*Keepin' Up With Rob*
*The Newsletter of Songwriter and Musician, Rob Russell Davies*
www.robrusmusic.com
NEWS
Biggest news, must be that I’m a grandad again with baby Olivia being born last Thursday. Baby, mum and all the family are well! Rose and I are chuffed to bits!
Music wise, I’m still working on lot’s of different instrumental tracks for the production companies, but must confess to sneaking quite a few peeks at the cricket whenever possible.
Thumbs up to Paul Abraham of Leeds Music Promotions for adding a blog about me on his MySpace page. Much appreciated Paul and thanks once again for putting ‘The Tipperay Song’ on your page as well. Paul’s MySpace page is:
I’m doing my best with the social networking sights and am starting to make more of an effort with Facebook and Twitter. I’ve always used MySpace more as it’s a great platform for featuring and actually hearing the music, but must say that I’m now enjoying Facebook too. I’ve already dug loads of old friends out of the woodwork! Not sure how much of a ‘twit’ I’ll become (don’t answer that) but I’ll give it a go. Here’s all my relevant links:
And please don’t forget to visit the Tipperary Song of Peace MySpace page:
Thanks to Colin from Durban showband ‘Cheers’ for sending me the track of Wizard in Club Med / Durban back in 1982. However, the ‘old git’ comment that came with the MP3 wasn’t so appreciated!
WE’VE NEVER BEEN BACK TO THE MOON
It’s amazing to think that it’s now 40 years since man first famously stepped on the moon. To me, it’s incredible how such a thing was achievable in 69, and many political commentators will now tell you that it was mainly down Cold War pride and the East / West arm’s race. I’m always intrigued at the fact that between 69 and 72 we stuck 12 men on the moon with some flourish, and then gradually lost interest in the whole thing, even going so far as to cancel the last few Apollo missions. I suppose, historically a few things then came into play:
Mission achieved - so why bother anymore
Budget cuts - we’ve had our moment now let’s cut our losses
Vietnam - let’s fight the Cold War on Mother Earth!
The media losing interest - not much has changed there then!
In my humble opinion, it does seem a shame that things seemed to peter out as they did. As a kid who was just starting to think about the grander things that life had to offer, I was convinced that Mars wasn’t far behind, never mind space stations on the moon, commercial space travel and alien discovery. (Which reminds me... I must tell you about a pub just down the road from us sometime!).
For the record, I’d like to say that I’m not one of those that thinks the whole thing was faked. Realistically, it would probably be more difficult to fake it and cover it up than actually make the journey! So for me the moon landing’s don’t belong with the great conspiracies like JFK, Marilyn, Lady Di and ‘Who Killed Mr. Burns’. Besides, they didn’t just do it once... six different missions actually landed on the moon! And of course, the photographic evidence can’t be disputed!...
Just like actors in a box office smash, or musicians in a famous band, the astronauts involved were so busy ‘getting it right’ that they often didn’t comprehend the reaction the rest us had to what they were doing. They simply went away to work for a few days, and when they returned... found the world a different place!
This from the Times online:
‘In July 1969, soon after their return from the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were shown footage of the world’s reaction to the lunar landing. They saw the US newscaster Walter Cronkite wiping away his tears; people gathered around televisions from China to Brazil; pavements outside TV shops crammed as people watched in awe. Aldrin turned to Armstrong. "Neil," he said, "we missed the whole thing".
That comment (reminiscent of George Harrison’s complaint that the Beatles felt left out because "We were the only people who never got to see the Beatles") reveals the surprising truth about the Apollo missions: they weren’t about the Moon. They were about the Earth’
I also love this comment from Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell...the only person to have flown to the Moon twice without making a landing.
"Everything that I ever knew - my life, my loved ones, the Navy - everything, the whole world was behind my thumb."
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1975: AN ARP ODYSSEY
Have you ever bought something that you wished you hadn’t. I’m sure we all have. I’ve found that an annoyance equation you can apply is: The more you paid for it, the more you grow to despise it when it doesn’t do what you hoped or expected!
I’ve had a love/hate relationship through the years with many keyboards, computers and even a few trumpets. I still fondly remember my first piano (a Chappel), first organ (Hammond L100) and first computer (an Atari 1040ST).
There have been some amazing advances in keyboards in the last few decades, and maybe the biggest plus factor is that they’re getting smaller and lighter. When I stop to think, I can’t believe that my Dad and I used to carry a Hammond Organ and Lesley Speaker (a hug wooded box housing revolving speakers - usually heavier than the organ itself). And we’d do that just for a once-off gig like a wedding! Many a time we nearly rolled an organ, lesley or bass drum down the hill we lived on.
When I was about 17 and joining up with my first professional band, the leader of the band - Richard Pickett took me under his wing and issued me with a shopping list.
‘Right Rob... What you need is...’
An electric Piano
An Organ
Some sort of String Machine - to make orchestral string sounds
A Hohner Clavinet (especially necessary for FLAGSHIP who were very into the black / funky sound)
And some sort of synthesiser.
So I already had the Hammond organ and bought a Fender Rhodes piano (fantastic instrument), an Elka String Machine (alright for it’s time I suppose) and a Clavinet (wonderful instrument). Now for the synthesiser. Soon I was into a local music shop and casting my eyes and ears over my first mini-moog. Within an hour I’d got the hang of it, and was in love! But then... a problem. The shop only had one in... the one I was playing, and it was already sold. Worse still, there was going to be a fairly long delay for the new stock to come in.
So I went to another music shop, and there lying before me was this beast...
ARP Odyssey: Mark 1
Now it made some interesting snaps, crackles, and pops, but then so does my morning bowl of cereal. But to my 17 year old Emerson / Wakeman infected ears this thing kind of made the sounds I wanted to hear, and with some financial help from my parents, I walked out of the shop with it. I proceeded to read the manual from cover to cover and even bought a fairly thick book about it, and sat down to find my own ‘sounds’.
Very soon I started to realised the problem with all of these early synthesisers... they weren't programmable. You could spend hours finding a good sound, but once you’d got it... you couldn’t store it anywhere for later recall! So, every time you wanted to get that sound again, you had to line up all the knobs and levers to the exact same positions you had before, and hope for the best. The mini-moog, for example, had surprisingly few knobs on it and was relatively simple to use, but the ARP was quite complex for it’s relatively small size.
To their credit, the ARP company did try to help you by supplying a number of ‘cover sheets’ for the instrument. You fitted these sheets over the working area and drew little marks where the knobs and levers should go. That sort of worked OK, except when you’re on-stage with a packed dance floor... and you’re yelling at the singer...
‘Tell them a joke or something while I try to set this *%*$& thing up!’
I remember that I was always very impressed at my friend Rob from the band Wolf who could set the Odyssey up at amazing speed. I watched him one night at Club Tomorrow / Salisbury, and it always sticks in my mind how well he set the instrument up... often foreshortening Bass Player Dave Ridgeway’s legendary audience abuses.
On top of the fact that I found the it awkward to use, I also started to realise that my particular Odyssey seemed to be just plain unlucky. I was forever dropping it by mistake, breaking the plastic ends off the sliders, pulling the knobs off and spilling things on it. (Yeah I know... blame the instrument for my own clumsiness!) It’s total demise, however, began on New Year’s eve of ’77 when Wizard was at Bulawayo / Rhodesia. At the time we had a cabaret artist on with us, who liked to end his show with a skit in which he drank a whole bottle of vodka and steadily got drunker and drunker. That New Year’s eve was the last night for this cabaret artist, and in true South African / Rhodesian tradition, the band decided to play a few tricks on him. So we replaced the water in his vodka bottle with real vodka!
Of course, it was great fun to watch his face as he realised what we’d done, and that now he was going to have to go through the process of actually drinking the whole bottle. But like the true professional that he was... he improvised... and after filling a large glass with the vodka, chucked it over his shoulder towards the band! I suspect he was also out for a bit of revenge. But it wasn’t a good throw... probably in golfing terms... a bit of a slice.
Just about the whole lot came down on the ARP Odyssey. Within seconds it started to make a few strange sounds... a bit like a parrot in labour, chucked out a few wisps of blue smoke, and gave up the goat. This all happened just before the New Year came in... was that a bad omen or what! Our ‘bad luck’ continued throughout that Bulawayo contract when we later had equipment stolen from the club, had to work for a club owner who was obviously not playing with a full deck of cards, lived like tramps in pretty awful accommodation, ate food that you wouldn’t feed to your mother-in-law, and even eventually found out that part of our missing light show had been stolen by that very same club owner! Yeah... you read that right, the woman that we worked for was stealing our equipment!
In those days you couldn’t find anywhere to repair keyboards in Bulawayo, or for that matter in the whole country. Although, of course, these days you’d struggle to buy a loaf of bread there! As it happened, our drummer, was making a trip to Johannesburg, and managed to take the instrument with him for repair. I suppose the repair man did his best... but it was never the same again (keeping in mind, it wasn’t great to start with!). If I remember correctly, the main circuit board was actually cracked which made it nearly impossible to repair properly.
I kept it for a while longer, but by now it felt as though it had taken on a mind of it’s own. It started performing like it was possessed and at the time I had visions of it coming alive in the small hours of the night when the club was empty... it’s keys spinning around like Linda Blair’s neck, and it breaking into weird tuneless renditions of ‘Telstar’ by The Tornados! On stage, it would suddenly go all out of tune, or simply change sounds mid-ships. I even started to worry that it might just launch a sneak-attack on me when my hands were otherwise occupied, and break into the melody of ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’ behind my back. I don’t actually remember what I did with it when it eventually got replaced with a new much-loved programmable synth. In my imagination, I probably sprinkled a few cloves of garlic on it, said a quick prayer and drove a wooden stake through it’s circuit board heart!
SPLASHDOWN: LAST BITS:
Good friend and ex-Mayor and Councillor of Tipperary Brendan Lonergan has had a bit of a rough time of it lately, and I thought it might cheer him up if I featured one of his poems. Here, used with his permission is:
SECRET GARDEN
If I could plant a flower just like you
Constant alluring appealing and true
I wouldn't hesitate mull or dither
It would be a red rose that would never wither
Washed and cleansed by summer rains
Glistening in the shining frost from winters pains
That danced in spring's coolest breeze
Never fell like the leaves from trees
Standing proudly from stem to head
Nurtured pampered loved well fed
Like an oasis in a field of green
Your beauty seen and unseen
Striking elegant surreal sublime
Both forever in your perennial prime
Making honey from life's sadness and mistakes
It's weeds stones spades and rakes
Like viewing the richest land through the world's window still
I have loved both flowers and I always will
It's the vulnerability and frailty in you I suppose
That I see in every single red rose
BRENDAN LONERGAN 2008
And a quick funny to end off. These are actual complaints made to the Thomas Cook Holiday Company:
"The beach was too sandy."
"We bought Ray-Ban sunglasses for five euros from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."
"No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
"It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England but it only took the Americans three hours to get home."
"I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller"
"The brochure stated 'No hairdressers at the hotel.' We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"
"We had to queue outside with no air conditioning"
"I was bitten by a mosquito. No-one said they could bite."
"On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."
"We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."
Package Holiday: 2009!
Finally, If you love ‘The Sound of Music’ then please watch this, a great example of rent-a-mob!:
Thanks for reading and chat again soon.
Rob.
(Be a friend on mySpace)