Calling all the local heroes
Jul 23 2008 By Pete Chambers
TOWARDS the end of next year, the stunning new Herbert will play host to a music exhibition that goes all the way back to the birth of rock 'n' roll.
Provisionally titled More Than Two Tones, it will tell the tale of music in Coventry and Warwickshire. It is planned to include many angles of this great scene of ours.
The team behind the project is working on ideas and concepts, all aimed to bring the whole thing to life. It promises to be spectacular, but partially reliant on what exhibits we can obtain.
This is where you, my Backbeat friends come in; I'm asking people to be part of this by contributing to the exhibition. Be you an amateur or professional musician, a player or a fan, in a band now or an artist in the past six decades, we are looking for your help.
So what are we looking for? Well, anything with a musical connection. Be it with a national, international or local connection.
* RECORDS: What would music have been without all that lovely black flat vinyl? Yes long before we had the curse of the innocuous MP3, music had a bit of a fun factor about it, even in its packaging. I for one, recall the ride home with that new LP. Delicately removing the inner sleeve from the cover, and the joy of discovering that a lyric sheet was included.
So now is the time to drag out that almost-forgotten record box, and find that special album. We are not looking for your common garden LP, EP or single. We want something that has a tale behind it. Maybe it was your band on the disc, or as a fan you met the record's artists and got it signed.
* POSTERS: Probably the most highly-priced music collectible these days. I've seen Beatles posters outselling a complete set of the Fab Four's signatures. The very essence of a poster was to promote that one-off event, then discard it. The clever ones did no such thing, and hey presto, a collectible is born.
I have a few local posters in my collection, Covaid, Blitz Kreig Zone 2020 and Attrition. You may have one from a Coventry Theatre show, or Tiffany's, or even more exciting from the Orchid Ballroom. Remember, it doesn't have to be advertising a local artist; the exhibition will focus on any music that has a connection with the area. Including acts that played the city.
* CLOTHING: This is always an exciting one, you can roughly deduce what records and posters are likely to be available. Not so with clothing. Already we have pledges of some very interesting items. Such as Paul King's famous red suit, an amazing military-style coat from Edgar Broughton, and Tom Long has offered us the chance of borrowing his blue Gino of Will Brookes tailored stage jacket he wore when he was a member of the hit Rugby band Pinkerton's Assorted Colours.
You may have an original teddy boy drape coat, or have kept hold of your stage costumes, or even some 70s platform shoes that you wore to a gig. We are looking for many types of interesting clothing - male or female.
AWARDS: An interesting one; I'm talking about gold discs and the like.
I know that we already have people such as Coventry's Mark Rattray who is happy to loan his precious Opportunity Knocks Trophy. Cov legend Hazel O'Connor has pledged the loan of gold discs and her Best Soundtrack BAFTA she got for the Breaking Glass movie. Producer Roger Lomas is on the committee, so we may even get to exhibit the Grammy award he won for his production of the Lee Perry album Jamaican ET.
* EPHEMERAL ITEMS: Literally means lasting just one day. Like posters, this section will include throwaway items that never were thrown away, such as flyers, hand-bills, postcards, business cards and ticket stubs.
* PHOTOGRAPHS: The key to any exhibition. I'm happy to have a large picture collection of local music as part of my job as a local music historian. Though many of those images have already been seen, and I'm excited by what other photographs exist out there. So now's the time to get the photo box out, and have a good look at what you may have.
* INSTRUMENTS: Grand pianos and church organs don't really fit this bill. Guitars certainly do though, and maybe an odd drum kit (or a bass drum at least). Some may have concerns at lending such precious irreplaceable items. The Herbert has assured us that, as always, all items will be stored securely and will be well looked after in gallery conditions.
* GO ON SURPRISE US: Above is a broad outline of what we are likely to see, what we really want is the public to surprise us. To offer something we had never thought of.
I have every faith in the great Coventry public and I know we are going to get at least a few items in this category.
So what happens next? OK, what we want right now is a rough description of the item (or even better a photo), please don't send anything in at this stage. Letters can be addressed to me: Pete Chambers, at the Coventry Telegraph, Corporation Street, Coventry, CV1 1FP, or via my e-mail at tencton@hotmail.com
My apologies for taking so long to do the next LTP...I have been carried away writing new songs recently, we have been busily trying to get more material ready for upcoming gigs. We have about 6 or seven new songs we're working on at the minute and its got a bit hectic!! My original plan was to do LTP weekly and I shall endeavor to keep to it from now on...
If you could be a fly on the wall at any point in time anywhere in the world what would you choose to spy on?
Look forward to your answers on this one - love Elly x
Delia Derbyshire famously arranged Ron Grainer's Dr Who theme electronically and
produced the first form of modern
dance music more than two decades before it became a popular cultural phenomenon.
In Godiva Rocks, Coventry music journalist, Pete Chambers wrote -
"Delia Derbyshire was one, if not the most important pioneers of electronic music..Delia was born in Coventry in 1937. She attended Coventry Grammar school and went on to achieve a degree at Cambridge in Mathematics and Music. A perfect combination for her chosen career. Originally rejected by Decca records in 1959 because they didn't employ women in their studios, she went on to join the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Her most famous work was arranging a Ron Grainer composition - the Theme from Dr Who. Such was her ability though, Graiger was astounded to hear what she had done with his composition, asking her 'Did I really write this?' It is of course one of the most famous theme songs in history.
Throughout her career she was to mix with the creative minds of the 60's (Brian Jones, Paul McCartney, George Martin and the great Karl Heinze Stockhausen) The 70's (Pink Floyd, John and Yoko, Jimi Hendrix). Right up to the new breed of electro artists with her influences on such forward thinking artists as Sonic Boom and the Chemical Brothers. her two most definative releases are : An Electric Storm (1969) under the name White Noise (released on Island Records, the world's first all electronic group) and BBC Radiophonic Music 1971. Delia sadly passed away in Northampton 2001 aged 64. Her legacy lives."
More recently Delia, who struggled for recognition of her talent, has at last been been celebrated in the media with the discovery of some of her lost works. On July 18th 2008 the Guardian ran this article Here claiming -
"A long-lost collection of tapes representing the legacy of the musical genius who arranged the Doctor Who theme has been rescued from irreversible decay by a team of academic musicologists."
"Her experimental work fell out of fashion following the advent of the synthesizer but, in recent years, she has enjoyed a revival of interest especially among bands like The Chemical Brothers and Portishead to whom she is a legendary figure."
The Guardian tells us that a collection of 267 tapes, correspondence and scores were found.
"The material had languished unheard for 30 years until it was passed to Manchester University’s School of Art, Histories and Culture to catalogue and preserve. The material, in poor condition, had to be played on a 1960s Studer A80 tape machine lent by the BBC’s Manchester studios before it could be digitised."
"Ms Derbyshire was also a woman of her times, clad in Biba or Mary Quant, her hair in a Vidal Sassoon bob, a fixture at the parties of Swinging London where she was known for her chaotic but exuberant love life. She worked with Brian Jones, the late member of the Rolling Stones, Yoko Ono and Jimi Hendrix and met Paul McCartney to discuss an opportunity to work on Yesterday"
"She left the BBC a disillusioned woman. She and struggled with drink and a series of unsuitable jobs, including radio
operator. At one time she married an out-of-work miner but eventually settled in the Midlands where she lived in relative obscurity and would rail, between drinks, against her lack of critical recognition."
"The composer, who always kept a book of logarithms in her back pocket, used a combination of musique concrete techniques including the tape manipulation and electronic gadgetry to create her sounds. Her favourite instrument was a green lampshade which she would strike and then manipulate the resulting sound to achieve the desired effect."
The BBC News site have uploaded examples of Delia's earlier work including a piece from the late 60's that is a proto dance music track.
BBC achive of rare Delia Derbyshire sound bites
"A hidden hoard of recordings made by the electronic music pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme has been revealed
- including a dance track 20 years ahead of its time.
Delia Derbyshire was working in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop in 1963 when she was given the score for a theme tune to a new science fiction series.
She turned those dots on a page into the swirling, shimmering Doctor Who title music - although it is the score's author, Ron Grainer, who is credited as the composer
Most unexpected of all, however, is a piece of music that sounds like a contemporary dance track which was recorded, it is believed, in the late sixties." Here is a direct link to the dance track - Delia's Dance Track from the late 60's
From this biography site Delia Derbyshire Bio we read - "she created by
recording the individual notes onto bits of tape and then assembling the song by hand. On hearing the finished piece, Grainer asked: "Did I really write this?" "Most of it," Delia replied. Yet despite Grainer's
In 1966 she formed the group Unit Delta Plus with Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinovieff. Though the group existed only for a year, they staged some of the earliest concerts consisting entirely of electronic and tape music. Famously, the group performed at the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave in 1967 at the Chalk Farm roadhouse in London, a four-day electronic music event which featured Paul McCartney's sound collage Carnival of Light (now lost in a vault somewhere).
In 1968 David Vorhaus enlisted Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson (also at the Radiophonic Workshop) for his psychedelic electronic music project White Noise, releasing the seminal album An Electric Storm in 1969."
From her Obituary in the Guardian -
"Among her outstanding television work, one of her favourites was composed for a documentary for The World About
Us on the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert. It still haunts me. She used her own voice for the sound of the hooves, cut up into an obbligato rhythm, and she added a thin, high electronic sound using virtually all the filters and oscillators in the workshop.
"My most beautiful sound at the time was a tatty green BBC lampshade," she recalled. "It was the wrong colour, but it had a beautiful ringing sound to it. I hit the lampshade, recorded that, faded it up into the ringing part without the percussive start.
"I analysed the sound into all of its partials and frequencies, and took the 12 strongest, and reconstructed the sound on the workshop's famous 12 oscillators to give a whooshing sound. So the camels rode off into the sunset with my voice in their hooves and a green lampshade on their backs."
Link to her album - Electrosonic
by Delia, Brian Hodgson, Don Harper - Glo-Spot
And a review
Review
ALBUM OF THE WEEK- Delia Derbyshire/ Brian Hodgson/ Don Harper- 'Electrosonic' LP
Something a bit special for those of you that care about the evolution of music. The force that is electricity revolutionised the ways that sound could be produced and there were many pioneers. Among these were the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop who were instrumental in creating sounds that never existed. Sounds from other worlds, planets, time and space. Among the equipment used to produce these strange futuristic sounds were modular synthesisers. Huge things with cables and twiddly knobs everywhere. Basically if you dig this kind of early synth stuff then 'Electrosonic' is an essential piece of musical history that deserves a place in your collection. The music is composed by some relatively unknown colleagues of Delia Derbyshire (The White Noise, BBCRO) nameley Harper/ Russe/ St. George which we're guessing are pseudonyms for Delia Derbyshire/ Brian Hodgson/ Don Harper. This was previously only issued by KPM in 1972 as on obscure library record. If you enjoyed the 'Tomorrow People' record on Trunk or like Pauline Oliveros' early work then I suspect you'll be wanting this gorgeous chunk of extremely limited green vinyl released on Scottish label Glo-Spot. I'm not even going to attempt to describe the sounds on here. Light years ahead of their time. Ace.- Ant x
Andrew Wagner's tribute -
Andrew Wagner's tribute and pop art painting
http://www.adrianwagner.com/awgalleryPopArtGallery.html
Delia was a guide and an inspriation to me in all the many years I knew her and I miss her more than I can possibly express. I met her at the age of 18 years and she took me in hand and pointed me at many directions in Electronic Music. She was a true genius and her love and passion infected everyone who knew her. This is a very special painting of her and, I hope, reflects her many dimensions in the prime of her creativity. (She his pop art portrait of her on his site).
Delia Derbyshire in the Scotsman
"Drew Mulholland, a Glasgow-based composer and musician who got to know Derbyshire in the last five years of her life. "She was a hero, a pioneer," he says. "She was a completely unique, one-off composer. Her stuff sounds ahead of its time even now, never mind in 1965. When you realise she was just beavering away at the BBC in Maida Vale with the most basic equipment, it is amazing."
Susan Mansfield
"WHEN THE DR WHO THEME MUSIC beamed out into the living rooms of Britain for the first time, in 1963, it began a
new era in sound. The unearthly whines, throbs and howls seemed to come from the future. In a way, they did. The great British public was getting its first taste of electronic music.
While the theme went on to become one of the most recognised in TV history, Delia Derbyshire, who created the eerie futuristic soundtrack, is virtually unknown. Yet she was one of the pioneers of electronic music in Britain. Among Derbyshire many credits is the music for a film by Yoko Ono.
Now the fascinating, often turbulent, life and tragic death of Derbyshire will be brought to a wider audience for the first time in Standing Wave: Delia Derbyshire in the 1960s, a theatre production being developed at the Tron in Glasgow by Reeling & Writhing Theatre Company, with a script by Nicola McCartney. Each performance will be followed by a programme of new electronic music composed in Derbyshire memory by Scottish contemporary composers.
Derbyshire was born into a working-class Catholic family in Coventry in 1937. She would later say that growing up to the sounds of air-raid sirens and the clatter of clogs on cobbles first awakened her lifelong fascination with sound. She studied piano to performance level and graduated in mathematics and music from Girton College, Cambridge.
She excelled, demonstrating an instinctive grasp of sound which enabled her to find extracts of orchestral music simply by studying the grooves in an LP. As soon as she could, she sought an attachment at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, created in 1958 to supply music and sound made with the day "new technology". Although the secondment was for a maximum of three months, Derbyshire stayed for ten years.
..........................
Link to the Radiophonic Workshop with Vid
Yes, its true. We are playing a festival. How very exciting!!
Greenbelt Festival is a Christian music and arts festival - established in 1973 and first held in 1974, now in its 33rd year, and, at the last festival, attracted around 19,000 festival-goers. It starts on Friday 22nd August and goes through to Monday 25th August 2008. It's location - Cheltenham Racecourse, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Hurrah!
Tickets can be found here:
http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/shop/tickets/
We have been booked to play at 19.40pm on the Underground Stage, on Saturday evening. A great slot, I'm sure you'll agree. Headliners include Jose Gonzalez, Seth Lakeman, and Emmanuel Jal, and This Morning Call (in my head, not in reality).
Although I'm mostly excited about seeing my MySpace friends, a band called Elliot Jack, who I really rate, and like me enjoy watching the odd episode of DrWho, so no doubt we'll have a nice chat about that as well.
You can find out more about the festival here: http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/lineup/
You can also check out our new song "The Observatory" at our myspace page here: www.myspace.com/thismorningcall (which our VOX profile refuses to upload for some reason. Those of you with good memories will know I had this problem some months back. But don't let that put you off listening to some new music....just change websites!!)
Here's the press release:
"Following rave reviews from the likes of Channel 4, XFM and Channel M, underground Mancunian pop artists “This Morning Call” bring their melodic yet experimental blend of rock and electronica to Greenbelt 2008. Following on from successful recent one off shows at the London Troubadour, Manchester PRIDE and the Hard Rock café, their off the wall collection of darkly uplifting tunes has been described by some as an experience similar to watching “portishead on anti-depressants”. Ben Heyworth’s soft rock vocals superbly compliment ambient landscapes, the odd glitchy beat and beautiful piano driven ballads, lyrically painting emotional landscapes and giving classic pop sensibilities a kick into the 21st Century.
Formed in Manchester in 2007, this ongoing studio project turned live band can be compared to the likes of The Postal Service, Elbow, Coldplay and even Goldfrapp with whom they undoubtedly share a maverick streak and capacity to surprise. Indeed, recent recordings have seen them return to their indie roots, producing uptempo guitar driven rock and top ten friendly Mancunian anthems. Undoubtedly ones to watch, catch “This Morning Call” live on the Underground Stage at 19.40pm on Saturday."
Here's a gratuitous picture, I'm doing something strange with my hands again:
Anyone who has been to the last few gigs will have noticed that Molloy are now a 4-piece. We have parted company with Jacqz, who is working on some new things, and we wish her well!
On the gig front, Molloy are one of the 9
bands selected to play the PRS New Music Stage at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
on 10th August, and we will be playing Broccoli's Pull up
the Roots just before that on 7th August. It's at The Old Queens Head, Islington
and it's FREE entry!
I think I put the security dongle for Cubase in a safe place. Too safe a place that is, as I cannot remember where it is..... Doh!
Yay! all moved and back on Vox!
So we have just moved house and now have a studio big enough to have all musical equipment connected permanently. Maybe this will be the needed motivation to stop my terrible procrastination and actually do something creative.....
1st step is that I remembered the URL for Vox.com....
Things are a changing...
There is lots going on behind the scenes and some major changes are imminent.
Watch this space!
MBB x
Hi there music people
My Groups
-
Indie Pop Updated: 15 minutes ago
-
A & R Updated: 37 minutes ago
-
The Spotlight... Updated: 1 hour ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
Links from my Friends
Examples of my songwriting
This live jam was recorded upstairs at the Sir Colin Camp...
Phil Knapper 1952-2000 This page is a tribute to my older...