For some months now I’ve been subscribed to a weekly email from Jonny Trunk who runs Trunk Records (seriously, check it out).
I’ve been thinking of starting a BBS thread simply to post selected links from his weekly email because he often manages to unearth some very quirky video finds. There have been some real gems over the months and I believe many of them to be genuinely “wonderful things” - just the sort of things that many Happy Mutants here might get a kick out of.
So courtesy of a round tuit from @chgoliz I’ve created this thread simply to provide some links, for our delight and delectation, to an assortment of weird things Jonny has unearthed in recent months,
Starting with this one - a wonderful 18 minute animation with dialogue and musical improvisation by Dizzy Gillespie and Dudley Moore!
Two guards on either side of a border get into a discussion…
(You’ll have to go to YouTube to view it.)
More in a short while, and once I’ve run out of ‘back catalogue’ maybe every week or two.
And this is very British. From 1970. Features Dick Emery (who was “of his time” shall we say, if we are being polite - his act would not make it to TV today, for sure, but in the 70s he had a regular Saturday night TV show) and The Young Generation, a UK dance troupe who also had their own TV series in the seventies.
It’s a “brilliantly bewildering 1970 musical-comedy-song-and-dance spectacular promoting National Girobank.” … and is also very much of its time - and country!
I hope it has the required segment saying something like “This is one penny. Now previously 244 pennies would be one half-bob or a thrupenny shilling. 14 thrupenny shillings are a pound and all that is of course natural and self-explanatory. After decimalisation, one hundred pennies will be one pound. Now I know that seems crazy and you think you won’t be able to cope but it will be ok – despite what the tabloids say.”
Yes - a cat video. An improvising jazz cat. Is the man improvising with the cat or is it the other way round? Hard to tell by the end.
(Has this one been on BB? Maybe. Can’t be doing with checking for it. It’s worth revisiting if it was.)
There were of course 240 old pennies in a pound
As well as bobs and thrupenny bits, we also had tanners, florins, crowns, and half-crowns (a sixpence, a two-bob bit, two and sixpence and five shillings respectively). Crowns were not really in general circulation. Fortunately, farthings had also gone by then.
This TV programme features “a male singer from the US, a girl singer from Yorkshire, an Indian group from Bangalore, a pop group from Liverpool, and a [very famous] classical guitarist.”
Eclectic or what? Oh - and did I mention the roller-skating? The whole thing is rather wonderfully cheesy.
Wire recorders have featured in a couple of BB posts over the years, but I don’t think this clip has.
In which I introduce a project I have been working on for the past four months - Wires, a faithful VST/AU/AAX model of a soviet secret service and military wire recorder. It sound as close as possible to the haunting original, but we adapted it for use as a creative musical effect. Soft echoes, broken dreams, the sound of numbers stations and hauntology. Wires shines both in music and post-production.
Conspiracy theories are nothing new, of course. Nor are nut-jobs.
Thames TV made a programme about - and with - a motley assortment of a few of them 46 years ago.
What is most striking is how civilised and polite everyone is - no programme like this could be made today without screaming, shouting, mocking and insulting. But then, most of the theories or other ‘paranormal’ claims made here hardly represent a direct threat to our democracy, way of life, or existence.
In his email, Jonny described this one thus: And for a daft film this week I was sent this very strange video of cool crooner Brook Benton singing “Mother Nature Father Time”. However it seems like the dancers are dancing to a completely different tune.
someone sent me a link to a hobbyist remaster of The Wicker Man. Yes, I know we have missed May Day, but this American chap is clearly a true and total obsessive and has spent possibly years of his life regrading and joining versions of the film together. You can see his final version on the liinks below (but you have to open it in Chrome apparently). I watched it until it said I had to pay or wait. But it was interesting none the less. Here are the links he sent me:
This is from 1983 - an episode of an (at the time) hugely popular TV series. Viewed from here its sedate pace and low-key commentary would drive today’s TV producers mad - they’d be screaming for more jeopardy, conflict and winding up the rabble (studio audience) to screams of anguish and delight. Sigh.
The Great Egg Race - When the Petrol Runs Out
Dismantle a Citroen 2CV and construct a new vehicle that runs without petrol and can be carried by and carry the team members. Thus Professor Heinz Wolff sets another task for ‘The Great Egg Race’ contestants.
I liked the chap at about 12:20 from the World Society for Celebrating the Millennium.
“We’re not all nutcases here you know!”
Building a 10 square mile island in the Atlantic to hold trade fairs and so on would have made an interesting alternative/addition to the Millennium Dome.
