Word reached me today that Milliontown won "Album Of The Decade" on David Elliot's show on The Dividing Line. I think I owe a Giant Panda sized "THANK YOU!" to the lovely people who voted for it. Bless you both.
Seriously though, it's a lovely accolade and I'm dead chuffed. Frost and The Dividing Line have a long and happy history together largely owing to the mighty Franz Keylard who has championed the band from day 1 pretty much. And now with extra thanks to David, we're even more interconnected. It's nice to have some friends out there in Radioland. I know that Badger on Planet Rock wanted to play bits off EIMA when it came out, but was overruled by the powers that be. Rick Wakeman did manage to go through a small phase of playing Frost songs during his show on Planet Rock which was great. I should imagine the powers that be wouldn't dare tell Rick what not to play. I was also intrigued to hear that BBC 6 Music played "Toys" a couple of times last year. Quite how that happened is anyone's guess, but I'm grateful all the same.
Co-incidentally, I got an email today from a gentleman in the US who wants to talk about using a Frost song on a film he's working on. I can't say anymore than that at the moment as it's bound to go horribly wrong if I do, but a thought's a thought and right now, it's a thought that's out there. And it's an exciting thought.
In other news, I'm trying to become a man. The weekend before last, I fixed the dishwasher which was immensely butch of me, however, shortly after that I drove to Kingston dressed as a Victorian so it was only a partial victory.
This weekend I plan on delving into the world of DIY electronics. A man's soldering set for men will arrive tomorrow complete with clamps, sponge, multiple solder tips and some other solder type stuff along with 2 lithium batteries on comedy stilts and some solder braid. Armed only with some instructions I found on the internet, I shall endeavour to replace the battery in a Yamaha DX7 Mark II.
No, not that one. The other one. The one I bought yesterday in Tonbridge. The one which has turned out to have a flat battery.
Do synths have batteries I hear you cry? Well, amazingly...yes. They have little round batteries like you used to get in digital watches that help them remember things after you turn them off such as the sounds you put in them. This is very useful. Otherwise you have to make your sounds from scratch every time you turn them on.
The last machine to require that sort of thing was called a Minimoog, which is very old, very wooden and very silly. Like this -
Currently, all the sounds in the Tonbridge DX are called things like "*9*u1#uj$£))" and "#78jJ--hyR!!" when they should be called "Bell" and "Electric Piano" and most of the patches sound like a postman whistling a very high note while atop a windy cliff.
On fire.
So I figured I would be a man about it, get my soldering iron out and save myself a few quid on sending it to the menders. How hard can it be?
On the plus side, if I do accidentally burn through the motherboard or spit a full gob of red wine into it (these things do happen you know) I can relax safe in the knowledge that I've got another one to replace it with. Either way, I shall emerge from the experience with slightly larger techno cojones than before.
And probably slightly fewer DX7's.
