Saturday 21 March 2015
This article is taken from a story I wrote ages ago called "Remembering the Eighties". The 80's story was originally commissioned by a website called "Metal Godz". The site is long gone and my eighties article remains unfinished and unpublished. [caption id="attachment_792" align="alignright" width="300"]
Click to enlarge.[/caption] During all the recording sessions for Neat Records we had the assistance of Conrad Lant. Conrad was a good tape op and got on well with everyone. He was always going on about his own band. It seemed that they saved up for about 3 months until they could afford enough pyrotechnics to blow up half a city and then they had a major blow out and had to save up to do another show. Conrad said very little about the music, it was mostly about the explosions. One day he informed me that the bass player had quit and he was being called upon to play bass. A gig was imminent so I loaned him my Gibson EB3 I still had from my own early career. Conrad could barely contain himself seeing all these bands make recordings. He wanted his band committed to tape too. We had a slack day coming up so I relented and said he could bring his band in during down-time. Again I loaned him the bass. I produced three tracks with them but the only title I remember was "In League With Satan". I taught t he guys a musical trick sometimes called "The Devil". Theoretically known as the "tri tone" it is a very discordant combination of two notes and I thought it would be most effective in their music. Say you were playing a G, the tri tone from that would be C#. At high volume it sounded horrible and they loved it. I had no idea these tracks would come out as a single, I just produced it as a favour. Now Conrad was convinced he was on the way to mega stardom and in need of a bass so I let him talk me into selling him my EB3. I explained the history of the instrument and made him promise it was going to a good home. The next time I saw my old bass it had holes drilled in it and an upside down crucifix nailed crudely to it. My bass was now a mess and Conrad had become Chronos!
Click to enlarge.[/caption] During all the recording sessions for Neat Records we had the assistance of Conrad Lant. Conrad was a good tape op and got on well with everyone. He was always going on about his own band. It seemed that they saved up for about 3 months until they could afford enough pyrotechnics to blow up half a city and then they had a major blow out and had to save up to do another show. Conrad said very little about the music, it was mostly about the explosions. One day he informed me that the bass player had quit and he was being called upon to play bass. A gig was imminent so I loaned him my Gibson EB3 I still had from my own early career. Conrad could barely contain himself seeing all these bands make recordings. He wanted his band committed to tape too. We had a slack day coming up so I relented and said he could bring his band in during down-time. Again I loaned him the bass. I produced three tracks with them but the only title I remember was "In League With Satan". I taught t he guys a musical trick sometimes called "The Devil". Theoretically known as the "tri tone" it is a very discordant combination of two notes and I thought it would be most effective in their music. Say you were playing a G, the tri tone from that would be C#. At high volume it sounded horrible and they loved it. I had no idea these tracks would come out as a single, I just produced it as a favour. Now Conrad was convinced he was on the way to mega stardom and in need of a bass so I let him talk me into selling him my EB3. I explained the history of the instrument and made him promise it was going to a good home. The next time I saw my old bass it had holes drilled in it and an upside down crucifix nailed crudely to it. My bass was now a mess and Conrad had become Chronos! 
I wrote Lonely at The Top for the Tygers of Pan Tang for their 3rd album "The Cage" back in 1982. They were already planning to record my song "Paris By Air" but their chief songwriter, John Sykes had just quit the band and strong songs were in short supply. I went round to their management office which was above a Carpet shop in Whitley Bay and played this song to their manager (My brother Graham actually). Tom Noble may also have been present. All I had was an acoustic guitar so I demonstrated the song with much arm twirling, foot stomping and shouted "kabooms". They loved it and said "go ahead and make a demo" - which I did, and the song made the album. What I didn't realise until just now (see pic) was that the song also came out as a single. To be honest in 1982 things went ballistic with my songwriting and I would have had a hard time keeping track of where any of my songs were.
Monday 23 February 2015
Sorry to bother you with tests but it seems my Wordpress postings do get triggered to Google + via the Jeptack sharing plugin. However the title is not included and it seems a somewhat random image from my blog gets posted. What happens if I purposely add an image to this post? Sunday 15 February 2015
I’ve been developing some new digital workshops lately http://bit.ly/embdig15 My process work is all in Dropbox but I share the guide docs with participants in Google Drive as they all get a login and password in the Workshops. I had a mild panic when my entire process folder representing several years of work disappeared from Dropbox. I say “mild” because this often happens in Dropbox and you find your errant folder lurking somewhere you never intended it to be.
So, I figured it was time for some backup failsafes. I looked around for ways that I might auto backup my Dropbox to Google Drive. I found a few solutions but none were quite right and then I hit on the simplest solution of all. I installed my Google Drive inside my dropbox. I then moved the folder containing all this work inside the Google Drive meaning it was both in in G Drive and also in Dropbox. Each file is a unique instance but exists within BOTH drives at the same time and is therefore synched.
Some people have commented that this takes a little getting your head around. I’ve posted a diagrammatic image below which I shall annotate. I hope you find this interesting, at best it’s just a note to myself about the experiment. Now I have a better working method for workshops I mentioned earlier and what I’ve learned here could well end up in this specific workshop http://bit.ly/embdig0327
Resources.
Insync: https://www.insynchq.com/ for Running More Than One Google Drive Account.I’ve not tried this yet but it looks interesting.
Cloud HQ https://www.cloudhq.net this is really good and I may come back to it. It synchronises your various cloud accounts but I struggled with clarity about what the “free” account provided and the leap to premium was too steep and too soon.
MultCloud: /www.multcloud.com - I like this and it’s free. It will read your various cloud stores and then you can move files between them. You have to physically initiate this though there is no automated synchronisation going on.
Above are my Dropbox and Google Drive respectively. As you can see my G Drive sits inside my dropbox. My working directory is [2] where I develop the workshops. This sits both withing Dropbox AND G Drive. I work on the files in D Box but they're backed up in G Drive. I copy files for participants to [1] which they can access from shared folders online in Google Docs (Drive)
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