Cactus club.

 So its with great sadness that I report that we lost our club treasurer this past week. Its been a horrible year for me getting out and about, but club has been reduced to monthly zoom meetings, which as I hate webcam shit with a passion I've not been taking part.  Seriously my cam has been taped up since I bought my current laptop and have no intention of ever removing said tape.

We stay in touch through monthly emails and this came out of the blue yesterday, I kinda know the guy through facebook, from a Lithops forum of all things. If you're part of the MSG (Mesemb Study Group,) he was in charge of the seed list, so you may know him from there.

He grew a lot of mesembs and used to share photos online on the group I'm part of (yes I'm a fan too.) But trailed off a while ago. I knew he had a site up somewhere he'd link off to. Site is here if you would like to see what he grew or are just a mesemb fan then please have a look.

Bill Wymans Mobile Recording Studio.

 So America has a new president, and Trump is predictably being a cunt, not budging from office. So what the world right now needs is... The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio or rather an old BBC programme about it.

Bill Wyman set up a project called AIMS and set off around the country to find local talent and give guidance and more importantly, a recording gig in the mobile studio. The culmination of this is whittling the acts down to a manageable amount and a charity concert at the Albert Hall in South Ken. in aid of the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The tape I have is the legendary "Gostbastes" tape which does indeed contain Ghostbusters but also has quite a bit of music on it. There is the back half of the Montreux rock festival 88 with Gary Davies as host. And this, AIMS project.

It takes in the East Anglia leg of the tour with a lot of local acts from Norfolk and Suffolk. We get a genuine look at the studio which has the mother of all mixing desks along with 1" tape and two engineers straight out of Rockstar Ate My Hamster.

In fact its a lot like that with a few local rock bands and a rather good Christian band called Supafrutas which is surely an oxymoron. No Christian rock is good especially one with a choir of kiddies.

There's a dutch guy going by the name Mola Mola who was one of the winners as such. Had a video made of his track, with some blue screen trickery and a spot at the titular gig at the Albert Hall. 

Along with all the guitar wankery there is a lingering shot of them programming a Yamaha DX7, the old techno workhorse, and some Simmonds drums, which you might remember from Italo Disco, which begs to mind, what tracks did the Stones use a DX7 on.

At 30 mins its too big for my Youtube channel but will upload to Archive.org so at least it'll be archived, though the tape isn't that hot in places as its quite jumpy and jittery.

Finally we are halfway through Hooded Hawk's book encoding. The original is all formatted and we are currently editing it down against my original UK edition so it scans nicely.

Anyway Bill Wyman AIMS tour uploaded, here.

Updates of a sort

 Finally have a few bits on from last weeks, excitement when I found a tape of some obscure Mario game show. 

The tape has predictably calmed down and turned into a Olacak A Kadar a Turkish comedy show. The Travel Channel tape largely contained something from Cirque Du Soleil, and "Gostbastes" did indeed contain Ghostbusters, but mainly it's quite a bit of the Montreux Rock Festival from 1988.

Nothing really to write home about, though its hosted by Ooh Gary Davies, with a bit with Steve Winwood in an interview. Your acts are;

The Sisters of Mercy, Lucretia

Double, Gliding 

Then Jericho, 

Londonbeat,

Sabrina and yes it is Boys Boys Boys.

Mica Paris (Sadly interrupted)

Blue Mercedes

And that is as far as I've got, though looking online there's live bits of Run DMC too, so this is cool.

Anyway, along with the usual guitar bands there is a DX7 there and an Oberheim is used at one point. Whether its live, I have my doubts. There is a bit of Yazz and Coldcut from the top of the pops earlier. There is a black dude on stage to perform the jazz scat samples that Matt and co have sourced for their track.

Memory has it there is either an Orbital or 808 State clip of them performing in front of a big modular synth set up, which is totally fake of course.

I wouldn't mind seeing the top of the pops, where they played the Plasitkman mix of Shamen's Ebeneezer Goode, when it was at no.1 for the fourth week, also but I reckon that is memory holed into oblivion.

 

Süper Mario

 Do you like Mario? Of course you do, but would you like it even better if he was: 

A, Turkish,

 and B, an obscure TV programme you could play along on your touch tone phone in order to... well I don't know Turkish at all, so there may not be any point to this all.

Bonus background on this, for a while, we've been bringing back a bunch of tapes thrown in the recycling bin at work, tossed during lockdown. They are from, I'm guessing, a Turkish house clearance, as they are all from Star TV from back in the 90's, with a few home broadcasts thrown in (some Top of The Pops and Sabrina Live at Montreaux festival is on the one pictured below along with..).

Gost Bastes 

I've dug out my old Video grabber and along with OBS, am currently going through these tapes and grabbing anything interesting and obscure on the way. Hence our current find of Super Mario.

SO WHAT IS IT.

Remember those times on Going Live where you would play a game using a touch tone phone. Those with the highest score would win, it was normally something like, Top Banana or such, but there were other games as well.  Well Süper Mario is exactly like that but drawn out into a whole show.

You essentially play Mario World, until all your lives are lost, the first Yoshi's Island bit via an old Touch Tone Phone, indeed most of this are just long beeps as you try to jump and fail. The host, Gül Ozan, gives words of encouragement and when its game over, a cheeky wave. but apart from that, well your guess is as good as mine. Those with the highest score after all this get.. well I don't know.

There doesn't seem to be much more to add, except that it's up at Archive.org as its too big for my paeon Youtube account, without splitting it down.

Süper Mario

With that all I have to do is give you a wave good bye.

Welcome to despair.

 Short one this, but have been going down memory lane again.

Met an old friend from school I haven't seen for about 25 odd years. Just walking down the street, a chance encounter that, had I gone my usual route, would not have seen at all. We got talking, and said he still sees some of the old crowd from BTEC days and that he's married now.

Further on I decided to look up another person I worked with back in the day and actually fancied at one time. She has a website up and does mixed media art, and I have to say its pretty good. Though as a massive nitpicker the cactus is actually Gonialoe Variegata (previously Aloe Variegata) but I'll let it stand.

You can visit it here.

In other news the Byuu post has been updated, and I've been slowly scanning bits and pieces, mainly old bits from the Brian Lamb exotic collection. I have a few old journals to scan, and for all you Hardy fans, have started on the Hooded Hawk mystery original, which is another extended directors cut, nothing major different yet.. 

Travel Channel tape

 Currently going through this tape, which contains part of a Panorama (I think) Documentary on X ray damage, and the Hugh Grant / Robin Williams film, 9 months, on Sky with bonus Kleenex sponsorship. We've come to a part where the film has ended and were in entirely unknown territory. 

Like the Power Rangers tape which contained some Mr Masturbator (Motivator) keep fit bits and some CITV stuff, we're now into some Travel Channel stuff from I'm guessing 1996 or so. There's some ads from one of those CD box sets (70's music rather then the more usual Classical Collections), trails for Birds of A Feather on SelecTV, and a healthy dose of Technical Difficulties complete with a channel logo and easy listening muzak.

Travel Channel is no more now, just like Bravo and the aforementioned SelecTV. It lasted to the middle of the year where an update from SKY put it out to pasture. It was a go to in the past year as they used to show Andrew Zimmern  shows at 9pm. If for some reason you wanted to see Bizarre foods America or the World versions of said shows, this was your go to. 

Not bad shows either, mostly keeping watch to see what he would actually eat, mostly offal with the occasional ethnic niche treat. Can remember him eating Shaved Ice in Hawaii, and visiting the ever present Nouvelle Cuisine ponce, straight out of somewhere like Seattle or Brooklyn for the win.

But most of the time its somewhere deep in the country, eating roadkill or freshly hunted stuff with the local backwoodsmen or at a local fair. 

Am I sad to see Travel go, kinda. It was OK and apart from that never really had anything to interest me. Maybe an update when I've finished the whole tape.

A full on tat upgrade.

 Both Hidden Harbors are done now for you now, you can judge for yourself just how racist this book is, and then burn it seeing as its 2020. Get it from here and here

A note on the remake. We never really got a version of Hidden Harbor in the UK, I guess its due to violence and themes. I previously attributed it in House on the Cliff to a prescription drug smuggling theme that wouldn't translate whilst overlooking the sheer amount of guns involved and shoot out at the end. 

Hidden Harbor has similar themes, whilst the "racism" of the original would preclude it from being a substitute as The original Melted Coins was used, thanks to the new versions summer camp plot. 

The Hardys being demolition experts in the remake and blowing up a submerged tree with dynamite, would bar it from sale here, especially as the whole IRA were in full terrorist mode in the UK at the time. 

So like House on the Cliff, I've decided to anglicize it as if Armada were bringing it here back in the day. It's not the full American text, I guess its about 99% the same with a few bits and pieces changed here and there for period descriptions. It's not much an Amphibian plane is changed to  sea plane, and extra l's and u's are added to words.

New Scan stuff.

Thanks to redecorating, I now have a whole bunch of stuff to scan. A few booklets and loose stuff are done and I've found some Frosties cards from a Gameboy promotion. The art is something, and it's not the whole set but I'm slowly scanning these in. 

Favourites are 

Hair metal Simon Belmont looking like Wolf from Gladiators.

Retarded Paperboy.

And a whole clusterfuck of bad Gauntlet 2 art.