If that’s the Mel Collins that played with King Crimson and Camel amonst others, I admired his tone so much that I emulated it, it took some searching to find a mouthpiece that favoured that fat, slightly woolly tone without going reedy in the high register. Thanks for the reminder, I must listen to him again.
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I think you mean Blur, and it is Dave Rowntree.
I atttended a talk by ex-PW editor Rob G3XFD a few years back, where he reeled off a list of celeb. hams, including some closet ones. One which sticks in my mind was the DJ Steve Wright.
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Joe Walsh (Eagles) WB6ACU
Feargal Sharkey (Undertones) G0OAU
Dave Rowntree (Blur) M0IEG
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Yes the very same Mel Collins Brian. Also an accomplished flautist.
Thats not a big step Steve, the only time I ever picked up a flute I found I could play it quite acceptably, the mouthpiece is responsive and the fingering is almost identical to the sax, so moving from sax to flute is easier than the other way around when a flautist needs to acclimatize to a reed that at first feels like a squawking plank!.
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Steve in post 58 mentioned DSOTM, which came out in March 1973. I held back hoping that somebody else would cover it, but no, so here it is a little late.
DSOTM, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is one of the best selling albums of all time, I don’t know its current position in view of the recent re-issues, but suffice it to say that it spent 937 WEEKS in the American Billboard 200 and an aggregate of 14 years in the charts. Its genre is prog rock with a curiously lyrical flavour, heavily blues influenced, that has prevented it dating. It marked the transition of the band from a highly skilled experimental and improvisation flavoured band to a group that could handle the big themes of life without sounding shallow or pretentious. Each track on the album segues into the next track, fragments of earlier tracks crop up in later tracks, and the general feel is melancholy as befits the blues. The big question is what is it about? It is a concept album, it must be about something, but no two people seem to be able to agree on anything except the universality of its themes. For what it is worth (not a lot!) my guess is that it is about the dichotomies of life: youth/age, wealth/poverty, war/peace, light/darkness, sanity/madness, life/death and grief/acceptance…just for a start! Highlights for me are “The Great Gig in the Sky” which ends side one, improvised by Clare Torry, and Eclipse that ends side two; its final couplet hits me like a yard of lead pipe:
“and all that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”
I won’t waste time describing the tracks, if you have spent your life under a rock and have never heard the album then give it a listen, if you haven’t heard your copy for a long time, try this version:
On a personal note I bought mine the week it came out (and still have it) and was so inspired by Dick Parry’s tenor sax solos that I put my alto sax away and went out to look for a tenor - the search for the mouthpiece that gave me the tone that I could hear in my head took a LOT longer!
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The thing is Brian it didn’t come out 50 years ago. No, it came out just a few months ago. Well that’s what it feels like. Several friends elder brothers had it so I was exposed to it quite soon after it came out. But it just can’t be 50 years ago because that means it’s 50 years this September since I started senior school. That cannot be right !
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No, Andy, its like you - timeless!
I listened to it again before posting the above, and still noticed things that had previously escaped me, and I must have played it hundreds of times.
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Some say it is best heard after taking a quarter tab of acid.
Elliott, K6EL
Haight-Ashbury
resident, '64-'71
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I prefer the mellow stage with alcohol!
[quote=“MM0EFI, post:62, topic:27507”]
One which sticks in my mind was the DJ Steve Wright.
[/quote]A year or so ago on the way home had Radio 2 on and he definitely came up with 5 and 9 when responding to a listener….
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I think the best description of why DSOTM is so popular came from a poll of Australians who voted it the “best album to have sex to”.
I think its a superb collection of songs that flow and fit combined with excellent production and mixing techniques.
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I thought that was Ravel’s Bolero 
Nah… not Ravel, this. https://tinyurl.com/2s4kd5x6
Oh boy! Trust the Aussies to take an album dripping with angst and philosophy to fuel a bonk fest! You just gotta admire that!
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We (as the FMF family) have just been away for a week. As my kids are in their 30s you become less aware as to when it’s school vacation time. Anyway, lots of kids on holiday with their parents as Easter was only a few weeks back. And it got me thinking what was I doing in the Easter holidays 50 years ago? I went to a bit of a poncy school and we had a farmhouse out in the wilds near Betws-y-Coed where 12 boys and a teacher would decamp for weekends or longer. We’d go hiking in Snowdonia, try Orienteering and then see if the older boys could succeed in buying cans of beer for everyone. Sometimes it worked. I used to go with the school radio club so there were boys from 12+ to 17. Evenings consisted of maybe looking at the stunning starry skies but most like drinking illicit beer followed by belching, f*rting and trying to burn stuff. Privileged schoolboys in the country 
It’s where I was introduced to “proper music” like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath etc. at Easter 1974. On my return I rushed out and bought Made In Japan. So I have owned a copy for 50 years now. Oh I do feel old thinking about that.
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Not me….love that band but I went to Newcastle University in the 70s.
Really disappointed that they just played the Maltings in Berwick a few weeks back and missed it!!
Was your ‘poncy’ school the Bluecoat in Liverpool, by any chance? They owned such a place near B y C, I went there once, my late dad in law taught maths at that school.
You don’t get poncy schools, only poncy pupils!
So Eton would not be Poncy but for its inmates?