Andy Lewis

-a Elka transistorised clone that was his “portable” one. My parents persuaded him to lend it to me for a few months when the band I was in got a keyboard player who didn’t have a keyboard. For several weeks we sounded like The Doors, then he got a Korg synth and we mutated into Tubeway Army.

-to set up their UK operations in Milton Keynes, such was the size of the market. Hammonds of Watford (no relation) had a massive home organ department well into the 1980s. So yeah it’s possible your friends had a Hammond in the home. My parents knew a bloke who had two. A C3 (the classic) AND -

-when i first saw them back in 1986/87. An amazing sounding thing. Single manual but instant Booker T vibes. If it had the drawbars you could make those sounds. The later transistorised ones had preset tabs that were less versatile but cheaper to buy. Hammond Organs were one of the first big firms-

They did. There was a whole range they made for the domestic market. Some had built in Leslie speakers, others needed a separate speaker. Later still, they made transistorised ones that said Hammond but sounded shite. The James Taylor Quartet used a domestic M100 with external Leslie-

We’re not talking about Enterprise Allowance or dole money either. A Studer 16 track reel to reel is gonna set you back around 20 grand minimum. By comparison, my entire ProTools rig- unlimited track count and majestic musical fidelity Messrs. Studer could only dream of, came in under 1.5k.

Bontempi yes. But they were mainly kids plastic reed organs powered by a blower. A bewildering array of home organs proliferated during the 70s. Hammond unsurprisingly led the market, but Viscount, Lowery and oriental interlopers Yamaha were also big players.

Anyway good luck to him.

Absolutely. The bloke doing it seems to be all right though he spends an awful lot of time online banging on about how brilliant old equipment is. “Look at me I just bought a 16 track reel to reel recorder! What was I thinking?! Yoinks!” etc. What *I’m* thinking is where did the money come from mate

- Do I *want* it to do well at the Eurovision? Oh yes. Oh yessss.

- Do I *like* this tune? Not exactly, it’s a load of rubbish. But it’s brilliantly executed, well crafted, boutique rubbish. If a time warp sent it back to 1985 it would absolutely rule the world. But, like the Typhoon, it’s kind of exactly what we need now. It’s a wholly British hot mess. -

In his book about British defence procurement Lions Donkeys And Dinosaurs, Lewis Page reckoned that the Eurofighter Typhoon would only be useful if a time warp sent it back to 1985. God knows what goes on in my brain, but it’s the first think i thought of when i heard this unbelievable tune-

-to its ultimate and evolved into being a music producer. Heck, I've even arranged for a bowed double bass to be on the thing I'm recording later today. I suspect I have a baggy roll-neck jumper in my suitcase too. I have become Walkin' Sam!

Hopefully I won't erase all the best takes today.

- I mention it only because I've got a set of samples of one that I'm incorporating into a thing I'm producing at the moment. I have taken my love for Paul Samwell-Smith, his on-stage awkwardness, his fondness for bass guitar, his desire to push the boundaries of what's acceptable on pop records-

-The harpsichord ended up having a bit of a renaissance in 60s pop, and prompted the development of a truly exotic beast, the Rocky Mountain Instruments Rock-Si-Chord. This was an all-electronic harpsichord soundalike. Well, sort of soundalike. It's a wonderful thing in its own right. -

-produced albums for Cat Stevens, Carly Simon, Chris DeBurgh and All About Eve among many others.
Anyway, For Your Love. Brian Auger played harpsichord. "Who in their right mind is going to buy a pop record with a harpsichord on it?" he quipped after the session. Loads of people as it turned out-

-when he accidentally erased half of the tapes recorded at The Marquee for their Five Live Yardbirds album including, as Chris Dreja recalled "all the best stuff, including I Wish You Would". Not letting this mishap put him, or the band, off, he'd end up producing a lot of their hits & later -

That's Paul Samwell-Smith on the top right of the picture, in the baggy jumper and looking like he'd rather be somewhere else. I love him. He never looked totally happy, but played bass like nobody else. He was happiest in a control room though his producing career didn't start well-

On the subject of mod/beat/folk crossovers, here are The Yardbirds practically inventing such things. Everything about this record is wonderful from Graham Gouldman (& his dad as it turns out)'s song to Paul Samwell-Smith's ambitious arrangement, from Brian Auger's harpsichord to Keith Relf's voice-

Davy Graham's Midnight Man album also contains the best version (Sorry Sandie, sorry Rufus, sorry the Stones) of Walkin' The Dog. It's the perfect mod/beat/folk crossover album.

Anyway, this is a brilliant list of incredible albums to investigate.

It’s XTC before they were XTC.

Over on Facebook, this is a pretty good representation of how this news is being received.

Labour can’t win on this issue. They need to stop trying to.

-As an aside, Thatcher was still Prime Minister in February 1990. She'd be out of office by the end of November.

-and it's the policy of the Conservative Party to see that this position is maintained". Sometimes being reminded that other people have it or feel it bleaker than you do makes you pull yourself together a bit, snap out of your moodiness, focus on what you can do to make your world better.-

Things perked up and got a lot more interesting for me musically and personally in 1990, and looking back I think that this tune was one of the catalysts for that. As Peter Cook (impersonating Harold McMillan) said, "There's always someone worse off than yourself-

-This Is How It Feels was an "indie goes mainstream" moment as important as the Stone Roses/Happy Mondays. A Second Summer Of Love comedown moment. The ground between pop, dance, indie, mainstream shifting and twisting. People started waking up to the fact that good times don't last for ever.-

As the personal disappointments of 1989 dragged on into 1990, along came a record that made me feel simultaneously worse and better. Worse, because everything about it triggered feelings of melancholy even when I was happy, but better because a band I dug were getting Radio 1 airplay & a chart hit.-

Absolutely. He's a total throbber, as I said to somebody else.

As one of those old guys, we were just making do with what we had! More luck than magic, I can assure you.

Britain leads the world in offshore wind generation, in part because of experience developing offshore oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. If this isn't energy resilience- and a great British success story for the flag enthusiasts- then what is?

Yeah, like getting the occasional free pastry because you're nice to your local barista rather than being the normal "joyless bastard"* they have to deal with
(*their words, not mine)