A friend and I visited the Rye Treasury of Mechanical Music (Rye, East
Sussex, England) on Friday, having been told it would be a quiet day.

This is a brand-new venture which has now bedded in after a few months
running, and is essentially the collection of Player Piano Group member
Mick Doswell, put on public display in a former Victorian seaside
warehouse with the help of Universal Music Rolls supremo Mike Boyd,
whose premises are next door and who secured the building.

Generally, I'd call this the Musical Museum (Brentford) Mark 2:
smaller, better laid out, with a host of small items and a more
personal treatment by Mick in the walking tour of the instruments.

There is a greater emphasis on early organs and musical boxes and a
good phonograph (in both British and American senses of the word)
section and, while the treatment of pianos is necessarily cut back by
comparison, what there is, is well up to a standard that would have
gratified the original makers, with everything in excellent tune and
operating condition.

This rule is broken by one exhibit, the Mills Violano-Virtuoso, which
is certainly in tune but is on the last legs of operability, having
been kept untouched as one of the very last unrestored examples.  This
achievement is more apparent to the collector than the musically-minded
casual visitor; a good Violano always strikes me as the playing of an
efficient mechanical butler -- at Rye, he has got at the vodka
somewhat.

Mick spends some time on modern plastic musical boxes, which are often
to be picked up for next to nothing in "boot" (US, "garage") sales.
One is a bright yellow child's box with a full set of 4-inch plastic
discs, sounding entirely traditional.

The reproducing piano is represented only by Duo-Art (a mellow and
thickly 1920-ish Steinway OR grand) and Ampico, a beautifully crisp and
modern-sounding English Rogers grand.  We didn't get to hear the Red
Welte Steinway grand (not playing well, and for sale) except under the
fingers of a 65/88n Aeolian pushup, or a pedal-only Steinway OR
"half-Duo-Art" (not enough time), or a 65-note Electrelle (not yet
restored), or a Simplex reed-organ-cum-pushup, or a Grotrian-Steinweg
Phonola upright, fascinating instruments all.  The 1895 Orchestrelle
(roll-operated reed organ) is a beautiful time machine -- with the right
roll on, it takes everyone immediately back to Victorian times and Mick
is a good chooser of stops too.

Both the Nickelodeon (a modern conversion of an Aeolian upright playing
O rolls) and the deafening Mortier (Belgian cafe) organ, I felt, were
let down by a lack of imagination in the original rolls.  O rolls have
excellent piano parts but the accompaniment is pitiful compared to what
an even moderately competent amateur group could provide.  In a dance
number, the "skins" should keep going !  The Mortier seemed designed
to pummel the customers into the ground with short but grand set
pieces, when the instrument would be ideal for toe-tapping French
accordion music.

The "plain parlo(u)r pumper" Mick has chosen to represent the everyday
player is in fact an unusual model -- one of the Themodist 80-note
uprights from the Hayes (UK) works of c1927 given the budget label
"Aeolian".  What's obviously different about this instrument is that,
where most Aeolians are like demure little British Stecks, nothing
special but exceptional value for money, this beast is a flagrant
re-badge of a fruity great American upright, possibly a Wheelock,
though it sounds like a Stroud -- a great fat thing with ledges like a
surety company building and keybed legs.  Presumably a batch were
imported to launch the name.  It plays half a roll with a couple of
pumps, and is both rich in tone and _very_ loud.

I was surprised to hear that the Rogers Ampico, which is one of the
best I've heard (albeit suitable only for domestic use as it doesn't
have that Steinway bray), was for sale, not being a Treasury
possession.  Mick was critical: the owner wanted "as much as" =L=5000
($8300) for it.

(But I paid =L=4500 12 years ago for a Steinway OR Duo-Art which didn't
even work properly ! Yikes ! All my rooms are full of rolls.  Suppose I
cleared the kitchen, or put the rolls in the bedroom and slept on top
of the Rogers ... ?)

With Mick, Mike Boyd is co-promoter of a new jazz venue in the loft
above and appeared briefly, looking tense in a suit and bow-tie.  With
these affairs, you either book someone unknown or over the hill and
bomb badly, or hit the customers' current prejudices on the nail, run
out of chairs and don't know where to put the money.

Friday night was chair starvation night with a well-known duo, Mike
Hatchard, a self-taught pianist in Oscar Peterson style and Herbie
Flowers, a bassist, session man and comic raconteur.  Juliet and I
stayed for this but while I would have been happy with just Mr
Hatchard, he's not (who is ?) actually Oscar Peterson and I'm afraid I
fell asleep.  Dear _me_ !

The Rye Treasury is a must if you've got a day on your hands in London,
though it's 90 miles away.  You can do it by train via Ashford (on the
Eurostar run from Paris or Brussels) or Hastings -- there's a bumbling
40-year-old local diesel train that takes you on from either.
Five-minute walk to the Treasury.  Contact details:

  20 Cinque Ports Street, Rye, East Sussex TN31 7AD
  phone +44 1797 223345 (no answering machine or fax)

Dan Wilson, London