Tim Blake - serious situation

The Moog Forum Moog Music General Topics Forum
1

I hope it’s ok to post this here. Tim Blake is one of the great synth pioneers and he’s made much use of the MiniMoog, so he’s very relevant to this group.

Tim had a serious car accident a couple of years ago, so serious that he effectively died at the crash site and was revived through the skilled medical attention he fortunately received. It’s taken a long time to recover enough to be playing concerts again, but he had the last of the metalwork removed from his legs last year and was able to put in a great performance at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms soon after. He’s due to play a couple of concerts in Britain this Summer, but he may not be able to:

Tim’s been charged with `Involuntary Homicide’ in connection with the crash. This is despite the fact that the other driver - who died - was drunk, had bald tyres, and narrowly missed another car before crashing into Tim’s car. Tim was in court recently and is due in court again on May 18th, when he may be sentenced. The sentence is likely to be ten months in prison plus an eight month suspended sentence.

It seems like an absurd situation. Tim was basically unlucky enough to be in the wrong place - in the car the other driver died after colliding with. He’s suffered considerable hardship as a result and he’s trying to get his life and his career as a musician back together. The only thing they seem to be able to find against him is that he had a small quantity of cannabis in his bloodstream. This was from two weeks prior to the accident and there’s no reason why it should have affected his driving. In court they seemed to seize on this, and they also appeared to resent his being English.

He intends to appeal if convicted on May 18th, naturally, but legal representation doesn’t come without a cost, so there’s an appeal being set up to raise money.

Further details can be found on the Planet Gong website at http://www.planetgong.co.uk/

Links to individual threads don’t seem to work on that site, but if you enter the forums and choose the first section there’s a discussion of the accident called

Dark Times … Tim Blake’s Court Case - Threat Of Prison Sentence

and also a thread about the appeal.

Alternatively PM me for further details.

As well as being a great synth musician, Tim’s a really nice guy and all the circumstances of this case suggest he’s being made a scapegoat and punished for something that wasn’t his fault when he’s already suffered considerably because of it.

I feel I should add that I’ve chosen to mention this here because I’m already an active member of this group and because it’s possible that people here know Tim’s music. I haven’t been asked to post here by Tim or anyone connected with the appeal.

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This breaks my heart. Tim Blake is a big influence on my playing.
I love his work with Gong,Hawkwind and crystal machine.
God Bless him, I pray everything works its self out for him.
I thought Blake was french though not english?
Blake in my opinion is way underrated and one of the great
Moog players of the day.

3

I think Tim’s actually from Hammersmith, London, originally, though he’s lived in France for many years.

I’d definitely agree with you about him being underrated. I put him among my all-time top three synth players - my other two are Wendy Carlos and Miquette Giraudy. His EMS playing on Last Ride of the Boogie Child is simply awesome.

Did I notice in another post that you have a pair of AKS synths, as Tim did? I think Tim actually sold his - after the accident when short of money, if I remember rightly, though I’m not certain. He still has a VCS3 that used to belong to Christian Boule, though.

Quite honestly Tim’ situation seems to sum up everything that’s wrong with the music business. People with little or no talent or originality have their albums plugged and get money thrown at them, while someone of Tim’s abilities has most of his albums deleted. All the Voiceprint re-releases have now been deleted. Caldea Music II is still available as far as I know, but who knows it even exists?

In a just world Tim would be recognised as one of the great synth pioneers - as well as the first person to use a laser in a concert light-show - and one of the great exponents of the instrument. He’d also have had the song Sarajevo released as a single to become the massve hit it should have been.

Instead he’s often known more as a vaguely familiar name than as an admired and respected musician, stocks of his deleted albums are slowly selling out, and after overcoming the effects of a near-fatal accident he’s being threatened with a prison sentence that’s quite frankly ridiculous.

In view of all that, I think his ability to be positive is yet another of his admirable qualities. It’d be easy to give in to bitterness.

4

Hello there,
a very sad story unfair for someone who is a legend in space 70’s prog music. I hope for a better luck for Tim.
By the way, fans of Gong material would like to check “Fish Rising”, the first solo LP by their guitarist Steve Hillage, back in 1974 I think. Tim plays inside (as all members of Gong) and it one of my all-time favourite records.
Dig for Tim blake’s sake!!
nick :cry:

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I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Blake and playing on the same bill some years ago.
He was brilliamt, very nice and easy to talk to.
Chris Franke was on the same bill. Couldn’t say the same about him…
He took most of the soundcheck up with his hoards of keyboards and then…Mimed to the CD…Hey!..What times we live in eh!..

Unfortunately, knowing UK law…they’ve always got it wrong. Not so long back, a wreckless driver mowed down a 9 year old kid on a pedestrian crossing and she died. He got three months in prison. The reason being is that she had already been diagnosed with a terminal illness…
How sad a nation we are that we allow this to happen.
I shan’g go off on one about our laws because they stink…
Nige

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The accident actually happened in France - my apologies, I forgot to mention that in my original post. If anything, they seem to be worse than the British over things like this. The attitude to drink driving seems to be much more lax, which is consistent with the court’s dismissive attitude to the other driver being drunk. People who’ve driven in France have warned about people driving from one vineyard to another having samples of the local product at each. It seems to be part of the French way of life from what people have reported. In Tim’s case the accident happened in the morning, so it’s anybody’s guess why the other driver was drunk at breakfast time.

Tim’s now deciding whether he can afford to appeal after the latest hearing on May 18th when he was given 6 months imprisonment and twelve months suspended sentence. He won’t be sent to prison until that’s decided.

There’s an appeal to raise money for him to defend himself, which has been discussed on the Gong forum I gave a link to in my previous posts. That’s now being co-ordinated at a different website, at

www.melosprogbazaar.com

The appeal fund details are on there, of course, but essentially it’s a moneybookers account which seems to be far more reliable than Paypal.

Moneybookers can be reached here: https://www.moneybookers.com/

The acount for any money is: admin@melosprogbazaar.com

Please indicate that it is meant for Tim Blake.

As well as a fund for donations, a number of musicians have donated albums to the appeal. Details of those and how to notify that you’re buying to benefit Tim can be found at the melosprogbazaar link above.

Any help and support anyone can give would be very much appreciated. I think I’ve mentioned to Tim that I’ve posted here, but I’ll make sure he defintely knows about this thread. It’s good to know he’s appreciated.


On related points above: yes, I bought Fish Rising when it first appeared on vinyl. Tim’s contribution is very effective and it’s a great album generally. It’s out on CD, but there are plans to release remasters of Steve Hillage’s solo albums with extra tracks later this year, which is definitely something to look forward to.

Tim’s albums are well worth checking out, and it’s worth grabbing them now because several of the have been deleted and existing stocks won’t be replenished. The Voiceprint releases have all been discontinued. Tim was hoping to make direct downloads available, but obviously current problems interfere with that as well as with the concert performances that he depends on for his income.

7

Just to clarify the situation re Tim’s EMS synthesisers, the pair of Synthi A’s known as the Crystal Machine, customised by Patrice Warener, were sold about 6 months before the crash.

Both machines were fitted with a fairly extensive range of modifications by Graham Wood, who was the service engineer at EMS in the late 1970’s. The mods include buffered patchboards, voltage controlled pulse width, sequencer transpose from the keyboard, hi/lo oscillator ranges and variable oscillator sync, used to excellent effect on ‘Boogie Child’. They can also be cross-patched. The combination was completed with a DK1 keyboard and a modified KS sequencer.

Tim’s current synth is the late Christian Boule’s Synthi AKS, not a VCS3 as mentioned above, and Tim is currently having it restored to use it on tour, hopefully later this year.

Regards to all,

8

Thanks for that. I hadn’t realised Tim had aleady sold the pair of Synthi As before the accident. Your information on the mods is helpful. It’s always useful to have information like that generally distributed on boards like this one. While some of those mods are generally recommended for EMS synths, others are more unusual. The oscillator sync and cross-patching for this pair are especially interesting.

Hopefully the fortunate person who bought those Synthi As will be producing something worth hearing with them. It’d be nice to know if and when they re-surface on someone’s album.

I hadn’t seen Christian Boule’s synth and remembered - or misremembered - someone who was at the Glastonbury gig saying he had a VCS3, hence my comment. As you say, hopefully we’ll be hearing that later this year. Right now it depends very much on the legal situation and the appeal.

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Just checking my records and I have a photo of the Crystal Machine.

There were a couple of mods I forgot to mention; switchable envelope modes (normal, single shot or voltage trigger) and inverter pins, which are patch pins with wires which connect to op-amp inverters. The connections to both Synthi’s were made by umbilical leads which plug into the rear of the case, and the mains was fed via a voltage detector, which would drop power in the event of a surge, apparently to protect the logic in the sequencer. The Crystal Machine also featured a Start button which activated power to both Synthi’s, and three fluorescent tubes to illuminate the front panel. A collection of red LED’s also pulsed on and off, but this had nothing to do with any settings on the machines.

One other interesting quirk - the RH of the two Synthi’s was an upgraded Mk1, and (possibly) the only one in existence with “Synthi AKS” factory written on the front rather than just “Synthi”.

Regards to all,

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10

A bit of an update. It’s too early to be sure yet, but there’s a possibility Tim may have to do community service instead of going to prison. This is still ongoing, though. We can only hope.

In the meantime, Tim’s played three concerts with Jean-Philippe Rykiel (some people may know him for his MiniMoog solo on Steve Hillage’s The Fire Inside). The first of the concerts was recorded, and it’s available for download from his website. It’s £8, which is pretty good for a concert that almost fills two CDs. I was at the second concert, which was even better. The guy next to me turned to me at the end and said “I’ve seen a lot of gigs, but that must have been the best one ever.” I’m inclined to agree.

(And yes, Lucidsound was of course correct - the late Christian Boule’s EMS synth is indeed a Synthi A, not a VCS3. The restoration work was obviously carried out well - Tim put it through its paces and it sounded in great form.)

A CD of Gong recordings (mostly live) called Gong in the 70s was released recently, as well, and the royalties to the other Gong members are going to the appeal to cover Tim’s legal fees. Tim’s synths are in there, of course, and there are some gems, notably an early try-out of the opening of Fish Rising, with different lyrics. And the first lot of Steve Hillage remasters are due to appear in January - remastered by Steve and with bonus tracks.

11

Some sanity prevailed finally with Tim’s legal situation. The judge presiding over the sentencing brought some sense to the proceedings, but he had to pass a sentence of some sort. In accordance with the French way of doing things Tim had been convicted and then passed to the next judge for sentencing, so the conviction couldn’t be overturned. So he gave a much more lenient sentence than had been expected, with the result that Tim is electronically tagged for a few months and confined to his home.

A much better result than might have been hoped in earlier stages of the case.

12

Due to being electronically tagged (see previous post), Tim wasn’t able to appear at this year’s Hawkfest, so he filmed a performance at home of his composition Lighthouse, which first appeared on his New Jerusalem album and has since been a frequent item in Hawkwind’s live sets.

Here’s a link to the video stream -

http://moonweed.free.fr/Videos/Tim-Lighthouse.mpg

Due to technical difficulties the volume is a bit low, so it needs turning up. I found I had to let the whole thing stream into Windows Media Player before it would play without stopping every few seconds. If you do that first it’ll play fine.

There’s also a video clip of Tim with Jean-Philippe Rykiel on Tim’s MySpace site at

Myspace http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=100321165

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He is still doing great music !

I realy enjoyed every second of this home concert.
Time to listen again to “Crystal Machine” and “New Jerusalem”

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I’m sure you’ll enjoy this one as well -

Myspace http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=100321165

That links to Tim’s MySpace site. Part way down the page there’s a film clip of Tim and Jean-Philippe Rykiel live in Amsterdam last year.

This is due for release on a DVD of the Gong Unconvention 2006, which should be great. This clip looks better full screen rather than reduced on the MySpace site.

It’s worth mentioning here that there’s a new DVD just been released of Steve Hillage live in 1977. I thinki it may have been out on video before, but the DVD includes some extras. There’s a recent interview with Steve and Miquette Giraudy, and the first copies include a bonus CD as well. The first 300 are also signed.

They’re available here -

www.stevehillagedvd.com


(I hope this doesn’t sound too much like advertising. It’s all Moog-related as Tim, Jean-Philippe and Steve Hillage have all used the MiniMoog extensively. And I’d better say I have no financial interest in any of this. :smiley: I just love this music.) And it’s great to be able to talk this way now, having got past the dark times of Tim’s accident and court case.