BLABBER welcomes you and your tribe to One Two Testing. Sit with us a' while beneath the tent of friendship while bejewelled wenches bring you morsels of fact and fascination. F'rinstance. PET SOUNDS, know for sure which is the truly cool animal or animoggy to share your hip musician lifestyle (p8) TUNER SURVEY spot your pitch with our at a-glance guide to a selection of tuners (p10) SHREDDER be the first with the news via our lightning dispatches (P12) AFRICAN PERCUSSION its secrets and tools. But first, foremost, five-star and filthy... the gossip.

Cover versions — the musician's fishfinger. They're cheap, quick to prepare, made of reconstituted nutritional material, and are almost invariably lacking in taste. Not so sure about the breadcrumbs though... Amongst the fishfingers (or are they turkeys?) served up by hot popsters the Power Station are a version of Animotion's "Obsession", which was co-written by current (pun) Power Station vocalist Michael Des Barres. Also on the set-list is "Some Guys Have All The Luck", by former vocalist R Palmer. "It's all right, though," claims Power person John Taylor, "we do the Rod Stewart version."... Paul Simon is making a rock'n'roll accordion LP... According to a rumour derived from US magazine "Musician", that ultimate fishfinger "Louie Louie" is set to become Washington State's official song. Not content with naming April 12th "Louie Louie" Day, America's most North-Westerly state (does that mean it's far out?) will be voting on the matter in the Autumn. Original composer Richard Berry is reported to have written new lyrics for the occasion; since when did "Louie Louie" have a proper set of words in the first place?...

The Wit & Wisdom Of The Press Officer, pt 13: "You must interview their keyboard player," exhorted our first example of artist-press liaisonry. Nah, we said, they do all that American FM blandola. "Ah but you must," she retorted (technical mag whirr click buzz), "he uses a MIDI!" Oh well, in that case... Steve Gadd plays drum cases on Rickie Lee Jones' first album. In itself, not so rare. But He did it with brushes... More fishfingers: what do an acoustic version of Mai Tai's "History", "The Joint Is Jumping" by Fats Waller, "Love Letters" by Kitty Lester, "Last Train To Clarksville" and "I've Got A Gal In Kalamazoo" have in common? They're all under consideration as possible Blancmange covers...

Duran-without-a-boat-on-his-head, Andy Taylor, has just written, produced, played, polished, etc, a single for John Adams of little-known Private Lives... Just take off that appalling disco-style sampled nonsense and listen to this, Mr Henry Cowell writing in a rag called Music Quarterly back in 1952. "People who work experimentally with new sounds," he says, "seem to have trouble in distinguishing between the material of musical composition and the compositions themselves. They are apt to rush their new sounds prematurely into pieces that are hardly creative work in the generally accepted sense, and that are easily identified as vehicles for new sounds rather than works in which these sounds form an integral part." I think we can see what he's g-g-g-g-getting at... But Henry Cowell was more than an avant-garde composer and prophet: he was a man from whom mid-70s pop funsters Henry Cow took their name....

Harken to this: "A device capable of linking a man, with electrodes taped to his temples, to an instrument instantly sampling his impulse and converting waveforms to voltage." Gulp — revolutionary! Apparently the result of 15 years of Army Intelligence/CIA research, this "BLACK BOX" is advertised in An American Music paper under the heading "NEW!! NOTHING LIKE IT. MIDI YOUR MIND? NOVEL!! ABSOLUTELY". The Walkman-sized BLACK BOX "when inserted between the 'BIOFEEDBACK' headband and a microcomputer produced ASTONISHING RESULTS WHEN INTERFACED WITH A synth." Yet more capital letters claim that this MIDI linkage allows you to think of a note and have it played back by your synth. Yowza. And how much would such an earth-shattering machine cost — $3000, $10,000 perhaps? No — a mere $9.95+ $1.50 for p&p is all you need (headphones are not included). Send your monies to Army Brat, (Contact Details). In the USA, of course.