National Fresh - A Mike Allen Tribute

Some original reel-to-reel stuff from Sonic Graffiti. Photos copyright MEX 2012

I just wanted to mention something which some of you will already know about but will be pretty amazing to those who don't.

There's a new Facebook group entitled National Fresh - A Mike Allen Tribute. It's been started by Mex Luthor who is an old Brighton hip hop head.
The sad news was announced last year that Mike is currently suffering from Alzeimer's and in all likelihood will probably not sit behind a microphone again.
The concept is to put together a package of rare Mike paraphernalia such as photos, booklet, cd, t-shirt....etc... with all proceeds going towards Uncle Mike.

This is from the FB page in Mex's words:

"A message to the Army On Manoeuvres...


Recently, a friend of mine was given Mike's remaining records & memorabilia by a family friend, due to Mike now suffering from Alzheimer's and dementure. I will be acting as curator, my intention being to put together a tribute package.
As yet, I do not know the exact contents of the several boxes my friend has. I am meeting with him this Friday to go through it. I'm hoping to find enough recorded material to release a record, possibly alongside a booklet and t-shirt. This would be a not-for-profit project, with all proceeds going to Mike himself.

I've already been in contact with a bunch of hip hop luminaries in order for them to record thank-you messages for Mike. DJ Cheese, Cash Money and others are already on board.
It was very sad to learn of Mike's condition. I hope that the Army can march forward with this and give him something back.

More details to follow. Keep it locked to the Boss."

In addition to this Mex will be trying to centralise ALL of Mike's shows but this will involve all of us.
Again, Mex says:

Evening Troops,
I see there's some interest for a central site for Mike Allen show tapes.
If you want to upload a show, please use something like yousendit.com or sendspace.com and forward the link to me at:

mexluthor (at) virginmedia.com

I am going to set up a new mixcloud account (or similar) and will upload each show once the tracklist/date has been verified, so we don't have a page full of duplicates and bad information. Let's do this right!

PLEASE include the date of the show in the filename, ie. "MA_DDMMYY.mp3"


Many thanks,
Mex

The amount of stuff that Mex currently holds in his hands right now is pretty unbelievable.
We are talking Holy Grail stuff from Mike's archives. Original jingles and beds on reel-to-reel by Sonic Graffiti, Mike's own hand-written Groove Sales Charts on bits of paper....!

If you are as enthralled and captivated by this great man as I am then you need to be part of this.
Waxer and I are both keen fans of Mike - you could even say bordering on the obsessive - and had talked between us about trying to get together to visit him and do an interview. Sadly that might now not ever happen.
However what I would love to see - and this is not such an outlandish concept - is a BBC4-type documentary on Mike Allen as he has led an eventful life from paranormal expert, race-car commentator, talk-radio host and chill-out music king of the airwaves all on top of what we know he brought to the table.
The suits in charge of producing output on BBC4 are all roughly our age and you can bet some of them used to be fans!


Anyway this is the addess of the page - I realise that some of you are not fully-converted to social-networking (and Facebook in particular) but this needs all our attention I think you'll agree.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/nationalfresh

And, as always, please, please visit Simmo's http://www.mikeallencapitalradio.com/ if you have not already.