Castle Aching

[runs as required]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

ENSA: Every Night Something Awful

I suppose the troupes did their best in often trying circumstances!

This is how my dad got through WW II

At RAF Mountbatten in Plymouth as an Airman he met an extrovert Sergeant from Barnstaple (who postwar became an innovative Head of Barnstaple school) and they did an act together. Dad got made up and I recall helping him sewing a stripe on his serge tunic in the boarding house we stayed in just before the blitz which destroyed the seaplane base. 

They were re-posted to E.Grinstead and spent the rest of the war (as Penguins) assisting in the reconstruction of burnt RAF aircrew and the development of plastic surgery. The crucial part was early on trying to keep morale up between long-drawn out procedures, with beer and singalongs. These ditties always seemed to me to be “blue” in the xtreme.

His much younger brother lied about his personal details and became a fighter pilot (Hornchurch and North Weald - and also my hero). He must have lost control in the monsoons in Burma after VE Day from what i have researched and was posted missing. Dad always felt guilty about persuading my gran he’d  make it through.

dh

[Northroader]

Sunday was the day for listening to radio music, lunchtime it was the “Billy Cotton Band Show”, and mid evening there’s “Music from the Palm Court of Grand Hotel” remember Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth?

[Edwardian]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

Well.....

 

Its post-grouping, but compare and contrast revivalist Dance Bands having a go at the same number.

 

Late 50s/early 60s

 

The Temperance Seven

 

 

 

Early 70s/ More or less to date

 

The Pasadena Roof Orchestra

 

 

I actually bought the PROs first LP (sleevenotes by George Melly) when it came out and obtained a copy of the 1961 Temperance Seven LP  from an Oxfam some years later.  I suppose the T7 recording is a more "authentic" sound as, with a bit of hiss applied, it would sound like it had come off a 78....

 

 

 

 

Thank you so very much for posting Temperance Seven's Pasendena.  My father had the recording, though it had long since passed from my memory.  I was reminded that I used to love it, and I find I still do.  The musicianship combined with the wit of the playing and of the phrasing is a delight.  It has a whimsicality that goes well with CA.

 

And, you have to love a song that starts with "Oh, you railway station ..."

 

Made my afternoon. 

 

Moved to look up the T7, I discover that they, like many a railway modeller, had their fictional history; in their case, founded in 1904.

 

I have a feeling they might yet be booked for CA!

[Donw]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

J’attendrai, as sung by Rina Ketty, which is the ‘Das Boot’ version, I think.

 

Or Sing, Nachtigall Sing sung by Evelyn Kunneke.

 

More suited to my thread, but since CA seems to be in a “gathering round the warm and woody valve wireless” sort of mood today, I strongly recommend both.

 

Can one still but proper wooden and valve wirelesses anywhere? No modern thing can replicate the tone, and certainly not the dim, amber glow.

 

My Grandfather built an early Crystal set, my mother said it was frustrating all clustering round an earpiece trying to hear. I also remember the windup gramaphone with the trumpet thing attached to the needle.

 

Don

[webbcompound]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Wikipedia says:

 

2MT was the first British radio station to make regular entertainment broadcasts,[1] and the world's first regular wireless broadcast for entertainment. Transmissions began on 14 February 1922 from an ex-Army hut next to the Marconi laboratories at Writtle, near Chelmsford in Essex. 

Although Wikipedia also says that Radio Clube de Pernambuco began transmitting "radiophonically" from Recife in Brazil in 1919, and 2MT began transmitting regular news programmes in February 1920. By 1922 there appear to be quite a few stations broadcasting in the USA. What is clear is that there was nothing much going on before the Great War, and mostly nothing entertaining till after the grouping. Shame.

[webbcompound]

44 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Moved to look up the T7, I discover that they, like many a railway modeller, had their fictional history; in their case, founded in 1904.

 

I have a feeling they might yet be booked for CA!

Obviously likely to be booked for the summer season at the coastal resort..

[runs as required]

I have a memory somewhere in a clogged up cell of my brain that Ian Dury had something to do very early on with T7 as an Art SchooL band.  Dury was a Hero of mine singing about the GER Jazz suburbs:

“Home Improvement Expert Harold Hill came home to find anuver fellas kippers in ‘is gwill”

i still wear his T shirt for best.

 

Another GER territory Hero was Hank Wangford the Norfolk GP eCountry & Western singer and his band who liked to “Patronise you like you patronise me” in a faux US air base accent.

dh

[Regularity]

T7 brings us dangerously close to getting back on topic.

 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Regularity said:

T7 brings us dangerously close to getting back on topic.

 

 

Drummond's double single is an impressive-looking beast:

 

 

but Johnson's dinky 0-4-2T is the closer of the two to Castle Aching:

 

[brianusa]

Surely old music is the topic?

     Brian.

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Drummond's double single is an impressive-looking beast:

 

 

but Johnson's dinky 0-4-2T is the closer of the two to Castle Aching:

 

 

Nudging even closer .......

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

15 minutes ago, brianusa said:

Surely old music is the topic?

 

Good to see you Brian, and trust that you are well-protected from you-know-what.

[runs as required]

29 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Nudging even closer .......

 

 

 

Are you suggesting this is actually northwest Norfolk - identified by objects in the landscape rather than WNR personnel ?

[Compound2632]

The engine in Edwardian's picture has been decorated for the visit of the Maharajah of Katspoor's visit to the Erstwhiles - not the oriental crown on the cab roof.

[Edwardian]

23 minutes ago, runs as required said:

Are you suggesting this is actually northwest Norfolk - identified by objects in the landscape rather than WNR personnel ?

 

I suppose that could be a gate pillar to Aching Park.

 

The loco does look rather like WNR No.1.

 

Popular music, does, I'm afraid, have a lot going for it once "Grouped". Home in Pasadena was published in 1923, my researches tell me, and it was , indeed , introduced here by Hroth as Grouping era,  I must simply imagine that the Temperance Seven were indeed formed in 1904 and that Home in Pasadena. was published 20 years sooner!.

 

For a near contemporary performance, see Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra, who I know chiefly for the splendid When Day is Done.

 

How about this, British performance, from 1924:

 

 

Home in Pasadena. Fox Trot. Savoy Havana Band.London.1924

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Edwardian
Internet playing up

[Edwardian]

9 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The engine in Edwardian's picture has been decorated for the visit of the Maharajah of Katspoor's visit to the Erstwhiles - not the oriental crown on the cab roof.

 

Yes, HH and Lord E were up at Cambridge together in the Eighties. 

 

Well spotted. 

[brianusa]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Good to see you Brian, and trust that you are well-protected from you-know-what.

 

Thanks Kevin, never realised what a good investment the trains were as they sure take your mind off you-know-what!

       Brian.

[CKPR]

9 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

 

 

 

This is the fourth reference to the Temperance 7 to have come to my attention in the past 72 hours - the BBC4 documentary on Eel Pie Island, a clue on 'Only Connect', reading up on Vivien Stanshall's 'Stinkfoot - an English comic opera' and now this. They were really rather good, weren't they ? As someone who can nod through the claim of the  late great Sun Ra to have come from Saturn and whence he ultimately returned, I see no reason to doubt the T7's  pre-grouping credentials.

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by CKPR

[St Enodoc]

13 hours ago, Hroth said:

Well.....

 

Its post-grouping, but compare and contrast revivalist Dance Bands having a go at the same number.

 

Late 50s/early 60s

 

The Temperance Seven

 

 

 

Early 70s/ More or less to date

 

The Pasadena Roof Orchestra

 

 

I actually bought the PROs first LP (sleevenotes by George Melly) when it came out and obtained a copy of the 1961 Temperance Seven LP  from an Oxfam some years later.  I suppose the T7 recording is a more "authentic" sound as, with a bit of hiss applied, it would sound like it had come off a 78....

 

 

 

Saw the PRO in York over 30 years ago. Absolutely excellent.

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, ChrisN said:

 

I still have my parents' 1954 vintage wireless.  It had stopped working until a friend of mine who is into anything electronic took it away to fix it.  All he did was take the parts out, clean them and put them back, and it worked!  He said we should not have it on for no longer than half an hour or so as it might blow the ageing capacitors.  It is perfect for listening to the Queen's Speech at Christmas.

A shame it isn't a couple of years older - you could listen to the King's Speech instead.

[St Enodoc]

7 hours ago, Northroader said:

Sunday was the day for listening to radio music, lunchtime it was the “Billy Cotton Band Show”, and mid evening there’s “Music from the Palm Court of Grand Hotel” remember Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth?

A few years later you'd have Benny Green, Alan Dell, Sing Something Simple, Your Hundred Best Tunes and David Jacobs to fall asleep with...

[TheQ]

10 hours ago, runs as required said:

I have a memory somewhere in a clogged up cell of my brain that Ian Dury had something to do very early on with T7 as an Art SchooL band.  Dury was a Hero of mine singing about the GER Jazz suburbs:

“Home Improvement Expert Harold Hill came home to find anuver fellas kippers in ‘is gwill”

i still wear his T shirt for best.

 

Another GER territory Hero was Hank Wangford the Norfolk GP eCountry & Western singer and his band who liked to “Patronise you like you patronise me” in a faux US air base accent.

dh

As played on Rodeo Norfolk by Keith Greentree, 

I've always liked the name of a band he plays...  Cardy and Coke

 https://m.facebook.com/cardyandcoke/

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

A few years later you'd have Benny Green, Alan Dell, Sing Something Simple, Your Hundred Best Tunes and David Jacobs to fall asleep with...

 

"Sing Something Simple", with Jack Emblow on accordion...

 

One of the most depressing programmes on Radio 2, it was virtually the stopper on a Sunday evening as it meant that all those chickens you ignored on Friday afternoon would be coming home to roost on Monday morning.

 

And then there was the accordion! 

 

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, Hroth said:

And then there was the accordion! 

 

 

"Shoot the pianist" - the instrument could be played by a better performer.

"Shoot the accordion" - the performer could play a better instrument.

[Nearholmer]

I’m sure that it would be possible to carry out analysis of rhythms, and take frequency domain plots, to arrive at a fully detailed understanding of the characteristics of music and it’s affects on the human psyche, then create a multi-dimensional scale with axes like: physically energising; mentally energising etc etc.

 

’Sing Something Simple’ would be an extreme outlier, way down in the bottom left hand corner on all, or in the far negative if the measurement scales used have a central null point.

 

Measurably, rather than immeasurably blooming awful.

 

(Did anyone, other than that Emblow chap, enjoy it??)