Another Month In & Musical Geekiness

Wow again I am surprised that a month has gone by so quickly and in a few days my parents aunt/uncle and Mikey Lavilla will be here in London. And then even more fun continues. Somehow I am going to crack down on all the work before visitors arrive (God knows how) and in all of this I am going on an epic walk through London again. I hit the West End and Westminster last time. Now I am going to head east. We'll see where fate and fortune bring me.

This past Monday, I had an extra long Radio show because the DJ before me asked me to fill in for him: of course I obliged. Jess I think summed up the spirit of my show best: "'It's about mud killing people in a medieval totalitarian society...but I'm not really sure' is what I heard when I tuned into your show. You achieve nerd status more thoroughly than I can ever hope to." Yes, I got really pretentious doing a 2 hour long show focusing on progressive rock. Oops!

But this coming Monday will be a good show: I have a special theme planned that I think people will like...this may even be one of my more accessible shows for the unwashed masses!

To add to my musical nerdiness, I would like to talk about some discoveries I made. First, the band called Tangerine Dream: amazing ambient/electronic music from the 70s/80s. Really, this is some great stuff. People ask me why I have so much music and keep constantly trawling for more. Tangerine Dream and a conversation I had with a friend in NYC sum it up the best. What if there was the perfect song out there, but you never found? Some of the stuff I have found and loved, if I hadn't been adventurous I would have never come across. There are so many great diamonds in the rough (some from stuff even out of print on CD!!) that I could fill up pages. So my search continues and I find music like Tangerine Dream that blows my mind.

Another musical discovery, which may give a hint for the theme of the show this Monday. I always said my favorite rock instrument is the mellotron (want to know what songs contain it?) but now I found something awesome: the first sampler/synthesizer known as the Fairlight CMI. Not cheap (it cost £25,000 when first realized in 1980) it really was hard to come by. But musicians like Peter Gabriel (Shock the Monkey was made from 60 different pieces strung together on the Farilight [Download here and make a free log in name in order to remix "Shock the Monkey" yourself!) and Tears for Fears and producers like Trevor Horn and Geoffrey Downes (of The Buggles and "Video Killed The Radio Star" fame) made it very very popular. It was very unique in that it had a light wand and DOS computer screen on which, the you could draw the sound waves and the decays of the sounds. It also had a massive (at the time) sample library. Here are some samples that you may recognize hearing in songs. And of course songs, which once you realize were made with the Fairlight CMI, you will never forget its distinctive sound.

So yes, thank you for taking my musical odyssey detour. See you next blog post!