A Yorkshire Lass

We went over to Mansfield tonight, to see folk singer Kate Rusby, who was appearing at the town's Palace Theatre.

We've seen her a number of times now & she never disappoints. She only has a small band with her, two guitarists; one being her husband Damien O'Kane an accordion player, and someone on a double bass. I was surprised with the introduction of a Moog keyboard. But it was used sparingly by the bass player.

Gail & I love her songs and brand of humour. She always tells little stories about the songs, where she found them, their history, and how good it is to live in Yorkshire, especially Barnsley, as that's where she comes from.

She's not singing in this shot, but telling one of her stories, hence the amusing expression. She was saying that in 2017, will mark her 25th anniversary of being a professional singer. And long may she continue.

Abbadabbadoo

I had a bit of luck this week in winning a couple of tickets to see an Abba tribute band at Mansfield's Palace Theatre.

It was quite strange how I won them too. I went on the theatre's Facebook page to make a complaint about their on-line booking form, and saw the competition. It simply asked in which year did Abba win Eurovision. Being an Abba fan, I obviously knew that it was 1974. I also noticed that no one had answered, even though the posting had been up for a few hours.

The theatre was packed with people of all ages, and by about the third song, people were either on their feet dancing, or sitting down clapping and singing along. Even I was singing to some of the songs, as I knew most of the words.

The band also joked with the audience, in a cod Swedish accent. Although, like the real Benny, the pretend one didn't say that much either! Their costumes looked quite authentic. They had a live drummer, but I think they also used a backing track on some of the songs.

On the whole it was a very enjoyable evening, and probably the nearest thing to the genuine Abba that anyone will get to see, as Agnatha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Freid have no intention of every playing together again.

And It's All Yellow

A simple window display highlighting the clearance sale at the Marks & Spencer outlet store at McArthur Glen Retail Park, near Mansfield.

I always call it McArthur Park, after the song from the 1960s, that Donna Summer covered in 1978

Synthesis

The first time that I came across a synthesiser was at school in London in about 1975. It was during a music lesson, when our teacher switched on this strange looking black box with lots of flashing lights. He then played a simple tune and all sorts of weird noises came out. There was also a lot of plugs that he changed by unplugging them and putting them into other holes and some even stranger noises came out.

I was amazed about what it could do, and have been in love with such music ever since. The first musician that I got into was Jean Michel Jarre and his 1976 album Oxygene. Then came along Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield, Vangelis and Kraftwerk.

So I was excited to see this Moog Voyager synth at the studio in Mansfield yesterday. Sadly it wasn't used in the songs that were demoed by the Disco Prophets, although they do have a keyboard player in the band called Richard, who has a couple of keyboards himself, but neither of them are Moogs.

Adventures In Modern Recording

The former library in Mansfield has been turned into an arts centre and recording studio. Our favourite band The Disco Prophets were there to record some demo songs for promotional purposes. We of course were there to record the event in photographic form.

I was hoping that it would be a big open studio like the Beatles recoded in, so I could get some nice shots of the band members doing their thing. Alas it was a fairly small room with subdued lighting. But I still managed to take some shots of the band in action, although I could only hear the drums, as the guitars & keyboards were plugged straight into the recording equipment. We also watched the sound engineer/producer twiddling all these knobs and using ProTools to work on the sound