Tag Archives: music

Some Moments in Time —

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Another musical post from Jack – –

Back around 1964 my old singing partner Barbara Dickson and I shared the stage a few times with a couple of guys called ‘Robin and Clive’ (Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer). They played regularly in a club in Edinburgh – Robin singing Irish and Scottish songs and playing guitar, while Clive played banjo and sang Appalachian songs and blues. They were at the forefront of things and very, very good!

They were so good that they were signed up to make a recording. So they decided to recruit a third person and give themselves a collective name. The third member was selected after auditions were held – unheard of then in the world of folk music! The successful applicant was Mike Heron, whose previous experience was in rock groups – he had played at the notorious ‘Snakepit’ near my hometown. The name they chose was ‘The Incredible String Band.’

Their first album was a big hit and created a stir outside of the folk world. There are reports that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were influenced by them, and there’s another report that Bob Dylan said that Robin’s ‘October Song’ was “quite good” (maybe Robin didn’t know that that means very good in America).

But Clive wasn’t happy with the group’s direction, so he headed off on the ‘hippie trail’ to India and beyond.

Time to prepare for more prestigious gigs and more records. Robin and Mike recruited their girlfriends, Licorice McKechnie (yes, that was her name) and Rose Simpson. They quickly learned to play various instruments proficiently, and the band became a foursome.

The next thing was being booked for Woodstock, which didn’t go too well – – –

But they continued to tour and played many big concerts at famous venues.

I’m a big fan and always have been from their very earliest days – here they are, and it was hard to pick just one, but it has to be this: The Incredible String Band: “This Moment”

Next week, more from Jack

Revolutionary Thoughts – – –

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Jack easily makes it in time again – –

I really don’t want to write anything about Covid 19 so last week I wrote about my wee parlor guitar. This week it’s about a different and equally beloved piece of musical equipment –

phono

Many years ago I had a hankering for a wind-up gramophone (phonograph over here). So Wendy announced before one Christmas that we were going on a trip. She had done some research and found a gentleman who collected and sold ‘old technology’. He lived in a big old mansion house south of Edinburgh and he welcomed us graciously when we arrived.

The basement area was a warren of passages and side rooms that were probably originally cold storage for food etc. Each room had a different kind of ‘stuff’ – radios, TVs (including mechanical Baird Televisors), Medical equipment, telephones, scientific instruments – and on and on!

Eventually we reached the room with gramophones. Everything from old cylinder machines to 1960s Dancettes.

I had already gathered a fair collection of old 78 rpm records, everything from old Scottish traditional performers to Glenn Miller. But I wanted the kind of machine they were intended to be played on.

We chose a lovely old HMV machine and agreed a price. The gentleman then insisted on giving us a free box of needles too (I still have most of them).

For any readers not familiar with these machines – the turntable is driven by a powerful spring which is wound tight by the handle on the side. The needle picks up the sound vibrations and a diaphragm makes them audible, then feeds the sound to a horn. In my gramophone the horn is built in and opens behind two doors on the front. The doors are, effectively, the volume control. There are two levers beside the turntable, one controls the speed of rotation and the other is a brake which turns the rotation off or on. There’s no electricity involved at all.

The great thing is that my old 78s sound exactly as they should.

I often wonder about the previous owners, what they played on it and whether it had pride of place in their houses – I like to think it did, just like here!