Lyric sheets
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Your support makes all the difference.TO A WATKINS COPICAT FROM AN OLD ROCKER
In 1958, Charlie Watkins of Balham invented an echo unit called the Watkins Copicat. One morning he opened his shop in Balham High Road to find a queue of buyers for his first 10 units. First in the queue was Johnny Kidd. Joe Brown is reputed to have given Hank Marvin his first Copicat. With the advent of digital delay units in the early Eighties, the Copicat lost a certain amount of popularity. Charlie Watkins has recently started making the original Copicats again - complete with valves. Early orders have come from Robert Plant, Mark Knopfler and Dave Gilmour . . .
The twang which cut the Sixties night
And changed the world from black and white
Would not have been as sharp as that
Without the Watkins Copicat
From quiffs and cats in coffee-bars
To pudding-basined beat-boom stars
The brew may well have tasted flat
Without the Watkins Copicat
Expresso echo - now a relic
Button four for psychedelic
Button two and you'd be ready
Quite like Gene and just like Eddy
Nothing like it. Weird machine
Had to keep those tape heads clean
Too much oxide made them manky
Wiped them with the roadie's hanky
Tape loop whizzing round and round
Spring-arm made a squeaking sound
Tried to stop it - nothing doing
Sounded quite like gerbils screwing
If the problem wouldn't stop
Took it back to Charlie's shop
Kept spare tape loops on his shelf
Or you made them up yourself
The Watkins echo breaks away
To psychedelic ricochet
The old degeneration game
And digital is not the same
That twang which cut the Sixties night
And changed the world from black and white
Could not have been as sharp as that
Without the Watkins Copicat-icat- icat-icat
icaticaticaticacacacaaasssshhhhh.
Martin Newell's latest collection of verse, 'Under Milkfloat', is available from The Essex Festival, Literature Department, Essex University, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, priced pounds 4.
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