PAUL TOLD ME THAT Uncut magazine was keen to feature a track from our forthcoming Breakloose album on a compilation CD which would be on the cover of their October 1999 edition. We'd also been granted ‘Rock Recommendation’ status in the Virgin, HMV and Our Price shops in Liverpool. This meant that, for two weeks, Viper CDs would be in the racks and everyone walking into the shops would see them immediately as they entered the premises.

To get the album ready I needed to make a trip to London to have the songs mastered for the vinyl. Late in August, I left Lime Street station early in a train up to the Big Smoke. The place in question, Porky's Studio, was situated in Shaftesbury Avenue and I discovered the proprietor, George, to be a thoroughly decent bloke. It turned out he was from Liverpool (where else?) and was a legendary figure in his own right. He had worked with just about everyone who'd ever made a record in the UK and had long been known as the top man for cutting and mastering recordings in the country.

He retired a few years after our meeting, but I remember the time we spent together very fondly. He always played the tracks loud because his hearing was shot after years of mastering and he was well known for etching little messages into the vinyl's run-out to personalize them. As with most of his work, he etched ‘A Porky Prime Cut’, while on side one he inscribed ‘Go the Whole Hog!’ and on side two I asked him to inscribe ‘Freedom now – Break loose!’

I really liked George. He intimately understood the whole magnetic vs digital sound issue that Lee and I had so often discussed. He made me realize the cut was still very much a part of the whole creative process. He was pleased I took such an interest and told me the only other guy he'd met in recent times who had wanted to be involved in a similar mastering process was one of the fellas from Cabaret Voltaire when some of his back catalogue had been making the transition from vinyl to CD. As a rule, George told me, musicians just got the master tapes and bunged ’em directly onto CD.