Mellotronists

<<Let's let the sleeping dogs lie (-ping dogs lie) >>

poor chap only wants a mellotron player for his band, and all we can do is 
mock his hometown and quote john denver at him. no wonder the list never gets 
any bigger...... :-)

I saw the hyde park footage a few years ago when vh-1 (amongst my employers) 
covered the thirty-years-since-cotkc bash; it also resurfaced (along with sid 
smith) during the prog rock top 10, one of an interminable series of top 10 
shows (all at least 90 minutes) made for/by channel four in the uk. 
the prog one was exceptional in that it afforded the makers less than the 
usual opportunity or excuse to reuse the same tired old 1977 punk footage, 
and so there were tantalizing glimpses of the various beat club performances 
(with jamie muir) amongst some other gems and surprises. 
the hyde park 8mm was carefully overdubbed with the album track (I'd figured 
out, for vh-1, that "21st century schizoid man" was a best-fit for the 
snatches of slightly-less-fat-in-those-days-greg) while much of the remaining 
footage is either of the crowd or of the periphery of the stage area- no idea 
why. it's also been telecined twice, so that the original four or five 
minutes also appear laterally reversed on the tape that's available to 
programme makers. one can see why the publicity machine might prefer to 
remember this as their debut- the setting's a bit more impressive than.... 
where was it? guildford?

I'm hoping against hope that some enterprising individual at the production 
company will clear the legal minefield and release an enhanced and expanded 
version of this show (v/o by mark radcliffe, bill bailey the in-vision guide) 
so that us hawkwind fans can see the entire promos for "silver machine" and 
"urban guerilla", both featured fleetingly to illustrate hawkwind's 
unexpected 8th place in this faux-chart. (camel were tenth, btw, and "the 
guardian", the only sensible broadsheet the uk has left, finally got around 
to doing an obit for pete bardens yesterday.) 

there probably isn't a great deal more broadcastable footage from this era of 
any of our favourite bands, but there is a wealth of slightly sub-standard 
quality stuff available on the bootleg market; poorly transcribed US and 
european video recordings, presumably salvaged or stolen from video archives 
by, er, video engineers (ahem...). this turns up on laser disc or dvd in the 
far east. the quality's pretty rubbish by the time it's been bounced off two 
or three vhs tapes and transcoded from ntsc to pal or vice versa, but if you 
really do have to have that concert where keith emerson and his piano are 
suspended above the audience and spinning so he's playing upside down....

er.... I'll get me coat.

duncan/m400nr1098 (more bilko than klinger)