Funky, pre-gentrified Ladbroke Grove, West London, was a fascinating place to live in the late 80’s and early 90’s…an eclectic population of West Indian, Portuguese and boho English…street markets selling dried chillies, cheap daffodils, addictive custard tarts, scratched records, pre-loved books…a soundscape of dub-reggae-doorstep ghetto blasters, laughter, arguments, spruikers…little underground drinking dens and a local gypsy-cab service that would home deliver ‘erb and pizza from dusk ’til dawn…”Errr, dat you egain Roger? Ok, ok…Winston back at ya in twenty, innit…layters…”
I was lucky enough to live amongst and befriend a few of the ladbroke grove crew, including ‘resting’ photojournalist, unassuming dude and ‘erbalist, ‘Roger’. He’d spent a chunk of the early ’70’s working for Der Spiegel and also Stern magazine, war-reporting from Vietnam under a pseudonym – he took a bold decision to break away from the constrained, rather conformist press pack and went off track and seriously undercover to Laos, with nothing but his cameras and a local guide. They stumbled upon a series of jungle helicopter bases and photographed uniformed military personnel loading and then flying around bales of…opium…this interpretOr saw his pics and Bolex shot Laos footage (I was, coincidentally, doing post-grad at the London College of Printing at the time), and Roger’s material the real deal…more on this in future interpretOr posts…
Anyways… ‘ladbroke-grove-rOger’s’ satellite news service emerged around the time of Gulf War One…very, very pre-Wikileaks…the US government was feeding news agencies, including the rapidly ascending newcomer CNN, with its then startling innovation, the VNR…short for Video News Release. Essentially, VNRs were manufactured, manipulated and often sanitised video footage reels that were dispatched on a daily basis to the newsdesks at CBS, NBC, ITV et al.
One evening, Roger and I were chatting with my Kuwaiti girlfriend and we were all very worried about her family and the paucity of info on what was actually brewing in the Gulf. The ‘VNR’ derived coverage was nothing more than crappy propaganda and Roger had a startling brainwave that was to lead to a very local solution to a rather global problem…and ‘ladbroke-grove-rOger’s’ satellite news service was born…
…click below for…
the interpretOr 