HW: Tim Blake live in London

[M Holmes]

Allan T. Grohe, Jr. writes:

> Well, I hate to sound ignorant and all that, but....
>
> I don't really recall just who Tim Blake was/is--I think he was a
> keyboardist around Levitation?

Yep. He'd had a little to do with Hawkwind in the very early days at
Clearwater. Tim played for Gong before pursuing a solo career.

> In any event, I picked up a copy of his
> Video Magic video a few years ago, and wasn't terribly impressed with
> it.  Is this not a good example of his work?  I don't have any other of
> his solo material to compare it to.

Magic was pretty dire and Tim ended up opposed to releasing the video
although contractual reasons forced Voiceprint to supply preordered
copies (about 18 months later!). I wasn't aware that it made commercial
release? I get the impression that the cassette was just some doodling
he'd done at home and somehow got persuaded to release.

Part of the problem with the whol Majick tour was that Tim has
frequently suffered from twin delusions that:

a) He can sing, and

b) He's Gary Glitter.

This led to him moving away from proper keyboards and instead using one
of those guitar/keyboard thingies. The dressing up in silver is perhaps
more forgivable and is an acceptable, if more than slighly risible,
piece of eccentricity in the rock genre. Unfortunately he compounded the
error by singing along to some tracks and generally spoiling the music.
This coupled with the fact that he'd clearly not spent a huge deal of
time on the pieces made the whole tour look like the amateurish work it
was.

> Just what makes him so noteworthy?

At his best, he can use synths in a way which I've only heard bettered
by Rick Wakeman and in some ELP stuff. He sounds like jean Michel Jarre
except without the triteness and with some mood.

> I don't recall being terribly
> impressed with any HW keyboardist, in general, truthfully.  What makes
> him stick out so much?

Get hold of his album "Blake's New Jerusalem" and listen to the title
track. The synth playing is superb. Admittedly he does sing, but had the
decency to put it through a vocoder in this album. His other album
"Crystal Machine" is IMHO not as good but does contain synth noodling at
least of the quality of Brock and Bainbridge's better stuff. I've also
heard live tapes from that period, and some of it is so glowing and
moody that I really wish I'd been to at least one Blake gig of that era.
The tape "Waterfalls in Space" (from Orsay?) is excellent and I wish I
had a better quality copy.

There were rumours that Blake would do a new album this year. I hope
that his return to gigging indicates that this is so, and that he's
learned something from the Majick tour.

P.S. As well as any tape from this gig/tour, I'm also still looking for
any tape of Blake's solo spots at the Gong 25th anniversary reunion
gigs. I'll offer a good deal for such.

Does anyone know if any records were released from that gig which
include solo Blake stuff?

> Allan.

FoFP