Roundel Jack

Today's image was taken on a short early morning walk in the grounds of the Royal British Legion Village just up the road from home. This figure commemorates the service of RAF personnel and veterans. I decided to name him Roundel Jack as the symbol on his chest is half a roundel and half a Union Jack.

I read a great article in the Guardian today by Helen Pidd, their North of England editor, about the birth of electronic music in the UK in the late 70's and early 80's.
It describes how a band turning up for a session at Studio Electophonique (fabulous name!) in the late 1970's could have been forgiven for thinking they had the wrong address. An ordinary Sheffield council house with a caravan parked in the driveway, it was semi-detached with deep pile carpets and a toy poodle with a bark like a wildebeest.
However, behind the chintzy curtains an RAF veteran and panel beater called Ken Patten had handbuilt one of the most pioneering electronic studios in Europe. In return for a recording fee of £15, he helped some of Sheffield's most important bands form their newly emerging sounds - including Pulp, ABC, Heaven 17 and Human League (and other much less heralded acts such as the Doncaster Wheatsheaf Girls Choir).
Martin Ware, who went on to form Human League and Heaven 17, remembers being greeted at the door of the house by Ken's wife, offered tea and biscuits and shown into the front room which was all chintz and voluminous armchairs and had a coffee table with a four-track recorder on it. The keyboard stands sat on the deep plush carpet.
It also turned out that the main recording place was actually in the bedroom and that this was where the drum kit was. Jarvis Cocker (of Pulp fame) recalled that on his visits to the studio in 1981 the band would be in the kitchen and the drummer would go upstairs to the bedroom but through creative use of wiring he could hear his bandmates downstairs - a little portable black and white TV was turned on in the bedroom so they could actually see him too. Ken's wife had insisted on this to make sure nobody misbehaved!
Now two ex-teachers from Sheffield called James Leesley and James Taylor have made a documentary ("A Film About Studio Electrophonique") 
celebrating what they consider one of the greatest untold stories in British pop music.