I played a track on the jukebox. He hated them. To be fair, I think everyone in the bar hated them.

There is a retired black man who sits at the bar; sometimes drinks beer, sometimes drinks wine. He is a bit of a curmudgeon, and often he keeps to himself, his earphones on. Sometimes though, when his earphones are off, we talk. He has a great laugh, like an old car trying to start up on a cold morning. 

He loves old progressive rock. I love some of it, too. One of my favorites was the German band 'Can'; he didn't know who they were. I played a track on the jukebox. He hated them. To be fair, I think everyone in the bar hated them. The track was, like, twenty minutes long. I realized quickly I made a mistake. But the song kept going. And going. And going. Oh yes: the singer can't really sing, either. So that makes it seem longer, too.

So: he pretty much loves old British progressive rock, to be more specific. Even more, there is a unifying item that runs through the British progressive rock music he likes: the Mellotron.

You have probably heard the Mellotron, without maybe knowing exactly what it was. The flutes on the Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever'? Mellotron. The flutes on Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven'? Mellotron. Hell, the cello on Oasis' 'Wonderwall' is actually a Mellotron. So you most likely have heard it, even if you don't listen to prog rock epics about elves. Although 'Stairway to Heaven' is long and kind of elf-y, really.

The mellotron was a monster keyboard that was pretty much an analog sampler: each key played a brief tape snippet of an individual recording of a particular instrument in that note. Flutes, cellos, strings, voices: it was often used to give a symphonic sound when one didn't want the trouble -- or the expense -- of hiring a symphony.

Of course, it didn't sound exactly like a symphony.  The tape sounds could randomly distort, compress, warble, wobble, especially if multiple keys were being played. As such things often do, that became part of the Mellotron's charm.

The Curmudgeon says "Yeah - yeah! Mellotron!" He then puts his iPhone on the bar and shows me the app he has for a Mellotron simulator. It looks like the old-school keyboard, and when you press the 'keys' you pretty much get the sound of a Mellotron. A digital sampler of an analog sampler. Of course, the digital version doesn't randomly distort, compress, warble, or wobble, but I do not attempt to say this. Sometimes you sound like an idiot, going into that kind of detail.

And, anyway, that damn German Prog Song was still going on the jukebox.


<a href="https://jamesfirstandlast.blogspot.com">- james james</a> 

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