Roland Roadshow 1985

Musician (dreamily): "I'll have them all... vintage Fenders... Les Pauls... antique Sunburst what-do-you-call-its, when we get famous I'll have..."

Alan Townsend (appearing suddenly in an enormous cloud of ex Genesis grade dry ice): "Dreaming about guitars, are we?"

Musican (in awe): "Surely you're a man from...?"

Alan: "That's right — the Great West Road — and I'm here to help you get what you want....

Thus, as far as memory serves (and we can't all be Martina Navratilova) the script for Roland's first all-playing, all-dancing public roadshow which combined the serious business of demonstrating new lines with a full scripted revue featuring product and tuition expert Alan Townsend as an unlikely, bearded Fairy Godmother counselling a band through the trials and tribulations of the road to stardom.

The show, put on by Roland with the support of their dealers in the areas toured, was a considerable innovation in an industry where manufacturers' demos, on the rare occasions they're given at all, tend to be solemn affairs based around lifeless American Jazz-Funk sets — the product demo man's Muzak. At the Roland event there were some good tunes, there were some unbearably corny jokes, there were some extremely capable demonstrations (particularly when Mark Wood put the guitar synth through its paces) and there were important firsts, such as the public showing of Roland's new MIDI drum pads. In the London gigs we saw, the musicians and actors play to a packed auditorium and unquestionably if new musical instruments are meant to inspire more people to get creatively involved it's this kind of event that will do it. Displays shut up in music stores are not enough.

As someone said once on a sticker (and indeed gave it away with this very magazine). Keep Music Live!

A Muso Wonders...

(The first in an occasional and intensely boring series)

What have No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley, Down Under by Men At Work Since You've Been Gone by Rainbow, So Lonely by The Police, Only You by Yazoo, Don't Think Twice It's Alright by Bob Dylan, Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? and Let It be by the Beatles got in common? The same bloody riff, that's what.

For the more technically minded, each of these songs follows a I, V, Relative Minor, IV chord progression (that's C, G, A minor, F or any transpositional variation thereof). Now why is it that this pattern with its descending bass line is so popular and so memorable?

We asked a leading psychologist in the field of music and he told us that Dong's Descending Bassline Syndrome was invariably the result of a bannister fixation in early years, the absence of an effeminate brother figure and lack of peer group pressure in preventing the victim listening to dodgy records.

Are the great Rock minds slowly running out of ideas? Will anybody be able to use it again now the gaff has been blown? Who thought of it in the first place? Why wasn't it me? When will Wang Chung cotton on?

Next month: E, A, and B (and Status Quo)

That's What I SAE...

Those of you with the burning (or even slightly smouldering) desire in your heart to become one of those people that know what all the knobs do on a mixing desk, and maybe even become a professional fiddler of the faders, probably noticed an advertisement in our June issue which threatened to make your wildest dreams cometrue.

The School of Audio Engineering offered full practical studio time during a one year course, run by the largest training school in the world. And trillions (well, hundreds) of you, attracted by such seductive blandishments, wrote to the box number in the ad to find out more.

Well, here it is. At long last — a delay occasioned by problems in finding premises and the odd last-minute hitch or two — the SAE have got the wheels turning and their first course is all set to commence at the beginning of January. They've found a place to hold their tuition; it's at (Contact Details), above the premises of BAN Electromusic in fact, and only minutes from Farringdon Tube station. There will be a 16-track pro standard studio, a large control room, a mixing room, a four-track set-up and three classrooms ensconced in those salubrious spaces, which should be enough to be going on with, considering that towards the end of the year's course when the students get good they are given time in bigger studios and placed in work experience situations.

The backing for the course, and all the expertise, comes from an Australian organisation of the same name who have got studios all over the Outback and have had massive success with their courses over the last few years. We'll keep our collective editorial eyes on this one, but if it's all it is so far, being cracked up to be it'll take you from school desk to mixing desk so well, you won't even notice the inkwell's been replaced by a VU meter.

Write now!

Being a forward thinking, upwardly mobile, go ahead magazine, we're always on the lookout for young literary blood. So if you think you can write technical interviews with current bands, reviews of equipment or investigate pieces of music business in general why not drop us a line explaining why you're the next big noise in music journalism. We're not after amateur philosophers or electronic wizards but if you think you can present technical facts in an articulate and technically knowledgable style then we'd like to hear from you.

Write to Tony Horkins, Northern and Shell Building, (Contact Details).

In loving memory...

Mathew Street just off Liverpool's city centre has seen many changes. In the 50s it was little more than two rows of seven-storey warehouses, in the 60s the centre of the music world when The Cavern Club presented The Beatles, in the 70s a shrine of Beatle memorabilia and in the 80s the home of the John Lennon Memorial Society. John Lennon helped to change the attitude of a generation as well as the face of a narrow street, and in 1985 the final irony may be that at his roots nothing has changed at all.

The John Lennon Memorial Society won't actually let you in if you look scruffy.

"If you look smart and have got shoes on its Okay," I was informed.

Strange to think that if he were alive today he wouldn't even be allowed into his own club.