I'm submitting a DJ Mix to Radio 1's BBC Introducing and hope that whoever listens to it could possibly read my potted music background here too...
Music Background –
Christopher Griffith
The first album I can
recall owning was Now That’s What I call Music Vol.2, released March
1984 when I was coming up for my eighth birthday. I must have listened to and
enjoyed music before this but some of the tracks on that compilation, Queen’s Radio
Ga Ga, Nena’s 99 Red Balloons & Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just
Want To Have Fun remain always amongst those which remind me, whenever I
hear them played, of just how young and free and totally unencumbered I felt
by, well, anything; in the following summer, for example, I can clearly
remember singing along with my sister to Sinitta’s So Macho, not having
a clue what the lyrics meant and not caring at all how stupid I must have
sounded as we played together with Lego on the floor of my bedroom, the shared
activity and music forging bonds between us as strong as the creations we made
that day with its durable material!
That album also contained
Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax, and I can clearly recall being told
one day in the school playground what the lyrics were actually about without of
course understanding what they were actually about; I don’t think the idiot who
informed me really comprehended them either because we were just too young to
‘get’ that kind of double meaning. He wasn’t subtle enough, and I remember
thinking he’d always been a bit of a prick anyway so why listen to what he had
to say!? So on I went, enjoying Nik Kershaw’s Wouldn’t It Be Good? and
then in the next Now album his I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Duran
Duran’s Reflex (more attempts to explain this one ended up with my being
told the ‘reflex’ was an egg!), Phil Collins’ Against All Odds and
Frankie’s (in my opinion) far superior Two Tribes.
This, and their lengthier
Welcome To The Pleasure Dome were for me the closest thing yet to the
kind of electronic music I would become so engaged with in my adolescence, an
entirely different genre to the sort of sound I still enjoyed through Now 4
& 5 (I’m sticking with these until 10 as they represent
broadly the pop music to which most of us were listening back in the mid-80s)
Lionel Richie’s Hello emblematic of, maybe trailblazer for many a love
song to come, Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters & Duran Duran’s A View
to a Kill taking care of the cinematic tie-in and The Fine Young Cannibals Johnny
Come Home along with Simply Red’s Money’s Too Tight To Mention
showpieces for how effective the individual voice of a singer can prove in
lifting an entire song to the next level. There were lots of off-the-wall tunes
around too, Doctor & the Medics Spirit in the Sky one of my
favourites whilst new on the scene now Pet Shop Boys & Communards delivered
again strength of voice but in different, gentler degree to those cited above.
It could have finished for me in 1987 with Europe’s The Final Countdown,
and I would remain for a long time afficionado of rock embracing almost all
that a certain Guns n Roses produced in the late eighties and nineties, but in
that same year, 1987, a track called Pump Up the Volume was released by
M/A/R/R/S and the start of my odyssey into electronic music began.
I just loved it, loved
the sound, the samples, the sections, the breaks but most of all I loved the
beat which ran through it; electronic music of course starts with the beat
because that is what gets your toes tapping and brings you onto the dancefloor,
it’s what underpins and drives every mix no matter the percussion or bassline
attendant, and it’s crying shame in my opinion that the beauty of two beats on
top of each other (sometimes even cancelling each other out in their identical
thud) is often nowadays lost by the DJ simply chopping tracks into each other,
but I’ll come back to that later! I was still listening to other stuff of
course, loving T’Pau’s China In Your Hand, Whitesnake’s Here I Go
Again, pretty much anything by Belinda Carlisle, Madonna, Michael Jackson
all of it moving on, sounding different somehow to earlier music like Chicago’s
Hard To Say I’m Sorry, Fame, Murray Head’s One Night in
Bangkok, Sting’s Russians, pop music was changing, subtly but so,
and then just as the Doctor & the Medics sound had appealed to me along
came the Timelords with Doctorin the Tardis. I had no idea these guys
were the KLF, their album The White Room becoming one of my all-time
favourites, and when I fell completely in love with What Time is Love?
the following year, 1988, I still had no clue that they were one and the same
beat masters. And that’s what they were to me, masters of the beat. What
Time is Love? is slow, way slower than the energy I’d find later in trance
and Happy Hardcore, but it had that beat, those hi-hats and snares, and the
wonderful voice again, the lyrics raw, aggressive, catchy, cool certainly to
this 12 year old middle class white boy who lived in suburbia and went to prep
school!
But this was 1988-89, and
I was in my last year with the little kids about to jump up to big boy
territory so that I’m sure my music tastes were directed by this change as much
as any other influence. Paula Abdul’s Straight Up, Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo
Stance & Manchild, Soul II Soul’s too cool for school Back To
Life, I was listening to and loving this stuff right alongside
Tecnotronic’s Pump Up the Jam and Beats International’s Dub Be Good
To Me, these latter on an album called Deep Heat 90 which was as
seminal for me as Now 2 had been back in the day; I don’t need to list
any tracks on this production because I loved every single one of them, playing
the cassette tapes over and over and over again, planting though I didn’t know
it at the time the passion for and loyalty to electronic music which would
actually do nothing less than save my life at university, but all in its
place...
I loved my new school
too, and that summer 1990 we went on cricket tour to Birmingham listening
repetitively in the minibus to MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This & New
Order’s World in Motion, willing England on to beat West Germany in the
semi-final of the World Cup, our hopes for national glory disappearing
somewhere alongside the ball Chris Waddle smashed over the goal in his penalty
miss! But that second year, it was called the Remove for some reason, tracks
like Nomad’s I Wanna Give You Devotion & Crystal Waters’ Gypsy
Woman, they were just doing the do for me alongside Heavy D & The Boyz’
cheesy but catchy Now That We’ve Found Love, K-Klass’ brilliant Rhythm
Is A Mystery, KLF’s massive 3am Eternal and then my first taste of
the Shamen with Move Any Mountain. These were all chart hits of course
played across the airwaves, I mean being a good little Surrey boy I had no idea
what a rave was or the first clue of any underground culture, but they were
still tunes bridging that divide for me, and so my own stage was set for one
summer afternoon in GCSE year when I liked the sound of the track that was
playing on the common room’s ghetto blaster (strangely no one was there with me
at the time as I recall!) and opened the tape deck to read the words Kaos
Theory 2 on the cassette inserted there; well that was that, I bought a
copy for myself and as I listened back at home to the first few offerings I was
wowed having never heard anything like it to date, especially the drive and
pure energy of Praga Khan’s Injected With A Poison.
This was the summer of
love, well it was for me anyway, and I could easily have tripped down the
brilliant Bodyguard love song medley album route Whitney Houston
produced that year but somehow Kaos Theory 2 won; I was addicted
particularly to its first few songs listening to them over and over through
1992’s long break, heading to London at the back end of August with friends
with whom I was moving from GCSE year into sixth form, but as they bought
Nirvana and Neds Atomic Dustbin posters from shops in Oxford Street I stepped
into a store and was blown away by The Shamen’s LSI blasting from the speakers
therein. Term came quick then, there to accompany me The Greatest Hits of
Dance and Rave 92 albums. I’d listen to tracks 3 through 8 over and
over on the third disc of the former, my old favourite Pump Up the Volume
followed by SL2’s mad On a Ragga Tip, The Prodigy’s bonkers Everybody
In The Place, Smart E’s naughty Sesame’s Treet, 808 State’s booming In
Yer Face and finally Altern-8’s classic Active 8. This was quality
rave in amongst the more mainstream focus of discs 1 & 2 and I just
couldn’t get enough of it. Nor could I miss a single episode of Normsky’s Dance
Energy House Party that autumn, one track in particular remaining a
favourite of mine for years to come, Liquid’s Sweet Harmony, XL
recordings producing brilliance after brilliance including a university
favourite of mine, Le Voie Le Soleil.
I was beginning, starting
really to appreciate the underground scene though still because it was lapping
over with mainstream, Rave 92 a really good example of this and the
first album I had ever heard where it seemed, just seemed in the end that the
tracks were being mixed together, if only actually the second starting as the
first came to its close. Into this autumn and on through 1994 came other hits,
mainstream ones which again took me away from that underground rave sound, Don’t
You Want Me by Felix, Haddaway’s What is Love?, Dr Alban’s It’s
My Life, many by 2 Unlimited, Sybil’s When I’m Good & Ready,
several by Cappella, Usura’s Open Your Mind, D;Ream, Tony Di Bart’s The
Real Thing, even Culture Beat’s Mr Vain, if it had a beat and a
half-decent melody then I’d listen to it and love it, adoring this form of
music which always improved my mood and made me feel full of energy.
The Prodigy’s Music
for the Jilted Generation was released in July 1994, another seminal album
for me with tracks One Love, Skylined and of course No Good
(Start the Dance) completely blowing my mind. It wasn’t long before I
bought their first album Experience to be reacquainted with mixes of Everybody
Is In the Place and Fire which I’d already heard on compilations
plus of course Out of Space which was just bananas, mental, awesome to
listen to through headphones with the volume turned up. And then there was
Kiss, pirate station of enormous repute which had become legal at the start of
the nineties, me the old slowcoach finally waking up to its driving energy in
the back end of summer 1994, tracks like Livin Joy’s Dreamer and Baby
D’s Let Me Be Your Fantasy again mainstream but played alongside much
more underground fare which was now beginning to drive my fancy. And yet it was
one more album purchased at that time, Hardcore Junglistic Fever Volume One
which sent me on my way to university aware now of new sounds breaking through
old barriers, DJ Kenny Ken smashing it to pieces with his mixing alongside a
terrific second side of the tape featuring MC GQ accompanying similar selection
of tracks. I’d never heard music like this, and yet, and yet it contained the
essence of electronica which was now firmly in charge of my musical tastebuds,
beats, breaks, percussion, lyrics sparse but unforgettable, fitting for the
tune at hand, Burial by Leviticus and NRG’s I Need Your Love. In
October I went with friends to a jungle night at Ritzy’s in Bristol but within
five minutes of getting there a mass brawl erupted on the dancefloor and I
turned my back on the place. I hate fights and I’ve never done illegal drugs
because I hate the ugly side of human nature. Although I still love the sound
of what became drum n bass it was its sister effort Happy Hardcore that really
captured my heart, though that was still several years to come.
For now, I studied, the
much more easy sound of Tony Humphries in the mix for Ministry of Sound,
the pacey and fun Danny Rampling’s DJ Power and of course the series
which became legendary amongst us at the time, Journeys by DJ. It was
actually in bizarre order that I listened though, starting with a friend who
had Paul Oakenfold’s Volume 5, then picking up Judge Jules on tape for 2 which
I had on repeat for much of the autumn term, Billy Nasty’s 1 in November and
then the John Digweed Silky Mix 4 for Christmas which we were all blown away by
because we’d never heard transitions between tracks which you couldn’t tell
apart. I then picked up Danny Rampling’s 3 the next term but that’s to get
ahead because I still haven’t mentioned where in reality this was all being
echoed, and that would be Bristol’s Lakota nightclub; of a Saturday evening we
would head down there to have our ears assailed by Mory Kante’s Yeke Yeke
(Hardfloor Mix) and I was fully paid up member with our own queue and bouncers
welcoming us so friendly compared to those at the mainstream clubs we also went
to in the city. Don’t get me wrong, we still loved a good boogie at Wedgie’s on
a Wednesday night but Lakota was the absolute place to head to if you wanted to
hear cutting edge electronica, especially the tiny, cosy upstairs room where
you danced the night away with fellow folk who loved their music beats banging,
relentless and mixed together seamlessly.
But things were moving so
fast, for suddenly JDJ was on to international and Keoki blasting it from the
front and we’d all turned progressive with the awesome Renaissance Mix
Collection by Sasha & John Digweed, soundtrack to the summer whilst the
latter DJ banged out Transmission and we all heard him play this harder
stuff one Friday night at Lakota in June, finishing his set just on 4am as we
all gathered outside before heading back to Halls. And I haven’t even mentioned
BT and Oakie’s Perfecto, Grace’s Not Over Yet the backdrop to
early summer 1995 until I was back to Danny Rampling’s Love Groove Dance
Party and Radio 1’s R.A.V.E Day whilst travelling in Scotland to compete in
the BUSA Champs with other athletic friends. And I stayed with Danny Rampling,
and remembered Oakie because there I was listening to Dragonfly, A Voyage
Into Trance which they had mixed between them. It was almost as if the DJs
themselves at the time didn’t know which genre they preferred to play, or was
it because they were just more versatile, could put anything together they
chose, hell maybe even the music was so fluid at the time it crossed boundaries
and could fit into several categories rather than the distinct ones we have
today?
Because suddenly there
was Cream Live and we swung back mainstream again, Pete Tong and Oakie’s
sets the ones I remember best through that summer though we all spared a
thought bizarre for the first track in Justin Robertson’s mix, Armand van
Helden’s The Witchdoktor and not just because it was different but
because it had that sound, in the chorus that had reverberated around Lakota
when Digweed was playing and again repeated in his Transmission tape. And
that’s the key, that’s what joins us clubbers, DJs, electronic music
afficionados, it’s the comfort of the beat, the breakdown, the build, the blast
back into a track which unites us all
because we first heard it time and ago and somehow, somehow hold the same
memory for it. The tunes produced appeal to us, unify us and of course once
they’re mixed together into segments take us on journeys also, if the DJ
spinning them has enough skill of course. Well, I listened to Cream Live
all over that summer though there was another album in the mix, remote at first
then fading in before joining and taking over the other, this was Fantazia’s The
Fourth Dimension. Fantazia, epic label, business, people, organisers whose
N-Trance Set Me Free was one of the first tracks I heard in our first
term in Halls, when I’d come down here to the west country and within ten weeks
of term been introduced to all sorts of dance music which had increased my love
for this brand; it was like track and field, all sorts of events but under one
umbrella which seemed to be taking over the world in the mid-nineties. Of
course there was Britpop, there was Oasis and Knebworth and Trainspotting
and Euro 96 and I loved it all, but it was electronica which still meant the
most to me, another Fantazia release
with Jeremy Healy & Alistair Whitehead my soundtrack to the start of second
year life in Bristol before Tony de Vit’s Retrospective of House mix
with Shaker’s Strong to Survive quite simply saved my life.
You see, I’d got ill.
Stretching back into the eighties I now think, but my mind had over the years
gradually taken on loads which it became incapable of sustaining. Now, as
mentioned above I never took illicit drugs, no sir, but I did drink because in
my weird conception it was legal so of course it couldn’t do any damage, could
it? Well no, not in moderation, but by the time I’d got through my first term
at university I had been consuming very heavily indeed, something which
continued all the way through 1995 until I had a moment, a very bad moment one
night on the Downs at Bristol in which I think I lost contact with all reality
for a few moments in time. Then I contracted flu, proper influenza which kept
me in bed for almost two weeks with its intensity and virulence such that when
I managed to get back to my university accommodation I still had to spend
hours, sometimes days in bed recuperating. And boy, was I down. I mean
depressed, dejected, so low I couldn’t even see the way through the darkness
that dropped down over my vision. Nothing could lift me. Nothing, except the
sound of Shaker’s Strong to Survive as I played Tony de Vit’s mix whilst
I recovered. It’s a track which shows its age now, but back then, right there
its lyrics and its beat, and yes all the other electronic elements of which
I’ve made mention, they cut through the haze that surrounded me, and they
sustained me. The track sustained me. In fact, it saved me. Without listening
to that mix, and in particular that track on repeat, I don’t think I’d be here
now typing out these words to let you know about how important dance music is
to me.
Around this time, there
were two further awesome compilations, John Digweed’s skills over three discs
of Renaissance the Mix Collection Part 2 & the first Essential Mix
album, Tong, Cox, Sasha & Oakenfold delivering a perfect blend of house,
techno, progressive and well, house again making Christmas 1995 pure bliss for
this dance music afficionado, Carl Cox in particular playing the kind of sound
which I believe he perfected in his Colours Edinburgh 2 hour effort which
although recorded in June 1996 I only heard two years afterwards thanks to a
friend of mine on postgraduate course. And still the albums came, In The Mix
96 a real mainstream but fun effort, Boy George & Pete Tong’s Ministry
of Sound Dance Nation and then Kiss Mix 96 put together by Graham
Gold and soundtrack to my summer then alongside Danny Rampling’s spacey trance
mix on his Love Groove Dance Party first release. And that’s when I
bought my first pair of record decks, not Technics by any stretch but a couple
of cheap turntables with a mixer and me behind them in the middle. I found it
hard going at first, but I remembered the brief lessons I had from a friend
before about beat matching and song choice and before long I’d made my first
mix, a dreadful effort full of mainstream garbage I’d picked up on the cheap.
Back at university for my third year (why didn’t I take my decks with me?) I
bought Bitter & Twisted mixed by Mrs Wood & Blu Peter; now this
was underground stuff, and it was banging hard and I still think ahead of its
time, or maybe it’s because it’s held up so well over time. The retrospectives
had gone introspective and I loved Judge Jules’ effort on that one whilst
Rampling had produced another awesome spacey trance mix on his next LGDP album,
Pablo Gargano and X-Cabs absolutely belting tracks. I think this was his best
effort as I never really got into LGDP 5 & 6, but anyway it was my 21st
around this time and of course I had to deliver a guest set, trouble being I
was so bladdered I could hardly see the turntables although I do remember a
good mix out of Y-Traxx Trance Piano & one involving DJ
Quicksilver’s Bellissima into Robert Miles’ Children. And then
that was it, I’d done my Finals and I was home for good, listening to Kiss
Mix 97 all over the break before falling head over heels in love with Happy
Hardcore.
It was natural
progression really, I mean I was just always drawn to the harder, faster stuff
and when one evening on the way to my then girlfriend’s house I tuned into Kiss
100, the sheer madness of Sharkey, Hixxy & Slam absolutely appealed to my
own insanity and I was sold, particularly when the latter played Trip To the
Other Side and smashed the mix out of it into the next, there was a
terrific Rock Da Funky Beats sample on top of breakbeat and that summer
I heard two other blistering tracks, Dune’s Million Miles Away &
Q-Tex’s The Power of Love. Strangely, I didn’t buy any of this genre on
vinyl, instead sticking to mainstream with a bit harder thrown in as though
what I was practicing in actuality was trying to catch up with what I was
listening to, very odd but in the Fall that year I played my first house party,
teeing up Dario G’s Sunchyme and moving through the gears over several
hours until I was banging out techno so hard everyone at the event had to go
and sit in another room, though they did say my sound was good enough for a
club, apparently!
And that was that, I
pulled the plug on my course, broke up with my girlfriend and got diagnosed
with bipolar disorder. I was 22 when my world dropped away with this news, but
just like three years ago back at university I still had electronic music to
succour me listening avidly to Gatecrasher’s Black CD set, making mix tapes for
friends of mine and now listening more and more keenly to Radio 1, Dave
Pearce’s Dance Anthems to start with and then the Judge himself who at this
time in 1998 took on two shows across the weekend, a harder selection from
9-11pm on a Friday and the more mellow but still pumping session on Saturdays
5-7pm. This marked a sea change for me, no longer buying album after album but
listening to Radio 1 at these times and often popping over to HMV in Newport
afterwards to buy or order tracks that I’d heard in a particular mix; the guy
who ran the vinyl section asked me a couple of times why I did it this way
rather than listen to tracks fresh in store and buy what I wanted, the reason
being that I liked to hear the tunes in the middle of a mix, and Jules’s weekly
10.30 – 11pm effort really never disappointed. And so this continued on through
1998 and 1999 whilst my mixing improved as I did mentally, recuperating on the
Isle of Wight with my family and a Games room which perfectly muffled the sound
of my trail and error whilst mum and dad listened to classical in the other
part of the house!
In September 1999, I
moved back to the mainland and started listening to Alex P & Brandon Block
on a Friday afternoon on Kiss from 3pm, if I remember correctly. I absolutely
loved their show though I didn’t give up the Judge for it of course, and for
some strange reason whilst I was writing I’d play on repeat the second disc
from John Digweed’s Renaissance 2, listening to Pete Lazonby’s Sacred
Cycles over and over. And then my chance came, a private club on New Year’s
Eve to welcome in the new millennium, CD decks to get my head round in the DJ
booth and my own turntables out on the stage. It was brilliant. I was already
half-cut by the time I started at 7pm, loving the experience as the punters
turned up and I could leave ABBA alone for a half hour or so to bash out
Yomanda’s Synth & Strings, some guy hugging me for the sound whilst
girls came up to the booth and chatted me up royally! When I finished at 7am I
was completely spent; back home I tried to sleep but couldn’t, beats
reverberating round my head so that I panicked and decided there and then this
wasn’t good for my illness.
In early 2000, Jules took
his show out on the road and I would leave drinks I was having with my friends
early on a Friday night to tape record these live events. They were awesome,
but nothing like what I was about to hear for in late May 2000 when I was fed
up with the dismal accommodation I was stuck in I stayed up to listen to Paul
van Dyk’s mix from a very wet Homelands festival; all through the rest of the
year, driving back from Cornwall in the summer, down in the returns room at the
book shop where I was working I bashed this mix out on repeat and repeat and
repeat, for me simply the best demonstration of DJ mixing I have ever heard
before or since. This was in marked contrast to me and my two calamitous
auditions around this time, the first to an empty hall at a university in
London where I transitioned horribly from the guy before me with banging techno
from his melodic house and then got distracted by the monitor beside me,
something I’d never experienced before, the second at what was then Bar Med in
Guildford when the place was half-empty and I knocked the needle across the
record I was teeing up to bring in on the mix!
I got rid of my
turntables after that and decided to just listen to Paul van Dyk’s superlative
mix, on and on through 2001 until I must have chewed it up because suddenly I
was relapsing, it was approaching Christmas and I was listening to Getaway
by Terry Bones. I can’t remember which album this track was on but I hammered
it over and over that end of year 2001 before 2002 brought for me a new
discipline growing end over end in dance music, and that be Hard House. I can’t
remember whether or not it was on one of Jules’ shows but Marco V was the sound
in early 2002 and one of my favourite tracks of his still remains My Acid
Pacemaker; then there was Hard Energy mixed by Fergie & Yomanda,
the latter producing Synth & Strings I mentioned earlier, the former DJ of
whom I knew nothing though would become another great influence on my onward
journey. In fact, Fergie became so popular at the time that he took on his own
Radio 1 show in June that year, and suddenly Hard House was the absolute
business.
I was back to buying
albums too, Hard House Anthems, Hard House Euphoria, Big Room DJs,
there was Nukleuz & Lisa Lashes & Andy Farley & Ed Real & Mario
Piu & Nick Sentience & of course BK whose track Revolution jumped
into the mainstream charts that year. I was listening to other stuff too, DJ
Hype’s jungle on repeat in our shop’s Goods-In whilst I booked stock on to the
system and as 2002 drove into the next year and beyond the DJs kept coming,
Eddie Halliwell, Rob Tissera, the Tidy Boys, Lee Haslam, Amber D, Mauro
Picotto, and three epic tracks for me, K90’s Red Snapper, James Lawson’s
mix of Bad Ass & Cortina’s Music is Moving. I couldn’t keep
up, and I wanted more of this stuff that I bought Mark EG on Music for a
Harder Generation Volume 4. And of course from there it was a quick
transfer back to Happy Hardcore such that in 2005-6 I collected almost all the Bonkers
CD compilations, DJ Sharkey my very favourite although in truth I loved
whatever I listened to on these albums. Directionless in my direction, I
charged headlong back into trance when I moved into new premises in January
2007 listening to Armin van Buuren’s State of Trance Yearmix 2005,
something about the sound grabbing me so that I began to collect the other CDs
in the series whilst transferring my vinyl collection to laptop files. And then
there was Kutski, the hardcore sound still popular enough for him to have his
own show on Radio 1, listening to this 2008 and on, particularly a brilliant
Halloween mix in 2010. And so, in 2012 I decided to give mixing another go,
making an appalling effort on Virtual DJ including Lost Witness’ Red Sun
Rising, Agnelli & Nelson’s El Nino & Vincent de Moor’s Flowtation,
just some of my very favourite tracks from back in the day, well 1998 I think
for some reason.
In 2013 whilst marking
papers I listened to Fatamorgana’s Goa Trance on You Tube, picking up three
excellent Essential mixes along the way, Man With No Name’s 1998 effort in this
genre, classic techno from the same year by Jeff Mills & CJ Bolland’s
effort from back in 1994. In all these, there were sections that just
absolutely blasted, when song choice stuck brilliantly, and it was in this vein
that I started listening to other Essentials through 2014-15, mostly Paul van
Dyk’s efforts whilst I trained in the gym at school over lunch. But that autumn
I also tuned into Armin van Buuren’s 8 hour sets and I made another mix, again
on Virtual DJ, which was still ropey to start with but got better as it
progressed; and then I managed to produce a longer two-hour effort at Christmas
with a 40 minute slot in the middle which still remains now some six years
later my best selective effort on this software…
