Mellotronists

<<  Favourite mellotron moment............. The first 2 notes of In Wake of 
Poisiden by King Crimson. Anyone else agree? >>

a qualification is necessary- you would have us discuss only those mellotron 
moments on other peoples' recordings? that's going to take a while, even if 
only a few of us nominate something.... ok. I'll come back to that. 

but my favourite mellotron moment was when I got the f*cker home and working, 
and it made it's first noises after years of neglect. it was like opening the 
mummy's tomb inside a pyramid, and all these big hairy blokes jumped out 
going "aaagh!", not especially in tune, and quite cross at having been 
kidnapped and locked in this white box inside a pyramid when they were 
supposed to be at rugby practice. and then discovering that they had a string 
section with them, and a church organ. their mood(ies) improved after a lot 
of alcohol (and q-tips).

many other occasions followed, wherein a mellotron appreciator would suddenly 
be brought face-to-slanty-face with the-machine-that-makes-that-noise, 
whether it be a dutch r.m.i. fan helping us up the stairs at the october 
gallery, or that lawrence bloke from denim ("this. is. a. mellotron? oh. wow. 
can you make it sound more like a sampler?"), but all of these occasions have 
that same moment of realisation on the part of the innocent: "*that* noise 
comes out of *this* box???", especially when they see the insides. sometimes 
there's a nearby tape-recorder to point at during the explanation, but by 
this time, you've lost most of them because they've seen the expanse of wood 
that is the rest of the keyboard, and suddenly they're thinking about 
dismantled pianos- something that has a strange and different resonance for 
each of a surprising number of people.

here's the thing. nobody's ever asked me *why* I've got one. sometimes I'm 
asked how I got it, sometimes why we use it on stage when "samplers could do 
all that and more.....", but no-one's ever asked me why it lives in my house, 
without ever having been subject to the rules that govern the disposition of, 
say, fishing tackle, or anything else that girls like to banish from the 
home. it's excused all that, as though somehow it's earned the right to take 
up the space of a small sideboard, without question, because everyone's heard 
one but they're so seldom seen.

brian auger's reading of "this wheel..." was a pivotal moment for me, though- 
I'd not yet heard "court.." and the bits of moodies I'd heard were either 
horribly twee (even for an eight year old, in 1971, "ride my see-saw" was a 
sinister invitation rather than a casual drug reference) or ("nights..") not 
entirely 'tron-focused, and a bit slushy for a kid of my age.... but on 
"wheel", you can tell it's a machine, and it was captivating and dramatic. 
then we started buying albums and found the thing all over the place, and a 
definite divide- those who 'tronned (yes, genesis, barclays, traffic, moodies 
and, later, TD, hawkwind, bowie, zeppelin, aerosmith) and those who didn't 
(ELP/nice, mike oldfield, can, rush, hendrix, vangelis) which we didn't 
understand. 

duncan/400nr1098.