It’s a very, very bad day to run the Boston Marathon. Worst weather I’ve ever seen, with heavy rain and very strong wind. I picked a good year to be injured!
Year: 2007
Give Pet A Chance
If you’ve been reading the interviews with Petula Clark I’ve linked to, you may have caught a comment about her being in a certain place at a certain time. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss her in this video clip.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/APR07/GivePeaceAChance.flv 400 300]
Why was Pet there?
“I’d been staying in French-speaking Canada but was starting to have hits with records in English as well. So when I was booked to perform at the Place des Arts in Montreal, I thought I’d do a bi-lingual show. Wrong. It was open war.
“After the show, I was upset and I went to John’s hotel to ask his advice. I didn’t really know him that well, but I do remember he was very rude about the audience.
“There was a very strange atmosphere in the suite and I remember the cameras being there but I really didn’t realise [sic] they were making Give Peace A Chance at the time.”
Al “Capp” Caplin was a full-time jerk. I never did much like Li’l Abner. But in fairness, John Lennon was a part-time jerk. It would have been much more interesting seeing Pet, instead of Capp, talking to John. Recognize any other faces in the crowd?
Two Arms! Two Arms!
Blogging newspaper editor Mike Dobbs has posted some scans from a 1939 magazine article called “The Movies Launch a Kindergarten of Democracy”. [Link] The pictures are scenes promoting the Warner Brothers cartoon “Old Glory”, directed by Chuck Jones. Here’s the cartoon, released in 1940, in all its patriotic, rotoscoped, Technicolor™ old glory.
http://youtu.be/utkBu-mqi-c
Notice the two words that are missing from the Pledge of Allegiance? And of course there are two states missing in the map of the United States.
Synthetic Sir George
I’ve been trying to find a copy of a 1962 single of partially electronic music, Time Beat b/w Waltz in Time, by Ray Cathode. I’ve placed bids, and lost, for the single on eBay, but fortunately I found these MP3’s on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. [Link] Here are the tracks.
Ray Cathode – Beat Time
[audio:http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DG/time_beat.mp3]
Ray Cathode – Waltz in Orbit
[audio:http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DG/waltz_in_orbit.mp3]
Ray Cathode was a pseudonym for a collaboration between BBC technician-producer Maddalena Fagandini and George Martin, who would sign the Beatles to Parlophone Records just a couple of months later. The recording was made for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which was set up to create atmospheric music and effects for radio and TV. The 1963 production by Delia Derbyshire of Ron Grainer’s theme for Doctor Who is undoubtedly the workshop’s most familiar work.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/APR07/DoctorWho.mp3]More Frank Luther
A while back I featured an interesting children’s record by Frank Luther. That being the only thing I’d ever heard by him, he sounded so old, although he wasn’t yet 60 at the time. So I thought I’d dig up a few recordings from Luther’s earlier days, as an urban musical cowboy. It was worth the effort. This is absolutely super stuff, that I know my buddy Dennis, in particular, will appreciate very much.
Hope You’re In Hell, Adolph Hitler
Anne Frank (1929-1945)