Archive for August, 2007
365 Days #243 - Pat Campbell - Just A Quiet Conversation (mp3s)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
MP3:
01 The Deal (3:43)
02 Giddy Up Go (3:43)
03 Mother Went A Walkin' (2:43)
04 Silent Worship (4:48)
05 Big Railroad Man (3:54)
06 Deck Of Cards (2:56)
07 The Last Goodbye (2:47)
08 It's You (3:01)
09 I Think I Can Sleep Tonight (3:12)
10 The Gun (3:30)
11 The Mission (2:53)
12 The Late Arrival (2:48)
13 The Upper Room (with Mike Mercardo and the Mike Sammes Singers) (3:32)
14 Trouble In Amen Corner (with Mike Mercardo and the Mike Sammes Singers) (2:48)
Aah Pat Campbell. I first encountered this gentle voice of Irish country when he was featured on Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show in 1977 with The Deal. Sadly not about drugs as you might think it's the mawkish story of how a father-to-be makes a 'deal' with the good Lord to take his life instead of that of his wife or his unborn child when he hears bad news in the delivery room at the city hospital. I love the way he says his wife and child mean the whole world and everything to him, and I also like the way he says of his unborn child "I caught myself a little chuckle and thought – hey, it might be an old girl." Surely he means a baby girl. If his wife gives birth to an old girl then that's some deal he made!
Amazingly this single just scraped short of the British Top 30 in 1969 and was popular enough to spawn this album the following year. Prepare yourself for more Steel pedal guitar-fuelled death rants and tear-jerkers.
Pat had been a member of Irish vocal group The Four Ramblers with Val Doonican but the group split up when Val went solo in the late 1950s. Pat later found found fame as a disc jockey on Radio Luxembourg and championed American C&W hits. These included Red Sovine's legendary trucker narrative Giddy Up Go and so impressed was Pat that, when he signed his own deal with Phil Soloman's short-lived Major Minor Records in 1968, he seems to turned himself into Ireland's answer to Red Sovine.
I love Pat's 'voices'. There the urgent, nervous one he adopts on the organ-driven It's You (probably my fave track) where he sounds like he's about to have a nervous breakdown. Then there's his 'little tyke's' voice he does on the truly nauseating (and confusing) Big Railroad Man. The Mission sees him potentially in spaghetti-western mode with tales of cowboys in San Antone, but you know as soon as he mentions "the smiling padre" that someone's gonna get a bullet in the bonce. But for me the worst track is The Last Goodbye where his wife dies in a car crash but comes back to see him one last time. This features what is possibly the worst lyric in song writing history "I didn't look up, I just nodded okay and asked her to pass me an ashtray."
The sleeve text reveals: "Pat Campbell was born in Ireland, but it might just as well have been Nashville. He's been there many times and he's welcomed as a friend by the biggest names in the world of country music. On each visit he brings a little piece of Nashville home with him, but also leaves a little of Pat Campbell there in return."
In 1968, before he made these recordings, Pat was invited to narrate a couple of the tracks on the album The Power and The Glory by label-mate keyboard player Mike Mercardo, who was better known as 'The Swinging Monk' (I kid you not!). These are more religious in tone and feature strings and gospel-pop vocals by the ubiquitous Mike Sammes Singers although strangely very little piano. I have included these two tracks here as a bonus.
- Contributed by: David Noades
Images: Just A Quiet Conversation (Cover)
Media: Album
Label: Major Minor
Catalogue: MCP5051
Credits: Produced by Tommy Scott, Musical direction by Nicky Welsh.
Date: 1970
Mixburn Vol.1: DJ Paz - Bossin’ Gets Rockin’ (MP3)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Nepheton: 808 Drum Machine VST
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Sinevibes Announces V-Synth GT Compatibility With V-Motions, V-Lectric, And V-Synth Tweakbook
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Hardway Bros Bathing Machine Mix (MP3)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007FXpansion releases GURU v1.5
Thursday, August 30th, 2007In Defense of The Defenders of The Hate
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Times are hard for Seth Putnam. His body slowly recovers from a drug induced coma which reduced him to a wheelchair. His soul can't ever possibly recover from the immense amount of hatred that he's spewed into the world. After ridiculing any and all forms of weakness in others for twenty years, Seth's train has come in: in the most beautifully ironic way possible, Seth is a completely pathetic self-parody.
Seth's drummer Nate is leaving: "Even before Seth's coma, Anal Cunt was already a mere shadow of what it once was. Honestly, Anal cunt should have broken up in 1999. To be even more frank, I think Seth needs a live-in nurse and a bedpan, not a band. By his own hand, Seth has robbed himself of middle age. He went instantly from a 36 year old drug addict to a 90 year old invalid. The spectacle and circus that involved being in Anal Cunt grows tiresome after a while."
If you know of Seth Putnam, it's probably as the vocalist for Anal Cunt, the most offensive band in the history of the world. Boys laugh at their song titles throughout middle school and occasionally listen to their music for short amounts of time. I can't blame them for disposing of AC as soon as they can grow decent facial hair, but they're wrong if they think that moral depravity is all that AC has to offer...it's only the overwhelming majority of what AC has to offer.
Do I hesitate before I place Seth Putnam up there with Iggy and GG as one of the most insane stage presences ever? Only for as long as it takes me to consider whether I mind exaggerating a bit! At any rate, insanity at this level isn't easy to comprehend. It's like wondering how bright the sun is. Anal Cunt in fact nearly became Allin's backing band in the late 80s but lived too far from the legend to actually go through with it. See what Seth was doing on stage durig his salad days circa 1988:
(Four MP3s on the flip side)
I'm also impressed/horrified by the early Breaking The Law 7". Side A features a live set that lasted for about 3 minutes followed by an argument between Seth, the audience and a girl Seth had just hit in the face with a microphone...Seth spent that night in jail. Side B is similar. After only a few minutes of "music", the crowd (including Seth) broke out into a small scale riot. One crowd member sustained a concussion, not to mention a broken jaw. Do I call this 7" nice sound-poetry? I would, but some dude yells "play freebird!" on side B - disqualified! All the gory details to accompany the sounds are available here.
I might also call their 5,643 Song EP a nice conceptual work. But I don't, mostly because Seth is a low brow degenerate. Also, I'm not really sure what conceptual art is. Nonetheless, an impressive and incomprehensible twelve minutes of grinding noise. As if one AC song weren't violent enough, try 16 at once!
Also worthwhile is the Painkiller-indebted Death's Head Quartet record.
A few months before Seth's coma, I played with AC at a dive bar in Clifton, NJ. Because my guitar amp had been stolen a few nights beforehand, I decided to ask Jeff, AC's guitarist, if I could borrow his. After wandering through the most disgusting, dusty, soggy basement imaginable, I found the band sitting on the floor around a bottle of Jack. They happily let me borrow the amp but had reached mean drunk status by their time to play. "Who here hates faggots?" and like questions got no response from the twenty people in the crowd. After a few minutes, Seth said "fuck you all" and stumbled off stage. Guess he's not interested in high art anymore...
Dave Smith Prophet 08 is Here: All Analog, All Modern Synth Shipping
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
Who says progress is bad? Synth designer Dave Smith’s Prophet ‘08 synth is a new instrument inspired by his legendary Prophet series, but there are a number of clues that indicate it’s not 1978. First, driven by Internet buzz, word-of-mouth preorders are already taking off. (DSI hasn’t yet added the Prophet ‘08 to their price list because they’re scrambling to fill the early orders.) That means, ironically, the Web generation is better able to support “boutique” synths now than even synth customers of a few years ago. Second, I expect a lot of these Prophet ’08s will happily become outboard analog gear complimenting computers. (It’s a good thing Dave Smith was a driving force behind MIDI.) Lastly, the Prophet ‘08 has some great features we take for granted now that were harder to come by in 1978.
The Prophet ‘08 is analog to the core: it boasts a 100%-analog signal path and a “sonic character” not surprisingly modeled on the classic Prophets. What’s new:
- Velocity and aftertouch: If this spoils the “vintage” experience for you, go see a doctor.)
- Mo Modulation: “Extensive modulation routing capabilities”, making the Prophet ‘08 essentially a semi-modular synth; it’ll be interesting to see what this lets programmers cook up.
- Splits and layers:Four-on-four splits and layers with separate stereo outputs for each layer.
- Arpeggiator and sequencer: Arpeggiator, gated 16 x 4 step sequencer, and LFOs. Everything is syncable, as well — thank you, MIDI.
There’s onboard MIDI (even with “Poly Chain”), and CV input, as well. On the analog side, you get 2 oscillators and 1 lovely filter per voice:
- 2 digitally controlled analog oscillators (DCOs) per voice with selectable sawtooth, triangle, saw/triangle mix, and pulse waves (with pulse-width modulation), and hard sync.
- White noise generator

I have heard some complaints about the new models: some would prefer the pitch and mod wheels next to the keyboard rather than above, though the payoff is a full five-octave keyboard in a compact space.
I have to say, I’m a sucker for the Dave Smith philosophy of “un-nostalgic” analog. But, really, who would expect anything else: Dave Smith’s earlier instruments all progressed with technology, and he continues to do so. There’s a clear resonance with the modern Moog synths, like Minimoog Voyager and Little Phatty, down to special editions with colored wheels. (Dave Smith has the much cooler red glowing wheels, which is great if you’re tired of blue.) But the Dave Smith Instruments are also unique takes on how to reinterpret analog.
Detailed specs and descriptions are on the mercifully redesigned Dave Smith site:
Dave Smith Prophet ‘08 Page
And via news you’ll find more on the limited edition, videos of Dave, and other news, as well as further reassurances that the BoomChik drum machine really is progressing:
Dave Smith Instruments News
So, who’s getting one? And anyone have smart money
analog, CV, Dave Smith, hardware, MIDI, modular, pioneers, previews, Prophet, synthesizers, synths© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments
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