Dukes at Brasenose

The City University London - Music Studio - Tape Composition

Upload from a cassette tape taken from the mixing desk. The mix changes  and eventually improves during the gig, and the guy on the mixer forgot to start the tape for the first song, which is lost, and for most of the encore. We'd played quite a few gigs that year, so this is a good performance, although the drum kit fell apart during one song. Vocals and lead guitar Jon, second guitar Ken, drums Graeme,  bass, keeping old tapes and uploading them Adrian,

Black Tiger - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4th 1982 - Full Set Playlist

Several Thingamagoops from bleeplabs.com played by Tom DiGrazia - Nebulophone played live then Thingamagoop 1, Thingamagoop 2, Thingamagoop 3000 and Bitblob overdubbed and mixed in and out. Drums by Beatbuddy (one of the Communication Breakdown riffs slowed down a bit), bass and slide/wah guitar and recording/mixing by Adrian. All first takes, about an hours work total recorded on pi-day 3/14/2021, and it shows that we do indeed have more toys than talent...

More Toys Than Talent - Thingamagoops Untethered - pi day 3/14/2021

Songs recorded on a cassette tape at a practice session while Renegade was looking for a singer, and before we re-named to Black Tiger (pictured).

Renegade No-Vocal - Its been so long - 1981

Composed by recording and splicing tapes in The City University London Music Studio in 1982. Part of my final year coursework in 20th Century Music and Tape Composition. The original Moog synthesizer, piano, ring modulator. This track was mastered from a Revox B77 to a cassette tape, forwards.

Tape Composition - 1982 - Forwards

Composed by recording and splicing tapes in The City University London Music Studio in 1982. Part of my final year coursework in 20th Century Music and Tape Composition. The original Moog synthesizer, piano, ring modulator. This track was mastered in reverse from a Revox B77 to a cassette tape, backwards.

Tape Composition - 1982 - Backwards

Dedicated to our biker friends. Last track in the set, played as fast as we could. Mixing desk cassette tape recording. Jon on shredding, lead guitar and vocals. Ken on second guitar, Adrian on bass and repetitive strain injury, and Graeme on drums. We always played this last, because we needed a break afterwards to recover!

Black Tiger - Riding - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Black Tiger - Rocking With The Angels - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Black Tiger - Come On - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

The drum kit fell apart, and we improvised a short blues while he fixed it.

Black Tiger - Drummer Blues - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Mixing desk cassette tape. Chugs along with a nice staccato bass line, and a faster section under the guitar solo. Guitar/vocals Jon, 2nd Guitar Ken, Bass Adrian (me), Drums Graeme.

Black Tiger - Don't Look Back - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Mixing desk cassette tape. Nice dual lead guitar parts and guitar solo.

Black Tiger - Man on the Run - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Mixing desk master. Attempt to get the (small) audience to clap along was swiftly abandoned.

Black Tiger - Party Tonight - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Cassette from the mixing desk. Uptempo, shorter song.

Black Tiger - Small Town Man - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Mixing desk cassette tape. Drumkit came apart during this song, but we survived.

Black Tiger - We'll Survive - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Mixing desk cassette tape but the mixing guy forgot to turn on the tape for the encore until we'd finished most of the song...

Black Tiger - Towers of Silver (truncated encore) - Bedford Civic Hall - Sept 4 1982

Hatfield School, Hertfordshire, UK - School Concert Recordings - February 1979

Finale from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Andrew Lloyd Webber

March from Symphony no. 9 Choral

Hatfield School, Hertfordshire, UK - School Concert Recordings - July 1977
Performed by Simon Berridge, Howard Hall (Tenors), Nick Selo, Adrian Cockcroft (Basses)

Barbershop Quartet: The Wiff 'n Poof Song

Hatfield School, Hertfordshire, UK - School Concert Recordings - July 1977
Ian Harold (tenor), Paul Rooke (bass), Michael Slaney (piano)

Ballad: Excelsior

Hatfield School, Hertfordshire, UK - School Concert Recordings

Polka: Feuerfest - Josef Strauss

Hatfield School, Hertfordshire, UK - School Concert Recordings - March 1977

Stabat Mater

Blend of three noise makers, a Thingamagoop 3000 as the main voice, with a Loud Objects "Broccoli" and a Rucci 8-bit power synth both played through a Boss DD-8 shimmer effect and mixed in and out. Loosely inspired by Varese Poeme Electronique (1955).

Poeme Thingamatique

Solo plus chords - my take of Steve Hackett’s Firth of Fifth solo. I’m still learning guitar, having fun with this piece. Played on the Bootlegger Spade.

Firthy

Oddly unsettled drums and psychedelic synth and effects

All that shimmers is not sliced

Alan Stuart (Stewart?) formed Robots on Strike in Hatfield UK, in the spring of 1979. I'd moved on from my first band and joined Alan. This is a recording of the second jam at probably the first time we played together. I don't think he had recruited the drummer or singer or started writing songs at this point. My bass playing is just ok, but it's clear he was a very talented Hendrix inspired blues guitarist.

Robots on Strike - Starting Out - Zygomorphic - Guitar and Bass, 1979

Arriving at Brasenose College, Oxford University in late 1979 I met guitarist Toby Churton, and we had a few projects together. Duke Duke and the Dukes was a jam band including Andy Mason on Drums (who looked like and played like Ginger Baker) and Martin Craddock on lead guitar - he had an echo box. I think it sounded a bit like Hawkwind at times. This was the first take, the first time we tried to play together in a room at Essex College.

Duke Duke and the Dukes - Take 1 - First Session Dec 6th, 1979

A few days after we met, we played in the basement bar at Brasenose College Oxford...

Duke Duke and the Dukes - First - Brasenose Bar - Dec 7, 1979

Duke Duke and the Dukes - Second - Brasenose Bar - Dec 7, 1979

This track is in several sections, we improvised and moved on. Near the end the cassette tape ran out, and had to be turned over by hand, so part of it is missing.

Adrian Cockcroft

Pinned to spotlight

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