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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Inside a Mellotron M400 and how it works

An evening pause: A very strange instrument from the 1970s whose keys play strips of magnetic audio tape for each note. You can listen to a performance of “Nights in White Satin” on a Mellotron here. This is definitely a sound from the 1970s, used in many songs of that time.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • judd

    Mechanical nightmare. i imagine that after trucking between shows you’d have to realign the capstan rollers and head pressure pads.

    But, people used them, and they made interesting sounds.

  • Judd: In posting your suggestion, I also came across this video of Paul McCartney demonstrating his own use of the Mellotron.

  • wayne

    judd-
    great piece!

    I would suggest this version to see what’s going on…

    “Nights In White Satin by the Moody Blues, on my Mellotron M400”
    Marco Hoogland (March 2020)
    https://youtu.be/DUAj3ql1DFI
    (2:17)

  • judd`

    They evidently underwent significant development after the M400.

  • Jeff Wright

    Bowie used it as well:
    https://www.electricity-club.co.uk/space-oddity-the-electronic-worlds-of-david-bowie/

    The unsteady, bittersweet whimsy of the instrument fit his music best.

    Better synthesizers demand a Robert Rich/Steve Roach style of ambient.

  • Andrew R.

    Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues had worked for the Mellotron’s manufatureer, Streetly Electronics, for 18 months. The experience came in handy on their first U.S. tour. One night the back of the Mellotron fell off and the tapes cascaded out. Pinder grabbed his toolbox and had it fixed in about 20 minutes. Mellotrobs were finicky. They didn’t do well with changes in heat and humidity.

  • Jerry Greenwood

    The instrument is amazing but the instructor impressed me the most.

  • Jerry Greenwood

    It just struck me. This is an outgrowth of the laugh track machines used (over used) to simulate audience reactions in television shows in the 60s.

  • Jerry Greenwood

    Well maybe not.

  • Jerry Greenwood

    Wayne

    The picture in my mind of the Moody Blues on stage while I listened to Knights In White Satin has been forever shattered. The vision of the violinists in their concert garb drawing the bow across the strings in unison is just a fond memory. The flautist standing in the Eric Anderson style is no more.

    Why did I get up this morning?

    Thanks for the link. ( not sarcasm)

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