Over the last couple of years, I’ve been using proper professional equipment to make music. It’s certainly more reliable, but recently, I decided to regress and try out some music using some really crappy gear. Toy instruments. I’ve acquired a fair bit over the years through boot sales and charity shops, not to mention my own kids’ toys. I expanded the selection to include instruments made for children – not necessarily toys – such as recorders or glockenspiels.
So far, I’ve completed two tracks. The first, which I will probably make available another time, uses quite a lot of my son Albert’s Power Rangers toys, for noises and voices. The second, which I present here, uses recorders, glockenspiel, toy saxophone, my old faithful Casio MT45 (which I’ve had since I was 13) and a few cheapo keyboards, which I’ve modified to sound like they’re dying. The only grown-up instrument is a bass guitar, because toy instruments are not generally known for their low end.
The video naturally features kids playing musical instruments…
Years ago, I used to work in a public library on a council estate. One of our regular library users used to bring us in his short stories – I guess he thought we’d be interested, what with all the books around us and that.
His stories brought us immense pleasure, as poor DHW – or Dave – had very little skill in either storytelling or basic grammar.
His tales were, more often than not, stories of triumph over adversity (mostly blindness) or wry flights of fancy There was also an epic work with echoes of Kipling’s Just So Stories, but based on the chinese horoscope. They’re touched by the hand of delusion.
So, I was clearing out the loft this weekend and stumbled upon them, so I thought I’d share them with you.
By way of introduction, we can hear from the author himself, in what I presume was to be the forward for his as yet unpublished book of short stories, entitled “A Little Bit Of Cheese” (I’m not making this up)…
And so onto the first story – Only Inside Is Blind:
And yes, I know it fucks up the layout of the page, but I don’t care. More to come later!
Blimey. I’ve just received a STACK of dressed-up-chimp postcards, all from the same set as above. Most of them will be making their way onto this blog in the near future.
They all have trite captions on, dreamed up by some bored copywriter at the postcard company. Personally I would have abandoned the tenuous marriage metaphor in the above example and simply written – “Monkey Boxer”.
Readers of a certain age may remember the Brooke Bond Chimps depicted here, but it was the message on the back of the postcard I liked…
Norman is obviously on holiday in Bognor (see postmark), although the weather’s been a bit poo and probably not as nice as the continent where Mr and Mrs Whitlock went. He then goes on to suggest that one of the chimps looks like Joan (which may be Mrs Whitlock’s christian name) “giving a dirty look”. By that I assume he means a stern look, rather than a filthy twinkle in her eye.
But sadly, he seems to have either got the address wrong, or Mr and Mrs Whitlock took the opportunity whilst he was away on holiday to move house and finally sever their friendship.
You may well have seen the very amusing 4play interview with Raygun – the kind of traditional glam-rock-with-wooshy-synths band middle-class A&R men loved to sign in the 90s (see also: Gay Dad).
I won’t post the original here as it’s not hard to find, but the singer’s jaw-dropping pretensions and naiveity will propell them to at least at week’s worth of fame.
So, in a bid to further prick their pomposity, I made a few changes to the footage…
The first in an occasional series. The Dragons are left speechless by a virtuoso performance of a Dusty Springfield song. Unfortunately, no one is willing to break the ensuing silence…
