Melvis Remembers: Hendrix at The Isle of Wight

1970 was a good year for festivals. I’d got a taste for them at the Isle of Wight the previous year. The highlight for me had been an amphetamine enhanced introduction to The Who live. Unfortunately I overdid the Dexedrine, spent the whole night staring at the inside of a tent and was dead on my feet by the time Dylan came on the following evening. I didn’t even see him. Everyone stood up and I was staggering around on a sea of crushed beer cans at the back of the crowd, desperately trying to keep my balance. I could hear him, but it was still a massive anticlimax.

The following year I got to work there. Some mates of mine had a company distributing underground magazines. We got transportation, tent space, free jazz cigarettes and a bowl of muesli in the mornings. In exchange we did a couple of hours crowd-selling and took turns to mind the stall.

We’d done the same a few weeks earlier at the Bath festival. There I’d seen, amongst many others, Santana, Led Zep, Jefferson Airplane, It’s a Beautiful Day and The Pink Floyd debuting Atom Heart Mother. But Hendrix was headlining the Isle of Wight.

A dozen of us travelled down in the back of a Luton Transit containing 2000 copies of the Schoolkids Oz. [Shame I didn’t keep a few]. It was a massive festival. I’ve since seen the movie which tries to make out it was some kind of Altamont disaster. Well it may have been for the organisers and the guy who got bitten by a security dog, but I had a great time. The weather was superb. I didn’t overdo the dexies and crowd-selling was a breeze; International Times, Friends, Gandalf’s Garden and the Schoolkids Oz, which sold like hot cakes, joss sticks and Esmerelda large rolling papers. The sharing of Jazz Cigarettes with complete strangers turned out to be an integral part of the crowd-selling experience.

With the exception of the Stones, anyone who hadn’t played at the Bath festival played the Isle of Wight. The Who – Daltrey in the fringed jacket lassoing the mike around whilst a fearsome Townsend leapt about dementedly in a white boiler suit. The Doors – Jim Morrison – exuding charismatic magnetism whilst virtually standing still.

I missed far more bands than I saw. Forty years on a few things stand out in my memory. ‘Ten Years After,’ whom I’d seen being fairly pedestrian in a small blues club earlier that year, got two hundred thousand people up off their stoned arses and going mental to Alvin Lee’s killer-riffed ‘Going Home.’

Standing in the middle of that enormous crowd when Emerson Lake and Palmer debuted the Moog synthesiser. That moment in the middle of ‘Oh Lucky Man’ when the synth does a four octave leap: everyone just gazed at each other in astonishment. Two hundred thousand people all simultaneously thinking what the f*ck was that? And then there was Hendrix.

I’d dropped the acid at just about the perfect time. In the words of Lou Reed ‘I was rushing on my run’ as Jimi was announced. I hurtled off on my own. No need for mates. This was to be me and the man. Total concentration. Not surprisingly the arena was packed. Everyone was sitting down. I seemed to surf through the crowd, nimbly weaving through without treading on a single hippie; I headed for front and centre. By the time he’d begun I’d found a space thirty yards from the stage about the size of a dinner plate where I was able to ground one of my buttocks. I stayed there for the duration of the set, perched on one arse-cheek, my limbs contorted way beyond yoga. It’s amazing what you can manage when you’re nineteen and determined.

I’ve subsequently seen the film and know, that compared with, say, Jimi Plays Berkeley, this was not a great Hendrix gig. However, with my enhanced consciousness, this is what I experienced.

There was a beam of light coming out of the top of his head into the sky. There was another beam of visible energy coming from the centre of his chest into the centre of mine. A further beam went from the top of my head into the sky. Through this circuit incredible unearthly sounds of cosmic power and glory were flowing imbued with a passion and intensity that passeth all understanding. It was as if Hendrix was trying to pull God down from the sky to show everybody. He knew it was impossible, but he was going to try his damnedest.

At one point, just in front of me, a foolhardy hippie got to his feet and began to idiot dance. Immediately a stunningly beautiful blonde, incandescent with outrage, leapt up behind him, put her hands on his shoulders and slammed his arse into the ground. The fool had gotten between her and Jimi. He had the good sense not to rise again.

When Hendrix finished he apologised, said something like ‘maybe we’ll get it together next time.’ I couldn’t understand it. I was blissed out in the extreme. The top of the stage appeared to be on fire, but that seemed perfectly natural to me. How could you follow that? Apparently with Joan Baez or Leonard Cohen, I forget which, but I do remember running out of that arena as fast as I could. Hendrix was still resonating through my head, the way the taste of a delicious meal can linger in your mouth. I couldn’t be doing with acoustical folkiness whilst still savouring the afterglow of James Marshall Hendrix.

When I got back to our campsite ten minutes later I found that one of my genius mates had taped the Hendrix set. We plugged his cassette machine into a large pair of speakers and listened to it all over again.

Melvis © 2009

Read Til You Drop: December 2009

No, reading isn't the new rock and roll.

It isn't even the old rock and roll.

But it sure as hell passes the time . . . .

With that daring thought in mind, here's the first in what may become a series of book reviews for RTYD - depending on how many snide comments are made about my grasp of music history or even music per se. I'm very sensitive, you know. Incredibly so, my bandmates tell me. But then what would they know? Gits.

Let's start with Madness. Perhaps you know (of) Terry Edwards - multi-instrumentalist, Londoner, sometime player with Robyn Hitchcock, Tindersticks and his own band The Higsons in the 1980s. (All together now: "Who stole my bongos? Did you steal my bongos?") Now he's written a book, in Continuum's 33-and-a-1/3 series, about Madness's album One Step Beyond . . . from 1979.

It's only 169 pages long, and they're quite small pages. But Mr Edwards is good company in print. The idea is to run briskly through the album track by track, "One Step Beyond" to "Chipmunks Are Go!", introducing its makers, their influences, their stories about ripping off Prince Buster, the pub rock scene, etc, as opportunity arises.

This works well, as it mainly requires Suggs and co to speak for themselves, as interviewed by Edwards in the past couple of years. The author has reminiscences and opinions of his own, too, beginning with his assessment of OSB . . . as not the best album in the world or even in Madness's back catalogue - but certainly the "blueprint" for the band's later work: "All the fun, pathos, quirky bits of timing, key changes and even an early string arrangement are already in place in their debut album".

It probably helped that the album was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. Apparently, they know what they're doing.

Madness, a band once labelled as strictly ska for skinheads, are still going, still gigging. The Liberty of Norton Folgate shows that they can still surprise the critics. Apparently, in the 80s, they spent over 200 weeks in the singles charts - more than anybody else.

That's not bad going, is it? Impressive, even if you're not a fan of their music - but one thing this book makes clear is that they had eclectic roots and worked together superbly to create their own sound. Ian Dury, Alex Harvey, Prince Buster, the Faces, Elvis Costello, even Santana are cited here for one reason or another (the last being one of the drummer Dan "Woody" Woodgate's old favourites).

Thanks to Terry Edwards, I also know now that Madness, which includes several songwriters, split the royalties cunningly: 50 per cent to the named songwriter, the other 50 split between all seven bandmembers. "Razor Blade Alley" is about sexual transmitted diseases. The brother of Mike Barson (the keyboard player) played in Bazooka Joe with John Ellis, who went on to form The Vibrators - so there's a marvellously tenuous Rock-Til-You-Drop connection, since Phil Ram of The Great Outdoor Experience played with The Vibrators, they tell me . . . .

Enough Madness. There's one other book to mention for now, another first effort by a musician. From CBGB to the Roundhouse: Music venues through the years by Tim Burrows is badly copy-edited, with no index (which wouldn't be a completely unhelpful thing in a book that works through the entire post-war history of music venues on both sides of the Atlantic). There's been a great deal of raiding of newspaper and magazine pieces, but also a fair amount of original interviewing. In a sense, it's more about music scenes than music venues. And it's deftly done, as you'd expect from a contributor to thequietus.com.

Burrows covers everything from West Indian sound-systems blasting the xenophobes out of Notting Hill, to the Twist, to the MC5 going crazy in Detroit, to the Armadillo, the former National Guard armoury in Austin, Texas, to - well, the rest is fairly obvious. If you've seen that big hole in the middle of London recently, where the Astoria used to be, you'll know where the story is going as well. (And if you were a fan of the Astoria, check out this . . .)

There aren't any grand surprises, but it's a Not Uninteresting account. A concise chapter takes you from Woodstock to the 450 music festivals held in the UK a couple of years ago. And like the unexpected influences that came together to form One Step Beyond . . ., there's something striking about the sheer ad hoc-ness of many of the most exciting music venues Burrows discusses, their emergence from unlikely or unpromising situations (it wasn't "Country, BlueGrass and Blues" making waves at CBGB in New York, can you believe it, but Patti Smith, Television et al).

In that way, despite its scale and conservatism, the O2 ("the British government's monumental white elephant") is just following in a fine, old tradition . . . .

OK. Enough already. I only meant to write a couple of hundred words on this nonsense. Now look what I've gone and done.

My first gig by Dirk Thrust

My first electric guitar cost £4. It was home made. I bought it in a junk shop. I took it home and painted black and white swirly patterns all over its body. For eight quid I bought a knackered Watkins Dominator combo. After less than five minutes on full whack the Dominator made a noise like a demented donkey that you could only kill with feedback. Best feedback resulted from sticking the head of the guitar against the speaker, the guitar’s arse into my groin and basically humping the amp to vary the pitch of the scream. Psychedelically enhanced, this felt fierce and mighty.

I wanted to be original, so I resolutely refused to learn anything. That’s how smart I was. I twiddled and diddled. I bought a Marshall Fuzz Face and a Vox Wah Wah pedal. I fuzzed and wahed my twiddly diddlings.

After a year or so I met another guy called Dirk. We jammed. He would play A and E minor and I would twiddle and diddle.

Obviously the next step was a gig. I knew a chap called Ambrose who was putting on a benefit at Guildford Youth Centre. I blagged a slot. This was 1970. These were Acid Days. I may not have been able to play the guitar but I was more than able to talk. I knew a drummer called The Black Shadow. He looked like King Charles the Second. He knew a white South African who claimed to play the bass. We called him The Immigrant. They were both up for it. None of us had any gear. No matter. We would borrow. I called us ‘Scorched Earth’.

I invited Stephen Stills to come and jam with us at the gig. I’d never met him, but I knew where he lived. He’d bought the house that Peter Sellers had sold to Ringo Starr. It was three miles from Guildford.

I wrote him a very trippy illustrated invitation, which not only explained several of his own song lyrics to him, but also suggested he bring his friend Eric Clapton to our gig. I delivered it by hand. This was 1970. Security hadn’t been invented yet. I walked into Stephen Stills’ kitchen and handed the invite to a very beautiful young American woman. She assured me she’d pass it on to Stephen. I told the promoter. We got a mention in ‘The Raver’ column in Melody Maker.

At the last minute the other Dirk pulled out. His girlfriend went into labour. This was a serious setback. His A and E minor had been intrinsic. He did however lend me his claret coloured velvet doublet. It had puff sleeves and old-gold frog fasteners. He’d bought it in Amsterdam so it had to be cool. It went perfectly with skin-tight white needle-cord wranglers tucked into knee-length, ox-blood, Cuban-heeled Anello and Davide boots. Shoulder-length John Peel haircut complete with wispy teenage beard. No set, no rehearsal, but I looked great.

We arrived punctually, but Black Shadow and The Immigrant were not getting on. They were snarling at each other like a pair of rottweilers with too-tight nut-sacks. It was a struggle to keep them apart whilst attempting to explain to Ambrose, the promoter, my vision for the gig.

My plan was to be actually playing before anyone even arrived. It was going to be a hypersensitive organic psychedelic jam session. The vibe of the arriving audience would totally govern the music. In fact I told Ambrose it was an experiment in Anti-Music. With hindsight this may have been a mistake.

Ambrose did not share my enthusiasm. If anything there was a definite flicker of panic in his eyes. He told us he’d prefer to start off with a few records. I was a little bit disappointed. But he was adamant. So much for my cunning plan. First no rhythm guitar, and now, not only the bass and drums at each others throats, but my artistic improvisational brainchild aborted by the promoter’s short-sighted lack of faith.

‘Well be back later,’ I murmured through clenched teeth. I turned on my Cuban heels and strode off, Black Shadow to the left of me Immigrant to the right of me.

We went round to visit Christopher Robin. He was a vegetarian butcher: a troubled soul with a heart of gold. He lived just a few streets away. He had a big bag of weed. It helped calm down The Black Shadow and The Immigrant. It took the edge off. They stopped snarling at each other. After an hour or so we staggered back to the Youth Centre to see what was happening. We were well wasted.

The Youth Centre was now half full. Between fifty and a hundred people sat around looking bored and mildly pissed off. Ambrose rushed up. He now seemed even more panic-stricken than when we’d left.

‘Quick. You’re on. Now.’

Too stoned to argue, we stumbled onstage. I had a great deal of trouble plugging in my fuzz box and wah-wah pedal. Some kindly hippie assisted me but I was still too out of it to stand up. It was a big stage. We were surrounded by equipment belonging to the several other bands on the bill. Someone got me a stool. I sat down and we started.

I diddled and twiddled. The Black Shadow triple-flammed and paradiddled. The Immigrant pumped out some deep mumbling bass lines. I fuzzed and I wahed. It didn’t take long for me to get through my entire repertoire of three or four riffs by which time I managed to hoist myself upright and line myself up with a microphone. We seemed to have somehow slipped into a twelve bar blues which was a surprise. I’d never played one before. Hell, I couldn’t even play a scale. I sang some kind of ‘Just a Country Boy’ lyrics.

I noticed a pretty girl smiling. ‘Hey, this is fantastic,’ I thought. Then I spotted a bloke yawning. ‘Oh no it must be shit,’ I thought. I then turned my improvised lyrics into ‘hey lets all have a jam, everyone.’ A couple of guys got up on stage at my invitation, but they were halted by representatives of all the other bands. No Way was anyone going to play any of their gear, Jose. That was final, non-negotiable and totally immune to all my ‘Aw c’mon, mans’.

None of these supposed hip musos seemed to understand the hippie ethic. ‘I’ll bloody show them,’ I snarled to myself. I handed my guitar to the nearest of the two onstage volunteers, exited stage left and left them to it.

It would be two years before my next gig. It would also be two hundred miles from Guildford.

Dirk Thrust. 2009.

How well do you 'function'? by Trisha McNair

From the second the email plinks into the Inbox, it's clearly going to be a complete mistake. But who can resist an invitation to play at a ritzy event, even when you know that your band is definitely NOT a function band, that the audience will back off in seconds to the relative peace of the bar, and that the only people left to enjoy the loud and raucous riffs will be a couple of crazy teens who were expecting yet another polite but dreary evening with their parents friends. Yes – that dilemma – should you compromise your art for any opportunity to gig, especially when the champagne will be flowing free ? And no matter what you think you will answer here. I’m betting that at least once or twice you have gone against your better judgement, and lapped up the flattery to say yes please. Hell, we’ll worry about the setlist later.

The invitation usually goes something like “We saw you play at the Dog and Doormouse and just loved your music and thought you would be great for our thankyou party to all our fundraisers for our Save the last British Speckled Porcupine campaign. If questioned closely about this gig later, those who sent the invitation will seem a little vague about what music they actually heard – was it something by that band from Glasgow, you known, that one you all yell along to.. or maybe it was your version of that catchy tune that was number one for most of last year. Completely unaware that the band plays solid blues with a few long winded classic rock numbers thrown in so that the lead guitarist can show you what he has been practising in his bedroom all these years, it later turns out that the Charity’s PR happened to be in the Dog and Doormouse and thought your lead singer was kinda cute.

So you swallow your principles and ignoring yells from the drummer, who is the only one to see sense (unusual for drummers I know – but even he gives in to the idea of a real stage to play on and special lights just for his kit) you put the date in the diary. Then the arguments begin about what to play. Some of the more esoteric jazz-rock fusion numbers are easily abandoned but surely someone at the event would be thrilled to hear a little Foo Fighters or keen to writhe a bit to Guns N’ Roses best. Hours are spent debating and shaping a set list mostly from numbers that have been half practised and half abandoned long ago by the band (mostly when we were about 17). Family and friends are grilled for their favourite party songs and then with a lot of clenched teeth Status Quo, Slade and even Mud start to appear on the list. Rehearsals are a strange mixture of grim determination, outright hatred (fortunately directed towards the songs) and rumbling angst that no-one really wants to play this stuff.

Another email from the event organiser subtly wipes the doubts away by promising the coolest party furniture and lighting rig imaginable (thankyou ChillSpace, you rock !) while at the same time making a few “requests” for songs. At least Mustang Sally takes only seconds to pick up …

By the night of the gig, you’re all convinced that this really is the business. Trying not to think about the tepid list of numbers that await, you wow at the stage back-drop, the glittery lights and the couple of celebs on the guest list, and snaffle some delicious canapés while asserting your rights to free drinks at the bar. But in truth, a growing sense of unease is sinking in, the singer has lost his usual chirpy swagger and the drummer is looking increasingly grim.

As you take to the (lovely huge) stage the guitarist is heard to mutter “well we are doing this for free”. And then you launch into your worst nightmare. You play your heart out. Almost note perfect. But there is one truth. This event and your band were not made for each other. The audience are polite, some even clap a little, or sway on the spot. But they don’t want your songs and you don’t want theirs. There is no love, no heart, no emotion – no mojo. Every song feels more leaden than the last, until eventually you slope off and leave the DJ to refill the dancefloor.

Commiserating over a cold beer you all agree that next week back in the grimy old pub, the band will be in its element and that is where you all really belong. Until plink… you have mail ………..

© 2009 Dr Trisha McNair

CREAMED again…. an appreciation of The Second Coming by Mark McKendrick

Cream at The Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London, 3rd May 2005

Me and the girlie saw Cream at RAH so came to testify.

I’ve tried to ignore all the comments I read following the concerts about their not being “young enough to desire it”.

After the event, there were always going to be ill-founded and utterly nonsensical comments flying around for all sorts of different reasons, after all this really was fairy tale stuff for the generations of people who were there the first time around and for the children, and the children’s children of those, the kids who – unusually for this day and age I feel – just came along to see what the fuss was about and to take the fantastic opportunity to experience a huge long departed chunk of it.

I've since read loads of reviews by a lot of seemingly over excited commentators who probably don't ever really listen to anything given the nature of their assumptions. I don't know whether bias or envy influence these people’s ramblings or whether they are simply naturally over-awed to a point of blindness - or is it deafness?

I am prepared to start a serious row with anybody if I hear anyone else say that Badge and White Room were "Awesome”.

Done live, Badge and White Room were NEVER awesome. It's absolutely impossible for those two tunes to be replicated with anything like the melodic qualities and the power they had as studio recordings.

White Room has about four guitar tracks missing and there was no 'second' guitar to shape the rhythmic underpinning to the bridge and solo section in Badge.

Having said that; As out and out power-trio jams the chord structures in both DO provide excellent workouts for some psychedelic soloing, of which, I do declare Clapton to be rather Godlike. These blokes invented most of that stuff, after all.

I didn't expect this concert to be anything like as brilliant as it actually was.

Pretty stunning deliveries from start to finish with each musician making the odd mistake and Eric occasionally getting a little lost in the more necessarily improvised tunes - namely Badge and White Room.

Given that it was always impossible to perform these tunes live, it wouldn't have worried me had they not been performed at all. It was more than enough that they were so influential as studio recordings in their day. The original solo in White Room is one of those that you know defines the way guitar solos are approached, and have been since he cut this one in 1967. With that solo [Clapton] has a lot to answer for - I’m glad to say. However, that's distracting....

They kicked off with the Skip James staple I'M SO GLAD and this reviewer was instantly stunned. I don't know what it was other reviewers were expecting but they are WRONG. This was the real thing and it was enough. Also real - and if you hadn't ever heard this before, this would have slaughtered you - Willie Dixon’s SPOONFUL turned the place electric. This was brilliant and set a level for the evening, which was only altered by further ascents.

Classy renditions of OUTSIDE WOMAN BLUES and even Ginger's PRESSED RAT AND WARTHOG (First time live????) SLEEPY TIME TIME and N.S.U. picked it up before BADGE came along and reminded me that we are all only human after all.

Next up, POLITICIAN - always one of your reviewer’s personal favourites - did not fail to please and gave us another lift contradicting my recent decision that we are ALL human. We are not.

SWEET WINE was a good leveller after that one. Some members of the audience were in danger of losing it by now. The trio duly left us with our chins on the floor, reminding us that they were also absolute masters of rhythm with a killer execution of ROLLIN' AND TUMBLIN' that quite frankly scared me shitless. Eric and Ginger combining to create a smoking riff on snare drum and slide guitar while - without bass - Jack delivered that trademark whining train whistle vocal and interweaving harp that made this group UNTOUCHABLE in the first place. Play the Blues? This is why Hendrix said Cream had opened the door. This is why Duane Allman said Eric Clapton had written the book for young white blues guitarists. Never mind Tears in Heaven and Wonderful Tonight. Some guitar players only ever needed to do one thing, and Eric Clapton is one of them.

A psychedelic ramble through T-Bone Walkers STORMY MONDAY BLUES was another reminder of how influential this band were, showing as they did, how a tune normally played by at least one more instrument can be given flesh by the application of the musician, in this case Jack was emphasising all those 7th and 9th slurs on the bass that would normally be covered by second and third guitarists and/or keyboard players. He even got in a suggestion of the G, Am, Bm, Bbm, D9, E9 progression while Eric was off again and taking us all the way to Klooks Kleek. Psychedelic Blues by its inventors. There is nothing else to do. This isn't my favourite way of dealing with a tune, but I cannot deny the originality and influence here. Wonderful.

A Cream original, DESERTED CITIES OF THE HEART was next, and reminded us of the very unique style that Jack Bruce and Pete Brown achieved as composer collaborators before Booker-T Jones and William Bells BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN gave another reminder as to why, when it comes to dragging the blues out of the past Cream had only one or two, if any peers at all.

WE'RE GOING WRONG a Bruce/Brown original from Disraeli Gears was delivered with canny accuracy. The six-time drum riff is uniquely Ginger Baker, and Clapton NAILS that lamenting oozy guitar sound, the way it has been mimicked oh so often since with varying degrees of accuracy, but never with such haunting effect. I didn't know if I'd been shot or if I'd shit myself at this point.
People said he shouldn't have been able to do it with a Fender Stratocaster. What they meant was that THEY can't even do it with a Gibson SG, which is the instrument on which Clapton originally recorded it. There is NO substitute for touch and feel - something many, if not most guitarists since the mid-'60s have failed to grasp.

A not too racy CROSSROADS followed with the "Rosedale" verse - which Cream generally tended to do - with good solid solos between the last two verses. I'm glad Eric DIDN'T go off on one here and that he kept it nice and compact, leaving the audience on a nice plateau for Chester Burnett’s SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD which was again performed faultlessly and with an accuracy sometimes lacking in their performances of old.

This was followed by the aforementioned WHITE ROOM and a steaming version of TOAD for which Clapton and Bruce duly left the stage for Ginger Baker to remind us all again just how influential this band were, not only as such but as massively talented individuals with no fear of boundary busting and rule breaking. I was never really one for drum solos and it might even have been the live WHEELS OF FIRE version of this tune that dulled my appreciation. I regained an appetite when I heard Jai Johanny Johannson doing duets with Butch Trucks that eventually took me back there to rediscover the joy of just drums! Ginger did not overdo this, and when Clapton and Bruce re-emerged for the closing chords I found myself almost disappointed that it was coming to a halt. Strictly employing the verse and bar structure of the opening gambits of the tune, far from being the tub thumping many wrongly consider [his] playing to be, what this did for me simply reinforced my notion of Ginger’s undoubted mastery.

The band left the stage to naturally ecstatic applause, although I can't help thinking that some members of the audience were applauding something totally different than I was. Maybe they applauding the fact that Jack made it the stage at all. Maybe they were simply applauding history. Fair enough.

The encore was the not unexpected SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE which, when delivered, was delivered with all the giving and all the knowing that this tune was - and probably still is - one of the defining pieces of music of all time, and it was delivered with such confidence you just knew were seeing and hearing everything you ever wanted to know about how music got where it got following the Beatles. After the Beatles, Cream cast the longest shadow of all over what was to follow. Jimi Hendrix broke into this tune as his farewell to the "group that made it all possible" during an otherwise rather drab performance on the Lulu show, many years ago. He played it just like Cream. The show was cut mid performance with Jimi gesturing just how important this group had been, with an almost uncanny knowing that if it was all over for Cream, it was all over for everybody - including himself. He knew it.

When Cream closed with it last night, we all knew it too. Eric Clapton probably is God The Father. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker probably are the Son and the Holy Ghost – but don’t ask me which one is which.