- Our tribute to late Mike Pinder on 24th April 2024 -

We are very saddened to hear the news of Mike Pinder passing. RIP Mike Pinder - Lord Mellotron

“8 Seconds at a Time” was a website dedicated to this magical and distinctive instrument “Mellotron” which is now a part of Mike Pinder’s official website under the section of “The Mellotron” at www.mikepinder.com. We came across this particular website when we were in the Himalayas in 2000 or 2001. We didn’t know anything about internet or website kind of things at that time as we were forced to leave the UK in 1996 and since then, we’d been living in a remote area in the Himalayas, India and we didn’t really know that the world had changed and globalised dramatically... In the meantime, we heard that we can research almost anything using the internet. So, we sometimes spent 30 rupees an hour (a cup of chai costs 1 rupee at that time!) at “Hotmail Cyber Cafe” on Temple Road, McLeod Ganj for whatever we wished to research and “8 Seconds at a Time” was the first website we visited...and it saved our life!

During our 10 years (nearly 11 years) in the Himalayas, we only had a very cheap Indian made acoustic guitar which sounded like a sitar! but after we saw the website “8 Seconds at a Time”, we asked a small local electrical shop in Kotowali Bazaar, Dharamsala to get us an electric keyboard and a guy from the shop got us a small children size Casio! from Delhi and it comes with 12 preset tones including “Flute” sound that somehow sounded a bit like “Mellotron Flute” sound…I (John) wrote a song “Good Morning, Lord Kitchener” on this children size Casio at Ahimsa House near The Dalai Lama Temple, McLeod Ganj in 2001! and exactly 10 years later, this particular song “Good Morning, Lord Kitchener” was awarded at Mike Pinder’s (with Denny Laine) Songwars Songwriting Competition along with three other songs and we recorded all of them for our unreleased first original album “Wonderland” in 2009-2011.

We have recently started re-recording an entire album “Wonderland” including those four award-winnig songs at Mike Pinder’s Songwars Songwriting Competition. We were thinking to send the album to Mike Pinder and Denny Laine when it’s done however, now both of them sadly passed away…

We just can’t thank Mike and Denny enough for what they did for us in the beginning of our life as Clockwork Flowers in Japan after having spent more than a decade in the Himalayas. As you can possibly imagine, we didn’t have much things even in Japan…we had nothing more than a laptop, a cheap guitar, a microphone and a sort of field recorder with USB output so that we can use it as an audio interface! In that poor condition, we recorded those four songs and all the songs were awarded at Mike Pinder’s (with Denny Laine) Songwars Songwriting Competition while people don’t even consider us as musician here in Japan. What made us very happy is that people like Mike and Denny, simply considered our music and creativity, not secondary things such as fame, popularity, status, quality of equipment or instruments and they did not judge our music based on stereotype ideas or whatever…very clever and very brave men!

Thank you Mike for your kind support and your wonderful music you created!

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti…

Clockwork Flowers