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Your favourite Mellotron performances
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Andfurthermoreagain
Andfurthermoreagain
696 posts

Edited Aug 20, 2012, 10:10
Re: Your favourite Mellotron performances
Aug 20, 2012, 10:08
Oooh, now you're talking my language. In no particular order...

1. 2,000 Light Years From Home/We Love You/Citadel - The Rolling Stones (Brian Jones); rather than use the Mellotron as a simple string embellishment, Jones played it as a full on sonic assault weapon with swirling arabesques, eerie space age soundscapes and overdriven demonic mayhem.

2. Red Chair Fade Away/Horizontal/Every Christian Lionhearted Man Will Show You - The Bee Gees (Maurice Gibb); multi-instrumental wunderkid Maurice adds another (tape looped) string to his bow here with some nice pitch wheel on Red Chair and unearthly atmospherics on the other two tunes.

3. Legend Of A Mind - The Moody Blues (Mike Pinder); hard to single out a particular performance from former Streetly Electronics employee Pinder (giving him a massive advantage over everyone else) but this is a 'Tron tour de force!

4. Have You Seen Jackie/Collideoscop - The Dukes Of Stratosphear (Andy Partridge/Dave Gregory); The Dukes may have been tongue in cheek but Partridge took his 'Tron work very seriously.

5. Don't Take Roots/Greedhead Detector - Julian Cope; like Brian Jones the Melltron often becomes a seismic third eye eruption in the hands of long time 'Tron-fan Cope.

6. Hung Up On A Dream/Changes - The Zombies (Rod Argent); its not all arabesques and psychedelic mayhem. Sometimes the Mellotron could be used simply to make already beautiful songs even more so.

7. Tomorrow Never Knows/Strawberry Fields Forever/Flying - The Beatles (John Lennon/Paul McCartney); they might not have been the first (Mike Pinder & Graham Bond can lay claim to this) but The Beatles introduced the idiosyncratic sounds of the Mellotron to a wider audience and the songs here are inseperable from it.

8. Space Oddity - David Bowie (Rick Wakeman); ground control to Major 'Tron. Yes! (hur hur)

9. A House For Everyone/Hole In My Shoe - Traffic (Dave Mason); they already had one keyboard genius in Steve Winwood so it took occasional guitarist Dave Mason to counter Stevie's soul tendancies with strange toy-town 'Tron parts.

10. Badhead - Blur (Damon Albarn); a bit of a curveball but here simply because despite their use of Vintage Keys samples for the retro keyboard and organ parts throughout Parklife they actually made the effort to use a real Mellotron on this track - so 10/10 'Tron dedication just for that. There's also supposedly a 'Tron on He Thought Of Cars (The Great Escape). It sounds like it but could be a sample this time.
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