THE UNPLEASANT REALITY OF

LIVING IN A LITTER FREE ZONE

In Memory Of Lord Litter (7th February 1956 - 1st May 2024)

Hi,
I am visiting John Lennon. This is no joke. The COPD worsened that much that they could not do anything. It’s all right, I had a great life, a bit short, what can you do.
I know we will meet again somewhere, bring your instruments, we will have jam sessions.
I am surrounded by my family and girlfriend so I am feeling great.
Please spread the news to as many friends as possible ! I repeat it’s no joke!
My son will send this mail when the time has come!

Cheers

LL

And when it did come, I was hit with a sense of absolute disbelief. We'd been chatting via our inboxes only three weeks earlier.  I was sending him some good vibes, he'd had Covid, much more serious for him because of the COPD, hospital et al. It sounded like he was over the worst;

"Yeah .. very slowly *comming back*..." he'd said, accentuating his recovery with bold type and two m's, "produced a first new show .. started listening to new CDs ... peeew .. all pretty exhausting ..."

If I'd known then that those would be the last words I'd ever hear from him. But I would have sworn he was immortal, it just didn't seem right that someone who had done so much could simply cease to exist. God knows, the underground network that grew from the cassette culture movement of the 80's, it could make friends of complete strangers. But Jörg Dittmar was more than that, he felt like a real friend, he'd been over from Germany to visit a couple of times (Easter '93 top right), and we'd been swapping letters and packages, then later e-mails and soundfiles, for some 33 years. Indeed it was him that first introduced me to the global network back in 1991, he changed my life, quite literally. For me, the three big milestones of cassette culture...

1963 - Philips introduce the audio cassette

1979 - TEAC introduce the Portastudio 144 (I still have mine)

1984 - Lord Litter releases his first tape, Take The Trash

I interviewed him in the early days of The Magic Net, January 2013, it's well worth a read, we had so much to talk about. To be honest, I was a bit crap with html back then, so I have been through the five page feature and tidied up its appearance some especially for this, least I could do...

o

◄ THE MAGIC NET INTERVIEW WITH LORD LITTER - JAN. 2013

o

One thing I definitely didn't have a clue about how to do back then was including music in features! Luckily, that's something I can now go about putting right. In those early days we were first in touch, he was recording both solo material and fronting recently liberated East Berlin band, Das Freie Orchester. Amongst the first package I received from him was a copy of Torn Between Temptations, his best album ever in my opinion, and one that would grace the first batch of M&E releases a few months later. But that wasn't all...

   Lord Litter vs Mick Magic -

Introduction / State Of The Art (12:17)

... it also came with the cassette on the left, one I'm really pleased I've kept all these years.

"Hi Mick! ... please listen - I really hope you don't mind ... I simply could not resist!!! ... just a test caused by fun - could have been much more precise with the arrangement ... cheerz, Lord Litter"

One of the items in the introductory package I had sent him was a copy of the first MMATT demo from early 1987, mostly me solo and a touch 'empty' sound-wise, so he'd recorded off the intro and title track on to his own recording deck and added guitar, synth and backing vocals. Mind? No, I was actually quite flattered he'd gone to all that trouble. And I have to admit, it was a bit of an improvement on the original!

C O N T I N U E D