PLAY > REWIND <
PLAY > REWIND <
. . . .
. . . .
Back to the video tapes!
Still mentally ‘bruised’ from hours – no, days! – viewing all the tapes, Adrian is intrigued to find what tracks are there.
He’s abandoned his attempted lip reading of the silent playback.
Help!
He contacted the Royal Association for the Deaf – about professional lip readers.
But their letter said No.
There it was. In black and white.
‘. . . . but I am afraid we don’t provide that sort of service.’
This is before the internet so no quick access to lyric sheets.
But, photocopying at the local library, he noticed the Music Section.
‘I’d try the National Sound Archive’ was the librarian’s seemingly strange advice.
‘They keep all the music papers.’
‘What pop music papers? – Melody Maker? NME?’ Adrian blurted out in disbelief.
It was a small dingy room in an old Victorian red brick building in Exhibition Road. As Adrian sought advice at the desk he wasn’t hopeful. What interest would these people have in Pop music?
But the guy at the desk pointed to a deep pile of copies, and said to give him a shout if I needed older copies. They would be on Microfiche.
‘Microfiche?’ Adrian queried.
He discovered it to be a photographic system. Where you peered into a small screen – a bit like a computer monitor.- to see the backlit reel of film inside. You turned a knob – winding until what you were looking for came into view.
‘You can take photographic images of any page.’ The librarian announced proudly.
Well the screen images were pretty poor – and the prints even more blurry! But, when Adrian resurfaced into Exhibition Road he was carrying prints of the Ad for Sunrise.
So it was ATOMIC Sunrise. Not just Sunrise!
Even that was a break though – but the Ad also showed a list of all the bands. In order!
This was Rosetta Stone for Atomic Sunrise. The key to cracking who those bands on the video tapes were.
Now the vocalists mouthing silent words could be identified!
But what were they playing?
To be continued