Mellotronists

In a message dated 1/21/2005 5:42:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
punchbowl4@... writes:

> Yeah...Ken M....where is it....?
> 
> Since we have a bunch of new list members, maybe we should revive this
> project. What made it bog down anyway? You know....We could do a Rime
> Vol. 2, and this will spur on activity for a Vol. 3 closely thereafter,
> hmmm?
> 
> Vance
> 
> 

I've gone through this already, but I'll do it one more time for those who 
may have missed it, or are new to the list.

A couple of years ago, I created a website which included pictures and 
information about my home studio and mellotron related experiences (much like Ken 
Leonard's site).  At the time, my web hosting company offered huge amounts of 
file space for free, so I thought it would be a great idea to get everyone to 
submit any mellotron related tunes they created. I would upload them to my 
website for everyone to hear (Ken Leonard had showed me how to do this).  Since 
they were "originals", we wouldn't get into trouble, legally.

This quickly snowballed into a much larger project, the thought being that we 
could create a CD of the best of these tunes, everyone on the mellotronist 
list getting a vote.  People on this list offered their services in the form of 
artwork for the cover, original tunes, and one of our members even offered to 
make copies of the CD for everyone on the list (he worked in a CD production 
facility at the time).

Now, I never called this "Rime 2", but that name started going around and it 
kind of stuck.  I preferred "The Mellotron Project". This was more of an 
amateur effort (no offense intended) than Rime, tunes were submitted by people like 
me who are not necessarily professional musicians, just love the mellotron 
and have the ability to record their playing.  As people would submit things, I 
would put them on my web site for all to hear, along with the details of the 
instruments played, mellotron sounds and musicians.  The thought was that we 
would select the best and record the CD.  This was not meant to be a 
professional thing at all, and I can only think of one or two tunes which were submitted 
by a professional musician (the complete opposite of Rime).

Well, as KL put it so well, "life got in the way" for most of us.  I didn't 
receive as many submissions as I had hoped.  Many people who intended to do a 
tune (including myself) never got around to recording one.  Hey, it's not easy, 
when it comes right down to it.  We lost our CD production capability when 
our production source changed jobs.  My first web host went under, and I changed 
to another company.  Then *that* company had a dispute between the two 
owners, which lead to closing down of the company (right after I had prepaid for a 
year of service at a now pricey rate).  A third company took over the web 
hosting, but most of the time the customers were left without service.  After a 
couple of personal setbacks which soon followed, I decided to just let the 
project and the website go.  

The upside is that we did get to hear original mellotron song submissions 
from people all overf the world, at least for a while.  Someone on this list was 
just asking about the Pink Floyd mellotron?  We had a nice tune on the site 
from the current owner of that Streetly restored, ex-Pink Floyd MKII (now in 
Israel), sounding very psychadellic indeed.  Now that I think about it, I miss 
many of those tunes, like "The Cool Vibe of Asia C", which I think is going to 
be available on the upcoming Systems Theory CD, from what I hear.  Fritz's 
terrific stuff was also on there, and I know his CD is coming out soon too.  
Sundae Club is another example, same thing.  And I love Roc Burgo's stuff (anything 
new Roc?), along with many of the other submissions.  So, I guess this wasn't 
a total waste of time. Hopefully it spurred some people on to record their 
own tunes.  Maybe we can resurrect it, never say never.  I still have the 
recordings (starting to feel like Brian Wilson here).  Vance has every right to ask 
"Yeah...Ken M....where is it....?".  He had the first submission, if I recall, 
with some nice work on his Chamberlin.  The problem with doing something like 
this is that it starts out being fun, and then it turns into a situation 
where a lot of people are expecting something and it turns into work.

OK, so that's the story of "Rime 2".  I no longer have a web site (or the 
desire to maintain one), so it wouldn't be easy to resurrect it.  I hope that 
anwers any questions.

Ken M.



I think KL summed it up rather well when he said that" Life got in the way".