M8 Magazine Interview

To give you some background info on how DVcrew started out we have transcribed this interview from an old M8 Magazine from the 1990’s… Journalist Claire Wyburn meets the curious couple who prowl the inner sanctums of Scotland’s rave scene filming the best bands and the weirdest dancers!“Any of you rave addicts out there ever wondered who that strange couple with the video cameras are?”

The more raves and clubs I went to, the more I began to spot the hyperactive pair leaping about on stage, filming all the best rave bands, and prowling around the dance floor, waiting to capture all the weirdest dancers and the more extrovert punters who aren’t camera shy. You just cant miss Paul Martin and Linda Hynds, the Double Vision camera crew. I have seen them at The Bunker, at Marco’s Forum in Livingston, The Tunnel nightclub in Glasgow, at Prestwick Airport, and everywhere else in between!

Fresh back from New York after recording They were busy filming Ultra-sonic recording their latest single live down at Hanger13 in Ayr, the night I finally decided stop pissing about and ask one of them who they were…..I’m very glad I did, for Paul’s energy and enthusiasm is catching, and talking to him is a superb way to cheer you up! For Paul is, as he readily admits, “just like one of the punters,” and what better qualification for Scotland’s only independent video company dedicated to capturing out thriving rave scene and dance culture on video. A few weeks later, I found myself outside their comfortable Glasgow abode, clutching a couple of bottles of red wine and looking forward to a night watching all of Double Vision’s video footage. What a night it was! Double Vision have a veritable rave archive….

Every little black video tape contains reels and reels of The Prodigy, Oceanic, N-Joi, Chase The Rhythm, SL2 Rozalla, Bassheads, Altern8, Lenny Dee, Bass Generator, Mickey B, Chill FM, Suburban Delay at the Rez during their prime, and Jon Campbell of TTF, Whom remarks, “Now, if that’s not a fan of the dance generation, what is?”

Double Vision produced the videos for TTF’s first two songs, Real Love and New Emotion, and now the camera crew are working with Chill FM. “Chill FM are going to be Scotland’s hottest band one day,” Paul believes, “and they’re my favourite band right now. They definitely have the Double Vision vibe. Their Stage show works on camera so well, what with their dancers antics, MC Sean Mack’s energy and Laura’s vocals. Add the fireworks and the graphic screen and you’ve got a video which will blow anyone away!”

Paul hopes to bring out Chill FM video soon. And the pair have just finished Ultra-sonic’s video, which will include footage of all the bands best gigs. In fact, Ultra-sonic and Chill FM speak highly of Double Vision and there can’t be many Scottish rave bands who haven’t used, or don’t know about Paul and Linda. However, the couple have worked hard for their current reputation. “We’re conscientious,” Paul explains, “and we spend countless hours going through all our film for the bands videos, picking out the best moments. We can take hours and hours of footage and only get a couple of minutes of magic moments. That’s why we try to stay in a venue for as long as it is open, if we went away early, we’d probably miss something exciting!” and who left early anyway? The couple hold down day time jobs as well – Paul is a building inspector and a joiner, and Linda is a nurse – but both would prefer to commit themselves full-time to their video work.

Linda spent 10 years travelling around Europe and the United states and she didn’t come back to Scotland until 1988 “Paul and I were childhood sweethearts”, she confides “We used to hold hands during playtime at our primary school in Glasgow!” After all the years of separation, Paul bumped into Linda again outside their local butcher shop, where Linda was buying some roast beef. Coincidentally, the couple now live across the road from their old school! Paul remembers well the fateful day he saw Linda again: “I walked past the butcher’s window,” he recalls, “and even though I was struggling with my 18 cans of Red Stripe and a bottle of Vodka, and I hadn’t seen her for over ten years, I recognised her straight away and I just had to speak to her again! “I asked her back to my flat for a drink,” he continues, “but she said she had to buy some sweetcorn, so I told her I had a whole bag of the bloody stuff in my flat and I hated it, so she could have mine!” Obviously this was an offer Linda couldn’t refuse, and she found herself getting drunk on Paul’s Vodka and catching up on old times! “it was love at first sight all over again for me,” Linda readily admits, though she recalls that Paul didn’t actually have my sweetcorn in his flat at all! And that was the beginning of a great team.

Paul has always been a whizz kid with the still camera, so he simply bought a video camcorder and learned the game by going out there and doing it.” It started out as a hobby,” says Paul, “We used to video rock bands like The Almighty, Zodiac Mind Warp and the Bleeding Hearts whom supporting David Bowie. RAR, Rock And Roll… “When we look back at these now we have a laugh – we’ve improved so much.”Double Vision’s big break came when Belgian band Praga Khan asked them to to the Rave Alert single at Streetrave’s all-nighter in Prestwick Airport. “The video was shown on MTV every day…

Pauls recalls, “then Praga Khan asked us over to Belgium, where they decided they wanted us to film their tour in the States filming.” So last New Year, Paul and Linda went to New York with Praga Khan, “What a time that was!” Paul enthuses, “We were so excited and Praga Khan were so calm, I can remember flying into New York and seeing the Statue of Liberty and thinking, ‘Wow! This is living!’ We got the star treatment during our stay – we were put up in a classy hotel and a limo drove us to all of Praga Khan’s gigs.” I also got Robert De Niro’s autograph as he was staying at the same hotel…..

“American punters aren’t as good as us Scots at raving though,” Paul reckons, “We’re better dancers, they tend to watch the band and jig around a bit!” But this was all so far removed from his very first job, which he approached with considerable trepidation: “I was looking at the instruction booklet for my video camera a few days before I was supposed to start filming, and I was thinking, ‘How the fuck do you work this thing?’ That was five years ago, Today the couple add their own graphics to their videos and the end result is a bit like U2′s Zoo TV, only n a smaller scale. But the question I really wanted to ask was did Double Vision possess any snippets of film of certain bands doing anything they shouldn’t?”Aah,” said Paul, “we knew you were going to ask us that… Of course, we’re far too nice to say which band it was, but one night I accidentally filmed two guys from a rave getting more than friendly with their fans backstage! Some of it’s actually quite revealing too!!” “No, I don’t know which band it is, but it’s nice to know that even rave bands enjoy some of the privileges of pop stars!”