Iain Cameron's Diary
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2010-08-04 - 7:47 a.m.

Bear played Marlene On The Wall - the rerecorded version which sounded very well. Geoff Castle of Nucleus etc linked up. I searched in vain for the Miditech website. The Coalition has issued a WP on business finance. I didnt recognise Octave One, the Theory of Everything but did Fin once again - on the mountain - also CBR.

I am more and more into the neck pick-up sound on the U2 with the treble cut - also mixing it with the bridge pu which notionally has more character. The bear played a track off the complete MD studio recordings 65-68 - I looked it up and saw it cost �70 for 6 CDs - I wonder how much new material there is? The complete live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 is only available 2nd hand for �200 - 8 discs.

Talking of Geoff Castle someone sent me this link

http://www.themovies.org.uk/backstage/misc.htm

The link is to part of the Movies' archive that Jon Cole is building up but includes a lot of Cambridge music from the period 69-72. Some of it features the late Steve Pheasant - particularly the tracks which bear his name and I think these also feature Geoff Castle on keybds who was mate of Steve's and who I believe went to the same school. Steve and I formed the band Horn in our first term. I also joined Jon Cole's band White Unicorn at about the same time. The two bands merged into Wild Oats the next year which also had R Jones from Chicago Climax Blues Band on bass- not to be confused with the R Jones from Goldsmiths who played bs in Tintagel and hosts Patteran Pages.

There are some bad live recordings of the Footlights band which Jon Cole led and which I was in - I think the year may have been 1972. It was the year Sarah Dunant was in the show - also the bloke who subsequently played Sebastian's older brother in the classic TV version of Brideshead and also Arthur Dent in the equally classic TV version of the Hitchiker's Guide. I think I actually wrote a couple of the songs for this but I may not be about to own up which they were. There's rather a lot of flute soloing on track FL9 - I think this must have been playing the audience out.

There are also sundry tunes that were written for student productions at the time. I have listened to Wild About Herself which I think stands up OK - and is nicely biting lyrically. Jon C took a first in classics and then did a PhD on ancient Greek pottery and then got offered a lecturing job at Trinity Dublin which he turned down to go on the road.

The site has a lot of Movies material on it but for my money they were never better than when they played Ronnie Scott's accompanying a then unknown Joan Armatrading. I think Sue might still have a tape from that phase done at Capital. To get a flavour of the Movies listen to Dr Hindsight's top 10

http://www.themovies.org.uk/backstage/top10.htm

I like Berlin for example esp the cold war ambience.

Dr Z says he worked out of doors in Paris. The long awaited Electric Eden is about to be published

http://www.electriceden.net/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/31/folk-music-of-people-young

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