Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

oh boy do I have some annoying news for fans of mr wilson's great opus.

a few years ago, a bunch of production-types moved from one area of mtv's
office space to another, and a considerable amount of junk was left behind after
the desk-clearing was done. this junk stayed where it was for a few weeks and
so, figuring it wouldn't be claimed ever, I grabbed up two rolls of 1/4" that
were amongst.

upon inspection, one of these turned out to be a "demo" version (or rough
mixes) of the whole "smile" set, recorded at 7-1/2ips and sent across the
atlantic in 1968 as a sneak preview of what was supposed to come out.

it was addressed to a london radio station, who quite possibly aired some of
it at the time.
I can't remember all of the track listing but I remember playing some of it
into a colleague/fan's voicemail for verification; even this, apparently, was
better quality that the boots that were already around.

"heroes & villains" was there, and a load of other titles that I recognised
from reading about this turbulent period. I clearly remember the "fire suite"
bits, though; I knew I'd be challenged as to the veracity of this if I didn't
check it out myself. it had a great deal of sound effect action including bells
and so forth....

the quality was what one would expect from a second-generation 1/4" copy of
mixes, i.e almost as good as a master and certainly better than cd.

here comes the frown part- I handed the tape to people at the BBC for
examination ("is it what I think it is?"), as I was keen that it didn't fall into the
wrong hands. I never saw it again. this would be about five years ago.

I know that there were things on this tape that perhaps don't exist anywhere
else except in the darkest corners of brian's mind.

and no, I didn't dream the whole thing.

duncan/1098