lightshows:- Shiva
Photonics, Scene and Heard, and Hassid
Casualty (Dead Dog) often all at the same big events
I eventually got to meet John Brodel who's work I really admired
and we teamed up quiet often. We ended up with over 12 Kodak Carousel
projectors and several Audio visual computers, many effects projectors,
8mm and 16mm movie projectors, ohp, old odd slide projectors, I
also got
into boiling liquids in cut up slide projectors. We often swapped,
lent and borrowed equipment and slides from John, and I had another
friend join us at some gigs with small lasers.
Both lightshows (Us and Shiva
Photonics) plus lasers would sometimes join together, at the
Scala all nighters for instance. As time went by Wiz and I would
do two different events on the same night, often just using one
or two towers of three projectors plus an effect or two, his girlfriend
Kit joined us and sometimes took the lights out in her name (Suzy
Creamcheese).
I did some small tours with bands Like Thee
Purple Things and increasingly we separated, at some point
I would call my solo outings The Crystal Ship.
Gary Goodman
- January 2003
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