# 11 “Sound Lads”

 

Quantum Anonymous # 11

“Sound Lads”

 

Like Rock ‘n Roll itself, a strange and chaotic collision of personalities and technologies launched the Quantamp. Destiny drove a multitude of fated fools to breach The Veil. The Get Quick is at the core of that cadre. But beyond all their chosen souls, one specific figure seems predestined for Quantum realms. He was literally designed for this adventure.

Erik Evol.

The lead guitarist of the Get Quick came to Quantamp testing through their rather relentless manager, S. True “Smitty” Smith. My meetings with this bloke were limited to a few pints down pub, after sessions. And that bloke was always after something—more studio time, less reverb, better champagne, one more tour date, maybe that television appearance… Tried to sell me land in Florida one night! Always a million things spinning with that one. Maybe like Fabian but without the charm; less posh and more hogwash. But Smitty made those boys money. Pots of the stuff. That much was “true”. Not much else was. Not a bad bloke, but tough to put a number on. No one was really quite sure about S. True Smith.

Said he left the Netherlands as a teen and joined the US Army. Pulled a runner, probably like mine from the Royal Engineers. (Meaning he never quite left, me suspects.) Different times down the pub he had different stories about his work after the army. Sheet metal worker, dogcatcher, door man at Lindy’s in New York.

Claims he fell into acting and had some bit parts in larger pictures. The Bridge on The River Kwai he was always on about. Said they flew him to Asia and it was like prison. Rotten rice for the extras, living half starved for the picture, sleeping rough behind barbed wire. Said he led a riot for “beds, brisket and birds”, then personally negotiated terms with director David Lean.

That part I’d believe.

S. True. “Smitty” Smith could negotiate the pint right out of your hand.

Had enough acting after that. Found his way back to New York City. Took work “below the line” as they say, driving movie types and pop stars about. Saved up for a few sedans and managed his own fleet. That’s how he met The Get Quick. Driving back and forth between hotels, studios and recording sessions back then. Legend has it that Smitty signed the band at a stoplight on Lower Broadway. From there on, it was nothing but green lights for The Get Quick and S. True Smith, all the way.

No matter where those lads went and how things shook out, from going platinum to getting flattened… nobody could pry The Get Quick out of Smitty’s grip. They right bloody tried, all night and day. Managers, lawyers, labels and agents were always whispering in the wind. Smitty boxed ‘em all out. Can you believe they didn’t have a PR agent? Most famous lads on the planet, and Smitty handled that. Booked their tours, designed the record covers, dropped off the lad’s dry cleaning. Old school, that one. Real fighter. Held them lads tight and made their name.

The band’s “family business”, so to say, was handled by the drummer, Mitchell Joy. He’d smooth out spats and bickering, all that nonsense goes with playing bands. “Street kid” as you Yanks say. New York raised, played Broadway as a child star then found some drumsticks. Kept time like a bloody metronome. Started the band and played it like their second manager. Held the lads together no matter which way the road went winding. Joy had a way about him. Not like that Smitty character. Mitchell wasn’t a character. He had character, buckets of the stuff. Real stand up lad.

Too stand up, it was reckoned.

So Mitchell Joy never really knew what was happening at the Quantum level. He knew something was brewing, but was smart enough to reckon he wouldn’t much like it. So he never asked for details. All he wanted was that band together. Mates right sorted, playing rock and roll. Past that, couldn’t be bothered. Real idealist, that one. Burned his draft card later, did the marches and all that for Vietnam. So nobody brought Mitchell in on the Air Force business. Which was just as well. Smitty pulled strings behind the scenes, lining up with Fabian through military channels. Through such maneuvers, The Get Quick returned to London in 1965 for very specific reasons.

Some of that had to do with their next pop record.

Most of it had to do with Quantum Reality.

By that time, we all knew the Quantamp was a right cracking piece of gear. And we knew we needed a special type of bloke to play it. Rock stars were the broad general category, as previously mentioned. But past the right psychology, Fabian and the military came to realize another factor entirely.

Physiology.

Basically speaking, you had to be bloody born for this thing.

Let’s start with a bit of science to get that sorted for you.

Sound is generally defined by the limits of human perception. The standard range of human hearing spans from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Really, that’s not much at all. Just a slight smidgen within the electromagnetic spectrum. Lots more is happening beyond that range, but we never hear it. This type of thing puts dog whistles in business. Blow that thing proper, Fido goes mental. Meanwhile you’re la-de-da and sniffing roses, don’t hear nothing t’all.

Hidden tones like this run right cross the spectrum. The Quantamp was designed to locate and amplify them, through quantum harmonic resonance. When particular chord structures are played through the Quantamp, they create wave interference patterns. These exist partially in our auditory spectrum, but partly in a realm beyond. Playing these “lost” chords– when amplified and aligned with Ley Lines– produces standing wave phenomena that interacts with the quantum field.

Simply speaking, reality bends.

This was first experienced in our early Quantamp sessions, in what Fabian called “time slips”. This peculiar phenomena would later gain the rather royal sounding name of Resonant Quantum Lensing (RQL). Through RQL, Quantamps alter the vibrational structure of reality, creating distortions in perception, time flow irregularities, and, in extreme cases…. what’s it called? Oh, right: momentary overlap with adjacent quantum states.

But the fabric of space time wasn’t the only thing altered.

All this did something right powerful to the lads who plugged in.

Guitarists who first played The Quantamp for more than a few sessions went a bit… “off”. They talked about things like déjà vu and seeing things. Which is basically how they came in the door, since the lot of them were popping pills. Hard to tell where the chemicals stopped and Quantum problems started. Military didn’t have time to bother with all that. They wanted tape rolling. So no one paid these strummers any mind.

“Right lads, down the pub you go. Drink this one off, stay away from those pills and have a cold shower. More the morrow. Ta.”

That attitude wasn’t unique to us. Things ran fast and loose, back then. And it took decades to fully understand what Quantamps were doing to people’s mentality. That wasn’t good. Lots of blokes who plugged in went right to the cracker factory. Exposure to all those amplified, inaudible frequencies led to a world of problems. Neurological degeneration, paranoia, psychotic breaks and other such tragedies litter the Quantamp history.

It’s my luck that engineers aren’t treated with a lick of respect. More like hired help. Out of sight and mind mostly, twirling knobs at the board. Back from the booth and behind the boards kept me shielded from the worst waves. Players weren’t. Neither were producers like Kevorkian, who were the “hands on” type.

Speaking earlier I dismissed his production probably a touch harshly. That’s not right. See there’s different elements of producing hits. Maybe Fabian didn’t manage his post production, but laying them tracks down? Absolutely the business.

Fabian would think nothing of fiddling with songs right there while tracking. He’d take the guitar himself and strum it just like he wanted things played. Tilt the amps for reverb, custom tune pianos, tap out time, whistle little melodies to lads who ain’t read sheets. That type of attention to details is what earned him his knighthood.

It’s also what put him on the night train.

We all seen it happen. 1988, Fabian Kevorkian brought that stick of dynamite to the Grammy Awards, then shot up his donut shop in Venice Beach.

No one really got that last part. The first bit, OK. Probably we’ve all wanted to blow up the bloody Grammys sometime. Donut shop didn’t make a lick of sense. Favorite place. Handled all his business there over biscuits and coffee. Walked in that shop every night with all his Grammy awards. Slammed them down the table, did meetings till dawn. Music types all knew where to find Lord Fabian Kevorkian in L.A.

Apparently it was that Harold Faltermeyer fella set him off. Real tosser. Shows up calling Fabian “Sir Fabs” and Lord Kevorkian just lost the plot. Shot up the donut shop. That’s the part seemed crazy. Have a shot at that wanker Harold, why don’t you? People would’ve handed out cigars. Instead Fabian got handed over to the police, then passed off to doctors who had him sectioned. Paranoid schizophrenia, they says.

I’ll say it was karmic. Others said the drugs. 1980s music was mostly made on cocaine, quaaludes and quantamps. That last substance being the most sinister. Lots of secrets in the music industry. None more hushed up than Quantamp damage.

Ol’ Fabian wasn’t the only one.

Phil Spector, Joe Meek, those Troutman Brothers and Brian Wilson all used Quantamp production for their biggest hits. Every one of them went bonkers, too.

“Oh, it’s the drugs,” says the press. “Unstable types, crazy artists.”

Well that’s bollocks. Quantum pollution did them in. They plugged in those Quantamps and started playing with powers and forces we don’t understand. These amps don’t just juice up a power chord. They reach into the quantum undercurrent of reality itself. And while it cranked out some right brilliant sounds, every note came with a cost.

Military psychiatrists called that cost a “profound rewiring of perception”.

Which is another way of saying your brains is scrambled eggs.

But who am I? Just an engineer. What do I know? Maybe that’s what it takes to make real hits. Maybe Pet Sounds was worth it.

I’d say you should ask Brian Wilson about that… but no one asks Brian Wilson much of anything. Especially about Quantamps. He’s busy “grounding” himself in the sandbox he built under his piano at that mansion in Los Angeles he never leaves… Ever.   

Back in ’64, we should have seen such wreckage coming.

Perhaps we did and pretended not to. Some of those lads we plugged in at the BBC left shaking like soldiers from Dunkirk. Military didn’t pull the plug. They just turned things up. I helped them do that, so I’m part to blame. But what do you say when it’s Cold War out the door? You say ‘yes sir’.

Lord, weren’t we all naïve.

But we weren’t fools.

We all sussed that someone real special was needed to push That Quantamp to the limits.

 Right about then is when the military started whispering about “Sound Lads.”

Code word within the Quantum crowd. Referred to pop stars who would plug into Quantamps without going bonkers. Special favors and permissions would accompany the discovery of such blokes. So it was off to the races. Every back channel manager and shady agent was sussing out pop stars who might rock a Quantamp and stay held together. Type of lad who would stand his ground. Hold his mud.

S True “Smitty” Smith got word of this search right fast. And Smitty seen something in his lad. True just knew, right as rain, that Erik Evol was born for Quantamps. Stormed the Air Force with all that “this kid’s got it!” business. Mind you, nobody had a blooming idea what “it” was at this point. But The Get Quick had already recorded with Kevorkian and those initial notes pointed in the right direction.

Fabian had done his psyche profile during Pop, and Evol tracked well for extreme experiences. The lad had a penchant for mystic thinking and sonic exploration. Plus he was locally known. Toured up and down the UK and recorded right there in the BBC. Wouldn’t look daft to see Erik Evol bimbling about London. And what if Smitty was right?

Was he ever.

S. True Smith had that gypsy sense. Knew his lad down to the very blood in his veins.

It’s blood what made that lad survive, see.

A very rare type of it.

QH-7

Formally speaking, that would be blood phenotype Rh-null, subtype variant QH-7, if you please.

Or as Erik Evol called it: “Viking Blood”.

With that stuff running in his veins, Evol could rock a Quantamp all night and day.

Understanding that requires a brief detour through history. Shall we?

There’s a certain part of the world had a very brutal era, long ago. Genomic mapping traces this blood type to its origins in that distant time and place. During this era, QH-7 blood determined survival. It was a time of fury, fear, and mystery. The ancient people who pillaged through that era were seafaring, Norse warriors. 

History knows them as The Vikings.

Research has revealed that Old Norse skalds (poet-warriors) were instrumental in Viking wars. They had this magic weapon:

Sound.

Groups of skalds would get to chanting in ritual tones. That created an auditory effect that scholars say was part of their warfare. Went way beyond battle songs, mind you. Acoustic analysis from Viking burial sites show that certain ritual horns had the capacity to produce infrasonic frequencies.

We’ve no idea how these buggers made them. Scholars and scientists have put the best computers and calculations on ‘em. Tried mapping them out, 3D printing, all sorts of AI tricks. Just can’t reproduce the horns or their frequencies. But we can project their harmonics.

And what they look like are Quantamp harmonics.

Which means that one thousand years ago, Vikings were blowing horns to produce a very rudimentary and localized Quantamp effect.

Now mind you, these buggers weren’t bounding through space time.

We don’t think.

But we are sure they were producing some very peculiar and disorienting sound waves. Made their warriors mental. Made their enemies melt. That’s what made the Vikings so deadly. And it’s the reason they were foreign raiders. All that sonic warfare didn’t work on people with Viking blood, see. So these buggers took that show on the road. Set sail, blasted that horn and blew their enemies right away.

Surviving all that depended on your bloody blood.

Vikings who did survive that evolved the QH-7 blood type, which carries a unique resistance to vibrational and harmonic anomalies. Chemically, that happens through elevated Copper levels, decreased Iron absorption, and one or two other factors this old engineer is having trouble remembering at this late hour.

But you get the idea. 

Viking Blood. 

Got that and Bob’s your uncle.

Plug into a Quantamp and play.

And play.

And play.

AND play.

Which is what Erik Evol did.

Until that ol’ Quantamp played him.

 

More the Morrow.