Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

<< A little bit of my history with Mark II #123 and M400 #1285.... >>

phew! anyone else agog? les, where ∗have∗ you been hiding? how did you
stumble across us? are you still in touch with frank levi III? how long did
he work for the caped arsonist? and does anyone know if the mellotron janitor
is still with us in tokyo?

so I went to see 21csb last night; no 'tron, just some rather smooth-sounding
samples and some terrific playing by all on other instruments.
(kevin ayers supported; a great shame he didn't have his shit together
because his voice is still wonderful. guitars out of tune, uninvolved
sidemen... under-rehearsed. I wanted to shout "where's that oldfield kid when
you need him?" but I wasn't drunk enough. I think kev would've laughed).

never thought I'd see that lot together on stage this side of st peter's
gate.... the original pieces were hard acts to follow, and this line-up
(giles, giles, mcdonald, mel collins and jakko out of level 42) dealt with
the added complexity of also tackling material by several line-ups they'd
almost nowt to do with, altogether quite admirably.
I thought catfood was taken a bit too unslinkily, but that was all. they
stayed away from anything wetton-or-later, probably recognising this as the
beginning of fripp's total ownership of the brand, and filled the set out
nicely with GG&F and other non-crimson pieces, to about 40%.

and of course, peter giles never (officially) played bass with crimson, and
he had to deal with forging continuity across three purveyors of the plunk
(ranging in ability from lake to burrell, the latter taught his parts parrot
fashion by his boss), while his brother michael had a similar job with his
two immediate successors. interesting how much of his style turned up in
bruford's playing, especially the bits that make you laugh or say "he ∗can't∗
do that there, surely?", though giles didn't attempt anything too elaborate
with the parts written by/for wallace and mccullough.

bruford was a jazz drummer before crimson, really.... he didn't truly d
iscover the joys of violently clouting summat until he had to compete with
wetton and muir, chris squire being an altogether more cerebral rhythm-mate
and requiring of bruford only that the latter develop his
"god-almighty-what-was-that?" rimshot sound in order to be heard above ∗that∗
rickenbacker. and he hates mellotrons. so it's unlikely but....
....it'd be great if he and wetton hooked up with david cross and jaime muir
and found another guitarist for a quick run-through of the 72-74 sets. they
could call themselves "the great deceivers" or "bobless and loudly back" or
"one more fred nightmare" or "frippture" or..... "guitar lessons for
toyah"..... maybe fripp would move on then, and stop interfering with his old
tunes. the "american" retread of 21csm got a reconstruKCted airing, one
sensed at the time, because it was being used in a car commercial, and I've
successfully blotted out the high-tech horrors of the rest of the hour I
endured at that shepherd's bush show.

in the world of bob, 21csb are probably some sort of tribute band. for us,
they were crimson sans the sombre, camera-shy and moody midi-fripp, and as
much of an improvement over the construKCtion tosh as the waters-free-floyd
are over the version with the
sings-in-monotone-at-the-top-of-his-range-trying-to-sound-significant bassist
who dumped syd in a way that makes jagger and richard's treatment of jones
look friendly and patient.
("yeah, what ∗can∗ you play, brian?")

so anyway. damn them for not being arsed with a real 'tron- it's the only
thing they got wrong.
what's the story, martin? they could've had mine and andy's from just up the
road, both recently fed and watered by youse brummies. and we've established
that there are machines in japan in good shape for later in the tour.

anyway back at the venue- even the sbc ban on bands having their own
merchandise outlets (and meanwhile quite happily flogging their own
"classical" compilations, while the promoter was allowed to knock out
t-shirts) didn't put them off: "we'll see you all out the back in 10 minutes
for signin' an' that, and mel's got some old lindisfarne cd's to flog" or
something like that. and they did, forcing sbc staff to find a wallpaper
pasting table (eventually) for what few cd's remained, all this practically
under the waterloo bridge. top notch.

and there was a bloke giving away free tabs (he said). no I didn't neck one.
and sid was there, he of crimso-tome, and lord stevie hackett, recently on
the same stage his-self on fripp-stool w/ fripp-axe and almost
fripply-rigid-behaviour while evelyn glennie ran about the stage barefoot
hitting things with extreme precision and melodiousness. for the contracted
hour, improvising their homework..... I'm guessing that hank marvin's
lovechild was seated discreetly away from us proles last night, but he
sauntered velvetly amongst us while kev's guitarist should have been doing
pre-flight checks.

but so anyway, next in the quite-astonishing run of half-decent gigs in the
smoke this year (and remember I've also survived bruford+copeland and jeff
beck+roger waters+white stripes, aswell as television and a terrific sonic
youth) is mad keith, making motor-bike noises with the big moog aswell as the
hammonds. the band that weren't good enough first time round will blinkily,
jacksonlee and (hopefully) o'listlessly attempt tarkus amongst (one would
hope) some of their own hits.
it would've been worth their trying for jakko but I think 21csb are off to
japan soon. me and steve'll be in the choir loft, somewhere over where the
back of the moog will be, hopefully, so's to avoid the very necessary knife
chucking that, if he's bringing real leslies (and he will) could well have
someone's eye out.
it's like a long dream, all this. still to come are sparks (psst! guys! want
to borrow a 'tron?), mountain and hawkwind again. and progwest. yikes!

duncan/radio massacre international/400nr1098 [feeling a bit left out,
especially since the salley/streetly super-modern-classic tapeset is going to
california sans it's white angular body-armour.]

p.s. 'pon pre-amps: I did something to 1098's eq when we first acquired the
enormous cobweb from argents and found a keyboard inside. this tampering was
on account of a previously-documented mildew problem later cured with meths
and cotton wool on martinge's advice. sadly, the tapes were too far gone to
recover fully, though there was a marked improvement. happily, the mankiness
led to our discovery of half-speed-mode (long story) ∗and∗ we now have new
copies, amongst many other fab tapes. and so now we have to run normal speed
notes with the tone at half-way-round. I think john gave me a schematic once-
I'll check what I did but it was about an extra 6dB at 8kHz, enough to get
wallpaper off using the oboe.