ABSTRACT
The way we met is virtually a hologram. I had written a sort of a draft of a paper I’d been thinking about for ages. I was playing drums in a band called Dry Rib, working in a bookstore, and in my spare time I wrote something about music and television, based in part on a trip to New York City, where I’d spent hours not in art galleries but in my East 72nd digs, watching MTV get off the ground. Soon after that, I found myself somewhat isolated in Northern College near Barnsley, teaching media studies to adults. One of these adults wanted to write about politics and pop in his final thesis paper, and we needed an external examiner. Which meant not just reading the paper and grading it but also traveling to Northern College from Warwickshire (or London, or wherever Simon happened to be that night, still finding the enthusiasm to go to live shows in the middle of the week) to do a viva voce with the student and myself. I enclosed a copy of my paper on music, video, film and television; Simon’s work was one of the foundational bases for these increasingly ambitious bits and pieces of research and speculation. Within a couple of weeks I had a two or three page letter in my hand saying ‘yes’ to the invitation to do more work, and then moving swiftly on to a very considered and supportive response to my paper. To be honest, I was stunned.
