Rare And Live.

 Don't worry, I'm still alive.  

Here's some rare footage for your entertainment.  It's Strange Advance in Montreal, from their 1985 tour.  In the past a couple of clips from this have been up, but subsequently disappeared.  Now you can see a hour's worth of them in action.  I think this was also aired on MuchMusic at the time.  It's rare both because it's a mid '80s TV broadcast, and because Strange Advance toured only a couple of times.

A reunited version of the group played several gigs in 2019, but any plans they might have had to go on the road this year were obviously cut short by the pandemic.  

A Song For Mister Pence.

I know you'd prefer a flyswatter....

Edgar Froese, 1944-2015.

Tangerine Dream founder, and sole consistent member, Edgar Froese has died at 70 of a pulmonary embolism.  In memoriam here's "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" from Tangerine Dream's 1979 album Force Majeure.  That's Froese on guitar.



Appropriately I was listening to a live version of "Choronzon" when I read he died.

Take This.

If you read my last post, and it bummed you out, maybe this one will make you cheer up a bit.  Catchy and breezy, isn't it?

A Rare Bird Soars.

If you're into electronic music this might be of interest.  UK musician Dan Wilson has acquired a Crumar GDS, one of the earliest digital synthesizers to be commercially sold.  Just barely sold, since apparently only 10 were actually built.  Wilson's unit was formerly owned by Klaus Schulze, and used to record his album Dig It.  Other GDS users were Wendy Carlos, and Chris Franke of Tangerine Dream.  He's started a thread on it on Vintage Synth Explorer forums, and has very good news to report.  He's managed to get it to boot up, and it plays.  It's really cool that such a rare instrument, which probably hadn't been turned on in years, or even a couple of decades, can actually be played. 

Fair Is Fair.

Since I posted a Stones cover last night I should be fair and post a Beatles cover, shouldn't I?  And here it is, Yellow Magic Orchestra's version of "Day Tripper." 

Defeated!

I saw a headline this morning that Bob Geldof's daughter Peaches has given birth to a son, who she named Phaedra.  I snarked to myself that she named him after an old Tangerine Dream album.  Imagine my surprise when I read the associated article and found out she apparently did exactly that.  A comment ceases to be snarky if it's actually true, doesn't it?

If you're not familiar with the album, take a listen below.  It was originally released in 1974.

Personally I prefer their followup, Rubycon.

I wonder if Peaches knows that Phaedra was a figure in Greek mythology, and was a woman?  I don't think I've run into any in the flesh, but I'm pretty sure I've seen references to a few women with that name.  So she's reversing the modern trend of what were traditionally male names becoming seen as female.

Remember This Song?

If you do it means you're getting old, friend.  Frankly I'm surprised I remember it given that the Canadian TV show it was associated with debuted when I was four.

Home Made.

It's fun finding old commercials, rock videos, and TV shows on YouTube. But you can also find a lot of cool stuff people have done themselves. Above is an example by a fellow who calls himself organfairy, an original piece called "Torden over Herning." One of the things I find cool about it is that most of the sounds come from instruments most would consider toys, including '90s bottomenders from Casio's range of the era, the SA-1 and SA-3. I'm sure I annoyed a few people fooling around with one of these in a now gone Canadian Tire outlet when they were new. Don't forget to check out his other videos as well.

Today's Cassette, July 23, 2009.

One of the vehicles I drive regularly has a cassette player, so I often use it. Today's cassette was Severed Heads' Since the Accident, Nettwerk's late '80s version. The original version was released in 1983. At the time the music was still mainly tape loops and low end analog synths, with "vocal" content generally consisting of various found and manipulated voices, singing and otherwise. I suspect that despite apparent claims otherwise this album and the following City Slab Horror may have had some influence on the work of Richard James aka Aphex Twin et al.

Pulling Double Duty.

When most people hear the name John Carpenter they think of the filmmaker behind such flicks as Escape From New York and the original Halloween. But Carpenter has also been composer or co-composer of much of the music used in his movies. Above is one example that has caught my ear over the past few days, the theme to 1976's Assault On Precinct 13. To my ears it sounds fairly contemporary, probably due to its minimalist nature and the sounds used. As for the movie itself it was made for 100 thousand dollars, a budget piece even by the standards of the era. Today some movies probably spend more on the female lead's makeup than that.

I came across this clip via this thread on the Vintage Synth Explorer forum, which has more Youtube clips of Carpenter the composer in action.

The Beat Goes On.

I was putting my bed back together a bit ago after washing the mattress pad, mattress cover, and quilt today. As I did so I was listening to Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto. This was one of the first CDs I bought when I got my first CD player as a Christmas present 16 years ago. I bought it on a trip to Regina, which for some reason at the time seemed to have a good bit of Japanese pop music floating around. I stumbled across this disc in an HMV, not specifically looking for it. 16 years later it's still going strong. This is especially cool given the fears of CD rot that have been floating around at different times over the years. Thousand Knives was Ryuichi Sakamoto's first album, released in 1978 at around the time Yellow Magic Orchestra released its first album. An interesting album to pick up if you're interested in what could be done with late '70s commercial electronic music equipment.

Two New Links.

In case anyone is interested I've added a couple of new links to the link list, both blogs. First is The Daily Jazz, which as you might guess is a jazz related blog. Second we have Matrixsynth, a blog for all the synth freaks passing through.

More Dolby.

Following up my recent Thomas Dolby post I've just found out he has a blog. You can see it here. Its interesting to read about his current gear, especially his comment about buying a Fairlight CMI in '82 for 120 grand which did a lot less than what he's got now, and I bet it cost 20 times as much.

The Blue Box and the Brown Guitar

There have been at least a couple of entries on this blog that have mentioned the Roland GR300 guitar synthesizer system, much loved by Pat Metheny. Tonight I stumbled across an interesting page of various bits of GR300 miscellany. So if you're a guitar geek who likes all those '80s King Crimson, Police, and other releases full of GR300 goodness check it out. Personally I'd love to have one, but if I had the money I'd be leery of buying one, since we're talking about a 25 year old piece of equipment that used some pretty unique bits and bobs, and was made in relatively limited numbers. The cabling used in both the GR300 and its associated guitars is apparently pretty fragile.

It seems that we may see a new genre of music, synth music from cats, if this post is any indication: Matrixsynth: Kitty Goes Modular Given that cats can probably only hit a couple of keys at a time I suspect they'll do a lot of sequencing instead of real time performance.

Its always interesting the things you notice when you listen to a recording through different speakers, in a different listening position and so on. I was just listening to Tangerine Dream's "Cloudburst Flight," off the album Force Majeure, while reading and noticed for the first time drummer Klaus Krieger's bass drum patterns on that piece. In places he's playing multiple bass drum hits per bar instead of the standard hits on the 1st and 3rd beats or variations thereof. I suppose he's trying to emphasis the sequencer patterns being used or something along those lines. Krieger had gotten involved with the band on their previous album Cyclone along with vocalist/keyboardist/horn player Steve Joliffe, an album most TD fans, and Chris Franke and Edgar Froese for that matter, tend to view as a failed experiment. Krieger would not be back for the next TD album Tangram, which is kind of ironic given that they got pretty heavily into drum machines as the '80s began.

Sad news to report. Robert A. Moog has died at age 71. As previously reported here Moog was diagnosed with a brain tumour earlier this year and it was unfortunately inoperable. Chemotherapy and radiation proved unable to fight the tumour.

Here's a new word for your vocabulary: tablehooter. And what is a tablehooter, you ask? The answer can be found here. I even own one, namely a Realistic Concertmate 500, a rebadged Casio SK1.

Here's this week's random Japanese themed link, Nick Kent's synth music from Japan page. I've always found this one an interesting place to go. Mr. Kent is also a regular on yahoogroups' Yellow Magic Orchestra group.