And The Winner Is..
You know, some blokes really scrub up well. Take an otherwise mild mannered webby type geezer whose sartorial style you mightn’t remember much, put him in a well cut evening suit and he looks like James Bond. Take a fat bloke and put him in an evening suit and he still looks like a sack of gack.
That’d be me.
So it was that amongst the other secret agents and penguins all in dapper evening dress, there were some Talk Audio bodies present at the Mobile Electronics News awards recently.
M.E.N. is the evolved Car Audio Retailer magazine and has for some years now been the august organ of the ice and mobile electronics trades. Running the trade-only Expo show and the Awards dinner makes for two top gatherings for the industry. I myself have worked the Expo and even presented the awards in the past (my most enjoyable one was awarding Paul Richardson his Installer Of The Year gong) but this time around it was to be as a representative of one of the awards’ actual sponsors. For yes, Talk Audio had their name all over the event, rubbing shoulders with the likes of mega-players like JBL for Harman and mainstream dudes Alcosense who were also offering free ‘morning after’ tests for the folks who had chosen to stay at the posh venue hotel. Of those tested the next morning at eight, we gather that 81% were still too high a blood alcohol level to drive and only 19% were under! So their gismo really works and in this case also proves that the event was a slice of hard partying.
Of course those less well inclined to rave drove home sober the night before, so it was a self-editing bit of Set Theory. (We were in the wimp camp, leaving before glass slipper transformed.) But still, some were startled at how long they had to wait before safe progress.
The event was as well organised as ever and the assembled industry folks were as generally rowdy and unwilling to pipe down during the awards themselves as ever. In fact Gordon Dutch of BBG, who along with the guys from Four was up on stage to collect joint Best Distributor Gold award, took the mike and berated the audience briefly for their lack of schtumm during Graham Johnson of Alpine’s speech to award Tony Green his Lifetime Achievement Award. To our credit, he hit home and everybody stood up to offer an ovation to our Tone and looked a bit sheepish when told off.
But one thing’s certain. However rowdy and vociferous they might have been, the industry-voted-for awards are hotly desired and as each one was announced you got the whole X Factor ‘Well-if-it’s-not-them-then-it’s-USSS!!!’ build-up for each category as it sank in who had won each gold award.
M.E.N. had hired two scrumptiously attractive Diva-Babes (Melissa & Laura) to hand out the awards and my old mate Snapper Spike was hired to take professional-grade photographs. He wandered around capturing the action paparazzo-style after the classic grab-a-grin shots of the winners.
At the very start of the evening I learned from Fusion that ‘New Zealand have said yes!’ which was all about the final part of the sponsorship of this mad cartoon strip I want to resurrect as a classic marvel Comics style ‘Son Of’ thing. You’ll soon read more about that right here on Talk Audio. All sounds a bit bonkers but it was about closing long term deals, having important if brief words and meetings and of course enjoying a posh nosh in genteel surroundings followed by a bit of a bop for those of terpsichorean bent.
It was a cracking event, a credit to the professionalism of the Mobile Electronics News guys and of course marked a wee milestone in TA history.
And as for the Black Tie thing. Well, we were all feeling cool and well dressed and then Fraser Scotcher, PR for Midbass arrived in full highland formal dress and we all felt dowdy.
You just can’t compete with a bloke with a dagger down his sock.
And here’s where to click to see a funky cool slideshow in the newly imported gallery system. We LOVE this! If you go to the gallery itself from the menus above you can get at the fuller size versions of you want to nick any….
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