Happy Birthday to Prue!

Prue’s birthday isn’t until the 24th, but I’d better take advantage of this brief video while it’s available. Unfortunately, the BBC iPlayer doesn’t work in America.

Prue recently appeared on The One Show, talking about her old boss and chum Mary Quant, as a preview of an exhibition about the fashion designer at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, aka the V&A. I’ll have to ask Prue who the woman is speaking, standing next to her. Prue was clearly looking for an opportunity to speak up, but without more video there’s no way to see if she succeeded.

This is a preview video for the exhibit.

https://youtu.be/e_6oZoFDd48

Crustacean Inspiration

“I was at a dance club one night in Bermuda… Upstairs, they were playing disco, and downstairs I suddenly heard ‘Rock Lobster’ by the B-52’s for the first time. Do you know it? It sounds just like Yoko’s music, so I said to meself, ‘It’s time to get out the old ax and wake the wife up!’”

– John Lennon, December 5, 1980

I REDD the News Today

REDD was the Recording Engineering Development Department at EMI in London. Most Beatles recordings were made using a custom-built REDD.51 mixing console. Their first 4-track console was a REDD.31. Much later, after Magic Alex — the self-proclaimed genius of Apple Electronics — was revealed to be a fraud, the Beatles borrowed a couple of REDD.31’s to begin recording “Let it Be.”

Here’s some history of what happened to one of the consoles, starting ten years after the Beatles were done with it.