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.