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March 2006
Bestfrontseat.com and Raw-UK - One small step in a Welly, one giant leap... 'Give It Some Welly'
By Isabelle Tracy.
Putting aside tribal and territorial differences, local promoters, musicians and media people in Hull came to The Welly to support this event - or just to have a nosey - or maybe even to see if it was going to fall on its arse.
Well, it didn't. After 3 songs from the first band to test the signals, there was a delay of 10 minutes to the gig going live over the internet - due to one of those technical hitches that have a great sense of comic timing - but then Paparazzi Whore bounced back onto the stage and Raw-UK telly from The Welly went live around the world. Alan Raw, best known for promoting new and unsigned artists on his radio programme Raw Talent, had pulled together a line-up as diverse as it was talented - and all from Yorkshire.
Paparazzi Whore played eighties glam punk, Jon Gomm played one acoustic guitar but made it sound like 3 sitars and a tabla, producer Kid Kaneval teamed up with rapper Testament and beatbox star Shlomo to get the crowd moving before Emma Rugg and The Last People on Earth brought the hour-long show to a triumphant close. The show's producers by this point were grinning at each other like Cheshire cats and getting geared up for the after party. So what exactly was Give It Some Welly?
It was the pilot for a new and unsigned music TV programme, Raw-UK; it was the test flight for http://www.bestfrontseat.com, an internet streaming video service that will revolutionise the way that live music, football and other sports events are televised; it was a bloody good night out. Former Red Tape director and musician Frank Wilkes, who came over from Host Media Centre in Leeds to check out Give It Some Welly said ‘It felt just like The Tube in its early days. This is exactly what music needs right now’.
And Hull's Nicole Fuller said I came out to see Shlomo, because ‘I've seen him before and he's brilliant - he was, but what really impressed me was Jon Gomm’.
I couldn't believe all that sound came from just one guy with a guitar. And the thing is, I would probably never have gone out to see a guitarist. You just don't get to see this range of music on the TV. All around the world, people were signing in to www.BestFrontSeat.com to see musicians from Hull and Leeds in full-screen, near-DVD quality streaming video - whilst back in their offices in the medieval streets of Hull's Old Town, the BestFrontSeat team were fielding emails and calls to resolve any problems people were having with the service.
We have had a 70% success rate, globally, which we are very pleased with, said Peter Kemp of BestFrontSeat which has developed BestFrontSeat. We've discovered some glitches, such as with providing the service to Macintosh users and to some versions of Windows, but Give It Some Welly was designed to help us find these things out, and fix them. We thought we might as well have a party at the same time.
For much of the last decade, the City Council and regeneration agencies have talked up Hull as the digital city. A handful of local people, inspired by the spirit of 1976, with a small amount of European funding and one Welly, got together with BestFrontSeat to take the first step and make the digital city a reality. The impact of that step is going to be felt all around the world.
More information
Credits for Give It Some Welly
Artists
Paparazzi Whore, Hull
Jon Gomm, Leeds
Shlomo (Leeds)
Producer Kid Kaneval featuring rapper Testament (Leeds)
Last People on Earth, Hull
Emma Rugg, Hull
Presenter
Alan Raw, Raw-UK, Hull
Production
Sound Engineering
HPSS
Camera Crew
Class Lane Studios
Production Manager
Neal Osborne
Producer
Peter Kemp BestFrontSeat (BestFrontSeat)
Executive Producer
Isabelle Tracy, volcom
Welly Club, Hull
Dave Mays, owner
Technical and Business Details
BestFrontSeat, Hull
BestFrontSeat of Kingston-upon-Hull, England specializes in the delivery of media content over the internet. They have developed a specialist database to control and deliver video content from the website to the end user. In March, 2006, BestFrontSeat will launch Bestfrontseat.com, the only truly complete solution able to provide the long awaited global TV on demand.
Managing Director, Stephen John