{"id":792,"date":"2011-07-14T09:50:14","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T09:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/?p=792"},"modified":"2011-07-14T09:53:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T09:53:22","slug":"pilgrims-journey-to-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/?p=792","title":{"rendered":"Pilgrim&#8217;s journey to England"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If I&#8217;d say I have never been interested in meeting Dave Simmons, I would have lied. I didn&#8217;t take much effort contacting him though. However I did not refuse to contact him last year in association with the production of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xlnaudio.com\/?page=products&#038;p_page=adpaks&#038;i_page=reelmachines\">AD Reelmachines<\/a>. Finally, after 8 years of collecting, we met personally at his house in England for an interview which is supposed to be published in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sticks.de\">German drum magazine<\/a> soon. I thought he felt quite blandished that there are still a couple of freaks who keep his gear at the surface of awareness. Furthermore he is still (or again) following the e-drum development with much interest.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t very hard to convince my wife of this trip: &#8220;Darling. you wanna go shopping in London?&#8221; So I organized a nice 3 day trip:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Thursday: Travelling to Kings Lynn\/Norfolk<\/li>\n<li>Friday: Shopping in Kings Lynn, in the evening seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.howardjones.com\/\">Howard Jones<\/a> performing on  the Market Place, between soundcheck and concert: interview with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/jonatkinsondrums\">Jonathan Atkinson<\/a>, his drummer (Jonathan is actually the guy who&#8217;s taking <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/?p=455\">two of my SDS9 pads on tour with Howard<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Saturday: Trip to London. Shopping, shopping, shopping, dropping wife at the Airport at the early evening<\/li>\n<li>Sunday: Trip to Dave Simmons&#8217; house<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simmonsmuseum.com\/p\/blog\/20110701_england1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As usual the weather in England is perfect whenever I go there. A Howard Jones fan asked me to move there. The 800km are done in short 12 hours drive. In the early evening we arrived as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ramadakingslynn.co.uk\">Ramada Kings Lynn<\/a>, a nice and very British hotel with great (and heavy) english breakfast. The next morning we went shopping downtown and I was abused as a living hallstand. I had to carry up to 25 pieces peak and I was glad when my wife asked me to bring her back to the hotel. Then I went back to the Market place where Jonathan was already setting up his eletronic drum kit: Today he used his own <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundservice.de\/texte\/clavia\/ddrum4.htm\">DDrum4<\/a> as a midi frontend (on tour he often uses a borrowed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rolandmusik.de\/produkte\/TD-20KX\/index.php\">TD-20<\/a>, but only for midi) triggering an ESX24 software sampler in his Mac Book. The samples are the original percussion sounds taken from Howard&#8217;s 2 inch tapes from the 80s. Funny enough that the original sequences are now played by a live drummer! Jonathan invited me to a local pub and we did a nice interview which will also be published later this year.<br \/>\nAfter the soundcheck I picked up my wife, we had lunch and enjoyed another concert by synthesizer legend Howard Jones afterwards.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simmonsmuseum.com\/p\/blog\/20110701_england2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Saturday. Again <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Full_breakfast\">english breakfast<\/a>. All diet efforts of the last 5 years for nothing. We are leaving for London. To my wife&#8217;s fret Oxford Street is devided by the currently running anual CSD parade \ud83d\ude1b It takes endless 30 minutes to &#8220;cross the street&#8221; through the underground and cross the street.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simmonsmuseum.com\/p\/blog\/20110701_england3.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Again my destiny is to play the living hallstand&#8230; I can still feel the muscular soreness from yesterday. After this hard shopping day I bring my happy wife to the airport. For the last night I will stay on my own in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realcountryhouses.co.uk\/\">a picturesque B&amp;B near Stansted<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning the sheep on the neighbouring meadow woke me up &#8230; at 4:45am. I use that time and start writing down the recording of Jonathan&#8217;s interview until breakfast is ready. Another cloudless sunny day.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simmonsmuseum.com\/p\/blog\/20110701_england4.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At 8am I am leaving for Dave Simmons 300 year old farm. What a nice place! Master Dave is already waiting at the car park smiling (no, I wasn&#8217;t late). Beside the main house the farm features several barns which are partly developed. First I get a guided tour. Dave shows me the original workbenches where the last products of &#8220;Simmons Digital Music&#8221; had been manufactured until 1999. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simmonsmuseum.com\/p\/blog\/20110701_england5.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Somewhere in the garden there&#8217;s a freight container with all remaining documents and parts from the Simmons era: circuit diagrams, endorsee correspondance and stuff like that. All on the way to rot&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simmonsmuseum.com\/p\/blog\/20110701_england6.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Dave is showing me his small airplane which he built himself. &#8220;Where did you get all that knowledge from to built an airplane?&#8221;. He responds &#8220;I got myself a book&#8221; with a self-confident smile. What a guy&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We are doing the interview in the garden. We are talking about the beginning, Musicaid, how it was like to develop electronics at that time. What happened to the early prototypes; We are talking about endorsee policy, the rise and fall of Simmons Eletronic drums, the SDX and it&#8217;s huge number of innovations which have not been adopted in today&#8217;s electronic drum systems for whatever reason. We talk about Guitarcenter and Dave&#8217;s visions and plans.<\/p>\n<p>Time runs much too fast&#8230; At the end I think we were both happy that we met. Dave Simmons is a very friendly, open minded gentleman genius. A short but intensive trip to England has ended much too early. I feel assured that my strange hobby is the best soeone can have \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>To be continued&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin: 5px;\"><object width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/guRllr9bKgc&amp;hl=de_DE&amp;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/guRllr9bKgc&amp;hl=de_DE&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I&#8217;d say I have never been interested in meeting Dave Simmons, I would have lied. I didn&#8217;t take much effort contacting him though. However I did not refuse to contact him last year in association with the production of AD Reelmachines. Finally, after 8 years of collecting, we met personally at his house in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-report","category-stories-and-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.simmonsmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}