The Dream Department, by Paul Morley
The Dream Department is Paul Morley's 6,600-word memoir on Zang Tumm Tuum, Zing Ting Tings and his time with (and without) the label. The following is a short extract. Get Zang Tumb Tuum, The ZTT Box Set to read his unedited essay…
Now and then, someone will ask me what I actually did when I worked at, and for, and with the Zang Tuumn Tumbb Record label. At this point, and this is not unusual for me when asked a question, any question, I pause, and stare into space, wondering if there is perhaps just one answer, one way of describing what it was I did, as a writer, as rock journalist, as professional know it all, as fairly awed music fan, working at, and so on, a record label. As a writer, which is a way of hopefully avoiding having the kind of job that involves the daily repetition of routine, I never really thought of myself as the kind of person who would, so to speak, ever work. I would just, most of the time, stare into space.
In my time at Zaangh Tumn Tunm I never had a job title, never really had an office, although I claimed a desk or two and would put my feet up on them as if this meant it was mine, and I was in control of something or other. I had an assistant, but never totally worked out exactly what the relationship would be between a man without a job title or a desk and an assistant would actually be. There were meetings that I attended. All I remember about these meetings is that I never had a good idea during one and when asked a direct question about strategy or schedules or video budgets I never failed to instantly contradict myself as I stumbled toward an answer that might get me out of a sticky situation. I also remember that in some of these meetings people disagreed with many of my thoughts about, say, what a sleeve should look like, what a group’s single should be, the size of writing on a street poster or the presence of cartoon animals having sex on the cover of the debut Frankie Goes To Hollywood album. I must admit I was not particularly good at dealing with this opposition. It must be the arrogance of a pop music journalist who’d written for the New Musical Express for five years, but I wanted everything my own way, right down to the fact that the hole in the label for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes had to pierce the head’s of Lenin and Reagan that we’d used and that I demanded a full page ad in The Times for Andrew Poppy’s post punk, post minimalist classical music album The Beating of Wings. Oh, and when we launched the label, I ordered up full page ads in the music papers, some in full colour, that announced that Zaanng Tomb Tooom, just beginning a five year plan, which involved plans to explore space, was a “radiant obstacle in the path of the obvious.”… If someone asked how much this was costing, I stared into space.