All right, hello. I will give today a presentation about the Neo Realtime WIC platform. WIC stands for Run Intelligent Controller. In this presentation, we actually have two speakers, the last 10 minutes, Matti, the PTL of the WIC XUP project. We'll highlight some of the aspects of the XUP project. And before that, I, too, have to hear on the PTL of the Neo Realtime WIC platform. We'll give an introduction of the significant changes or updates that we did in the platform over the last year. As a reminder, the Neo Realtime WIC is a platform that hosts XSAPs. These XSAPs receive data streams via the E2 protocol from the run, from, for instance, the Genome B. And by analyzing the data, possibly including machine learning algorithms, they can control and optimize run behavior. And then they change this run behavior either via control messages or policy messages that are sent over E2 to the run. So let's jump to the first slide. Quickly, quick summary of what the Neo Realtime WIC project is. It's a sub-project of the O1 software community. We work closely with a separate organization, the specification organization, the O1 Alliance. And within the O1 software community, there are multiple other projects, including Mati's XSAP project, but also a project, for instance, that implements CU centralized unit. All the source code is stored in Garrett. And the exact list of components that make up the Neo Realtime WIC platform you can see from this link. The links you can obviously download click in the presentation that's downloadable from the Linux Foundation schedule page. All the source code is distributed on the Apache 2 license. And as a reminder, I mentioned this already. The specifications are worked on by the O1 Alliance, which is a separate legal organization, most specifically, working group 3, which works on the E2 specification, and working group 2, which works on the A1. All the specifications are downloadable from the O1 conference site or from the web page, depending on whether you are a member or not. I have on the next slide a bit more details on how we try to align the schedule of the O1 software community in the lower part of the slide set and the O1 Alliance in the upper part, the blue boxes and the red lines. So as you see, we, on the O1SC site, on the implementation side, try to release two releases per year, every half year. One we have just accomplished in June. That's the second release. We call that bronze. And the next one will be Cherry, which is scheduled for release in December. And then we start the next one for next year. And as a reminder, the first release, we actually released last year in December. And the project started in June, 2019. What this slide set also shows that this two releases per year doesn't fit very well or align very well with the specification site, where we have alignment with the Mobile Work Congresses, the GreenBot Bullets here. And they actually published really specifications in February, July, and November every year. With Bronze, we were happy that the first E2 specification actually came out in February so that we could implement this in the Bronze release. And that was a big theme of the Bronze release to adapt to, from a pre-specification E2 specification to the release published specification. For the next release, Cherry, we are not so lucky. So the next specification update will come in November. So in Cherry, we'll stick with the E2AP version 1.0 and then move in only in Dawn, most likely to the next release of the specification. If I move on, and we stay for some time on this slide, this is kind of a bit about the architecture of the near real-time week. One thing that I wanted to highlight here is that if you look at the upper right corner, this is the near real-time week with all its components, including x-ups. And then on the lower right corner, we have the E2 nodes that are managed or controlled by the near real-time week. And managed was the wrong word, controlled. And these are, for example, CUs, and a 5G architecture, G node B, E node B. All of these can be E2 nodes. And as an E2 node, and single E2 node always has exactly one E2 connection to the near real-time week. And of course, in the other direction, the near real-time week can have many E2 connections to the various nodes. It can be 10, 100s or 1000s. These connections are handled by E2 termination instance. And one of the significant changes that we did was that pre-specification, we were assuming that E2 connections, including the SCTP in it, were done from the near real-time week into the E2 node direction. And that was reversed. And now the E2 node is actually connecting to the near real-time week. That caused a lot of changes in the near real-time week code, code base. As part of this change, there was also change in configuration update that was actually removed as part of, so from our perspective, removed. In the specification, also some other message and procedures, load indication, restore status reporting, where removed. Configuration update, interestingly, is coming back in the E2 AP version 1.1 in November. So we will have to re-implement this. If we move on to the second bullet here, what I wanted to highlight also is that the rig platform deals exclusively with the E2 AP protocol, the E2 application part protocol. And this is important because the actual logic on top, it's a layered protocol and the actual logic on top of E2 AP is implemented in E2 service models, indicated here by those colorful boxes, red, green, blue, and so on. And these E2 service models, they are opaque to the near real-time week platform. So even if the E2 AP protocol as such defines, for instance, a concept of trigger, it is the E2 service model for a specific functionality on the E2 node, for instance, for a network interface like the X2 AP or E1, that defines how this trigger is actually defined in terms of message types or information elements in this specific function. And this becomes an agreement between the X sub implementation and the implementation on the E2 node, on the CU or on the Genome B. And from the platform point of view, we are actually fully unaware of this agreement. One thing for, and that's the E2 manager part of the near real-time week platform in the upper right corner, that actually collects the information on which E2 service model functions are implemented by each of those E2 nodes as part of the E2 setup of the establishment of the connection, stores this in a run function database. And this information is available to X sub to query which E2 nodes actually support the E2 service model functions that it requires. This is maybe more important for multi-vendor situations than for any other situation. Yep, so if we move on, this is the implementation status of the E2 AP, the basic protocol in the near real-time week. You see we have not implemented week service update, so week service query and reset yet. All the other messages are already implemented and again be used. The other three not implemented yet or procedures not implemented yet, they are being worked on and my hope is actually that still doing this here, we might get some late commit related to those. So if you move on, this is a reminder on how the procedures are actually used in the near real-time week. On the left-hand side, typically the combination of report indications and poly subscriptions makes up an X sub. So a typical X sub using this path would subscribe for report indications, get indication after the subscription from the run node. It will get from the run node indications on for instance, receiving the message on the network interface and that message will be copied in full or partial to the week. The X sub receives this from the near real-time week platform, analyzes this and based on this makes, changes the policy or the behavior of the run by making a policy subscription. And as you see here, these policies include the trigger and the policy and the run will autonomously apply those policies. Another way to use the E2 protocol in X sub is to first map and that we see on the right-hand side, starting with the lower right-hand side, is to make a subscription for an insert indication and the key difference to a report indication is that the run is expected to halt or suspended call processing or the processing of the push teacher and typically it will send the event that it has received or a message that it has received to the week as an indication and the week will analyze the message and respond and that's what we see on the upper right corner with the control message, for instance, rejecting a message or modifying it or telling the run how to continue with the processing this message. So only after the control message is received, it will resume with the processing. I have two slides on this, which explain this in more detail. First again, the policy mode, what we saw in the previous slide on the left-hand side. Again, here you see now with a GNOT B communicating with the week, it's continuously sends a stream. If you start with message number one on the lower right-hand side, continuous stream of indication reports, they go to the E2 termination, which is a week platform component which will send this information to the XSAP. The XSAP again applies its logic, machine learning algorithms, for example, and will then, and that's a new interface that we have in the Bronx really, that we are working on in Sherry. We'll send the subscription to the subscription manager. In this case, it's a policy subscription and the subscription manager might apply security checks or merge subscriptions together from our XSAPs and send those to the GNOT B. And the new thing that we implemented here that we are implementing now is that initially this interface between XSAP and subscription manager was ASN1 based, and we're using the E2AP messages and we are changing this to a REST-based interface in Sherry. For completeness, the next slide shows the simple message flow and that's perfectly possible already now to implement XSAPs using indication insert messages and control, very simple low latency case. The GNOT B will send an E2 indication to the E2 termination, E2 termination forwards to the XSAP analysis and responds with a compromise message back to the E2 termination and the GNOT B. So those are the two main cases how to implement XSAPs using E2. In this slide, which is probably quite difficult to read, I wanted to highlight again the reversal of the connection establishment and how we generally change the E2 setup. You see on the left-hand side, how it used to be implemented in a pre-specification in the AMBER release and on the right-hand side, how we now implemented it against the published specification. What I want to highlight here is if you look at the first message in the left-hand side, it's an E2 setup that comes from the rig platform and goes to the run. This has now changed. If you look at the right-hand side, the E2 setup request actually comes from the run to the rig platform. What the rig platform does next is it will actually extract the run capabilities or those E2 SM functions that I talked earlier about into the run capability database of the rig platform so that XSAPs can query this and then it will respond back to the run that the E2 setup is completed. This very same extraction was previously done on the left-hand side with the last couple of messages, last four messages. So this is now simplified into one message exchange instead of two, simplifying the E2 setup. And the run configuration conversion, which is in the middle of the left-hand side, that was actually removed as I talked about earlier and it will most likely come back later again. If we move on to the next slide, quickly going to a couple of other changes that we did in the near-wheel-term rig platform over the last year. So we introduced a new component, the O1 mediator. The O1 mediator mediates between the XSAP and the management platform. So it's the interface towards the network management interface or service management orchestration platform. The A1, which you see here is currently almost like a configuration interface as well, but essentially an interface defined by O1 for defining high-level declarative policies towards from the management platform or the non-wheel-time rig into the near-wheel-time rig. So on O1 side, it's netconf-based. It exposes, for instance, configuration and configuration interface for XSAPs. It manages alarms that XSAP might want to send and it forwards makes available metrics provided by XSAPs. On the A1 mediator side, we changed the implementation so, and that's a theme that we had in many other components of the near-wheel-term rig platform as well. First of all, it stores its policies for persistence in shared data layer and Redis. So that over restart in a container platform, it will be maintained this information. And then the other thing that provides statistics here are Prometo's interface, which we then can send over O1 to the outside world. Two slides left to go. Some changes we did on the RMR side, RMR is the RigMessageRouting library. What we did there is, first of all, a more reliable route distribution using the routing manager. And then we did also a major rewrite replacing a library that we previously used, NanomessageNextGeneration, where we had some problems with well-defined behavior or in case of high load situations and where we also had problems with low latency. With achieving low latency. So we did a new rewrite that we call SN95 and that's now part of the rig platform. On the Redis and STL side, we moved from a single Redis instant to an HA deployment, right now using Sentinel. There are some guys investigating also how we can move to Redis cluster here. On the E2 side, where we have E2 termination as one component and the E2 manager as the other component, E2 termination now supports the Prometheus for network, for interface statistics or metrics. And the E2 manager has an interesting support for big red button, where we can withdraw the rig from the run, either by closing all E2 connections and waiting for re-establishments or by closing them and not accepting any new E2 connections. The E2 manager also manages multiple E2 termination instances. Right now, this is a static mapping of E2 termination instances to E2 nodes. So no dynamic scaling. This would probably be something we want to work on in the next year, in combination with some capabilities that come in the new E2 AP protocol. And this information is managed by the E2 manager and provided to the other entities that needed in the near real-time rig platform. As a reminder, what you see here, all the yellow parts are near real-time rig platform. The blue parts in the middle are actually concrete XSAPs that are developed on top of the near real-time platform and that Matti will talk about further. And he will also talk a bit about the XSAP framework APIs used by the XSAPs. Coming to the last slide, upcoming changes that we're planning to adopting to the new E2 AP protocol. There are changes related to the configuration update. I talked about this quickly. There are changes to the transport network layer on the E2 side. This will give us a scalability and a better failover behavior. And then a small change, but quite important, it introduces object identifiers for E2 service models, which makes it actually easier to find the correct E2 service model that you want to use in an XSAP again, especially important in multi-vendor environments. That being said, it ends my part of this presentation and I would hand over to Matti with that. Thank you, Thorough. As Thorough mentioned, I'm the PTL of the RICAP project in the Orion software community. And the focus of that project is to develop open-source XSAPs for this RIC platform. Partially, this is to just demonstrate how to build XSAPs using the XSAP SDK and the frameworks, but also to support the Orion SC end-to-end use cases. There are a set of use cases that want to exercise the different layers of the Orion architecture. The main use case is the traffic steering. I'll talk a little bit about the XSAPs related to that. We have code contributions currently from three companies and we are, of course, hoping to have more and we already have some negotiations underway. So maybe even for the cherry release, we'll have maybe a couple of extra additional contributors. And the contributors can choose whether they want to contribute code under Apache 2 or Orion software license. And currently we support C++ Python and Go as the programming languages. So let me first talk a little bit about the XSAPs. We have about half a dozen XSAPs currently in the RICAP project. Here I'm highlighting the XSAPs related to the traffic steering use case. The idea of the traffic steering use case is to use the XSAPs and the near real-time RIC to basically control in which cell a UE should be residing or which should be the serving cell. So if a UE is having poor performance in the current serving cell, the traffic steering use case would basically have this UE handed over to a different cell where it hopefully has a better performance. In the PRONS release, we managed to complete the kind of a basic components of the traffic steering logic. We have the main traffic steering XSAP that kind of makes the decisions and then a predictor component that predicts the performance of a UE if it was handed over to a neighboring cell. In Cherry release, we are planning of including the KPI MON XSAP from Samsung that actually collects the metrics from the RAN using a KPM E2 service model and it will be stored in this STL namespace and used by the traffic steering XSAPs. We're also working with HCL on anomaly detection XSAP that uses this information to raise anomalies on either UEs or cells. And we will also implement the actual control probably using a pre-spec E2 SM since the final one won't be ready in time. We have a couple of other XSAPs that are not tied to the traffic steering use case the Hello World XSAP that is demonstrating on how to implement XSAPs, all the functionality in C++ and a measurement campaign XSAP that given a stream of X2 messages for my calculates various random metrics. So from the XSAP point of view, the big question is really how do all the interfaces get exposed to it? So from the XSAP is, of course, exists in the near real-time RIC platform, the different working groups in O-RAN are defining different interfaces like the A1, E2, O1 and of course they use different of encoding formats like ASN1, et cetera. So we need to figure out how does the XSAP interface to these different, these protocols and external entities. And in addition to interacting with the outside world, the XSAPs are also interacting with other XSAPs either directly via communication or indirectly via the SDL layer where one XSAP produces some data and the SDL on another one consumes that data. So that's where we get to the really the XSAP SDK how to build XSAPs to take advantage of these different features. I like to present the XSAP SDK as this layered cake diagram where it shows that XSAP writer can pick and choose what capabilities of the SDK they want to utilize. A simplest XSAP would basically just utilize Kubernetes and the XSAP descriptor and lifecycle management. The XSAP descriptor specifies some parameters for the XSAP that are then used to construct the Helm chart to deploy the XSAP. So the simplest XSAP would just deploy on the RIC platform and not do anything. But if the XSAP wants to, for example, do messaging or use the shared data layer, they would include the libraries related to that. If they want to use the RNIB where the information about which E2 nodes the RIC is connected to is stored, what are the cells, then there would potentially be other Nibs about information about UIs, measurements, et cetera. If the XSAPs want to utilize that information, they would include the appropriate libraries. We implemented early in the AMBER release the kind of primitive APIs for XSAPs to interact with A101 and E2. In the cherry release, we're building the higher level interfaces in Go C++ and Python. The goal of which is to make it very easy for XSAP writers to access these interfaces and utilize all these facilities. And of course, XSAPs will build up on services provided by other XSAPs. So it's not only the platform services that are used by the XSAPs. So what are these high level interfaces? We are implementing them using XSAP framework. So you can think of XSAP framework as being a library or a set of packages that you include in your XSAP. And the goal is really to make it easy to write XSAPs. Initially, well, the initial XSAPs were pretty complicated partially because people are not familiar with ASN1 and with all these other new interfaces. Now we are working on really based on the experience of building a few XSAPs and kind of identifying what is common to different XSAPs. What is the unique part of a particular XSAP? We are taking the common code and putting it into the XSAP framework as library code. So specifically looking at the interfaces E2, 01A1 and messaging. For configuration management, XSAP will receive its initial configuration when it starts and that configuration may be updated while the XSAP is running. In the initial versions, the XSAP writer would need to know where to look for this configuration file, how to detect that that configuration file has changed. With the new framework high level abstraction, the XSAP writer only needs to write a function that handles the configuration update. They don't need to know how that configuration file gets to the XSAP or when it's updated. They only need to provide a function. Similarly for the 01 metrics and fault reporting, we are providing interfaces for reporting a key value metric or raising and canceling alarms. The XSAP doesn't need to know how these things are communicated within the RIC or to the OAM layer. Similar to the 01CM, the policy A1P, the XSAP only needs to declare what policy types it supports and provide a function for processing policy instance and messages, JSON payloads. It doesn't need to know how to communicate to the A1 mediator. It doesn't need to know how the A1 mediator finds the right XSAP to send the messages to. And Thorov already mentioned some of the initial steps towards the E2 abstracting like the subscription providing a rest interface rather than needing to construct the E2 subscription message. This is still a somewhat of a study item but we are hoping that in the cherry release, we have some concrete steps even beyond this rest interface. And for messaging, the RMR messaging layer provides a very simple abstraction for XSAPs to send and receive messages. It eliminates the need to do service discovery, XSAPs just construct a message and send it and the RIC platform will take care of delivering it to the right destinations. So that concludes my portion of the talk. At this point, I guess we welcome questions from the audience. Thank you.


So maybe you've decided that now is the time to change in your life. You know, you've read all the little articles on medium.com and you've watched the YouTube videos.  But then when it's time to do it, it doesn't work and you can't find yourself motivated to do it and stick with it and all this inner stuff comes up and it makes you challenge yourself and wonder why you even tried in the first place. Well, in this video, I wanna share a very simple two-part framework that I've used with a lot of my coaching clients and it really is surrounding whatever domain of life you wanna change and transform. You always need two pieces and only one of them is taking action. So in this video, let's jump in and I wanna share what those two pieces are. What's up guys? Alex Hine, author of the book, Master the Day. FYI, if you grab my book, there's a free, it's like an hour and a half bonus course that I'm gonna send you for free. So if you buy it, send me your receipt, let me know. Now, one of the core exercises I've done with my coaching clients has always involved journaling because journaling is a brilliant way to get out abstract thoughts and put them into concrete plans on paper. So the first link in the description is for a free journaling worksheet as well as an email series you're gonna get every couple of days that shows you how to use journaling to set and achieve your wildest goals. So what is this framework that I subtly, discreetly mentioned? It is very simple. For whatever domain of life you wanna transform, you need to have an external habit, which is something other people can see, an internal habit, and these two things equal growth, transformation and being limitless. So let's jump into that a bit more. There are two big barriers I've seen come up with the hundreds of people I've coached. By far, the biggest one is almost nobody takes any freaking action towards their goals. Like if you said you were gonna write a book or go to the gym or start talking to more men or women because you want a relationship, have you done that on paper for 30 days? Can you show me you've done that? 95% of people cannot, even the ones that pay me money to coach them. But then the deeper question is, so why haven't they? That's the million dollar question. And when I asked that question, I always found that there was a deeper level of belief or self-sabotage or some story or narrative preventing them from doing that. And so for me, every piece of my coaching and life improvement advice that I've used on myself especially has always started with the external, which is the specific habit that's tangible, practical. That's the master of the day ritual, but the inner habit, which is something regarding the story or the narrative or the uncomfortable emotions inside you. So let's say for example, we take the domain of dating. You could say the inner habit is there's a belief that there are no good women or no men or no humans with these specific traits I want. That inner habit has to be rewritten to, okay, well, I'll just be open-minded and see if there are people that I like. That's just an idea. You're gonna act as if that's a possibility. Your external habit is rather than staying home all Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because you're an introvert, is getting yourself out to just one event per week. Boom, then you have your internal habit, your external habit. That's gonna result in massive growth and results. Let's say you're working on your health. Your inner habit may be changing this belief that, you know, I may never be able to fully have a normal life because of my insomnia, my IBS, this rheumatoid arthritis I have, some other condition. That inner habit needs to be rewritten to, you know what? I'm gonna at least dedicate 20 minutes per day to finding what resources are out there for me to heal.  And your external habit is gonna actually be, you know what, I'm gonna cook dinner each night instead of eating out. So I know exactly what I'm putting in my body. Now you have the inner transformation, the external, visible transformation, and that combined is awesomeness. Let's say money is your struggle. Your inner habit, the belief may be, you know, there's no way I can pay for that.  That narrative needs to be changed, maybe to something like, well, how could I pay that off? And ideas start coming. And the external habit for that is that we need to change our behavior. I'm gonna be a barista one day a week at a coffee shop for five hours, and that's gonna give me extra money that I can then save or put towards this goal. So you started with this domain of life you're not doing well in. You've changed the story. It's just a hundred day test. That's all it is. And you've changed a concrete habit. My experience has been if you fuse these two things and you need both things, then you can really, really do amazing things in your life. And that just by doing one or the other, but especially if you find yourself struggling with taking action, there's inner stuff that is not, that we are not clear on. Get clear on that, get clear on the tactical habits, and you'll get results. All right guys, so I hope that helps. Check out the first link in the description which is for a free journaling worksheet. You'll also get an email series on how to use journaling to achieve your most wild goals and kind of get your life together. So that's the first link in the description there below. You can check that out and then come on over here and check out my last related videos.


Ukraine's military said it had withdrawn from two more villages near the eastern town of Abdiivka which was captured earlier this month by Russian forces, losing more territory as support from its western allies runs short.A senior commander said troops had consolidated new defensive positions west of Abdiivka, whose capture was the biggest Russian battlefield gain in nine months. Ukrainian military spokesperson Dmitry Lykovich said troops had pulled back from Sivirn and Stepov, a day after. Kiev announced it had abandoned the village of Lastokind. Our forces withdrew from the small villages of Sivirn and Stepov. Heavy battles for Sivirn went on Lykovich said, adding that Russia had taken significant losses in that fight, Ukraine was pulling back to positions level with the rest of the eastern front line, to terrain more suitable for defense, Lykovich said, Sivirn and Stepov had a total population of fewer than 100 people before the invasion. Old military analyst Julian Ropp said that the Russian armed forces advanced up to five kilometers from Abdiivka and occupied the villages of Stepov, Sivirn, Lastokind and Badyanoi. As Julian Ropp said, Russian troops continued to advance along a 10 to 15 kilometers wide front. However, according to him, the Ukrainian command set up the defensive line Berdekai, Semyonovka or Lovka, Tannenko, Purvomesko. In the coming days, we will see whether they really managed to establish a defense line there or not, Ropp said. If Ukraine loses, NATO will fight Russia, Pentagon chief. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin believes that if Ukraine loses the full-scale war with Russia, the latter will be forced to fight the entire North Atlantic Alliance. Austin said this at the U.S. House Armed Services Committee hearing, although the hearing focused primarily on Austin's hospitalization at the beginning of the year, about which he did not notify either the White House or Congress in advance, the congressman also asked several questions about how much U.S. military assistance Ukraine requires. The Defense Secretary emphasized that the approval of additional funding for Kyiv is important to prevent a situation in the world where one country can redraw its neighbor's boundaries and illegitimately take over its sovereign territory. We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive actions in the region and other leaders around the world, other autocrats around the world will look at this and will be encouraged by the fact that this happened and we failed to support a democracy, he added. Later, Austin clarified that if Ukraine loses on the battlefield, the Baltic countries may be threatened. If you are a Baltic state, you are really worried about whether you are next. They know Putin. They know what he is capable of. And frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia. The official said, Russian MFA spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented on Austin's statement. Is this a direct threat to Russia or an attempt to come up with an excuse for Zelensky? Both are insane. British soldiers in Ukraine helping fire missiles, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reveals. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has come under fire from the UK after he suggested that there were British troops operating in the Ukraine conflict. Olaf Scholz said that he would not deliver the long-range Taurus missiles, Berlin's equivalent of a storm shadow as it would require soldiers assisting on the ground, citing the UK and French approach with their own systems. Scholz argued that following the UK would make Germany a participant in the war. The comments were seen as endangering British military and diplomatic personnel on the ground. Scholz went on to say that Taurus is a very long-range weapon and what was done on the part of the British and French in terms of target control and target control assistance can't be done in Germany. Commenting on Scholz's remark, Tobias Elwood, the former chair of the British Commons Defence Committee, said it was a flagrant abuse of intelligence deliberately designed to distract from Germany's reluctance to arm Ukraine with its own long-range missile system as quoted by the Telegram. The British lawmaker was also sure that the statement would be used by Russia to ratchet up the escalator ladder. German soldiers can, at no point and in no place, be linked with the targets that this system reaches. Scholz insisted, even if operating from German soil, according to the DPA news agency. The German Chancellor stated that it would be not very responsible for his country to risk becoming a party to the war. Meanwhile, the Financial Times quoted an anonymous senior European Defence official as saying that everyone knows that there are Western special forces in Ukraine. They've just not acknowledged it officially.


What's up everybody? Jason here for JaspysKazeRace.com. Another R&B sold out to help sell out Noir basketball pitching number one and for this one we're getting away two free spots. This one includes the magic Thunder Warriors, Pistons, Bands, Blazers, Grizzlies, pretty much most of the top teams in this Noir basketball class. That's a chance to pull some chat home here for the Thunder, Paolo Bonchero, of course, J-Dub also for the Thunder Warriors have a ton of Steph Curry, Pistons, Jaden, Ivy, Jalen, Duran, Mavericks, Luka Donchich, Shaden Sharpe for the Blazers. They've got a lot of John Moran and the Grizzlies. Look for those sneaker spotlights. Spotlight signatures like that one there. So again guys, you own a piece of these teams via the serial number break if any of them hit. We match them up by the first number on the left side of the serial number dash guys. Here's the dice roll. We're gonna click dice roll and after snake eyes two times top two win a free extra spot guys. One, two, and boom two times. Snake eyes two, two, Chris. Congratulations. You won both. So boom. So now two times on the names and the numbers. One, two, Chris down to Chris. I will get you one, okay? I also want to get you a chat though. Don't be sleeping on chat, my thunder. We're gonna do some damage this year. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine. One, two, seven out of six. Two, two, two. It's a Chris with seven as well as five and nine. Tom with one, Jeremy with zero, and you know our Redentions for these teams and of course little Chris. Three, two, four, eight, and six. Alrighty, now officially coming up in a separate video is going to be the break itself. So good luck everybody. Thank you.


And we are live punctual. Are we? Are we? Very punctual. We're a little earlier than usual. Are you sure? Yes. Yes. Yes. So our guest today, Alan. Yeah. Cuckits. Orders. It's a, you know, former Judas Priest. I'm not sure how much on the KK's Priest, Les Binks Priesthood.  The one and only. Is that a good buildup? Les Binks. How'd you like that? Was that good? That's good, man. Yeah. Like the motorhead. A little early today, but why not? So Les, you know, we could talk, we could talk as much as you like, as long as you like. It's all good. We know that there's the KK's Priest. And I guess everybody was kind of a little, I guess the word is disappointed. We'll start off with that and we'll go back into your history too. It was a little sad, right? Because everybody was really looking forward to you being part of the project.  Maybe you could just give everybody a little more of an explanation as to what happened. Sure. Well, basically, and this all came about from a one-off show that we did up in Wolverhampton at KK Steel Mill with Ripper. And it really was that. It was supposed to be a one-off thing. And I think KK enjoyed being out there on stage again and, you know, he got the itch to go back on the road and to get out and play to the fans again. And so he contacted me again after that, shortly afterwards. And asked me if I would like to make it a more regular band. And I agreed to that, thought it'd be a good idea. And so we'll have to do some fresh material, get an album together and then do a tour. And he set up management and everything else. And everything was looking rosy. So that was the plan. You know, let's do an album and then go straight on tour. And this was back in, and we did that show in November 2019, you know, so it's, you know, we're in 2001 now, you know, so of course, you know, the recording sessions were set up and I had a bit of a nasty accident and injured my wrist at the time, which was really bad timing and I didn't want to delay the whole thing because I knew he was anxious to get out on the road. So I suggested that they use another drummer. So the album could carry on and be done because Ripper was flying over to do his vocals and so on and so forth. And luckily he managed to do that before the lockdown came in and travel between America and the UK became rather a no-no. So I thought I'd just got a nasty sprain but it turned out to be, after we had an x-ray, turned out to like a little hairline fracture. So it took quite a few months to heal properly and I'm sort of more or less back to full fitness again. So that was quite some time ago, obviously. And then of course the COVID thing happened which screwed everything up, not only for the plans that we had to go on tour but everybody, the whole music industry, the West End shows, you know, it's devastated the musicians' livelihoods, the world crews, the whole, you know, lighting people, everyone connected to live music entertainment.  So I spoke to KK recently and he tells me it's unlikely that there'll be any shows until 2022, which is next year. So nothing's going to happen for some time, you know. He's asked me if I would still like to be involved and I said, yeah, yeah, how are we going to work that out? And so there may be some, maybe something we can work out where I do like a guest spot or something. But as I said, no actual tour dates have been announced. And so everything's in that sort of uncertain stage at the moment because nobody knows how this pandemic is going to work out. I mean, the big problem that bands have when it comes to touring, if they're planning to do a world tour, is that, like for instance, in this country in the UK, we seem to have at the moment anyway, with the rollout of the vaccines, quite a large percentage of the population have not been vaccinated. And they are planning to open up live music venues again from the 21st of June. Wow.  And it's put a lot of people out of work and not just in music, but everything. A lot of businesses have folded. So that now that the vaccines are out and everyone's been, that's been offered it, has had it, I've had it, had two shots of the Pfizer vaccine and had no, no bad reactions to it at all. A lot of people are worried about taking it. I think crazy if you don't, but it allows people to get back into, you know, social settings again, such as we have to have at live concerts. So then, unfortunately, this new Indian variant comes along. And you know, our government was far too slow to, when the scenes of what was happening in India currently, people, you know, dropping like flies away with this new, new variant what they call a, I think a double mutant variant is supposed to be even credibly more infectious than the previous ones, the previous variant variants. So that is now in the UK, unfortunately, they didn't ban travel to India and back early enough. So it managed to find its way in, you know, people traveling back and forth. And at the moment, it's still contained and they're doing everything they can to make sure it doesn't spread. But I think younger people are more likely to get it if they're not vaccinated. So the big thing that's going to screw everybody's plans up again is a mutant version of this COVID-19 virus comes along that can, in fact, people who've been in vaccinated vaccinated, you know, but one that can find its way around the vaccine. And if that happens, we're all back to square one again. Yeah, just when we saw the light of day, we might be back to square one. So yeah, until, well, I mean, we do have the vaccine, but because this virus is very clever and keeps changing the little protein spikes on it. The immune system may not recognize the latest version that comes along. And so it might be able to, in fact, people, even though they have antibodies, you know, because the original vaccine that we're all getting was based on the very first version of the virus, you know. So these new mutant versions will look different and the immune immune immune system may not be able to recognize these new versions. But the only way we can find out the answer to that is wait and see, you know, see how, you know, at the moment, the scientists and medical experts are analyzing this new double mutant version that's come from India and trying to work out how just how more infectious it is and whether it can find its way around the vaccine or not. And it's a bit too early at this stage to until they've done all their investigations to see what the situation is. So if it turns out that it it spreads regardless of the vaccination program, then that could screw up the life venues being opened on the 24th of June. So who knows? This is what the kind of world we're living in these days, isn't it? You know, there's so much uncertainty. You can't say we're going to be doing this on this day because who knows what's going to happen between you and them. So you were saying because, you know, we're trying to piece. Jimmy had some interviews with Casey, some excellent interviews. We've read his book. We've got Rob's book and we're just trying to fit it together. You said like he got a little bit interested. He did a one off show and then it kind of spiked, spiked, you know, this kind of interest and maybe a tour, maybe even an album. You know, what was the general attitude you think with KK?  I think I, I, I, I first sort of established contact with KK back in 2017.  And I did suggest to him then, you know, I said we should do something together, you know, and I think because of all, you know, because of all the commitments he had with that at the time, he wasn't focusing on music then. But that's all changed now. So and I think uh, uh, Judas Priest were trying to do a major tour to celebrate 50 years of, of the, you know, being together. And it would have been good if they'd, if they'd invited KK to take part in that. I thought that would have been. And you as well. And you as well. Yeah, well, and Ripper, I don't know, but sure. But, um, uh, it was for a long time, hemming and high. And it was, it was, it was just going to happen. Is it not going to happen? And it turns out that they, they, they, they, they didn't want to, they didn't want to do that. So, um, I think that, you know, after that show, we did together. And I think he did a guest spot in at Bloodstock as well. With Ross, the boss. I think I reconnected him with his fans and, and, and, and, uh, you know, gave him, uh, the, the, uh, the urge to do, to get out and play again. Uh, so, uh, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure we'll be out there doing it at some point. It's just when, you know, I don't, I have no information regarding tour dates or anything like that, because, um, you know, with the, with the, with, with the pandemic, normally when a management sets up a tour, it's a world tour. And so you're going to do so many dates in this country and fly to the next one, do so many dates there and off to the next one. There's so many, and so on and so forth. But the problem is that the situation is different than every country regarding the, the, um, you know, the, and so, uh, I mean, for instance, Brazil, there was a new variant of the, of the virus that came from business in Brazil. And that was one of the countries where we were supposed to go to do some shows in Rio. Uh, and, um, so, and, and, you know, the flights have been totally disrupted.  And you'd always hear planes flying overhead, you know, because I'm quite close to the airport.  And suddenly that just stopped. No, no, no flights. Yeah. You know, and, uh, It's been better at night. Yeah. You know, um, the, the, the airline industry has been devastated.   I think, uh, so, um, uh, they've, the, today is quite an important day because the pubs have opened again. Hallelujah. Yeah. I haven't had a chance to get out there yet. Cause you're too busy doing the second most important thing is being on the show. Absolutely. Yeah. But I'll, I'll be in the pub at some point this week.  And, um, a lot of them probably won't survive. You know, and if we have to go, you know, if things go pear shaped a second time and, and, you know, some version of this virus causes major problems again, um, then, uh, and we go into, we have to go into yet another lockdown. You know, how can businesses survive that? It's, it's, it's killing, killing everybody's business, you know, Let's, let me ask you this cause everybody's dying to know. And I mean, and this is how I started it off. I mean, are you officially in the band like the K case priest or you're kind of, or you're not certain? Well, um, I have my own bands, right? Yeah, that we know. Yes. Yeah. And, and Ripper has his own thing, you know, he does this three tremors thing and he's got his fingers in a lot of pies. He's always, he's always gigging. He's always busy. Um, and I've actually got, um, a few selective gigs lined up with my own band. Yeah. From, uh, the end of July, beginning of August, summer around there, uh, because there are, there are some venues that are trying to operate with, um, restricting the number of people and social distancing and all that, you know, but that means that the venues operating at a tiny fraction of its full capacity. So they can't, they can't make a, the same, the same mind. It can't do the same business that, that they would normally do. And, uh, I didn't want to go out and do shows to a half, half full venue, you know, right? Um, so if, if things are not, um, disrupted by some new variant of this virus between now and the 21st of June, then, uh, I'll be, I'll be out doing it again with my own band, uh, around the end of July, August, something like that. But I'm only, only accepting a handful of, uh, shows, you know, is that in the UK? Only in the UK, not only in the UK. Yeah. Cause I don't know what the situation, I know, I know the situation has been quite bad in France. You know, it keeps it simpler. Yeah, exactly. At least you know what you're dealing with in the restrictions in that country. It goes back to what I said earlier, the situation is different than each country. So you can only accept, uh, you know, work in the, in the country that you know, uh, is relatively safe from that you can play to a decent size audience. So let's talk a little bit about your band. So, so are you, uh, it's strictly Judas Priest, uh, covers, or do you have your own material or? Um, well, you know, I've worked with so many different musicians over the years. And, um, this, quite, quite often when I'm working with, in other situations, and somebody finds out who's on drums and come up and they say, Oh, I'll play some pretty stuff.  And then there's, uh, every year there's, uh, there's, uh, a thing that happens in Great Yarmouth, which is in Norfolk, uh, called Legends of Rock. And I have four day, at least a four day event that is, they have lots of different bands on. I was contacted and asked to do that. And what I do, um, the, the priest material from my era in the band. And I was, I thought that that could be good, you know, um, I hadn't played those songs in many years, you know. And, uh, so I contacted some of the musicians that I thought guitar players, first thought, that I thought would be able to handle that and, and, and pull it off. So I have a couple of really good guitar players. So I'm very happy with, uh, I had a bass player and a singer and, um, we did, we got together and we rehearsed all the material from my era. I didn't want to go beyond that, you know, uh, so it's 70s priest, you know, uh, because I joined the band, uh, when the band signed up to CBS Columbia, uh, their first album, which was Sin After Sin. Now I didn't play on Sin After Sin, that was Simon Phillips. Uh, but I did the tour. I joined to do the tour to promote the sale of that, sales of that album. So, um, I played that stuff live. And then, of course, we went into the studio together and we did the Stain Class album and, uh, I co-wrote Beyond the Realms of Death. Yeah, yeah, you know, it, it, it prepared for this interview. That's what I, that's what I, uh, read. That's what it, you know, that's the song off of this album almost, right? So that was a huge, huge deal. Well, thank you for that. Yeah. Um, actually it wasn't, we had rehearsed all the other songs, all the other material.  Um, I was the only guy living in London, so I had to travel up to Birmingham, sorry, for rehearsals. And, um, when I got home, I thought, all the songs are very uptempo. And I thought it'd be nice somewhere in the set to take it down a bit, right, and, uh, have some, something that starts off with acoustic guitars and a ballad, basically, that moves into a heavy riff section. So I made a little home demo of what turned out to be Beyond the Realms. And when I went back, back up to, um, Birmingham to rehearse, I played a tape to them of that song. And, um, I thought it was better for, Rob to, to write the lyrics, because he has a particular style of writing songs, and I wanted to maintain that continuity with the rest of the material. So Rob went away, came back, said, I've got, I've got, I've got the title Beyond the Realms of Death. So, um, so that's, that's how it came about. You also, uh, did, did, you opened up for Rush on the Sit After Sin tour? Sorry to say again. You opened up for Rush, Rush, the Band Rush. Oh yeah, yeah. On the Sit After Sin. You opened up for Rush, Led Zeppelin. Was it, was that, that tour? Uh, that was, that was, that was on the first tour we did of America. We opened for Zeppelin, uh, at, um, Oakland Coliseum. Yeah. When they had that big, um, Stonehenge State set, yeah, you know, Allen's favorite. Yeah. Well, every time I think of it now, I think of, uh, Spinal Top, you know, yeah, right. Or Black Sabbath born again. Yeah. Yeah, I'm done. What was it? What was it like opening up for Rush? Well, you know, I'd never, I wasn't familiar with Rush's material that time. I was a, I was an earlier, earlier part of their career and we had been on first, so I was standing at the start of the stage watching a show and I only caught, I only caught a short, uh, portion of the show, but, um, I noticed all these big banks of martial lamps, martial stacks, um, and, um, that they had on stage, which looked very impressive, you know, but when I stood at the side of the stage, I could see that behind the martial stacks, there was a, a Fender Twin Reverb mic'd up. That's what the guitar player, yeah. Alex Lifeson. So the guitar player was actually playing through, um, uh, you know, a Fender Twin Reverb, but all the martial stacks were there just for show. That was a lot of cases back then. What about the drumming?  Oh yeah, great. It was so sad to hear the news of them passing away, you know, but it was a fantastic drummer, you know, uh, very well respected. What can I say?  So when you came into the band, you know, they had gone through different drummers and Simon Phillips plays on Sin After Sin.    Um, well, I had to learn the arrangements of the songs. That wasn't going to change. But every drummer is different. Right. You know, um, as it happens, Simon and I have very much the same, uh, musical influences. Uh, the way that Simon plays, he, he uses his left hand on the hi-hat as opposed to crossing over. Oh, okay. And two people that we were both into, um, back in the 70s was Billy Cobham with the Mahavish New Orchestra who played that way. It still does. And, uh, Lonnie White with, um, Chick Korea's Return to Forever. So there were like jazz fusion bands with rock influences as well. But incredible players and, you know, Simon's quite into that jazz fusion type of playing that which he does with his own band. And, um, so our heads were quite similar in that, you know, in what we listened to. I was into, when I started off playing, I was, you know, I agree up listening to, uh, Bonzo, you know, John Bonham with, with Zeppelin and, um, Ian Pace, Duba D. Purple, uh, who else? In the rock field. Uh, Cozy was a, I liked Cozy's playing as well, Cozy Powell. Um, but, but I listened to a whole, a whole wide variety of musical genres and got to know players who, who like Steve Gadd. Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Yeah, Harvey Mason, um, and Lenny White and Billy Carbon, people from that jazz and funk sort of things, you know. And I found I could utilize some of those, some of that stuff. Uh, on the metal, on, in the metal stuff I was playing.  Uh, I don't think, uh, that was the case with the drummers that followed me. And I wouldn't agree with that, yeah. I mean, Dave Holland was a lot more, uh, just, just laying down the grooves, you know. For fun. Yeah. And Scott is more into the fast bass drum stuff. Yeah. Very, uh, end of the sort of speed sort of things. Right. So they, I mean, they've had quite a lot of drummers when you think about it, because when I, when I joined it already got, uh, gone through three. The first album, Rock or Roller had John Hinch on it. Yeah. Uh, who I just learned sadly passed away at the age of 73. Yeah. And, um, then they had a guy called Alan Moore who played on, um, Sad Wings and Destiny. Then Simon came, me as a session to do the sin after sin. And then I did the next three. And then Dave was there forever and then they got Scott and maintained Scott all these years. Probably, probably the drum has been in the band the most. He is, yeah. Yeah. He's getting a gold watch. You know, there's been different. Here's the bathroom. For the reasons why you left, I mean, there's different stories.  So, so what, what, you know, we read this and all everybody else's version, but what's, what's Lesbink's version for, for leaving freeze? Uh, right. Money or lack of it. Lack of it. Or lack of it. Just probably more precise. I was, I was, excuse me. I was in a different situation than the other guys in the band. I was assigned to the record company. And when I came to the live album on Least in the East, the management company thought I should do it for free. And that album went platinum. I sold all the previous albums and management didn't want to pay me for it. Crazy. Did you get any money, any money at all? I had to, I had to fight and struggle to get anything for it. But obviously that's solid relationships. Yeah. And made it impossible for me to carry on. You're not getting paid. Yeah. Well, so what was the reasoning less for that? Why, why, why wouldn't they want to pay you?  You, you asked them. I couldn't figure that one out either. Especially when you finally got somebody solidified behind the drums. Finally, you find your guy and crazy. Well, the wacky world of rock and roll, Alan. The wacky world of rock and roll. I think, I think they thought, I think the manager thought that as the album was recorded while we were on tour in Japan and I was being paid for the tour, they could use the recordings without paying me for the release of the album. Okay. You know, but it doesn't work like that.  If they're not signed to the record label, obviously if they're signed to the record label, they're going to make, you know, loyalties off the sale of that album. But my situation was different. And so I, I, I was so like the session guy. And that was normally, I would, I would, I would go in, have a meeting with a management when we were going into a recording studio and I would work out a, a, a deal for payment for, for that album. And it's easy to do that when you're going into a recording studio and you're in England. But we were on tour and I wasn't consulted about any kind of recording while we were touring. So there was no pre-arrangement made for what I was going to, I was going to be remunerated for that. And it was how I found out was I had a a new kit, a new drum kit supplied by Pearl who I was endorsing at the time. And they, they, they delivered the kit to the venue we were playing at. So I had to go down with my drum tech in the afternoon to get it all set up and tune it. It was a little brand new. And while I, while I was doing that, I noticed there was a 24-track mobile studio at the back of the building. And there were engineers bringing cables in and setting extra mics up to record. So the band's then manager was a guy called Mike, Mike Dolan who they got rid of finally, because he was ripping everybody off. Nobody was getting paid. Well, not what they should have been. And he was, he was with us on the tour in Tokyo.  And he said, oh, don't worry about it, Les. It's only for Sony. It's only for CBS, Sony's sake, you know, he said, if I want to do anything with it, we'll talk about it later, you know. So we flew straight from Japan to the USA and we toured the USA for about three months, came back to England and we had a two-week tour of the UK. And we did a show, I think it was probably the last show I did with them, a Dublin stadium, a stadium in Dublin, along with a status quo and a few other bands, I can't remember now. And then we took a break and, you know, everybody was burned out after all that. Well, you know, travel. We didn't actually vary the set much and we're playing the same set pretty much every night and that can get a bit tedious after a while, you know, getting some fresh stuff into the set. But I was the only member of the band that worked with other musicians outside of the band. So when we came off the road, I'd bring up all my session contacts in London, let them know that I'm around and available and I would go, I would go around, I'd be working in the studios in other situations with other musicians until, until a band wanted to either rehearse and make a new album or go back on tour. So, this is when I got a call from their manager, Mike Dolan, and he said, can you come onto the office? And we want to discuss the band's next move, you know, so I said, sure. So I, I came in and he said to me, I said, the bands down at Ringo's studio, Starling Studios in Ascot, listening to the tapes from Japan, the live stuff from Japan. And he said, we've had a lot of requests, he said from fans, asking when, when is the band going to put out a live album? And he said, we think this could be it. But this was the first time they worked with Tom Allam, as producer. He got old Tom, yeah. Oh, I never met the guy, because I was never invited to the studio to have a listen, which I thought was a bit weird. They didn't want you to know about it. Yeah. So I began to get the, them and us situation, you know, I felt I was being treated quite differently because, you know, and so I said, well, I said, well, that's fine. Just pay me the same as you paid me for the last album. And he said to me, he said, you know, there's the bands in debt at the moment.  Did he waive his? That was my response. I said, are you going to waive your management? Oh, no, no, they never waive their fees. No. Can you tell me how I'm going to pay my bills if I'm not making any money? You know, incredible. We're discussing you last. We're not discussing me. That's what he's saying. You know, this, this was the 70s. And it was, Yeah. It was very common, very common for, very common for ripoff cutthroat managers that took advantage of naive young musicians who were more into being rock stars and making music and into their music than they were business people. You know, so they used that. To, there are naiveness to exploit that and rip them off. I mean, Don Arden. Oh, we don't want to go there. You know, notorious, notorious.  Next album, you got your session fee, but when the live album comes out, there was no session fee or you did manage to get it at the end. Well, you know, I would go in and arrange payment with the management before we actually went into the studio. Because I saw, you know, so I would spend as much time in the studio as was necessary to get the results that we wanted to get. And a lot of the time we were in I mean, the, the staying class album we recorded at Chippin Norton Studios, which is up in the Cotswolds. It was a little village, a little company village up there and this building was, was converted into a studio and it had living accommodation. So we, we actually stayed there while we were working on the album. And whereas the follow-up album which was Hellbent for Leather on your side of the pond. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Killing Machine, yeah. Yeah, it was, it was Killing Machine in the UK. It still wouldn't work today. Yeah, yeah. We had to change it in America because of, yeah, it was always, always somebody goes crazy and shoots a lot of people, you know, because of American gun laws. Yeah. And there'd been a big, so many of them crazy at a school and shot a lot of people. It's still happening. Yeah. Just as the album was due for release and so the record company thought that Killing Machine was probably a bit, it was a sensitive title. Yeah, we're not having any of that. Yeah. So, so they changed it and they called it Hellbent for Leather which is one of the other tracks on the album. Are there any other songs from Stain Class and Hellbent for Leather or Killing Machine that you contributed to that sort of you didn't really get your credit for? Well, I think the way people record today is quite different to how they did. Recording studios and recording over the years, if you go back to the 50s and rock and roll with Elvis and Sun Studios and Memphis, they're, you know, everybody's played live in the studio. And everything was mono and stereo. We didn't have multi-track recording and all that developed over the years. I think Sarge and Pepper was only met on a four track. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And so you have to keep bouncing tracks down to create more space to add the next thing on. So what we would do when we made those albums was we would go in rehearsal studio. Each member of the band would present ideas for songs. I mean, for instance, Exciter on Stain Class as a drum intro. And that came about from me just messing about a soundtrack.  And Glen Zyrus picked up when he heard it. And he said, oh, let's play that again. Play that again, you know. And then he came in with a little guitar riff, you know. And so that's how some songs develop. You know, just out of a jam. And then you take them away and you develop them later on and ends up on an album. And when we all got together, regardless of who whose song it was or who's initiated it, everybody had their own input to it. But with a lot of bands, you know, not everyone gets credited. I mean, even Lenin and McCartney, you know, sometimes it would be mainly one or the other who wrote the song. But it was credited to both of them. And George Martin, how he took the songs, you know, orchestration and everything, he never got credit for anything. It was always Lenin and McCartney. Well, he was the fifth Beatle, wasn't he? Really? Yeah, for sure. I mean, he played, was it Celeste or something on what sort of track was it? In My Life? In My Life? Joe Manon's song? There's a whole piano thing. I think it was played on a Celeste, which George Martin played. And it's a really nice melodic structure as well. Adds a lot to the song. So I don't think it got credited for it, just a little McCartney song, you know? I guess it was there like, was there any other song other than Beyond the Realms of Death that you kind of put a little more, okay, excited, it's obvious, because there's that drum, you know, the drum intro, right? But is there any other song that you maybe contributed melody-wise or riff-wise that sort of, you put in a little more than, you should have got a little more credit. That you deserved. Well, I never asked for any more credit, because, you know, if somebody comes up with the idea for a song and you throw in maybe a suggestion here and there, it's still their song, you know? And so, and also, I was the new boy in the band back then. And I didn't want to say, well, I'm going to write this and I'm going to write that. And you know, it was Glenn KK and Rob, who were the main writing team in the band. And I was keen to write more stuff, had I been in the band longer, I definitely would have come up with more material. But there has to be space on an album, and if the guys come up with a whole bunch of songs that's going to fill an album, then you've got to find a space for your song on it, and you've got to convince them that it's right for the band. And, you know, that's the other way that artists make money, obviously, is from the publishing rights to their songs. Absolutely. And the publishing rights that I had with Beyond the Realms of Death were ripped off by the management. They make all the money. I don't get a penny for that. So you've never gotten a penny for Beyond the Realms of Death to this day? No. What the heck's going on in this world? Exactly. Now you understand why I left. Okay, so just one question now. Back in the 80s, there was that unfortunate incident with two youths in the United States, and they tried committing suicide, and this song was under question, and you were never called in? No, it wasn't this song. It wasn't Beyond the Realms of Death. No, I thought, oh no, sorry. No, no, no, no. That's right, that's right. It's the other one up. There's a letter on. Are you talking about the court case? Yes, the court case. Yeah, yeah, the court case was... By the two boys who, yeah. While I was out of the band, by the time that hit the headlines. Somebody out there tell me which song it was again. I thought it was that one. I think it was better by you, better than me or something. Yes, it was. Which was actually a spooky truth song. Well, yeah, that's a cover. It's a song. That's the thing. Yeah, because every time we went into the studio to make an album, CBS would... Their A&R people would be looking for a single off the album. And they would make suggestions. What about doing a version of this, you know, this song? Diamonds and Rust. Yeah, well Diamonds and Rust was a Joan Baez song. Yeah, that's right. No one would think of Joan Baez or Judas Priest and it's a completely different style of artist. Nazareth with Joni Mitchell and This Flight Tonight and other... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was Simon played on that one, on the Seven After Seven album. I played it on the live version, at least in the East. But that was one. Then when we did Stay In Class, they put forward the idea of doing better by you or better, you know, that's a pretty good song.  Everybody quite like the song. So we give it our own treatment. We played, you know, came up with a new arrangement for it and played it in a Judas Priest way and made it our own. And then on the next album, they suggested... Take On The World. The Green Manolishi. Oh, yeah. Peter Green. Peter Green. Amazing. What a greatest version. Oh, my Lord. That's a great version. And when we listened to it, I mean, I always loved Peter Green and so did the rest of the guys in the band. Fantastic guitar player. And I remember going to see him in Belfast, the original Fleetwood Mac, and it was a fantastic show. They're an incredible band live. And whose idea was it for Green Manolishi? Sorry? Whose idea was it to cover the song? Well, that began, I was to say. It was the record company. Oh, it was a record company. Yeah. It was like a Rob said, hey, guys, I got this idea. You know, let's cover Fleetwood Mac. The cover songs that we did. The songs that we did. It was always management. The guys who don't want to pay anybody. They thought, because they were looking for a single and they thought these songs. As far as I know, none of them ever were released as singles. When we did, I'll call it the hell band for the other album. For your part of you. The first single that was released on that album, it wasn't Green Manolishi. It was The Take On The World. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a hit in the UK. And we got on the top, top 10 with that singles charts. And then they took a second one off it, which was Evening Star. That did pretty well too. Two great albums, man. You know, I'm thinking about it. These are like just Rob and the whole band was like far and off in all cylinders.  But I prefer the style of the music that they were doing then. To, you know, the later stuff that got more The painkiller you're talking about? Yeah. The painkiller is a great track. Don't get me wrong. It is. Yeah. A great drum intro on that, you know. Very excited-ish. Yeah. Well, Scott KK told me he listened to a solo that Scott did on Racer X, which is another one of his bands. And there was something like that in the solo. And he said, play that. Play that as the intro, you know. So anyway, you know, I think if you look at the 80s period with Dave Holland and the album they recorded with him A Brish Steel, Scrooge of Revengeance. Yeah, there were several singles taken off that album, which were hits for them. Yep. Breaking the law, living after midnight. Straight ahead rock, you know, not speed metal. No double bass drums at a million miles an hour, you know. But quite commercial, there were hit records for the band, you know. Not all of them did very well. I know Martin Popoff will agree with you. I mean, he was a, you know, he's written about it. He's a huge Judas Priest fan in your era and before. And then he, what he calls kind of like the dumbing down to hit the U.S. market where British steel onwards, you know. Well, the 70s period was before MTV. Right, big time. And so the emphasis was on getting American FM radio play. And it was kind of strange for us because when we arrived in America, we were playing tracks like Exciter and all that kind of stuff. And we were on the same show as Aureo Speedwagon, Fogat. There you go.  But these bands, you know, four on there, they were very commercially successful bands and got a lot of American FM radio. Play. And so that was very important to get in your music herd in throughout the states because America is such a vast country. You can be really big in one state and totally unknown in another. And one of the first areas that we took to Judas Priest right away was San, Texas, San Antonio. San Antonio, yeah, huge, huge. We were doing a tour there with a very, very hardworking band. I mean, there are some bands that stick the first album out. I'm thinking of San Antonio, I would say Saxon. No, Death Leopard. Death Leopard. Oh, yes, yes. Their first albums, just America loved them straight away. Hello, America. And then we were touring with UFO and UFO, we went up to there. They were living up in Laurel Canyon and LA. And those guys were constantly, I mean, they were a British band who'd moved and relocated to America. And they were always on tour, very hardworking bands. But their success came gradually album by album, bit by bit. Whereas on the same with Priest, really, I mean, they had to work hard on it to get where they wanted to be. Whereas Death Leopard comes out. The first album goes, you know, and Mot Line producing. Yeah, young guys look good, you know, it's a little different. TV era, yeah. Exactly, you know, Shania Twain is another one she produces her. And I think Brian Adams, Brian Adams, they can always tell his production. But he knows how to make hit records. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of like, so there's a chat going on here too, less and people are asking all kinds of questions and we're just, I don't want to ignore everybody. But one person asks, I'll throw out some questions at you. Okay. And you could just answer if you want to answer if you don't want. Sure. What do you think about the new KK song? I guess, you know, since you didn't participate, what do you think about it? It's got that painkiller vibe. What's your thoughts? Well, I've only seen it on an iPhone. Hellfire put the video out on an iPhone.  The video is very impressive. Lots of effects and stuff. I haven't heard the entire album and I don't think it's due for release until... But it's okay.  Early on, there were some early sort of just rough. Yeah, that was sent to me, but I didn't really get too heavily involved because I knew I wasn't going to be playing on it, you know. Oh, okay.  If I'm not getting paid. Yeah, so yeah, I've only really just probably what you've seen of it is what I've seen of it, you know. So did you like it or your impressions? How's that? Yeah, I liked it, yeah. And I wish them every success with it, you know. For sure. I spoke to Kai-Kai earlier on this year when they were just putting that video together and it was very difficult because, you know, Rippers in America and so there were no flights to the UK hard getting, you know, restrictions on foreign travel because of COVID. And so getting everybody together, it was always a problem. So I'm not sure how they got around all that. Maybe they all contributed to whatever part of the world they were in and sort of stuck it together, you know. But, yeah, I mean, it opens up with Kai-Kai's trademark, Whammy Bar. I love the song, I love the song, actually. Yeah, that opened up something similar to that opened up The Center, you know, which is one of the tracks that I like playing, yeah. And I do that with my own band, actually, The Center. Yeah, great. It was also on Unleashed from the East. Yeah. So that song is from sort of my era with the band. Did they redo any of the drums on Unleashed East? Because, okay, the vocals we know it's common knowledge that they had to redo the vocals, but was any drums or any other other songs rebuilt from scratch? I hear this comment. There's a lot of rubbish that's spoken about. I think it was Unleashed in the studio. Yes. Which is complete bollocks, you know. As I say, the drums are entirely live. And I never even sat foot in the studio. Because they weren't paying you. So my part I can clarify is totally live, you know. So we know we've confirmed Les Binks was recorded live, yes. Absolutely, yeah. And I think and also we see nowadays, when that album was released in the 70s, we didn't have quantizing and stuff that we, you know, with technology that's around digital technology and computers and so on, you can control everything more in a studio. You have auto-tune.  Retune the voice digitally, you know. It's not, it's a cheating really, you know. But, you know, a lot of these boy bands and girl bands, a half of them can barely sing, you know. But they get away with it in the studio because of these that can make them sound better than they are. But the Unleashed in the East album was entirely live. I think when we did the shows, Rob had a problem. He had a cold or something affecting his throat. That's what I read, yeah. Yeah. And so when they went into the studio, I mean, no matter which band you think of, that's had a live album, think of then Lizzie. Live in the East. Yeah. They don't just, they don't just, oh yeah, just stick it out, you know. They wanted to sound well mixed and if anything needs an effect on it, you know, a vocal effect or a bit more reverb on that or a bit more echo. We're not kissed though. Kiss, it's all live here. All their albums are right live. There's no mixing there. There's no studio. Yeah, so. Kiss is always live. Yeah. So obviously with the Unleashed in the East album, I think they redid some of the vocals, probably not all of them. But anything that Rob felt wasn't, his voice wasn't on top form on, he would have redone in the studio. But I would say the majority of it is totally live. Okay, good. You know, Les, when me and Alan do these shows, it's more of a sit back, relax, talk casual, you know, we're very, and we're not, we're not, we'll make little jokes. We're just joking around, you know, we're just having, we're trying to make it feel comfortable.  And you're saying your tracks are always, is definitely live as well. So. Yeah. All I'm saying is, with any live album, the band always polishes it up in the studio. You know, they want to get the best out of that live performance. And so, you know, they'll just polish it up in the studio. And I'm sure there's a good mix and everything can be heard properly. And so, so they're getting the best out of it. Right. Well, I think it's getting late there. And I think we've weighed, took up a lot more time than we originally planned, but it was a great interview. And we thank you a lot, Les, for joining us. And hopefully, like you said, you'll be out touring in June, if everything goes according to plan. Yeah, yeah, fingers crossed. So Les Binks, the Les Binks priesthood, which is basically covering the three albums you played on with Judas Priest. Hopefully we get to see you with KK's Priest, some special guests. I mean, we'll see how that comes about, right? Well, that's what KK suggested to me, you know. Okay. And that'd be easier to do in the UK, obviously, because we all live in the UK, you know. I was looking forward to seeing you. I was looking forward to seeing you with KK's Priest. That's why I'm just here to look. I'm a fan, so I was looking forward to seeing you. That's all. I was looking forward to seeing me, too. Well, seeing me now, that's the main thing. There you go. There you go. Now you're catching on to these shows. Les, it was a pleasure. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll do it again soon. At any time. All the best. Stay well.


Today we're doing the CMP shoot, tables 3 through 6. This is annual training so we try to come out and do it every year. Really as combat engineers in a division unit, we take our marking ship skills better and continue improving on them. I'm doing things together, get out of the office, get out in the field and do marine things. It's important to understand because when you're room clearing or you're within 500 meters of that target, unlike the KD range, you need to be accurate, precise, you need to be quick on the trigger, quick on the reload, so that way it's them and not you. Every marine's a rifleman, so we all come out here and make sure we're good with that weapon. That's what marines do.


One of the biggest challenges for us is to help people realise that our merger is not about the institutions, but it's about the issues that we're working on. And so how are we going to use this as an opportunity, as a platform, to raise awareness of the things that matter both to us, and that is sustainable environments, preventing deforestation, linking marginalised communities together, and getting much more out of our food system and agricultural and rural enterprises? Well, that's the only thing that we want to do, almost, that we have in our mandate to centre, but the problem we have now with this is that within the CGIR, we are not perceived as the people that can deliver this, because they are the actors that are supposedly more powerful or more efficient endeavouring that. And for the outside world, we are seen as C4 is looking at forest, it's not looking at food and nutrition, ICRAF is looking at agroforestry, it's not necessarily looking at the whole landscape, and by getting together, we can have a more complete answer and a stronger voice in terms of setting the agenda and in terms of raising awareness and showing that forest trees, agroforestry, matter beyond what is commonly perceived as their main interest in making timber or producing fruits, it's covering the whole issue and the whole benefits, the whole contribution of forest trees and agroforestry in terms of sustainable development. So one of the things that helped bring us together was our shared, I suppose, bewilderment of why the world pays so little attention to forestry and agroforestry in sustainable landscapes. And when we think about the proportion of GDP in the world to agricultural forestry, combined there are only 6%, but yet they are so fundamental to life in our hydrological cycles and in the natural capital in which we will prosper. And I think this merger gives us that great chance to raise that profile, to raise awareness, to raise appreciation and then hopefully investment in what is our agenda, because you're right, Robert, that the marginalisation of the mandates, the diminution of the importance of it means that we can't be as effective with our partners, with our networks and with the research agendas that we've been held responsible for. Size matters because also if we limit ourselves to our classic world, the national agricultural research system or the national forestry system, or the public aid to deliver public good, we are missing a large part of the people that can change the agenda, which are the big corporates, the big players like the Danone, the Nestlé or the Cargill of the World. I think that was really pushed more by EECRA than it has been by C4, but it's something that we both recognise, we need to involve this player that's outside of the sector, the finance, and how do you see that with the... I suppose it's taking conservation and wise stewardship and all of the things that C4 and EECRAF, as well as the wonderful initiatives like the Global Landscape Forum, it is the world's premier platform for advocating for these issues, and that gives us the exposure and the reach and the machine to create that awareness, and what we hope from that will come that appreciation, that recognition, because I think we have to be starkly aware that agriculture and our food system at the moment is both bankrupt and broken. And how can we make this merging and going together initiative both a success for the outside world, so we are delivering on our mandate and we raise awareness and at the same time it's a success internally for our staff and our stakeholders. So, I think it's about connecting those opportunities and the demand and the supply of what we have, so we have together an amazing $1.8 billion legacy of past investment. C4 has been in existence for a very dynamic period of 25 years and what you've created in terms of this international network, this platform, this policy, the learning, the connecting, the changing, the way the world thinks about things like Red Plus, like landscapes, how we connect the various elements in them, so how we take that forward to make sure that there is, you know, committed investment, and who's going to invest?  It's got to work for them, so we have to have the evidence, the opportunities, the solutions that make a viable and prosperous livelihood for them and when we can connect that through the value chain with aggregators, with processes, with traders, with eventually consumers, that will be success and so essentially there is a business case for all of this and part of our problem is we've been grounded in almost shackled, if you like, by the public goods paradigm. We want to stay in business for a long period of time not because our mandate is to stay in business because we think our mandate is still very much relevant and overlooked by the other people and we are saying, OK, by going into this joint exercise we are going to, in fact, we are not looking at saving costs, we are looking at increasing our reach and we are looking at reaching people that are not now in part of our customer or people's interests that means that we will need to recruit staff, so for me the measure is in fact we are going to create additional jobs in the organization, maybe different to some of the jobs that we have already but it's really about expansion, it's not about trying to go together to survive a little bit longer and reduce our cost of backoffice by 20%. I like that framing that it's not about us as institutions but about what we do, but what we do needs a strong institution so how revitalizing our institutions and so given that we're 25 and 40 years old we've been through that institutional life cycle we've had the creation and evolution phase, the growth phase, expansion and now we're into maturity and we face the choice of either stagnation or decline or revitalization and growth and we felt coming together we would be stronger we would have stronger materials, bigger networks, bigger geography better partnerships to be able to deliver that but that paradigm shift from just being a public goods provider funded by public money is the exciting thing because we've seen the disruption in our world and when you're living in a disrupted world either you can absorb it and be the one who's disrupted or you can also disrupt the paradigms and the thinking and the investments and opportunities by being very clear with our logic and our planning and what the merger has done I think for both institutions well is to get us back to that strong planning phase what does the world need, what is the demand that we're expressing and what value propositions that C4 and ICRAF have and what they have together and how we're stronger together than separately I think that there is a risk also that we are going for a new paradigm or we are going for a new ITEC tool so that in a sense that we all move into having a smartphone and we leave the fax machine dying, resting in the corner and for me sort of the fax machine is all the things that we have done so far in terms of our classic work of research in agroforestry in terms of forestry research in terms of the wheels that are keeping our bus rolling and then we suddenly move towards everything we forget to do so I think that's something that also our staff and our stakeholders should understand I mean we don't want to forget or abandon what we have been doing for the last 25 or 40 years we want to use that as the basis to expand in another arena but still continue doing what we have been doing as long as it is relevant and give the result we want So the problems, the big problems that the world is facing climate change, habitat destruction, land degradation, water shortages huge social inequalities and disconnects all of those problems are not short problems and they're not going to be fixed overnight and those perennial problems need perennial solutions and I think that's where C4NUCRAF we can really leap in and profile that opportunity fill that demand by the tremendous knowledge products that we have the data, the analysis, the evidence as well as the technical, social and policy solutions and so the demand that we're getting now from the non-traditional kind of partners the private sector, the private investors for more project design for greater decision support for delivery options, for capacity development for playing that interfacing role and I think because of our identities as two international organizations that playing that role as independence we're kind of asking the tough questions but in a friendly way so the adversarial type of actors that are out there that challenge corporations we're asking exactly the same questions but in a way that's going to lead to change and progression and also our ability to understand and articulate some of those problems that supply chains are facing and particularly I think the climate related risks that businesses and corporations are facing because they now have to disclose those and their stakeholders and the regulatory authorities ask them to identify and mitigate those risks and that's much of the landscape work that C4 and ICRAF and our related groups the Global Landscape Forum the Tropical Landscape Finance Facility the Zero Base Natural Farming Work in India the African Orphan Crops Consortium these type of weaving together these initiatives to help provide that knowledge, some of those solutions and demonstrating that can actually work is the exciting part I mean, Rebea, how are we going to together go about convincing the world that our $1.8 billion of legacy investment over the past combined 65 years that that's of relevance to today and how do we take those knowledge products into knowledge services that people demand we think that we can do that via this new approach to a natural-based solution to showing the people that restoration is not simply something that is paid by public money to produce ecosystem services but can be paid by private funding to produce goods that benefit people and create jobs and at the same time provide the ecosystem services that the world needs and that's where I see the big elements for expansion and that's where I see the new part of the new orientation or the additional orientation that we want to give our common business besides the classical one that we want to continue because it feeds into the new one I think so if we can articulate that issue around changing the paradigm from public goods to say that it is about connecting public goods with private interests it's about using private interests as well to generate public goods and not just thinking of those public goods as the output the knowledge, the germplasm, the material, the method but translating that into a public good outcome to a public good impact is really going to be exciting because $1.8 billion is not a trivial legacy investment and taking that Amazon warehouse of all of this treasure some of it may be hard to decipher but that's where the tremendous staff the 700 great people that work for aircraft and C4 around the world and how we can mobilize them to be the champions of this merger the champions of that combined approach is to our favor that means also that for a foreseeable future we still need to have a very strong C4 and a very strong aircraft together with a very strong merge in entity or new entity and that the importance of the brand should not be underestimated because in fact people are willing to buy our product or aircraft product because they will rely on a brand so we need to maintain our current brands and institutions because they offer us the capacity to work in many countries to our own country agreement because we have also commitment existing with our own countries with our partners and we need to create a new brand that is building on the two existing ones and ultimately in a long distance or not so long distance future we have to bring all that together but by keeping the brands it's a bit like when you buy Orangina you are buying the Orangina brand but behind there is another company Yes so that's a powerful point in terms of it is keeping and renewing our value proposition and using the brand as a delivery mechanism so our brands deliver those new value propositions and how they are evolving and connecting with the past 65 years of work and the new challenges that the world is facing with increased population, climate change social destruction, conflict, habitat destruction how we link that to our delivery and it comes back I suppose to the staff and how whilst the board have taken very bold and very ambitious and very courageous decision for two institutions to merge and our mergers underway since the 1st of January 2019 the important thing is bringing staff along with that so that the staff are champions and our partners are investors and our beneficiaries ultimately are champions of that merger because they see that coming together and they see that combination of those different competencies of those complementary orientations around sustainable land use, landscapes together is the win-win-win for everybody so I guess for a bear one of the fundamental things that we have to continue to be front of our minds as we deliver this merger between C4 and ICRAP is the role of staff because institutions are not just the bricks and the mortar and the name and the bank accounts and the host country agreements they are the staff and they are the ones who are the biggest champions the greatest drivers, the one who do the work Well they are our biggest donor the factor in terms of the time they give to us the working on Saturday or Sunday or public holiday or at odd hours so I think if we want to in the list of the donor that gives to the institution and if we really make a calculation on how much the staff gives on top of their normal eight hours of work, five days a week I think that they are biggest stakeholder and for organization like C4 and ICRAP I mean they are definitely our we don't say that, our only asset by far the biggest, biggest, biggest asset if you have to choose between the bricks and mortar and the staff, you will choose the staff rather than the brick and mortar So one of the things that is common between C4 and ICRAP throughout our histories has been that sense of purpose that mandate, that very worthy enterprise and when you are changing the lives of poor people when you are helping make landscapes more sustainable when we are driving food security and nutritional security and I suppose wise stewardship of those natural resources it is easier for staff to connect to it because there is a sense of purpose throughout the organization from the scientists, the technicians the enablers, the accountants, the administrators everyone together working towards that and that is incredibly motivational both organizations had come to a stage of maturity where we were stagnating institutionally and I think the excitement for staff in this phase and the great opportunity is now we are like a start-up we are starting again we are in the creation, evolution growth phase into maturity for another cycle and that is a real great opportunity that there we can reinvent our futures there we can break out of that stagnation and poor recognition, appreciation and investment and bring staff along with that I mean there is just such amazing opportunities for jobs here, for careers for connecting people's own personal lives and motivation to this new combined institutional agenda it doesn't just happen, it's a process and as we go through that process what does success look like at the end of it and I think that this having an accelerated impact having more effect making more of a difference in the world is obviously the ultimate indicator for us and we are tracking that with our boards but also the institutional viability dimension the connecting to new stakeholders aspects of it to bringing that greater profile to the work of sustainable landscapes and the partners with which we work with well that accelerated impact and changing the world for a better place it's the ultimate goal but it was sort of I think maybe a bit selfishly I mean it's not for us it's also NIS NIS is the merging entity it's not UNI it's to ultimately have more flexible funding to do what we think is important and not simply to implement projects that are the idea of someone else it's to get ultimately better work-life balance for the staff to provide some certainties in terms of future in terms of carry in terms of prospect knowing that people will have to go out of their comfort zone in terms of thinking in terms of reimagining themselves but that's really at the same time that we try to offer something to the rest of the world that we should not neglect our own institution because ultimately the two are interlinked and maybe in 20 years after the success of this current we'll have to change again but in the meantime achieving success will depend very much on the way we treat ourselves so those are the two fundamentals of the objectives the goals of the merger to have that accelerated impact and combine that with greater institutional viability and making sure that we are getting sufficient resources delivering value for money connecting with our stakeholders better and expanding the vision and paradigms of others I mean both institutions sit within the CGIR system and here we are the slightly unusual, slightly idiosyncratic cousins who still get invited to the party and we're within the system fully signed up members however some of the paradigms around increasing food production solely or connecting it without thinking about the environmental footprint needs to be changed needs to be reinforced and I think that by coming together through this merger we can help change that paradigm we can help enhance it we can connect the green revolution with the green economy in much more effective and elegant ways