Happy Birthday Bill Nelson (60 today). Regular readers will both know that I am a bit of a Bill Nelson fan (I’m experimenting with understatement). My first ever experimental post was Electrical Language by Be Bop Deluxe partly because traditionally it’s the first song I play on any new equipment but mostly because it’s a great song. Indeed, this blog was going to be called ‘Electrical Language’ but I wanted to give it a name that reflected the fact that it featured mostly vinyl rips, so I took the title of a Be Bop Deluxe compilation CD, Raiding The Divine Archive, and adapted it slightly. The picture above was taken by me at a Red Noise concert in Southampton in 1979 with a cheap camera that I didn’t mind being confiscated by security if I got caught.
I’ve been following Bill since 1976 when, as a 15-year old, I bought the Hot Valves EP and didn’t stop playing it for months. The most money I’ve ever spent on a record was for one of his: £40 for the ‘Teenage Archangel’ single about ten years ago. I didn’t even have a turntable at the time and had to go to a friends house to play it. Today I checked out his website and found he has a single for
free download. I don’t know how long these songs will be available so my advice is get them now.
As a treat for any Bill Nelson fans dropping in here, here is a 1981 instrumental by Bill under the pseudonym ‘Revox Cadets’:
mp3:
Revox Cadets - Tony Goes To Tokyo (and rides the bullet train) (1981)
