Lyric sheets

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.