Fairlight-CMI

Hi All. As for the LA Fairlight get-together, it all went swimmingly well although I had very control of what went on! Fundamentally, Mark Sheldon, a "Fairlight friend" set up the use of his place of work, the LA Recording School. As part of the deal, he invited a bunch of his students, and I invited some Fairlight chums from this list... so we had about 20-30 in total..

The morning after spending the best part of a day travelling from New York, I got to work fixing up a CMI III that Mark had, to use in the show. He bought it as a bunch of bits off Craigslist, so I had to make a working system from 2 mainframes, 3 music keyboards, an unknown Ebay monitor, and some bits that I had brought from Australia. Working in Mark's garden, I got what was Stewart Copeland's system working, after not being turned on for about 20 years. Shows just how well they were made ...

So, after working all day, I had about 40 minutes rest, then gave a "show". It was videoed, and I had to sign a release, so the video is the property of the school. I gave a rambling discourse on the history, evolution, background, of the Fairlight story, with a bit of my history thrown in. I peppered the talk with projected pictures from my laptop, and we played selected music tracks via streaming audio.

We had a Q&A after, and it was interesting talking to young students learning in a whole new world, as well as some amusing anecdotes from some other older puffins. Some of the chaps from Hans's studio, Remote Control, were there, and it was great to see others I'd communicated with, but never met.

Afterwards most of the students thanked me and left, leaving the rest of us old puffins to go and have a few (in my case well deserved) beers..

You can get an idea of my style of delivery by watching the first five minutes of a film I co-wrote and acted in, shot on location in Tibet. It's called the Dalai Lama's Cat, and it can be found at: http://boswellgroup.com.au/the-dalai-lamas-cat/

Regards from San Francisco, Peter Wielk