Orphan Annie

Categorisation. Musicians hate it, journalists rely on it. Annie Whitehead need have no fears though. If the name sounds familiar, check the credits in your album collection, for Annie is one of the top session trombone players working in Pop, Jazz and Reggae today. Her roots, however, are far removed from all this, having started her playing career in a school brass band in Oldham, going on to join Ivy Benson's all girl orchestra to play the resorts of England, Germany and Switzerland for two years. And for good measure, she has now embarked on a career as a recording artist with a memorable single, Alien Style, and an album, Mix Up, both released on Paladin Records.

Both the single and the album feature Annie's spirited trombone playing and her wide range of influences in unique combination. Her instrumental talent is immediately apparent, and sterns in part from the rigours she underwent with Ivy Benson. The band would often play a gruelling six hours plus every night, and were expected to transpose parts at sight into any key and to play solo features at the drop of a hat. The company of females, however, proved preferable to that of many males she subsequently encountered in touring outfits: "With all girls you have things in common; the jokes will be about Tampax rather than tits!"

Reggae is also a big influence on Annie's music, especially in the approach to production. In the same way that dub producers take continuous horn riffs and transform them into completely original sound creations, the 12" version of Alien Style was done by recording three live takes then combining them by dub and splice to create the final product.

The Jazz side of Annie's character perhaps comes out more on the album, a collection of loose freewheeling structures, all punctuated by her peg-leg approach to dance rhythms.

"I'm quite obsessed with different bar lengths. I go around singing tunes in funny times. I don't know how they feel to an audience, because they feel easy to me. I can dance to everything we do, but then I dance in a different way to anyone else."

If all this sounds a bit technical, the panache with which Annie applies these odd rhythmic shapes should not be overlooked.

"When I get everybody in rehearsal playing in funny times we usually end up bursting out laughing, because what we're doing's so ridiculous."

Alien Style, which was sadly neglected by the single purchasing public, was also Annie's debut as a producer, and a remarkable one at that. The sound is bright and shiny and very alive, in considerable contrast to the slick Robin Millar productions of Working Week, also on the Paladin label. Since then Annie has had many requests from artists wanting her to do production for them, and this looks likely to become yet another facet of her already varied career.

The Annie Whitehead band has been doing gigs around the smaller venues of London, but plans are a foot to organise a tour to promote the album. Annie likes to play with people who are not well known but who 'stick out musically,' and the band tends to metamorphosise somewhat as a result of her unusual approach to line-up: "I've never looked on the band as having a line-up of instruments, it's always been people. If my percussionist left I might perhaps replace him with a trumpet; it keeps the music a lot more fresh."

Over the last few years more young people have become interested in Jazz, leading to the blurring of distinctions between Jazz and Pop music. Annie Whitehead's music looks set to enrich these border regions of music, although which way her career will ultimately gravitate is anyone's guess.

"I prefer to stay a musician than become a Pop artist. At the same time, I do like some Pop music and I would like to make records that are accessible, especially if I can indulge a few things I believe in, like good playing, and a message." RW

The luck of the Irish

How many Irish electric guitar makers can you name? Well come on think about it. Actually don't worry, we couldn't think of any either — until we heard about Chris Larkin.

Chris was born in Ireland but spent much of his early life in England, accounting for his extremely un-Irish brogue, but returned there 10 years ago where he set about making high quality furniture. Being a musician himself it was a logical step for him to make a guitar which has now led to a grant from the Irish government for him to setup a workshop and start producing serious quantities of instruments.

Interestingly every guitar Chris has made has been sold and he's never had to advertise so far!
The Larking instruments that I saw were refreshingly original combining native Irish timbers with unusual exotic ones (courtesy of David Dyke) plus more conventional Schaller hardware and specially designed Kent Armstrong pickups. Each instrument hasa shamrock logo made from Bog Oak — a black petrified wood found... well that's obvious isn't it.

The fingerboards have a virtually flat camber but are shaved down on the treble side, which Chris believes aids the left hand playing position.

In the brief time I spent with the instruments the most striking feature was the actual sound especially on the six-string model which was, frankly, superb. The control configuration was also unusual making the most of the Armstrong pickups.

Chris is also an avid IM reader so as soon as a production Larkin is ready we'll be doing a full review.

It's all early days for Chris and he'd be interested to hear from anyone interested in spreading the Larkin name as well as, of course, buying one of his guitars or basses, but if these first samples are anything to go on we should be seeing a great deal more of Bog Oak!

Interested parties should contact Claire Massey, (Contact Details) or Chris Larkin at (Contact Details). DB

Magic Trixon

In the late fifties, British shops were not allowed to sell American instruments because they represented a very real threat to our own music industry. However, German instruments were welcomed here, and the Trixon drum company, owned by a Hamburger named Karl-Heinz Wiemer, took full advantage of the situation. He had many revolutionary designs for drums and hardware which utilised the 'state of the art' technology of the titles, most of which have never been repeated. I suppose you could say they'll always be ahead of their time.

Anyway, the Trixon 'Speedfire' set is generally acknowledged to be the zenith of KHW's creative ability; although the 'Telstar' set of the sixties, introduced with conical shells, would run it a close second.

As you can see from the photo, Speedfire had what one of my better informed and more wordly American friends assures me is a bass drum viewed on 'acid'. I wouldn't know myself and refer to it less picturesquely as egg-shaped, squashed or melted. The snare drum is designed to be mounted via a knuckle-jointed tom arm to the bass drum, thus doing away with the need for a conventional stand. There's a receiver block bolted to the snare shell which is drum key locked and has a piece of soft, protective metal in the way to stop the tube from being deformed. All Trixon nut-boxes were bullet-shaped at this time and the snare drum had 16 of these, together with the corresponding number of slotted tension screws and pressed steel, roll-over hoops. The 20 strand wire snares have a very interesting parallelogram action with plastic 'butts' which were adjustable at both ends. Unfortunately they were rivetted on, and weren't easy to remove. This particular drum was, to the best of my knowledge, the first to be fitted with Remo's then-revolutionary plastic Weather King heads. None of the shells were particularly thick so they all had single ply strengthening rings and, to allow the snares to touch in the centre, Karl-Heinz cut in snare beds in the lower bearing edge. For those of you who are into size, it measured 15" x 4½".

The concert toms are all pretty unusual too — they have their shells sprayed battleship grey inside and are fitted with a demi-semi-circular plastic bearing edge. The raw bottom edges are finished off neatly with aluminium strip and the same sort of roll over rims are fitted. The two smallest drums measure 8¼" and 9¼" x 7", the next is 13" x 8 ", and the floor tom is uniquely 16½" x 15". (At one time you could buy the set with a much larger tom with a 20" head.) All these toms were originally fitted with calf or at least animal heads. All three small toms sandwich together with a plastic spacer and wing bolt; receiver blocks are fitted at each end. A pair of bent pieces of tubing then join the toms to the shell of the bass drum via another pair of identical blocks. Of course, you can't adjust these toms horizontally nor vertically, actually only their playing angles can be changed. The floor tom is pretty normal really, it has two heads and an internal damper for each. As usual, it has three legs (but made from tube), which locate into a padded holder which is cast and matches all the others on the set. Thumb-screws lock the keys reasonably well, the yet another piece of soft metal is deliberately placed between screw and leg.

[Text missing] other drums are, it's the twin bass which steals the show. As I said it's sort of egg shaped (although the bottom is considerably flatter than the top) and measures 28" from left to right, is 21" in diameter at its largest, and just 13" deep. It's meant to be played with two bass drum pedals set less than a foot apart (which is why they don't supply a snare stand), and the inside is partitioned as if it were two bass drums with common heads. The heads for this drum are also made from animal skins, and held in place with shaped hoops and 10 timp-type tensioners per head. Trixon fitted a pair of adjustable dampers inside the bass drum, the back one was an adjustable strip while the front was simply an adjustable pressure pad. A couple of very large holes are cut into the flat bottom on each side of the partition, and I'm a little confused about them. They could, of course, be just airholes, but when I discovered it was possible to get your hand through I began to suspect they could also be to allow access to the nut which holds the thick, short spurs in place. (I don't know why this nut couldn't have been made captive though.) Three tom holders are set into the shell as well as a disappearing cymbal arm holder. This latter worked on the now well known ball and socket principle, and gave more or less optimum choice of playing position. (It was meant to be used when the set was used with a single mounted tom.)

The bass and tom sounds are all very thick, resonant and soulful, due to their thin shells and animal skin heads. The snare has a very snappy sound which rolled back the years for me; it was exactly as I remembered it — tubby but still sharp.

So, Trixon drums had an awful lot of refinements, which like the later sets with their spring-less, plastic-brush, nutbox inserts made full use of the available technology.

There's no doubt that the Trixon 'Speedfire' set is very much a collector's item, but I haven't been able to ascertain just how many were sold in Britain. Ken Spacey, who was the manager of Paramount Music during Trixon's heyday, remembers selling about a dozen sets. But Lou Dias, the owners of the Supreme Drum Co. (who's very knowledgeable on Trixon and has a large selection of spares,) puts the figure a little higher.

I've deliberately not made any comment upon the stands and pedals which were also well ahead of their time. This is because, as yet, I don't have any, although (hint) I'm open to reasonable offers! BH