Results for “the seeds”

Tell us about your background in design and how your got started.

My father was in 'the print' and worked as a compositor all his life - I remember visiting him at work from an early age (I still love the smell of letterpress ink in the morning) and watching him setting a page, and being taken round the plant and seeing the presses running.

I never really intended to do anything remotely similar but was reminded, years later, by her, of a conversation I'd had with my nan when I was 12 or 13 and she'd asked me what I wanted to do when I finished school/college and I'd replied 'be a commercial artist' - I'd really little idea of what one was or did at that point.

I swapped my stamp collection with a friend’s older brother for the beginnings of a record collection about the same time, and that was it. I knew I'd have to work in the music industry somehow.

I left college with a degree in Humanities with that aim and spent a year writing music reviews for the Bristol student newspaper, as a first step towards the NME/ZigZag or similar. The editor's principal requirement for the job was that you were prepared to do it all - source the albums/gigs to review, write the review, have it typeset and then lay out the page/s in each issue ready for the print process. In at the deep end.

Back to London to a job in the production department of a small publishing company (music journalism just seemed to drain my enjoyment once it became 'a job') - some writing, but far more marking up type and laying out pages… design, in fact. After a couple of years of dues paying and on-the-job learning I thought - 'I can do this now and maybe I'm a designer and maybe I know a little about type and should work for myself.' My father wasn't sure about the type thing though - commenting on a piece of work I showed him at the time that it was ‘good, but it's photo-setting, not proper type!’

Skipping over a couple of decades of mostly independent work and what I hope is largely good design (with some lamentable stuff along the way of course - I'm thinking of the 80s here) - I've managed to combine my love of music with something like a 'proper job' and find myself here, watching with amusement as my son attempts to manoeuvre away from the inevitable time when he finds himself in a job involving design/typography/print.

Then, in September 2008, came another awesome box set, the three-CD, 75-track “Take Me To The River: A Southern Soul Story 1961-1977”, which as Tony Rounce and Martin Goggin explained, set out the story of Southern Soul “in an approximately chronological manner, from its early rumblings at the beginning of the 1960s, through its first golden era in the mid-60s and its second in the early 70s, and on to the valiant attempts to forestall its demise in the mid-to-late 70s” and featuring everything from “million-sellers to obscure 45s that didn’t get beyond the limits of the cities in which they were recorded”. Soul heaven indeed.

Gene Norman, jazz impresario, disc jockey and record label owner, passed away peacefully at his home in Hollywood, California on 2 November 2015.  He was 93.

2012

The Fame catalogue rolled on, as did the Songwriter and London American series, Mod Jazz and New Breed danced on and there were more cute EPs and cuddly 45s. So all of the flowers in the Ace garden were being well tended.

There was a new compiler on the block, looking like he was ready to bop. Ian Saddler, a record collector who specialised in Louisiana music created a new series. The first release was “Boppin’ By The Bayou”. Essential to making the series work was accessing the seminal rock’n’roll and R&B recordings made by JD Miller out of Crowley. While Miller provided Excello with a huge amount of their catalogue, he was also responsible for a lot of great rockin’ rhythm and blues sides that he didn’t sell on. With a big helping hand from John Broven, a deal that had been sought for many a year was finally put together. Before long, the Paddington Branch of the Grand Union Canal was doing a pretty good impersonation of the Bayou. Vince Anthony & the Blue Notes’ ‘Watch My Smoke’ was not just one of the great tracks in the deal but could well be the byword for the alacrity with which the series expanded.

Gary Sanford Paxton passed away peacefully on the night of July 16^th 2016, his wife Vicki Sue at his side. His friend Alec Palao recalls the life of the original rock’n’roll maverick.