How To Spoil a Good Film

Years ago, when I first started singing with newly formed John Wilson Orchestra, a crew was hired to film one of our concerts. The venue was Pizza On The Park, a gorgeous London cabaret room with a sideline in pizzas. It was something of an institution until the developers came in and replaced it with something depressing like another hotel or a Baby Gap.The orchestra was so large for this tiny room that it spilled off the stage into the house. There were almost as many of us playing as there were watching. The cameramen had a job getting the shots they wanted, squeezing in-between tables and trying not to get in the way, but they managed, and we were all excited to see they footage.A bit of gentle background noise, what they call "atmos", on a live concert video is nice: the gentle clink of glasses, soft clatter of plates and orders being taken somewhere in the background. It gives context and makes the viewer feel like they are in the room. What none of the film crew realised, is that almost everyone likes black pepper on their pizza. So, while the strings quivered and I crooned about broken hearts and moonbeams, all you actually heard was "crunch, crunch, crunch" as another pizza was peppered to perfection. This happened so much, that the video was unusable, and binned.I’ve recently made up for this mishap by having a mammoth recording session professionally filmed at The Pool studios. There are Christmas songs, brand new songs and some classics we’ve never got around to recording. We did have pizza delivered but fortunately no one had pepper. Over the next few months I’ll be sharing new videos with you on Facebook, YouTube and the website, and, I promise, not a peppercorn in sight.