Dear Jody,

Thank you for adding our email address to your list.  It might be best
to switch to Jeffrey's email address (jeffrey@borinsky.demon.co.uk).  We
are happy for you to publish our address etc.

We are interested in mechanical music and belong to the PPG (Player
Piano Group) in the  UK.  We used to own an Aeolian pianola and are
anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new Sherlock and Manning
instrument.  It was supposed to arrive this evening, but the man who
swore he could move it on his own found it impossible to do without a
tail-lift on his van.  We told him so!!  Our rolls have been unheard
for months now and Jeffrey is dying to use his feet.

We are happy to receive the mailing list in digest form and thank you
for taking the time to do the administration of the automatic-music
mailing list.

We found this list through a circuitous route.  Nina was trying to find
a postal code for the Northern part of Oxford (these are not apparently
obtainable on the Net-yet).  This search brought her to the Oxford home
page.  There was a link to a local piano store, whose home page had a
link to a piano home page, which had a link to piano-related lists
including this one!  The instructions on that link were to simply write
"Subscribe" in the body of the message and send to your address.  You
responded to this request quite promptly.

Previously, we had found some other link to player pianos but had never
followed that up.  We are still learning how to use this new
technology.

This past weekend we went to a PPG social at a member's home in
Bournemouth and had a wonderful time listening to music, trying out new
rolls, buying some rolls, and talking with friends.  We especially like
jazz and song rolls.

This might be repetitive as we haven't yet seen previous digests.  Last
week, there was a player piano concert by Rex Lawson on Radio 4 that
got favourable reviews.

One question for the group- We've obtained some old QRS rolls from a
neighbor of Nina's parents (in NY) and brought them back to the UK.  To
our dismay, we've found that many of them are quite brittle and tend to
rip quite easily.  Has anyone else had this problem and found a good
solution?  Like hydrating the rolls somehow?

We look forward to learning more about mechanical music from the people
on this list---

Best wishes,

Jeffrey and Nina

Jeffrey and Nina Borinsky¶
25 Abberbury Road¶
Oxford, England¶
OX4 4ET

Phone:  +44 1865 777534¶
Fax:    +44 1865 749540¶
jeffrey@borinsky.demon.co.uk