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a perky tune on a sunday morning from a very promising artist

Beyond disability

The Mellotron is a musical instrument developed in England in 1963. It consists of a piano-style keyboard with recording tapes instead of strings. Each tape has several 'voices' so you can switch from sounds. Flute, human voice are some that I recall.
When you press a key, the play head runs along the tape and you hear the sound of that note. So if the Mellotron has 36 notes, there are 36 tapes, one for each note.
Unfortunately the tapes aren't endless. You only get 8 seconds before the tape ends. At that point, you have to lift the key a second for the tape head to retract and you can play the note again.

I recall there was an issue with Mellotrons and the musicians union as the recording studios who had Mellotrons didn't need to hire real musicians every time an artist wanted to add a track where the Mellotron had that voice on the tape. Want a violin to play a short solo? Use a Mellotron. Need 10 singers in a chorus? Use a Mellotron.

Here is a demo with explanation of the inner mechanism.

Ronnie Spector co-founder of the legendary Ronettes, dead at 78.
Rest in Peace...

I started my weekend YouTube marathon on Friday. Some videos were about guitar repairs and the others were mostly music videos (like the worst cover bands) when I caught an interview with Matthew Fink aka Dr. Fink who is a multi-talented songwriter, record producer and made his fame playing keyboard synthesizers for Prince and the Revolution band joining them in 1978. He's the guy wearing surgical scrubs and a stethoscope.

It's funny, Friday, I was telling my cousin (who also a keyboardist) that around 1968-69 I was in a 3 piece band playing keyboards and the guitarist's father was in hospital isolation. He had lung cancer and not expected to live long. We were allowed to see him but had to wear hospital gowns. When leaving the hospital linen area, we stole some scrubs, masks and hats.
We often performed at parties for college med student fraternities and made a big hit coming to the stage dressed in surgical scrubs... about 9 years before Dr. Fink!

The lyric "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last" was sung by Dez Dickerson who was the lead guitarist for Prince's band on the song 1999.

I rarely go a weekend without listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. In the past few years there have been many videos of Rachel Flowers who is probably the top performer of Keith Emerson's music.

Keith ended his life by suicide in 2016 had suffered with focal dystonia, a painful crippling disease that affected his right hand. He had several surgeries, suffered from depression and had a short list of health related issues.

Prior to Keith's death, he acknowledged Rachel (on several interviews) for her accomplishments as she and other musicians have produced several ELP music videos available on YouTube.

Rachel was chosen to perform at the 2017 Keith Emerson Tribute in Birmingham, England. Most of her work was virtual during COVID-19 with other musicians and my guess it was the biggest live gig she's performed at.

It's obvious she was overwhelmed with emotion and starts to cry about a minute into the song.



Rachel who lost her eyesight as an infant, was taught piano at an early age. She is also accomplished at flute and guitar.

Blind girls do cry...

I was up early for a client meeting west of me and on the way back (heading east) I passed a private school with 'golf course grass' along the front of the property. We are getting radical changes in temperature this time of the year. Afternoons register 105F degrees in the car and 78F degrees this morning. Combined with daily rains, the humidity is very high.
The entire lawn was covered with dew that glistened in the sunlight. It appeared white like a fresh dusting of show and disappeared as the angle of the sun changed.

The song Morning Dew was covered by many. Written by Canadian singer Bonnie Dobson and released in 1962. I first heard the Jeff Beck version on his 1968 album Truth that featured Rod Stewart on vocals.

Earlier today I needed to speak to technical support of my cellphone carrier and they had me on hold for a few minutes. Usually the music is very different to what I listen to and they did play something I recognized "Drops of Jupiter" by Train.
Very cool song and great lyrics.
I pulled up a few sites that went into details explaining about the meaning of the songs metaphorical references.

Earlier this year I purchased a 2020 model car. A few days ago while going through CD's I decided to bring one along and play it while on the way to work.
Small problem... the car doesn't have a CD player!
It does have a USB port and will play MP3's. As a plus, it will play videos on the 7" display as long as the car is in park. When shifted out of park the video closes and only music can be heard.
The next step is using Windows Media Player and rip the music to the hard drive then download to a memory stick. Doing so captures the album, artist and song title on the list.
I've been able to put a bunch of CD's on to one stick which is more convenient that having CD cases in the car!

Modern solution to an old problem.