I know the meaning of life. It doesn’t help me a bit
Last Saturday we travelled down to Manchester to see Magazine playing at the Academy.
Magazine, one of the best bands of the post-punk era reunited for five dates in London, Manchester & Glasgow (plus a warm-up show in Oxford).
Howard Devoto and original members Barry Adamson, Dave Formula and John Doyle were joined by Noko on guitar, filling in for John McGeoch, who died in 2004.
An amazing gig, which sounded timeless. I recorded a few tracks on my flip mino camera…not the best of quality, but better than nothing.
The sound is particularly distorted on some of the recordings, but that’s what happens when you stand in front of Barry Adamson’s bass amp.
As it was St. Valentine’s Day, I love you, you big dummy was fitting.
Plus some great merch- designed by Malcolm Garrett- Magazine mug anyone?
Reflection
So, I’ve handed in Unit 1 on my MA and will be getting the results back next week. The 2nd unit (Professional development) has started and we’ve begun by looking at self-reflection and commenting on the forum. Before I enter a post on this, I’ve decided first of all to reflect on what I’ve learned from doing Unit 1.
Firstly: it nearly killed me! I’m not used to this, and getting back into academia and producing assignments was a shock to the system! World of pain!
I left things to the last minute and although I worked incredibly hard, putting it together; it would have benefitted me finished sooner and reflecting before it was handed in, as well as after. This would have prevented me from trying to upload a video file that was too big at 3.19am in the morning on the day it was due in at 12.00 noon.
Not wishing to make excuses (but I will at least attempt to justify some of the reasons), I had put in to go to a fractional post at work, so I would have one day off a week to work on my MA. This request was declined by the Director of School at the Performance Academy just before Xmas (because I’m good at my job, apparently!). My colleague was also absent from work leading up to my deadline and I ended up having to cover for him too, as well as doing my own work!
Anyway, for Unit 1, I decided that because my discipline is moving image and because the subject was moving image, that instead of producing a paper, I would instead submit a 30 minute video. I interviewed 4 media professionals from from across the discipline, then logged and edited the video. The video was structured into different sections, such as at past practice, change, key moments and the future etc.
After the panic of sumitting my assignment and not being able to upload it to the site (I eventually had to post it by registered mail -the old-fashioned way!), I re-read the criteria and started worrying that I’d mis-interpreted the assessment criteria and had got it all wrong- still could be the case!
So, what have I learned?
Not to leave things till the last minute.
