ITR - Well I've Got To Sit More Upright I've Been Told...

Michael's Blog ~ And Why Not!

Well I've got to sit more upright I've been told. I mustn't slouch or sit in the ~C~ Shape. This way it takes the weight off of the shoulders and puts the weight in an even-distribution over my hips.

You see I sit for hours, as you can imagine, what with setting up InTouchRadio (Coming Soon) and my Clairsentiency site - Psychic Soul Man - www.psychicsoulman.com which is based on my intuitive readings for people around the world which I have done for many years going back to childhood.

Broadband issues have been holding me back and I'm raring to go – it will happen in the near future, and yes soon a wonderful Entrepreneurial Philanthropist – someone who's got the same intent as myself will appear and then You and Me and He or She will have this ship sailing, this train rolling, this spaceship flying in-between the planets with our own Planet of Choice being our base. So if you know of the right person/persons who have other people's issues in front of their own and who Really, Really, Really (Spice Girls input here I think) want to be involved in something like this then direct them this way.

You will have read that the catch phrase for InTouchRadio.net is A Co-operative Collective – Not – A Corporate Selective. Let me break this down:

A Co-operative Collective – Co-operation within the Collective (Not the Left or Right of anything Political or otherwise - just centralized Balance within) – Not A Corporate Selective – this means you can't buy your way in – you are already in – remember we are One, it is not for the Selective Few. If you consider what's gone on around the world it is the Selected Few that have ruined most things for everyone. The minority 2% ruining it for the majority 98%. (Read My Other Bloggs about Sheep).

This is Our World and We Are Responsible for it, Every One of You (including Me) – We Are Important – Without Us There Would Be None of ~ Them ~.

So sitting here with a cushion behind my back in my recently new - leather-faced all singing, all dancing Static Waltz or Rheumatic Rumba chair – and now I've realised I should have waited a little longer for a proper Studio chair, with proper lumbar support which, would have been far more appropriate than a Directors chair, and although luxurious after my other aging office chair, I'm feeling another slouch coming on and just how easy it is to perform that office-type Rheumatic Rumba.

Recently I've found it easy to fall in and out of listening to the Beatles; perhaps it's been a time of re-collecting the past and then wondering what had held me to them in the first place. I think it was the progression I found fascinating as they grew from a gigging northern band working the German circuit and knowing of the hardship that most of the bands at that time went through. Paul McCartney states that he had to use piano wires for his Hofner Violin Bass, taken from pianos at gigs when they couldn't afford new strings: I wonder what those piano players thought when they got to play those pianos!

I loved the Beatles from that very first album; although I did rate the Stones first two or three albums but then the division started as both bands moved into their own stylised musical areas. If I break that separation down I suppose the Stones were already showing an early form of Grunge and the Beatles, moving into a musical perfection albeit coming from what now might sound as an over-correct form of nice-boys Pop! History would show them or two of their members as being some of the best songwriters we have ever produced and the Rolling Stones would go on to make and continue to make their form of music well into old bones and still they're doing what is right by them and still giving their penny worth to boot.

I'm not sure when I moved between the two and chose; although it would have been an easy move with my first bands being blues based to slide into the Stones, I was really interested in Bill Wyman's unorthodox style and method of playing. Maybe I was playing too much blues and needed the switch to the Beatles with Sgt Pepper and the historical recognition by the Beach Boys. It never has been fully agreed who really influenced who with the Beach Boys Pet Sounds. The future would show both bands honouring each other. Perhaps both were trying to make their mark with such a world audience; either way for a brief snapshot in time there was this amazing musical genius coming from both sides of the Atlantic.

Brian Wilson chose the easy route sliding out of the scene (such is genius and such is wasted time but who knows what it's like to be in that place unless we're find ourselves in that position why we do the things we do, and why they're always right at the time). Fame can be as destructive as it is constructive and this can be seen right now on both sides of the Atlantic with two of today's influential girl singers both going through their own particular nightmares!

The Beatles , I choose the collective because they would never have existed without each other and of course their respective support management and record production with Brian Epstein and Sir George Martin, moved into a free-wheeling time with permissions previously never before allowed within the recording industry. The white-coated men of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and EMI-Abbey Road were push-pulled out of their antiquated rules and regulations which set every instrument by number rather than the feel of how it, the music sounded. I clearly remember the number brigade and the white coats, which gave that early Pop sterility and separation; on the other hand that was the British Pop sound and that early music I would never change, it was unique for its time.

With early Beatles came the one-offs – the engineers and producers that broke all the rules but never quite made music history's headlines. One such person was Joe Meek, an absolute genius although his orientation was unfortunately out of time in a still black and white period in a time when a man was a man, whatever that is supposed to mean. This man should have lived much longer. Check out Telstar and his other tracks with various people. He also invented an amazing optical compressor originally situated in an old tobacco tin. If you like outboard get your hands on an early Ted Fletcher (Ted was Joe Meek's engineer at that time and Ted worked on some of my and the bands I was with early material) Green-fronted units. Sadly Ted sold out the Joe Meek designs to another competitor but like the Phoenix Ted is back again with another range of units, he's based in Devon near Torquay.

When Stereo came in, a very slow process spread over a good ten years or more because few people could afford stereophonic record players, the backing music would be one side and the voice or lead or comping instrument would be in the other – have a listen to some of the early non-mono tracks and you will clearly see what I mean. The other odd thing was to have the drums completely in one or the other speaker while the voice sits in it's true centre-field place and the bass, always central sits out of place usually in the left speaker! Turn the sound down on one side and then the other and have a listen! The engineers of the time had no idea what stereo should sound like, many people even now have a preference with Mono with the voice or lead instrument ahead and then the other instruments falling to the back – I still have a chart in the studio showing all the instruments and their respective placements in the audio sound field.

When, what I feel was, true Stereo came in it was right smack in the middle of the English Progressive scene. The Beatles were heralding in that Progression with Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, White Album and Abbey Road, but by this time they were falling in and out of love with each other (apparently) and no longer touring were becoming, I feel, self-indulgent – happily I enjoyed their self-indulgency because they were ground-breaking all the time and shifting the boundaries and the mechanics of modern music and that has given the bands and musicians of then right through to today; a technology that would never have come had the Beatles evolution never occurred or perhaps, would have arrived at a much more leisurely pace with the over-heavy conservatism with a capital ~C~ that had held the music industry since the beginning of recordings that started with the Wax Cylinder at the latter end of the 19th century.

One of my favourite bands in that Progressive period has to be the Leicestershire band Family. I had recently got married in late 1969 and moved to Maidenhead in Berkshire (England) to a shared rented property (don't make that mistake – no women can share a kitchen and the arguments made for a very unhappy time…). A neighbour who was with the Royal Air Force serving in the Middle East came back with, what must have been, one of the earliest portable stereo cassette decks. It had two opening doors and a heavy-duty neck strap. I borrowed this and early one morning drove in my Mini Van to Windsor Great Park and on a misty frosty morning with the sun rising from the East and Windsor Castle's outline in the distance I put on the Portable. The heavy-duty strap around my neck I put on my latest cassette, which was Family Entertainment by Family. How I loved that freedom, no one about, just me and the music; I turned track 4 full on and shared Summer '67 with that early morning mist and empty till then silent woods, what did the local wild life think, I didn't care it was this track that summed up the 1960's Summer of Love with it's Asian/Indian feel of Sitars – Violins, Guitars – everything that 1967 was to me was now coming out of those open-door-speakers, how I remember that time, I felt as if I was part of everything and no one there to say different. How long the batteries lasted I can't recall but if I could just pop back to that moment in my life I would love to give that young me a few pointers and a few of the future Lottery numbers… but truthfully that feeling could never – ever – be bought, it was one of those very few ~ highs ~ we meet in life and that are never forgotten.

After one too many falling outs at our shared rental we moved into an 18 foot caravan beside the Thames between Windsor and Maidenhead and my music and married life took on a new aspect when my son Simon was born. Now no longer playing Bass Guitar I was now entrenched into 12-String Guitar (bass players often turn to 12-string guitar I'm told – strong hands I guess!) and Sunrise was born – a duo consisting of myself and Roy Young – a short but very productive and very early step into recording ensued. Try fitting a family and two musicians and a 3-week-old baby into 18 feet along with a 4-track using any bit of tape we could get and then recording over and over with the obvious results… I have digressed and today's Blog needs to slip and slide back to reasons why we write Blogs – are there reasons why we write Blods I ask myself!

I guess today's Blog has been about Monaural and Stereo-phonics and musical progression.

You see there's a bit of a conflict at this point because way back in 1973 we had over here in the UK what would be known as, as the Winter of Discontent. Power Cuts – Coal Miners on Strike, no power in the home or at work –the shops working under candle power. (At some time in the future remind me to tell you the story of how I and another friend went to France to buy candles in the hope of making some money and how we ended up with 8,250 candles!)

In between groups and jobs I ended up as Manager of Squire's Boutique in Slough High Street. (Slough an Industrial town formed mainly after the First World War and which became a huge melting pot of workers from all over Britain in those years that marked post 1930's Depression England. Slough, a town where everyone seemed to congregate looking for work – John Betjeman Poet-Laureate wrote: Let them drop the bombs on Slough). I'm sure many shared that sentiment, shame for me as I was born in Slough in Burlington Avenue Nursing Home after a 3-day birth that found me having to be resuscitated, thank goodness that nurse was observant! It was during this time at Squire's Boutique that I found my version Quadra-phonics or at least my version of it.

We had an antiquated system in the boutique more as an indifferent background to take away the sound of high street traffic and monotony in an end of High Street shop that was supposed to be closing down. But we changed that with a bit of inspired advertising – I digress… The Winter of Discontent meant that we only had power 3-days and the rest working under the power of the candle.

There were just two of us after I cleared out a lot of the temporary staff that had helped almost bring the shop to final closure. Ray Gamble, he was the other member of staff was now the Assistant Manager. We shared a common interest in music and we would talk about the crap sound we had in the shop and if we could make it better we would hopefully be able to bring back the buying public, and we both felt music was a good starting point.

I figured that if we had two speakers, one at either end of a long narrow shop giving a very separate stereo sound we could try adding a single or another pair in the line length. At first I put in a speaker half way between the two in summed mono – this worked very well but there was a form of anti-phase going on so I put in another speaker in-between the extreme left and right and we had this very strange effect that sounded as though the music was everywhere; wherever you walked it appeared to follow; it was around this time that The Who came out with Quadrophenia, which was so far ahead of itself it really didn't take off in the audio sense as very few people except those Audiophiles with unlimited pockets could afford the equipment.

Oh, by the way after being there for about a year the turnover was good enough for them to keep that shop going for another 15 years I was told a few years ago – not bad but there was in the end a good team, a unit working as One!

The advertising ploy I came up with was Streak Into Squires – someone had streaked (run naked) across a major cricket match in London and I liked the advertising idea of people streaking into the shop to buy. A friendly reporter on a local newspaper picked up the story after I arranged to give him a new suit, that suit paid for itself over and over again and the story made the National papers – turn over went mad, did we get recognition, no, but that was the fun of the 70's. That was then and now we can segue back to the present.

Well the cushion has started to sag, the ~C~ Shape had begun to slip into another Rheumatic Rumba and being aware has made me sit up again.

As you can appreciate music has played a major part in my life and this is another of the reasons why I am so passionate about real music from real musicians and not the de-fractured substance that record companies spin out in a web of accountancy bank-rolled statements. Everything sounds the same as the last (mostly) and actually to find a building band or musician like those bands of the sixties and seventies where you could measure their progress, rise and fall and maybe rise again like some Phoenix out of the ashes, will in all probability will never happen on such a basis again. Mores the pity but this is the modern world, the days of Instant Karma!

There is hope at one level though. The hope is that through the invention of the computer and the internet now bands and musicians can proffer their goods at a personal level, less the ego more the real people and the closer the connection, which can be a very ~ positive ~ in this negative time we've travelled through over the past 30 or more years. Perhaps we will be able to follow the bands we like as they progress and share their stories even more so than when it was in the hands of the big labels?

Time rolls round in ever decreasing circles, or it would appear to do so. Perhaps we'll fall out of time and allow the beginning to start again with a fresher feel. I do feel we need to get the music of the world onto a platform where everyone can have the choice to listen in – having the choice being the operative word. It may be that you would like to listen to some remote Russian music from the Siberian outback or from some central Australasian Aboriginal tribe. It doesn't matter where but to have the choice and to give the opportunity for whomever it is that wants their music to be heard, that's what I would like InTouchRadio.net to become.

It is not only about music but also about people. Music is usually an expression of what is happening in the life of people, hence the Black Blues – music that came from the days of slavery and oppression to the higher aspects of Rock n' Roll in happier moments; music is the end story of people.

People may not be able to express themselves in musical form – that does not preclude them from having a voice that can be heard and subject to what it is they have to say and the situation they may be in then they have the right to get those stories and situations out to the world and we in that world should have the choice to listen to or not and if necessary the choice to be able to help where we can, isn't that what the internet was put together for – to give information for us all to share and become aware of and then we truly can say We Are One. If this could become a reality then perhaps my work will be done.

We are all at a point in time when we can turn from being the Sheep to becoming the truly integrated Human Beings that we all came to the Earth to learn to become on our journey of the Soul.

©K.Michael Dixon - 3 February 2008
InTouchRadio.net (Coming Soon)
Glastonbury, England
One Race, One Voice, One World – One!