It’s the final GMCRF fm. Today we have the news, the review of the Katy Price magazine and, as it is the last one, reminisce about the show.
Finally, in the place I would usually plug the website relentlessly I would like to write a very brief farewell to you. It, if you have religiously followed both Will and Myself on this podcast adventure, is has been a good few years… and it has been really quite delightful. From the early days of the Dan Barker Show with William Jones when we were solely doing a video podcast to the very end. This one.
The video show meant editing away on the iMac using iMovie, using poor cameras and hosting on a .mac account. It was probably the most awful (yet strangely charming) production we have ever done; two idiots making the longest straw ever, to two idiots playing golf with éclairs and eggs. Anywhere, in the early days of the show we decided to do a very brief audio show (entitled, imaginatively enough, “The Dan Barker Audio Show”). This was to describe the production process of the show (I don’t know how we claimed to have one, it was Will and I doing stupid things) and to serve as an advert of sorts, but it quickly morphed into something in its own.
The video show was possibly one of the most brilliant excuses for messing around, filming it and then transforming this poor quality footage into something which was a better, more refined package we could call our own show. Two of the best episodes we did, naturally, were our last. Firstly, we had the JFK extravaganza. With, what is in hindsight, a pretty poor script, we both spent the day building a narrative to explain the true cause behind the death of an American president and the second episode is the one after that, in which we then tried to tie the loose ends up because of the complete lack of continuity and attempt to return to ‘normal programming’. This would be the last Dan Barker Video Show.
For some reason we paused for a while. Then Will, Richard and I started GMCRF fm. Again, with the same slapdash style .Mac website we moved away from the type of slander present in the Audio Show to a more topic focused discussion. We, for some reason, chose Gaming, chiefly because of Richards insistence and also our desire to try something new despite the Audio Show pointing both Will and I in the direction we ended up going with in the later 20ish episodes (trashy news, random arguments, political chat and naturally, the type of brilliant rants as with the Trafigura episode – so basically talk radio). I feel like this though, was important. We quickly both developed a completely unique insight into the games industry, but we also had shown to our selves that a third person really didn’t work for the show. Perhaps because it was a different type of relationship we had with Richard, or perhaps its because we had different interests and opinions. However, I felt that it was a significant milestone, both with Richard on the ‘new’ podcast and then afterwards when Richard had left and Will and I continued.
As mentioned in the show, this isn’t something we were necessarily willing to talk about much (until this episode) for some reason, Richards name cropped up from time to time as a joke wondering where his attendance was or for some other obscure reason, but on reflection he was a footnote in its existence. There was not the correct relationship between Richard and the two of us. This is quite clear in the episode Will isn’t here, it doesn’t flow. It’s broken. So I feel that if he continued to attend, and didn’t basically snub us for 15 minutes of his time, the show quite well wouldn’t be around today. It certainly wouldn’t have been the same as it is. So in a way, I regret to say it, but I thank Richard for not coming that day (which in effect signalled his departure, though at the time it didn’t seem that clear to us). It enabled us to broaden our horizons, it enabled us to flow much better and more importantly it enabled us to be a lot more entertaining.
Not following the JFK script that day made that days footage much more difficult to edit, and the perfect metaphor for my last words for the ‘scheduled’ posts. Its this sense of sheer randomness and a complete lack of concern that is something which I personally look back on The Dan Barker Show with William Jones, The Dan Barker Audio Show with William Jones and of course GMCRF fm with some amount of envy. Very few times in ones life does one have to have such a lack of concern; with a lack of important exams to worry about, no University (or University fees to worry about), no dependant family or job, and no real worry about the inevitability of death – yet the podcast has documented this period.
Over these few years we have changed, we are no longer blissfully unaware of the world around us, we are much more intelegent, we successfully navigated our way trough the minefield of sixth form (with the added bonus of making an arch nemesis), we got much taller and somehow even more sarcastic and witty and somewhere along the lines I got robbed. But there is one even more important thing I want to highlight, it has been fantastic… I can’t think what would have filled the void if creating, what is in essence, a timeline of our developing opinions and thoughts, wasn’t here. Something which not many people get to do at all; but both Will and I have done this and shared it with the world in hourly, sometimes two hourly chunks.
Whilst I have said it several times, both on the podcast and after, I would like to thank Will. No one else would have been crazy enough to accept the invitation to “record some stuff for a video show”, especially one under my own name… and then to come back! But he did. I would also like to thank you. Whilst we don’t have that many listeners, some are out there. I thank you for sharing this amazing journey of the last four years, this really quite ‘public’ journey.
So, as always with these things I am going to end it with this advice. I find it rather fitting to what we have created and my attitude to life, and it comes from Steve Jobs quoting, naturally, someone else. Simply,
“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”.
Thank you.
And now a quick word from Will:
We made it to 54 episodes, which is actually 52 if you discount the “mythical” lost episodes. 52 is not an especially large number of episodes for a regularly running broadcast, but GMCRFfm was recorded on a fortnightly schedule. You then need to factor in occasional holiday breaks, frequent exam breaks and a surprisingly long break where we found our selves starting sixth form. 2 ½ years. That is the rough estimate of how long Dan and myself have been doing this show. Then of course there was the “Dan Barker Video Show (with Will Jones)” and before that there was the “Dan Barker Show” (I hadn’t earned a place in the title at this point).
What we are actually looking at here is the end of a four year period of our lives. These four years have lined up with, what anyone would agree, are pretty defining years of a young persons life. We have both set forward paths for ourselves. Paths which we will now follow for the rest of our lives. We made lifelong friends and short lived enemies. We learned about life. We learned about the universe. We learned about everything. In short, we grew up.
Now I am not going to give a detailed history of the show, Dan has done that already. Rather, on the verge of setting out on a new journey, it’s the perfect time to say this one simple comment. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Outside of my academic career, I have never been prouder of anything than I am of the last 20-30 episodes of GMCRFfm we recorded. They (d)evolved from a structured gaming show to a highly opinionated news debate bringing you “the news you care about”, and allowing us to return to what our two man team did best. Argue. We took the angle of forgetting the microphones were there. There is no acting or planning, what you hear is genuinely just two hours of our conversations that we recorded every other week. It was real and it was us.
Now, Dan has mentioned in his goodbye statement that he wishes to thank me for joining him in this four year chapter. I think that there is something wrong with that. No thanks need to be given. I got to spend one day every fortnight having more fun than I would have ever expected. We never really did any of the shows for anyone other than ourselves. There was no point beating around the bush, we had maybe 5 or 6 listeners. The audience, good as you have been, were never the main drive behind the show for either of us. The point was to laugh, and you mark these words, I have laughed for four years. We came up with an excuse to argue, to ridicule, to criticise, we played golf with snails on top of water balloons, we blew up batteries, we did countless variations on the “Coke and Mentos” tests, we made the worlds longest straw (Guinness World Record pending), we nearly gave a cat a bath in lithium water and we made a low budget (£0) time travelling epic.
I hope that those of you who have listened to the show have gotten as much joy out of listening to it, as we got out of making it. Hell, if you even got half as much, you must be pretty damn happy right about now.
Most people our age would have spent their time hanging out in parks, going out drinking, partying and generally “living on the edge”. In that respect neither of us have really had the full experience of a teenage life, but what I know I have, what I am certain Dan has, is a wealth of fantastic memories that are imaginative, hilarious, brilliantly nerdy and downright silly. Memories that will last me for the rest of my life, so in that respect, the thanks really needs to go to 14 year old Dan. Thank you for having a really rubbish idea to record a one off podcast.
Goodbye…
Will and Dan, 2008
