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Tickets are now on sale for the Bill nelson fans Social Evening - to be held in York commencing 7.00pm on the 26th October... Follow the link for full details. https://events.bookitbee.com/ian-haydock/bill-nelson-fans-gathering/

Once again I am stunned by the production qualities that Bill achieves from his home studio. Even listening on tiny computer speakers the clips sound so vibrant with all the elements beautifully melded together. Great stuff.

Now a proud and happy owner of The Jewel (mp3 via Bandcamp). It's a beautiful album. Keep safe and well everyone. Toby

Just posted a long overdue journal entry, the first one this year. Click on journal to read it...

RIP Prince Phillip Prince Phillip (1952-always in our hearts) was a member of the British royal family. He was the husband of queen elizabeth II. He always loved sports, especially the esuestrian sport of carriage driving. How exciting! He was a member of over 780 organizations, and was the longest living male of any member of the British royal family. Phillip died on the 9th of April, 2021, just two months before his 100th birthday. He is known for many of his famous and humorous quotes, including “British Women can’t cook.”

Sad day for music and you Bill . But at least an artist leaves treasures behind https://x.com/birmingham_81/status/1785781114197418493?s=46&t=LEgTYaR_2YEWgeQD72chog

in the last month I have seen Bryan Ferry (77) John Cale (80) and Bob Dylan (81) So I fully expect that we will have a Nelsonica in 2023 with Bill still being a relative youngster. (I do appreciate Bill does have his health issues but I think it would be good for the whole Nelson community in these dreadful evil right wing days to have something to look forward to.)

Hi Nelsonians, Might have noticed I've been out of circulation for a while. At 11:15 on November 19 my little baby girl Geneva was born! She's 7 pounds and has a full head of dark brown hair and mommy's sweet face. What can I say, I'm overwhelmed. We are at the hospital now and going home tomorrow morning. I look forward to playing some soothing Bill Nelson music for her! Guess that's all I know for now. That and that I've loved her more than I ever thought I could love anyone or anything since before she was born. I'll be in touch but you can always reach me at mondojohnny@gmail.com if you want to be subjected to cute baby pictures! Take care friends! Johnny M

Hi everybody. Just picked up the release the other day and it occurred to me that it has just been too long. Thought I'd just drop in and say hi. I hope everyone is well. Hope I didn't miss anything... unless it was bad.😉 Here is a shot of my little cherub wearing an outfit I only wish I could pull off.

Nice to see Powertron making the 'Prog Album' charts!!!

Hi all In 1980 I somehow found myself wandering around Ingleston Market in Scotland. Having always been a big fan of all things Bill, I picked up a cassette of Modern Music. Got back to barracks and wacked it on the old Sanyo blaster. My overriding impression at the time was this was just about the best thing I had heard in a very long time. Poetic,majestic and about as well produced as my tiny mind could process. Last week,some 40 years,massive learning curve and emotional shrapnel later the remastered version arrives. To say I am impressed is really an understatement. I am hearing stuff that was there 40 years ago that my [much younger] ears didn't even pick up. Awesome and spellbinding comes close. I was grinning so much my earphones nearly came off. Bill,you are one of the best songwriters and dream creators we have ever seen. I was actually 20 years old again for a short while. God bless and a peaceful Christmas to you and yours.

Quite a few will, no doubt, have seen this photograph, but I hadn't (as far as I can remember) until recently. Thought it was worth putting up on the forum and it's a fabulous shot. Bill, and the rest of Be Bop, looking cool as..😎😎 (...just in case anyone doesn't know this, click any images on this site to expand them)

Just uploaded a new journal entry dated 6 July. It contains some rather disturbing news. Check it out...

Yes, it was released on this date in 1986. Time to take it out for a spin. .

Two good things about this new compilation: https://stevenwilsonpresents.tmstor.es/product/104559 It's compiled by none other than the influential Steven Wilson It has a Red Noise track right near the beginning. It's actually a really interesting and different perspective on the decade in question. I'd be interested to hear Bill's thoughts on it. It's certainly good to be reminded of S Wilson's respect for Bill's contribution to what we call culture.

I've posted a new journal entry this morning, (June 18.) It contains news of 'Old Haunts', observations on the current Tory leadership contest and the Brexit debacle plus heath issues and four images if you scroll down the page. Check it out! https://www.billnelson.com/post/observations-and-distractions PS: forgot to mention that the photograph of me that I've used in the flyer for 'The Last Lamplighter' in this journal entry was taken by my son Elliot's girlfriend Nic.

Dutch engineer was also instrumental in development of first CD in his work at Philips Daniel Boffey, The Guardian | Thu 11 Mar 2021 Lou Ottens, the Dutch engineer credited with inventing the cassette tape and playing a major role in the development of the first CD, has died aged 94 at his home in the village of Duizel in North Brabant. As product development manager at Philips, Ottens twice revolutionised the world of music, but he remained modest to the end. “We were little boys who had fun playing,” he said. “We didn’t feel like we were doing anything big. It was a kind of sport.” Ottens, born on 21 June 1926, showed an early interest in engineering, building a radio as a teenager through which he and his parents could receive Radio Oranje during Germany’s wartime occupation of the Netherlands. He equipped the device with a directional antenna that he called a “Germanenfilter” because it could avoid the jammers used by the Nazi regime. Following the war, Ottens obtained an engineering degree, and he started work at the Philips factory in Hasselt, Belgium, in 1952. Eight years later he was promoted to head of the company’s newly established product development department, and within a year he unveiled the EL 3585, Philips’s first portable tape recorder, which would go on to sell more than a million units. But it was two years later that Ottens made the biggest breakthrough of his life – born out of annoyance with the clumsy and large reel-to-reel tape systems of the time. “The cassette tape was invented out of irritation about the existing tape recorder, it’s that simple,” he would later say. Ottens’s idea was that the cassette tape that should fit in the inside pocket of his jacket. In 1963 the first tape was presented to the world at an electronics fair in Berlin with the tagline “Smaller than a pack of cigarettes!” Ottens did not back the recent resurgence of the cassette tape. Photographs of the invention made their way to Japan, where substandard copies started to emerge. Ottens made agreements with Sony for the patented Philips mechanism to be the standard. more .

Released on this date, in 1991. .

On Rockonteurs at around 38 minutes in ….

Actually, it was yesterday 22 October. Released on that day in 2005. Still one of my favorites. .

It's my beater, the Norman B-20 Folk acoustic. NYXL (for good EBow response) mediums, tuned down to CGCFFC. For convenience and familiarity with music theory, I'm treating that tuning like DADGGD , and the two G strings are twinned , wound, because otherwise the intonation is skewed. I've made up masses of chords with this odd tuning, and some tracks will have lots of nice movement, though most will be meandering sonic excursions. The guitar has a soundhole pickup (Baggs) and an undersaddle piezo pickup, both routed to the input on the Pod 2.0. From there I have left and right pedal fx chains ...until the right one goes into the Mooer Ocean machine. Sub octavers, flangers, boosters, and delays, mostly, and an EHX synth. Nothing extravagant or high-end except the Mooer. It's going to be noisy. I have lots in the can, but may not have anything edited out for a while. Be afraid... 😁ps - it's a mess because it's me, and because I'm always moving pedals around and I don't have time to make it pretty.

New home, time to start to put a few pictures up!