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Eddie Braben
Graham Linehan has just told me on Twitter that Eddie Braben died today, he was 82…
Eddie Braben was the writer that almost single handedly propelled Morecambe and Wise to super stardom throughout their time at the BBC in the 1970′s, as he was the man that wrote virtually everything they said, although not how they said it, that was Eric’s particular skill.
It’s a bit late and I’m afraid I haven’t got the energy to write a glowing obituary just at the mo, so I’m going to put this short video clip up instead, as to me it says more about timing, comedic lines, silliness and middle aged men sharing bedrooms than words ever could..
Genius indeed.
Secret Cinema : G.O.O.D = S.H.*.T
We went to Secret Cinema last night and despite some early misgivings about the whole event, it turned out to be far more disappointing than I ever feared it might be.
Secret Cinema is like Fight Club; you’re not supposed to tell anyone about it, but in light of the fact that we did everything we were asked to, fulfilling our side of the bargain, as you will see if you read on, I think the organisers fell well short of what could be reasonably expected of them.
Hence any perceived contract is null and void, and hence me feeling free to tell you all about it. So click away now if you don’t want spoilers…
The experience all started off intriguingly enough, as over the course of the week leading up to the event, we had to enroll online into a company called G.O.O.D, answer questionnaires to generate our security levels and the Departments to which we would be assigned. We had to dress appropriate to our new stations, print out business cards and bring specific items with us such as newspapers, marigold gloves and brief cases…
Also on the plus side, the organisers had obviously put a lot of effort into it: the disused office building in West Croydon was decked out over six or seven floors to resemble various scenes and aspects from the secret film, which was… Terry Gilliam’s wonderful Brazil, which I must admit I was well chuffed about, as I’ve always been a huge fan.
The recreation of the office floor in which Sam Lowry worked with Mr. Kurtzman’s office tucked away at the back was particularly well done, whilst the restaurant with the string quartet and box like illuminated, numeric menus was also pretty impressive.
So the first hour or so was all pretty good, with signing telegram roller girls, freelance heating engineers, and red boiler suited Central Services personnel all running around and interacting with the (huge) number of guests (or employees as we were encouraged to think of ourselves) milling about the six or seven floors that were open to us.
The problems started when after an obscure announcement telling us to follow the screens and not our dreams, we tried to find out where the screens were and where the film was being shown. The be-costumed people we asked were either evasive or just plain idiotic and as our frustration grew we were directed to the lifts to get even more frustrated by being taken to floors where only a couple of tiny televisions were showing a DVD of the film…
So we bought more drinks at extortionate prices from bars with massive queues and not enough staff, to calm us down and continued to look for the feature presentation. We met more and more angry and frustrated people as we traipsed from floor to floor, looking for any sign of the film. We found art installations (on big projector screens please note), freeform dancing and performance art and small monitors showing the film but with the sound turned down (although you could hear the soundtrack in the stair towers bizarrely enough, but that was on the other side of two fire doors).
Eventually (after an altercation of which I’m not proud) we were told that the film would be projected onto the outside of the building in a courtyard area, sometime after about 9 o’clock when it got dark. It would only start from where the film was up to at that time however (it started at 8.00pm) and we could only watch it through the office windows, which were too high off the floor when sat down, as you can imagine from this screen grab of the building below…
It did occur to me that this was all part of the experience. Brazil is all about petty bureaucracy and small mindedness after all, and maybe the actors were under instruction to make life as difficult as they could for us. All of which would have been OK, if we’d then seen the film as a reward.
Sadly though, I can’t think of this as anything other than a total con. Effectively it cost us £43 each for a few hours membership into a very expensive drinking club in less than salubrious surroundings, miles away from home in Croydon, with some side shows to dull our senses. About 25 of us went last night for a friends 40th Birthday, and all of us left either angry, disappointed or both, quite rightly believing that our collective £1000 could have been far better spent on almost anything else we could think of. Indeed the birthday boy and his wife were going to look into getting a refund, so ripped off did they feel…
It’s all such a shame really as it’s undoubtedly a good idea, and could work really well. We met some people who saw Prometheus and said it was the best thing they’d ever done (although they did get to see the whole film on a big screen)
We may have just hit a bad night or a ridiculous and over ambitious production, but I for one will not be duped again…
Saul Bass’s Birthday Video
A very quick one today, as I’ve simply borrowed the video from Google’s search page.
I’m a huge fan of Saul Bass’s graphic style (having written about him on these pages before) and although the thought of Google appropriating his effortless style by association sits a tad uncomfortably with me, I’m a realist and know that’s how it all works…
And besides, the video is a pretty clever summation of some of his best work. I’m even quite liking Dave Brubeck’s jazz tune this morning (but don’t tell my And)
And don’t bother sending Saul your best wishes either… he died in 1996.
Delia Derbyshire & the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Last Saturday (May 5th) would have been the 76th birthday of the pioneering electronic musician Delia Derbyshire, a name that may be unfamiliar if you are not my side of 40, British or a bit of a geek.
There is however at least one of her tunes that you will recognise, as Delia was responsible for generating the futuristic bleeps, whooshes and synthetic sounds that combined to make the original Dr. Who Theme, which despite being made 50 years ago in 1963, is well worth a quick listen now, to remind yourself how good it still sounds…
Although credited to Ron Grainer, who wrote the basic melody, it was Delia who after three weeks of hard work recording noises and splicing together bits of magnetic tape, created the sounds and atmosphere that continue to make the tune as memorable today as it was then…
Delia (who sadly died in 2001 of alcoholism related problems, just as renewed interest in her work was beginning to pick up) was a key member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a name synonymous with the sonic and musical experimentation of the 1960′s and 70′s.
Formed in 1958 the Workshop’s original brief was to provide incidental sounds for radio and TV shows although this was quickly expanded and the team (which included Daphne Oram, Brian Hodgson and Paddy Kingsland) was soon creating theme tunes and other impressively futuristic sounds not only for The Doctor but also for The Goon Show, Quatermass & the Pit, Blakes 7 and The Hitchhikers Guide to name just a few.
Each of the members was also a composer in their own right and Delia wrote and recorded many original compositions, one of her most well known (and strangest) of which is Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO-OO from 1967. If you think it sounds odd today, imagine what it sounded like back when everyone looked this….
Delia was also involved in two offshoot groups in the mid 1960′s: the brilliantly named Unit Delta Plus (with Peter Zinovieff, inventor of the first British portable synthesizer the EMS VCS 3) and Kaleidophon (with David Vorhaus), neither of which had great musical success at the time, but both of which have since been the subject of much reassessment by musicians who see in their experimental electronic recordings, the beginnings of today’s digital soundscapes…
There a number of videos on YouTube about Delia & the Radiophonic Workshop, and the ones below I think are the most interesting. It’s fascinating to watch how sounds were created by speeding up and slowing down tapes, playing them backwards and then chopping everything up and making loops…. It must have taken hours and hours to do what any self respecting sampler can do in seconds today…
(I’ve no idea what the ghostly chap in the background is all about…)
There’s also an excellent 1 hour audio mix here put together by Soundhog, which through a mix of spoken word and music, gives a pretty good oversight of what they got up to over in their Maida Vale studio…
As a final aside and if you’re interested in this kind of music like me, I’ve also come across this BBC TV programme from 1979. Called The New Sound of Music and presented by Michael Rodd, it’s a wonder of optimism, science and massively complex technology. I especially enjoyed seeing David Vorhaus in the last section (Part 4) who at about 7.40 mins seemingly invents Goa Trance at least 15 years before anyone knew what to call it…
Truly Impressive…
One final excellent BBC TV programme of related interest can also be found here… (noted more for my records than anything else)
Is this all there is? Strange feelings on my daily commute…
I don’t mind commuting. I’ve lived in London all my working life and a journey on the tube is just another part of my day.
This morning though, I had a very strange moment. I got off at a different station to my usual one and I as queued for the lift to get to the surface, an image from Fritz Lang’s masterful film Metropolis from 1927 came rushing unbidden into my conscience…
There must have been twenty or thirty of us all waiting for the lift. One of the two lifts was broken and the wait seemed to take ages. We all had dark coats and clothes on, most had hats and headphones and some if not all, were looking down either at phones, books or newspapers.
Apart from the clanking of the lift cables and the echo of trains along the dirty, tiled corridors, there was silence. No one talks in this situation… And when the lift finally arrived, we all silently shuffled along into the space vacated by those leaving via the other doors…
I suddenly had these overpowering feelings of futility and helplessness, that we’re moving inexorably towards the end, all in grey, all the same, relentless and unchanging, with little or no say in what drives us on…
It quite took me by surprise. I really am not given to existential worries like this. I love life and genuinely try to make the most of every day. I don’t believe in fate, our futures are not laid out before us in some predetermined plan and we can make of it what we want…
Deep, dark thoughts for a Thursday morning. Hopefully after a good night out with my little A and our friends tonight, I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.
Tell you what though, I don’t think I’ll be getting off at the Elephant & Castle again. Far too intense a start to the day for my liking…
When the Day Didn’t Arrive…
I enjoyed my walk into work this morning.
The Island was surrounded in a thick fog, giving everything an eery and ghostly appearance. Shapes looming in the grey almost beyond recognition. It reminded me of an episode of Roobarb and Custard called When the Day Didn’t Arrive… a day when the birds couldn’t fly because the sky hadn’t been coloured in…
This is a photo I took of Pepper Street bridge over Millwall Dock, looking towards a very watery sun (which oddly is not visible in the sky, but is clearly reflected in the water) and it does indeed look like nothing has been coloured in…
And this is the episode of Roobarb and Custard, an animated cartoon that used to be on every day after I got home from school. It was drawn in a scratchy, almost unfinished way so that all the outlines and colours of the characters were constantly moving around… Generally Roobarb (a green dog) was full of enthusiasm for the days adventures, whereas Custard (a pink cat) was more cynical and usually tried to spoil the fun…
This is also one of those lattice of coincidence things that I’ve touched on before, as Richard Briers the actor who sadly died yesterday, and who was such an intrinsic aspect of my childhood (i.e. 1970′s) TV, narrated all these Roobarb stories, using a variety of silly voices to describe the events of these even sillier stories…
Nigella Talks Dirty
Sorry, I couldn’t resist this…
I’m not a fan in any sense of all these narcissistic celebrity chefs who seem to derive endless pleasure from their own ability to heat up different sorts of food…
But this is very funny…
James Bond Movie Death Match
Thanks to Skyfall, there’s lots of Bond stuff around at the moment.
We actually went to see the film on Monday and it’s pretty good on the whole. Not as good as Casino Royale or You Only Live Twice, but it does boast some surprising plot lines and some interesting twists (Javier Bardem’s gay evil baddie being the best…)
Anyway in celebration of all things Bond, I offer you this rather excellently compiled and edited video to kill 4 minutes of your time.. (Although how Roger Moore can win ANYTHING is beyond me)
Thanks to Wong for sending me the link (stop surfing and do some work!)…
Mr Williams & Mr. Lom
A sad day yesterday as the death of two big names from my past were announced to the world….
Andy Williams (born 1927) was the voice of almost all my childhood Christmases. This album was one of the few records that my parents owned when were growing up and my sister and I knew every song word perfect well before we were teenagers…
His deep, soft tones transport me back every time I hear them, and a later CD version of this record is the only Christmas record I have ever bought…
I don’t know much about him as a person, but the obituaries I’ve read over the last couple of days paint a picture of a popular man, who started life in Showbiz very young and was universally held in high regard.
Herbert Lom was born in Prague in 1917 and as he was christened Herbert Karel Angelo Kuchačevič ze Schluderpacheru, it’s maybe no surprise that he chose a more simple surname for his equity card.
Lom was of course most famous for his role as Chief Inspector Dreyfuss in the Pink Panther films, a character who became more and more exaggerated as his relationship with Peter Sellers’s hapless Inspector Clouseau developed over the 7 or 8 films they starred in together.
But it’s his vaguely foreign gangster Louis, in one of my favourite films of all time, The Ladykillers (1955) that will always give me a warm feeling. His first role acting alongside Peter Sellers (here playing a Cockney Spiv) Lom brought a sinister and dark edge to one of the best of the post war Ealing Comedies…
