Me and my e-reader

(from 2012)

Mrs Occasional and I started camping again in our mature years. We’d camped as youngsters, and then used youth hostels when the family was young. But my daughter’s insistence that we join her and hubby for a folk festival a few years ago saw us camping again. And that’s when the problems of reading in bed really started. To try and read a book while lying on a rapidly deflating air bed, holding the book above your head with a penlight torch gripped between your teeth, proved to be a less than relaxing experience. We even bought special torches that fitted around our heads, as if we were going coal mining or something. But the slightest nod and light danced off the roof of the tent, annoying the other reader.

Mrs Occasional had an early Nintendo – she likes those sorts of things – and one of the programs was a collection of “100 classics.” Reading those on the small Nintendo screen was a great improvement, except that at bedtime you don’t always feel like working your way through the books you did in school. The Victorians had a way with words – using two when even one was superfluous. We wanted to retire and read lighter fare at times.

The first dedicated e-readers with their e-ink format were a pain in the wallet. But then the ubiquitous iPad hit the market. For actual reading with the lights out they were not nearly as good as dedicated e-readers, but all the geeks bought first edition iPads and unloaded their neglected e-readers onto eBay. And thus it came to pass that that Mr and Mrs Occasional became proud owners of two identical Sony e-readers, with illuminated glass screens – and peace and contentment reigned.

Years later we still have the same devices, even though they came to us pre-used. An artistic use of dry transfer letters ensures we don’t mix them up. With extra memory cards they can hold a great amount of books, and even though by today’s standards they are a bit clunky they still work fine for us.

With a freeware program called Calibre, I can transform nearly everything into the ePub format that Sony use. Do I want to read a lengthy chapter of history research from another blog? Cut and paste it into Word, save as a pdf, and Calibre will immediately turn it into ePub – which allows a reader to choose different sizes of font for the page and their eyesight.

Of course, you can read books on virtually anything nowadays. My daughter can read books on her miniscule phone. This is great as long as you don’t mind having only one sentence available at any one time. A standard paperback seems to run at around 4000 pages, and you risk a severe case of repetitive strain injury to your thumb. So – horses for courses – if you want an e-reader – get a dedicated one.

So why not buy a Kindle? For a start, our e-reading predated the Kindle. However, as noted above, there is a format called ePub, which was designed to be the industry standard. I can download the latest books for free from the public library in ePub – they self-destruct after three weeks; I can download the main religious magazines I read in ePub; and if I feel like delving into the history that Rachael and Bruce have researched, I can download all the original sources in ePub too. Whereas Kindle have done an Apple – invented a dedicated system that generally only works on their machines. Fine if you only want to obtain books from Amazon, but too limited for my needs.

So what is on my e-reader? (Wake up now – I am sure by now that you are riveted to this post to find out...)  As is my wont, I am about half way through half a dozen books at present. I first downloaded the classics and re-read Dickens Nicholas Nickleby – well, the first half anyway. I love Dickens’ descriptions (e.g. Wackford Squeers – “he had but one eye, whereas the popular prejudice runs in favour of two”) – but in those pre-TV days he did go on a bit. I got to the Madeline Bray sub-plot, and faltered somewhat. Every so often I will go back and do another chapter.

Then as a collector and member of the Jerome K Jerome society I downloaded virtually his whole oeuvre – and actually read them all again, which was a big step up from just admiring them in the bookcase. Some of my favourite authors were sufficiently out of copyright in some lands to allow me access; I also bought an el cheapo CD containing ePubs of about 2500 thrillers off eBay and have been stolidly working my way through memories of a misspent youth. Then there is the first major book produced by the religion I research – it suddenly seemed an oversight not to have actually read it from cover to cover – so that is on the go. Some monthly journals always go on there, and I am half way through a certain book called Pixie Warrior.

As a practicing bibliomane, whose life has been spent falling over stacks of books and crying “Eureka” when prized volumes turn up dirt cheap, I never thought I would succumb to the charms of an electronic gadget. But succumb I have, for sheer convenience and on-the-go, while the original volumes still provide a decorative alternative to wallpaper. Of course there is still nothing like holding the real thing. But to take a library of hundreds, even thousands, of books around with you in your pocket – it has a lot going for it.

If and when my Sony goes to that great scrap heap in the sky, I will probably go for a Nook, or a Kobo, or even another Sony, one that still uses what was supposed to be the industry standard. But for now – time to turn out the lights, click the switch – select from the menu – and – go on – what will it be for tonight? Let’s have some bedclothes back Mrs Occasional, and I wonder what she’s reading...?

Gilbert and Sullivan

(from 2012)

In connection with another blog I write for, I often check old newspapers for information about the activities of a certain 19^th century religious writer who we shall call CTR. Not long ago while scouring pages of old Pittsburgh papers, I noticed that a touring company of Gilbert and Sullivan players were performing The Pirates of Penzance in his area. A strange vision came into my mind, of CTR walking home through the streets of old Allegheny humming to himself, I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General. It was quite incongruous.

(As an aside – and I’m afraid my posts are always going to be full of asides – you really must check out the parody of Major-General by American satirist and mathematician Tom Lehrer, who sang the Periodic Table of the Elements to this tune... Available on YouTube and all good internet video sources...)

So why on earth has this all come to mind now? Probably because I am writing from Buxton in Derbyshire, U.K., at the 19^th International Gilbert and Sullivan festival, that’s why!

We visited the book shops and charity shops, and booked one coach excursion and five operas in three days – as you do when you are a glutton for punishment. You obviously have to like this stuff, because it doesn’t come cheap.

So why does G&S still survive a century after their passing? Their popularity probably rests on Gilbert’s rapid-fire lyrics, puns on words (which Brits generally love), along with humorous social comment (even if 130 years out of date at times). And it has to be admitted that Sullivan, when not being po-faced trying to write grand opera, did write some jolly tunes. Generally, the Buxton festival favors the traditional approach, and all performances are professionally videoed in a three camera set-up and you can buy them as souvenirs the day after the performance.

Mrs Occasional has taken the opportunity to “dress up” and even Occasional has been a bit tidier than usual.

Perhaps the best show so far has been performed by what is called “the youth theatre.” Strenuous efforts are being made in the UK to interest people under the age of 90 in the joys of Gilbert and Sullivan. A number of school and university groups are having a go. To appear in the Buxton “youth theatre” you had to be between 9 and 18 – and that included the orchestra! So youngsters from all over entered auditions, and just a week before they came together under professional direction to put the performance together. They performed a lesser known work called Ruddigore. For any stray readers who may know the opera it contains a patter song usually called It Really Doesn’t Matter that is A REAL STINKER! But they nailed it! Of course we bought the performance DVD the next day.

For a marked contrast to Buxton’s traditional approach, about two week ago we spearheaded a gang of people from our “congregation” (there must be a more appropriate collective noun than ‘gang’ but I can’t think of one at present) to an open air theatre production of G&S’s The Mikado - that was anything BUT traditional.

Open air theatre in Britain tends to have one special element: rain, usually torrential – where the audience is in the dry and the cast splash around emulating “the drip of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd.” But on this day we had sunshine – lots of it.

The innovative angle this time was that a second-rate concert party circa 1930 had arrived at a theatre to find it had no roof (joke number one), and also to find that, unbeknownst to them, they had been booked to perform The Mikado. A lack of appropriate costumes and a considerable amount of improvisation from a totally unsuitable cast was the order of the day.

It could have been a disaster – one of those bright ideas from someone just out of Drama School or University designed to bore or offend as many people as possible. In the event, in its own non-Buxton way, it was extremely successful. I loved it. I roared out loud. People looked quite concerned. Grumpy, world-weary Occasional doesn’t often do that.

The Mikado kept on starting an aria from the wrong opera – to be shouted down by the rest of the cast – and for his big number, The Punishment Fit the Crime, suddenly whisked out a ukulele and tried to sing his song in the style of George Formby (a particularly British phenomenon from the 30s and 40s from whom American culture has probably mercifully been spared) while the rest of the cast tried to wrest the instrument from him.

Ko-Ko was played by the company’s ventriloquist, who did a “bad-vent” routine, complete with the traditional disastrous drinking-a-glass-of-water-while-the-dummy-tries-to-speak routine for Ko-Ko’s speech when he is summoning up courage to propose to Katisha.

I suppose this amateur production had a certain resonance for a number of reasons. My father ran concert parties for most of his life – meeting at least two of his wives that way. In folk clubs I have been known to play the ukulele – badly. My paternal grandfather (who I never knew) was an amateur ventriloquist. And my maternal grandfather (who I also never knew) was a director of Gilbert and Sullivan operas for years at the Alhambra theatre in Bradford, where my maternal grandmother had been a mezzo-soprano...  They met and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, these are just some haphazard disjointed thoughts in our hotel over a pleasant glass of red wine, while Mrs Occasional is avidly glued to her e-Reader. What you might call a random catalog. As Koko in the Mikado might say:

“I have a little list...”

Everything goes in threes...

(from 2012)

Who said that?

One theory is that is comes from Pythagoras, another is from Christendom’s traditional trinity, but why that should be translated into a series of disasters I could not say.

But I was mindful of the old saying just a week or so ago.

I was just completing a very happy week – working for a charity, meeting lots of people I have known for years, and if some were a bit down, hopefully leaving them feeling a bit better at the end. Unlike the person for whom I was deputising, I drove into town in – not a shiny new company car – but an old fourteen year old set of wheels, that was worse than nearly everybody else’s. People sorta warmed to that.

But it did have its downside. Disaster one was travelling home on the second to last day. My old car was ancient when I bought it nearly five years ago, and I had clocked up nearly one hundred thousand miles in the meantime. Manual gearbox, wonky electrics – it was destined to be finally pensioned off when the next annual test came up.

But then, a mile or two from home, it happened. The gear stick actually came off in my hand! When it happens to Laurel and Hardy you laugh. When it happens to you, your first reaction (if religious) is to briefly contemplate that the resurrection is a wonderful hope...

We ground to a rather dramatic halt. The sum total was that for my last day away I had to be ferried there by a friend – which warmed the hearts of the people we were visiting no end. Yes – we lived in the real world – when not laughing, they felt my pain...

I am now the proud possessor of a much more modern set of wheels, automatic gearbox at last (the significant other will now share the driving) and am slightly older, wiser – and considerably poorer. Vehicles are a pain in the wallet.

That was disaster one. Then, as I was preparing to catch up with secular activities to pay for the unexpected expense, my autoclave had a hissy fit. Literally. It is designed to sterilise equipment at 134 degrees, and resembles a rather sophisticated pressure cooker. It was new quite recently, and already we have had the engineer out for a couple of hours of drinking tea and eating biscuits and no sense of urgency when it turned into an impersonation of a geyser – which, according to the manual, it is not supposed to do. Memories came back from a million years ago, when my mother had a new fangled pressure cooker which – due to her inexperience – had a technical malfunction. Our dinner was imbedded in a circular pattern on the kitchen ceiling.

So, autoclave malfunction again. It is time for the “I-don’t-want-you-fixing-it-badly-again-I- want-a-new-one-under-guarantee-thank-you-very-much” conversation. That is waiting for me when I get home from vacation. I don’t like those kind of conversations.

And disaster three? Checking out the website that makes autoclaves, I noticed a nice little program with a Windows logo called System Check. One click. Yes, you have various slight problems, just click here to solve. Click. Whoosh. Now you have all sorts of things wrong – just send your credit card details and pin numbers to a site with no name...  Realization dawns. You have Dumb, Dumber – and Occasional Reader.

Normally, as what people might call “a slightly-techie old guy” I can burrow into system folders, find a restore point, and reclaim life as it was the day before. Not this time. It blocked everything. I couldn’t access the screen or anything. When did I last do a full back up? Yeah – last September...

A friend who believes he can do anything on computers came round. He confidently started, but after an hour and a half of burrowing into the mysteries of ancient DOS, with sweat pouring down his face, had to admit defeat.

So I went to a computer shop. The first one was manned by two scruffy lads, who knew even less about computers than I did. But the next stop I walked in – I was, to my surprise, greeted by name. It was run by someone of my own faith, whose congregation I had visited officially several years before. Lovely to see you. How was I? I was fine. How was my computer? Sick as a parrot. I have to say that he knew what he was doing. Over a couple of days, he rescued all my stuff. He cheerfully explained that I had caught something that only dates from January this year that gets through your virus software as a Trojan which you then activate by clicking on it... But it had a Windows logo on it I plaintively exclaimed... But yes – I was the first. He was confidently expecting a steady stream of ashen faced people coming through his door with the same problem. One man’s rain is another man’s sunshine.

So with my life rescued, I hastily backed everything up on other external hard drives, and I think I may invest in system 7. I think I may also invest in a little net book for all the crucial stuff – the “I-cannot-live-without-this-and-my-life-is- over-if-it-disappears” stuff – and not access the net at all on that machine – leaving my main machine for everything else, including blogs and research and the like – where if worst case scenario happens, one can retrace ones steps and download again.

So, frazzled and worn out, I went on vacation, and am now gradually settling down to normal.

But yes – it goes in threes...

I suppose it could have been worse.

Everything could have gone in fours.....

Don’t speak too soon...

Concidence and Likely Stories

(from 2012)

...was the title of an album by Buffy Sainte Marie – folk singer, songwriter and Native American Activist. Most of it was put together using an Amiga computer. Remember those? When the album was released my daughter had just won a design competition on a national TV children’s program and was heavily into music. Her prize was a state-of-the-art Amiga computer – plus a coveted badge. So we bought the album.

Finally transferring the old CD to the iPod last week, the title made me muse on how coincidences in life really do happen. Obviously, a lot may depend on your circle of acquaintances – linked to perhaps profession, religion, hobbies or geographical location. The smaller the country and the larger your circle of contacts, the more chance there is of bumping into people you know in strange places.

But it is strange in life how coincidences can happen. Here in Britain (population in excess of sixty million) I’ve had my fair share of them. I don’t see omens in them – I don’t see anything spooky – but there one or two do stick in the mind.

I was courting a girl who lived in another country. (How that came about also involved coincidence, but that would make this post too long). She was actually working for the same religious charity I did, only she was in a land where, had she been discovered, she would have been deported. But our burgeoning relationship was a big secret. It was partly because I was very well known in a “big fish – small pond” syndrome, and also her family were very well known. Had it all gone pear shaped it could have been somewhat embarrassing. So until we knew the relationship had mileage in it, we tacitly agreed that our liaison was to be hush-hush.

So I bought this cheap package holiday trip to the country where she lived, and without telling a soul disappeared “on personal business” from the locality.

All was well and good until I boarded my train.

So there I am in the bar on the train travelling across the width of England, when a surprised “What are YOU doing here” startled me out of my reverie. An old girl-friend named L. She actually now lived over 300 miles from me, but had been visiting the man she eventually married when his tanker came into the oil refineries in West Wales. She was travelling home. She knew me well. Humph - very well. Knowing my propensity for mild paranoia, she thought it hilarious that I was trying to be so secretive. And no – chortle, chortle – she wouldn’t tell.

We had a pleasant two hour catch-up to London, where we went our separate ways. Wow – what a surprise that had been.

Then I am in the queue for passport control at Heathrow Airport and blow me down – there’s another “What are you doing here?” This time it is a girl named M. Not an ex this time – she’d been too young anyway when I lived in the same part of Oxfordshire a few years earlier, but I had worked with her mother for three years, and been a guest in their home every week.

She and another girl (who I also knew vaguely) were on a holiday – not only were they on the same flight, but they were staying in the same hotel. For the next week we kept on bumping into each other, in the restaurant, in the bar, in the pool – I don’t know who was more horrified. We never got around to the “No – she wouldn’t tell” conversation – and my “secret” was out.

You really can’t go anywhere it seemed.

Now wind the clock forward. I have been married to Mrs Occasional for a number of years. She ultimately returned to civilization to marry me. But now our original career plans have been amended. We are pushing a pram and getting into family history. I have trained for a profession that will put food on the table, and am organizing educational seminars up and down the country for CPD purposes – a means of turning something that should cost me money into something that would make me money. One of my older colleagues met through a professional association, lives in Scotland. She has the latest in computers whereas we only have a steam driven model. She offers to scan our family photos into the machine for our family tree programme. We send them to her. Immediately comes a telephone call. What on earth are you doing with a photograph of P and M?  They have the same photograph in their albums. It turns out that she and her husband had been in the RAF at the end of the war and for some years afterwards. In married quarters they had regularly done babysitting for an older couple. A lifetime later I had only gone and married one of those babies. The families had eventually lost touch after each left the services – they settling in Scotland and my wife’s family setting in Wales.

So yes – coincidence and (un)likely stories.

Those are some of mine.

What about yours?

From the original comment trail

How Occasional came to ever ask out the future Mrs Occasional has a level of coincidence about it. Since no-one else wants to share their coincidence stories, I’ll stick it in here.

In those far off and fairly innocent days, I had returned home from a thousand mile cycle ride (evidence of current madness and keep-fit youth) to film a local wedding – at which the sister of the bride took my – er – attention. Actually – smitten is the best word. So, with a reputation and a high profile in a certain circles, I am agonising over whether to ask her out or not. Obviously – yes, I will. But I must phrase this in a way that will cause no embarrassment on either side if the response is negative. And I must hurry up because she is going home abroad in a couple of days’ time.

So there I am in the capital city of a certain country – in one of its many bookshops. I am focussing on the shelves and going over all these conversations in my head on just how I can phrase things. How I can nonchalantly suggest a meal somewhere perhaps... A voice says in my ear “Hallo.” I turn from the Detective Fiction, and – aaagh – it’s HER!  We make brief small talk and she abruptly disappears. Later I learn that her brief hallo was greeted by me with a look of absolute horror as I almost jumped into the air. She thought what on earth had she done and made herself scarce. But I pursued her through the History to the Biography section and somewhere around the Paperbacks – humph – made my move. The rest as they say is history.

But I suppose it boded well that we met in a bookshop.

Coin Collecting

(from 2012)

This post is actually nothing to do with the science of numismatics – but is all about the travails of unloading heavy items from pockets and saving quietly on the sly. And how a casual habit CAN BECOME AN OBSESSION!

Prior to decimalization in 1971, the UK used to have what was called a threepenny bit – a strange twelve-sided coin that probably made sense at the time, but seems weird today. In those pre-decimal days, there were eighty of them to a GBP. Nonetheless, in another life I had a special jar to collect them, and though life was poverty row at the time, two LP records came out of it – Buddy Holly and Bob Dylan if I remember rightly.

Wind the clock forward several decades. When Mrs Occasional took early retirement from teaching, we had an arrangement where, since all my payments came in cash, every time a modern 2 GBP coin turned up she could have it. She did very well out of that – once we struck that deal, it seemed that everybody was paying me in an abundance of 2 GBP coins.

When she reached a magic age and got a pension, then I became mean and kept the 2 GBP coins for myself – along with all the other coins that people kept pushing my way. And so the special jar syndrome came back into being.

Actually, the modern version is a special tub with a slot that registers on top exactly how much it contains. Somehow the mechanism can distinguish between the eight different shapes of coin in regular use, which weigh Brits down and make holes in their pockets.

So, I filled the jar. The way I am paid it didn’t take long. Well, that looked good, so having a large spare empty coffee jar to hand I transferred the coins to it – and started again. When I reached a certain figure, I thought that I had never done this before, so perhaps just another arbitrary total ahead and then I had better bank it. But somehow it got out of hand, and the back of my wardrobe became increasing laden as coffee jars filled with legal tender went forth and multiplied.

I finally decided on a figure, and then another figure, and from here and there the coins came, until I reached the grand total of two thousand GBP. I know... I know... I could have banked it and earned interest, but have you seen the interest rates in the UK recently? Recession and all that?

So now was the time to break the news to Mrs Occasional. She knew I put coins away; she regularly unloaded the little nuisances on me, knowing I would do ‘something’ with them. But when I told her I had done ‘something’ – I had actually salted away two thousand GBP in the bottom of the wardrobe, causing the floor to sag below – well, there were two not unexpected reactions.

The first was surprise and delight. Ooh - what could we spend some of this money on?

But the other was horror!

HOW MUCH...?

IN THE HOUSE...?

FOR HOW LONG...?

What if someone broke into the house and stole it all? I patiently explained that any robber would give themselves a hernia trying to shift it, but strangely this did nothing to console her.

But yes even I, in sane moments, have to admit – it had got a bit out of hand.

So we recently had an interesting time with a table full of large jars of small coins, along with a huge pile of money bags. Add to the mix a rapidly diminishing bottle of wine and we were suitably distracted while counting.

Having finally bagged it, the next step was to bank it. My local post office doubles as a bank since all the actual banks have closed down in the interests of ‘efficiency’ and has taken bagged coins before. But even they nearly fell off their perch at the volume of bagged small coin that was wheel-barrowed up to the counter.

I suspect I will not be doing it again. In fact, I HAVE BEEN TOLD I WILL NOT BE DOING IT AGAIN. But – perhaps just...just the first hundred next time...  Shh – please, you won’t tell...

But hey – it did come as a bonus.

When this was first posted in 2012 a correspondent named TallMidget made this comment:

Disappointed! Thought your punch line was going to be your being attacked by a guy with a whip when you emptied your coins into the church offertory - and escaping in a cloud of pigeons.

Bad Movies

(from 2012)

In 1961 country singer Sue Thompson had a top-ten hit record with a little ballad penned by John D Loudermilk, called Sad Movies.

That is really irrelevant, because this post is about another form of celluloid heaven – BAD MOVIES.

I have a sizeable DVD collection of bad movies. The family can’t understand me. I can’t always understand me, but hey – I LIKE bad movies!

I don’t mean the colossal expensive stinkers, where studios collapsed after bankrolling some vanity project of some overinflated star – where the money shows in everything apart from one tiny little detail, a decent script.

No – I mean the poverty row jobs – especially those of the 1950s.

As a Brit, my grasp on American culture is somewhat tenuous, but in parts of the States you have drive-in movies. (In Britain you would be sunk by rubbish weather). But at drive-in movies, you park up and watch the film on a huge outdoor screen – and hope that the plot of Boris Karloff’s last decent film “Targets” doesn’t come true. (For those too young, a homicidal gun-toting young man starts picking off the audience, while Karloff is in the audience and – scrambling the gunman’s tortured brain even further – is also on the screen).

But – correct me if I’m wrong - the concept of drive-in movies in the 50s appears to be that you borrow your parents’ station wagon, pick up your girl, park up, and – well, the quality of the film was not necessarily of paramount importance. Add to that concept the independent nature of many 50s movies – not tied in with big studios but free to express themselves with threadbare resources – you have a field of mind-boggling ineptitude that can be a delight in the 21^st century.

Robot Monster – Teenagers from Outer Space – Plan 9 from Outer Space – oh yes, I’ve seen them all and have a comprehensive collection in my library – albeit shelved apart from the theology.

But to-night I am going to nominate – Girls Town – a teen flick from 1959.

A cursory look down the cast list produces some very famous names in this production. From the silent and early sound era – WOW – there’s Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. There is only one slight problem – it’s the wrong generation: these are Charles Chaplin Jr and Harold Lloyd Jr. Other progeny virtually cutting their movie teeth include Jim Mitchum (son of Robert) and Cathy Crosby (niece of Bing). Watching this film helps viewers understand how their efforts to break into movies were generally doomed – names or no names.

The main star was peroxide blonde Mamie Van Doren, sometimes called the poor man’s Jayne Mansfield, who was in turn called the poor man’s Marilyn Monroe.  Mamie had the kind of pneumatic figure designed to fuel the fantasies of fourteen year old boys of all ages. In her late 20s at the time, Mamie played Silver Morgan (there’s a name for you), supposedly aged 16. Silver’s sister has an altercation with Harold Lloyd Jr, who falls off a cliff to his death. (Here is a great in-joke for cinephiles who might remember Harold Lloyd Sr’s exploits on high buildings in movies like Safety Last and Feet First). Somehow in the mess that follows, Silver gets sent to Girls Town, an institution run by scary nuns, whose aim is to “reform” her.

There are subplots featuring good and bad teenage boys. Battling for the good is teen idol Paul Anka (who wrote and sang Diana – and years later cleaned up by writing the English lyrics for My Way). Anka looks about 12. Battling for the bad is evil hoodlum Mel Torme. Mel Torme? The velvet toned crooner who must have been not far short of 40 at the time? Yes – that Mel Torme. A fight between Anka and Torme is hilarious.

Other highlights? Anka sings Ave Maria to Mamie Van Doreen – who cries. You are filled with emotion too, but of a different sort.

But the “piece de resistance” in my book is the performance by the vocal group, The Platters.

The Platters had a string of top twenty hits in the mid to late fifties – ‘The Great Pretender’, ‘My Prayer’, Twilight Time’, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ and others. Unfortunately, 1959 wasn’t the best of years for them; the men all got arrested on vice charges, and their lead singer, Tony Williams – who in fact did all the work (the rest just swayed gently going Oooh-Aaah in the background) was to leave the group and fail as a solo shortly afterwards. But the Platters sing – and – er - something has happened, because Tony Williams is missing. Rather than doing the sensible thing – a quick competition and a quick buck for the nearest decent Tony Williams lookalike to lip-synch – they get someone of approximate build and try desperately to hide his face all through the song. So we have the Platters swaying from the rear, we have the Platters swaying from off center with just a shoulder and pair of hands of lead singer in shot, and finally we have the Platters swaying from the front, with a piece of wrought ironwork in the nightclub conveniently obscuring his face. It must have been a nightmare – where’s Tony Williams? But we’ve publicised the Platters – quick, try this. Does it work? Of course it doesn’t – it’s a mind boggling failure on all fronts – and that is what makes the film so delightful.

With a suitable can of refreshment and a suitable frame of mind, I can sit and watch rubbish like Girls Town – and laugh all over again - as the rest of the family mutter words like “Strange” and “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed!”

I was going to say that some people sometimes have no “soul” – but since occasional family members have been known to read this blog, I guess I’d better not.

Ah Wop Bop a Loo Bop a Lop Bam Boom!

(from 2012)

Looking back on the many shows and performers I have seen, probably the most memorable was in the sixties, when Little Richard first came to Britain. I have my diary here – Granada Theatre, Kingston (south of London).

Little Richard – yeah. Who can forget those immortal lyrics, so full of thought and social significance – Ah wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!

I can just imagine white American parents from the heartland in the 1950s, with teenage kids, suddenly horrified by the Devil’s music coming out of the mouth of this short black man – wearing make-up and with his hair in a huge pompadour, smashing the keys of the piano while sticking one leg on the lid.

They tried to neutralise it of course – Pat Boone of all people did a cover version of Tutti Frutti from which our title comes. One suspects that Boone, later author of the toe-curling ‘Twixt Twelve and Twenty, didn’t know the origins of the song – an extremely dirty ditty which needed to be cleaned up for recording, even for Little Richard.

Anyhow, back to my show – on comes Little Richard – and he blows the audience away. At one point when jumping up and down on top of a long-suffering piano, he suddenly faltered, and collapsed in a heap. The compere Bob Bain rushed on looking worried, “Is there a doctor in the house?” Then – from flat on his back – Gonna Tell Aunt Mary ‘Bout Uncle John – Richard was up again and away into Long Tall Sally. At one point he threw his shoes into the audience, followed by his jacket – and scuffles broke out to try and claim these sacred artefacts. (I understand that later in time, the routine involved Richard’s shirt going as well, but as I remember it, he drew the line on this occasion).

I saw Richard decades later when he was in his 70s – it was sad – but this was a magic moment for a teenager taking his first girl friend to a show.

The first half of the show was closed by Sam Cooke. It was to be his only visit to the UK. It was a strange combination – one suspects the promoters just thought in terms of two black men on the same bill. Cooke was very professional, very smooth – but he had his work cut out. This audience had come along to potentially demolish cinema seats in the spirit of Rock Around the Clock. I was probably one of the few in the audience who knew all his songs – Cooke kept on coming back to me as I sang along to every word in the third row – giving him encouragement. Like Richard, Cooke came from the gospel church background, and used to pontificate on how the Lord kept him safe during trouble. A couple of years later he was shot dead while apparently trying to batter down a woman’s door in a seedy motel after she had stolen his clothes.

The real gimmick of the show, and an even greater highlight for me, was the guest appearance of Gene Vincent. I saw all the old rockers – especially when they came to the UK after their careers faded in the States. Vincent’s live shows were probably amongst the best rock and roll ever. Even when drink had taken its toll, he gave a good show in London in 1968 that I wrote up – and which still survives (uncredited, but hey - who cares – I KNOW!) in biographies of Vincent to this day.

His work permit had expired and, so the story went, he was not allowed to work on a British stage. So he was here as a special guest artiste who sang walking along the front row of the auditorium. I didn’t question it at the time, but the story sounds rather suspect today.

He did one number before introducing “his friend Little Richard.” I can still see him now, in a black leather outfit, limping along the front (Vincent had a leg brace from a motorcycle accident, which gave him enormous ‘street cred’) hollering Be Bop a Lula. It was only when the great man got to the line, “She’s the woman in the red blue jeans,” while smashing the stand mike into the floor, that I noticed my date for the evening WASN’T WATCHING!!!  She...SHE WAS...LOOKING...BORED...AT HER PROGRAM...  Well – obviously the relationship was doomed.

I try and explain to modern generations how the show was magic – how all the wild behaviour on stage from modern rock icons was first taught by the originals – but it doesn’t make much impact. Still, I have my memories, my videos and my iPod in the car.

At times when I just don’t feel like being older and po-faced and “responsible” I can still be taken back to Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom! 

Yeah man – rock on.