I've posted here several times about my love of ancient, analogue synthesizers and drum machines.

Try THIS for size. It's not quite the first ever drum machine but it's pretty close - I reckon it was the third to hit the market but it was the first one to really sell.

It's from 1959 and I want one :-)

I love the way the 'sequencer' is a revolving wheel with studs; and the tempo control is just a rod which moves the drive wheel across the sequencer wheel to vary the speed. Can't get much simpler than that.

Just come across this picture of the HJHs. How young and optimistic do they look? No idea of what they would achieve over the next 10 years.

Just been reading the notes that come with the excellent Egg Archive release of Egg's 'The Metronomical Society'. As with all the Egg/National Health/Hatfields archive releases, there are copious notes written by the band; particularly Dave Stewart and his customary dry wit.

The introduction was written by one Capt Sensible and relates that "whenever I end up with my punk chums Arthur from the Lurkers and Mark P from Sniffin Glue, we can be occasionally be heard singing 'A Visit To Newport Hospital' after a couple of beers"

Year zero eh? ;-)

Just watched Murray Lerner's film 'The Other Side Of The Mirror' from BBC4 last night - it documents Dylan's 1963 and 1965 Newport folk festival appearances.

Although it's always being raided for clips, I'd never seen the full film before and it stunned me into realising (remembering?) what an incredible artist the pre-electric Dylan was - just acoustic guitar, harp and voice

Appropriately for today, there's a song with Johnny Cash as well

Has there ever been a man who's voice, background and general demeanour suited a song as much as Levon Helm and 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"?

No reason, just pondering in the car earlier...

Ron Mael: Keyboards
Bill Wyman: Bass
Noel Gallagher : Lead

Anyone care to suggest a drummer and rhythm player who always look bored?

Just been listening to the 'Traffic' album Welcome To The Canteen. Anyone know the real story why this wasn't credited to the band? (the sleeve simply had a list of the musicians)

Just listened to the 'Goldtop' podcast; lots of interesting stuff in there for a studio rat.

If anyone is REALLY interested in how the HJHs recorded their music, can I recommend 'Recording The Beatles'. A gorgeously produced brick of a tome covering every piece of studio hardware used by the HJHs. Given EMI's predeliction for building their own kit, it covers stuff never before described. Some lovely pictures of anonymous grey tin boxes as well.

An unbelievably nerdy book to be sure but esssential for anyone interested in the serial numbers of EMI hardware :-)

I have no connection with it other than having spent hours poring over it's descriptions of precisely what *every* knob on the REDD37 mixing desk does.

http://www.recordingthebeatles.com/

Following the recent AWATS gigs and the associated thread on here, I was inspired to have a bit of a Toddathon yesterday.

I could wax lyrical for hundreds of words about his oeuvre but the one tune I haven't been able to stop singing all day is THIS one:

A catchy tune, a big singalong chorus, a ginchy little bass middle eight and a 'stuff it to the man' lyric. What's not to like?

"When I was a working man, I didn't go to a concert for some bastard to talk down to me that I should be thinking of some kid in Africa"

Brian Johnson on Bonio in the Sunday Times

Last night I was listening to a Radio 4 'Archive Hour' about Kenny Everett; much of the programme was about Radio London of blessed memory.

Anyone else of an age to remember the days before Radio 1 when 'Big L' was one of the few stations playing pop music might care to take a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archivehour/pip/r8r40/

Just been alerted to the existence of this...

http://www.mikemake.com/#72772/Charting-the-Beatles

I'd pay money for that as a book :-)

An Arena documentary, a Paul Morley-helmed review of the 'hit singles' he produced, and a history of Roxy Music.

What's all this about then? Looks veeeery inneresting.

http://alternative.artsalliancemedia.com/oilcity/

"Julien Temple's Oil City Confidential is the last film in his trilogy on British music of the 1970s. It is a prequel to his landmark films about punk figureheads the Sex Pistols in The Filth & The Fury and Joe Strummer in The Future Is Unwritten.

Rather than being standard 'rockumentaries', Julien uses the music as a prism through which he examines the social and cultural conditions of the times. The films share his characteristic cinematic language - an irreverent and anarchic style of montage of archive and fictive footage, which he pioneered in The Great Rock & Roll Swindle

The Sex Pistols' and Joe Strummer's roles are well known, but Dr Feelgood, who are the subject of Oil City Confidential, played a vital role in creating those conditions for that cultural explosion and is a story that is as yet untold.

Oil City Confidential is a film noir feature length documentary and about Dr Feelgood; it's the story of four men in cheap suits who crashed out of Canvey Island in the early '70s, sandpapered the face of rock’n’roll and left all that came before a burnt-out ruin, four estuarine John-the-Baptists to Johnny Rotten’s anti-Christ.

Cannibalizing the visual flotsam and jetsam of our society, welding into an emotionally engaging and humorous whole, Oil City Confidential sets out to explore this unique time, place and social landscape - all of which was responsible for shaping the identity of the band and which, more than any other, defined the strange cultural vacuum which existed before the coming of punk rock."

On last week's Radio 5 show, Danny Baker was insisting that Peter Gabriel is a qualified soccer referee and had one appearance for Southend reserves.

Sounds like another Candyman ruse to me...