MONTGOMERY BURNS (Simpsons) : Springfield's 104-year old entrepreneur and miser, given to ridding himself of visitors by instructing his toady, Waylon Smithers, to 'release the hounds…' Monty owns and runs the Nuclear power station, with scant regard for safety or environmental issues. He has a large wardrobe of garments made from animal skins… another voice (after the earliest appearances) from Harry Shearer.

BUGS BUNNY : Representing the cast of Warner Brothers other stars, including Porky Pig ('A-ber-th, a-ber-th, a-ber--that's all folks!), Daffy Duck ('You're deth…picable!'), Sylvester (and Tweety) and Foghorn Leghorn, all voiced by the incomparable Mel Blanc, Bugs is indomitable - 'Of course you realise dis means war…' and incredibly resourceful. A hint of Brooklyn in his speech reinforces the notion that he might just be a bit of a con-rabbit. 'Eh… what's up, Doc?'

PINKY : One of a pair of laboratory mice, the other being BRAIN. In some previous experiment, all the intelligence was sucked out of him and implanted in Brain, leaving one cheerful moron and one angry genius, whose daily task is to produce et another plot to Take Over The World. Pinky's cheerful insanity leads to his imaginative reactions to Brain's 'Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?' such as 'Well, I think so, Brain, but I can't memorize a whole opera in Yiddish.', or 'Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss.' He's also given to punctuating his lines with 'Narf!' and 'Poit!' noises… Brain, who sounds a little like Orson Welles, is voiced by the wonderful Maurice LaMarche, and Pinky's oddly English voice is supplied by Chicagoan Rob Paulsen — it seems his father used to play Goon Show recordings to him as a child! Pinky And The Brain began as a segment of the Warner Brothers' Animaniacs series, but was spun off into its own series.

… and there are so many more! Wacko, Yakko and Dot, Betty Boop, Ren & Stimpy, Tom & Jerry, IM Weasel and IR Baboon, Cow and Chicken, Duckman (Private Dick/Family Man), Eric Cartman… and to quote the last-mentioned: “Screw you guys, I'm going home…”

27th June 2009

Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits… and what I have been thinking about is the enormous cast of cartoon characters we have been entertained by over the decades. I love these guys, and the artists and writers whe created them! I started to list a few of my favourites…

BRIAN : (Family Guy) The intellectual of the Griffin household, Brian is a class act. With his martini glass in hand, and his Wall Street Journal folded under his arm, he counsels Peter, the head of the household, he married Lois when Peter was declared dead… all this and yet he is only the family dog. He appears to be the only member of the family who can understand the speech of the baby, Stewie, and has on occasion performed Hope & Crosby type song and dance routines with him. Brian has something of a drink problem, leading to Stewie calling him, on one occasion, 'Cirrhosis the Wonder Dog'. An atheist and a liberal, he hates and is embarrassed by the fact that he instinctively reacts with barking to the presence of a black man, he worked as a sniffer dog for the police department and became addicted to cocaine, he is frightened of the vacuum cleaner and he still hasn't finished the novel he's been writing for years… Voiced by the show's creator, Seth McFarlane.

MR MAGOO : Myopic but undaunted, Magoo (voiced perfectly by the late Jim Backus) murmurs and roars his way through life, unfailingly getting the wrong end of every stick. Realising that he has been playing tennis not with his friend (Colonel?) but with a walrus his reaction is 'Well… I LIKE him!' The Magoo cartoons from UPS broke new ground in animation style and background artistry -- and used some very hip music scores.

WILE E. COYOTE : The emaciated desert wolf, eternally attempting to catch and eat the roadrunner, was the basis of the ultimate distillation of the cartoon short. Seven gag situations, played out against impressionistic backgrounds, and always featuring goods from the ACME catalogue, was a formula that worked time and time again. In the first cartoon, Wile E. did speak, rather pompously, and introduced himself as a 'su-u-u-per genius' -- although he failed just as miserably then as later. Afterward he remained silent. Quintessential Warner Brothers.

DOPEY : In the very first cartoon that I remember seeing, Walt Disney's first feature, Snow White And The Seven Dwarves, Dopey was the gentle pillock among the dwarves, all of whom were more efficient than he, even when sneezing or being bashful… Well… I LIKED him! And yes, I had nightmares about the Wicked Queen and her poisoned apple…

DR ZOIDBERG : (Futurama) The company 'Wellness Person' of Professor Farnsworth's inter-planetary delivery company, Zoidberg is an alien lobster with a strong Yiddish accent… and lobster is NOT kosher… Voiced by the incredibly versatile Billy West, Zoidberg is incompetent, given to panic-driven scuttling and miserably poor. His small brain is in his rump (I told you he was an alien) and his eating habits are disgusting…

DONALD DUCK : Of all the characters in Disney's short cartoons, it was always Donald who got the most rapturous reception at the Saturday Morning Pictures of my scabby-kneed boyhood. Truth to tell, we all found Mickey Mouse a trifle dull, but Donald, with his incoherent rages and his inability to cope with any of life's little trip--wires released the tensions in us all… Actually he was pretty incoherent at the best of times…

Enough for now… more to follow.

25th June, 2009

O ne day I had a telephone call from a certain Tony Meehan. It seems he had heard the asthmatic saxophone noises I had contributed to The Cannons' record for EMI, and he asked if I would be interested in joining an endeavour he was putting together "to make records". This sounded more promising than the plans The Cannons had, which took them off to Israel , from which at least one of them never returned! Calm yourselves, my children, he wasn't brown bread, but had become rather well off, as the result of studying electronics and founding a company to make and supply amplifiers. He later built his own recording studio in Tel Aviv… and today lives in Florida with his trophy wife… lucky sod!

The first task resulted in the only record on which I ever worked that reached the Number One slot. A tune composed by Jerry Lordan, who was famous for the Shadows' 'Apache' (did you know he wrote that for Bert Weedon originally?) was to feature Tony's ex-Shadows colleague, Jet Harris, and was to be called, simply 'Diamonds'. As I recall it we recorded it at IBC Studios in Portland Place, London. The middle section was where I was to do my stuff, along with a small brass section. The honking and growling completed, I wandered around to the other side of a screen, where the Mike Sammes singers were stationed. One, a pleasant blonde lady, looked up from her knittng and smiled. 'Hello!' she said brightly 'was that you making that awful noise?' I agreed that, yes, yes it was… Tony asked me to dub on some piano chords, arpeggioso and I did that, so I was on that record twice! Even dafter, on the 'B' side, a very forgettable 'Footstomp' credited to Mr Meehan, I played Glockenspiel…

Promoting the record had its moments, not least of which was my brief membership of the Billy Cotton band! The Cotton band was famous through its BBC Sunday 'Wakey-wa-a-a-key!' programmes, and for the TV spectaculars, replete with wallopers in feathers and sequins. On the occasion of Jet and Tony's appearance, I was there to do my chicken-scratch stuff, and the wardrobe kitted me out with a jacket to match those of the band. I was to play on one of the existing saxohone section microphones — fine, but the previous band number was to segue (continue without a break) into 'Diamonds', so how was I to get on mic? I suggested I play the previous number as one of the sax section, as there was plenty of time before that to take my place. I replaced Eddie Spiegel, who doubled tenor sax with character comedy on the radio shows. They were all rather surprised that this honking, squealing rock-and-roll reprobate could fit into a section and sight-read — it was nothing new for me, after several years of doing just that, from Cyprus to London, Belfast and Nottingham… Bill Cotton peered at me: 'Where's Spiegel? On 'oliday?' and he wandered off…

The next course of events put together the stage group, for touring purposes. I knocked out some small group arrangements, and we met up at The Roebuck, in Tottenham Court Road to rehearse in their upstairs function room. A fine baritone sax player, Glenn Hughes, guitarist Joe Moretti and bass player John Baldwin completed the ensemble. Glenn and I got on famously, and dubbed ourselves The Hughes Sisters… strictly for grins. Joe had a great deal of experience and technical ability and John… well he was and is, just brilliant. You may know him better as Led Zeppelin's co-founder and fearsome bass player John Paul Jones, but then he was a quiet, seventeen-year-old potential monster.

Stage outfits had to be procured. We went to Dougie Millings, who later became famous (and fashionable and expensive) for the Nehru styled outfits he made for The Beatles. He made suits for us in black mohair — and I took the opportunity to have a couple of 'civvy' outfits made as he had the measurements. One of our final rehearsals took place on the stage of the Metropolitan Music Hall in the Edgware Road, where a lighting plot was finalised. I was most impressed, both by the venerable theatre, designed by the great Frank Matcham, and by this professional attention to detail. Shortly after, the place was demolished, but I'm pretty sure we had nothing to do with that…

Our general factotum was to be the redoubtable Sam Curtis, who had been roadie for the Shadows. He designed the lighting among other things, such as humping equipment, driving the band bus, and generally looking after us like a mother hen. Sam had started out in life as Schmuel Gurvitz, but found that, inexplicably, people were happy to do business with Sam C. while avoiding Schmuel G. Sam's son Adrian later formed the successful Baker Gurvitz Army, with ace drummer Ginger Baker. Anyway, suddenly it was back to the Rock and Roll touring shows, although now I was with an act that finished the first half and someone else backed the other acts. A bit of a leg up, I suppose…

15th June, 2009

In the early 1960s, groups didn't wander on stage dressed up in the sort of clothes that they might have lifted from a scarecrow, as is now de rigeur — oh dear me, no. Matching whistles-and-flutes were the order of the day. The Cannons started out with five slightly sparkly dinner jacket outfits, supplied by Morris Angel, the theatrical costumiers.

I don't know what production they had been made for, but I do remember that mine had the name 'Anton Diffring' on the label. Diffring was a blue-eyed, blonde German, actor, very handsome, who played an awful lot of Nazi bastards in various films and TV shows. Ironic to think that he had fled Germany to get away from the blighters… The trousers led me to think that they had been made for a dance routine, since there was no fly, but a zip at the side, on the hip so to speak.

These served us well for a while, and then we were sent to visit a tailor in Streatham, who would make a set of suits for us, and these turned out to be pale grey mohair, very tasty! We wore them with maroon bow ties that went under the shirt collar. Sprauncy!

The group was being booked by the Tito Burns agency, and they came up with an idea I wasn't keen on. The 'Twist' was breaking in New York, and they wanted us to back an American dancer who sang a bit, a chap called Peppi Borza. Pep was from a circus family, and had until recently had an act with his sister, working with Sammy Davis Jr. The plot was, we were to pose as 'Peppi and the New York Twisters', and I think it was the dumb name that put me off. Still, work was work, and for a while we alternated as The New York Twisters and The Cannons. As the former, we played some rather nice stage shows, and also appeared at somewhere completely unknown to us in Liverpool — The Cavern.

The Cavern is now the stuff of legend. In reality it was a ghastly hole, with condensation running down the brick walls. As we unloaded our equipment, now all impressively rack-mounted by Ken Bran, our roadie, later a leading light at Marshall Amps., clusters of girls quizzed us; what did we think of the beetles? Frankly we had no idea what they were on about. Later that evening we discovered theat one of the local groups was wittily entitled 'The Beatles', and they were on to finish the evening. I must say that there were several local groups playing that night, and they were all good and all different. While the rest of the country was still trying to play 'Apache' and sound like the Shadows here was a variety of different sounds, styles and approaches. I think it a pity that it was only the Beatles that really came to fame.

As usual, Peppi got a girl up on stage and showed her how to do the Twist. Years later, on a recording session at EMI, Cilla Black told me it had been she… I remember the little band room at the right hand side of the stage (left hand if you were looking at the stage) there was quite a press of people, including the Bob Woolley, the MC, the Beatles's manager, Brian Epstein, and the lads themselves. I remember chatting with their bass player, and his pointing out their new drummer, a diffident individual with a lot of rings on his fingers which he twisted nervously. Apart from that all I remember of the evening was after our set, we took those soaking mohair suits off — they were now dark grey — and dropped them on the floor with a resounding 'splosh'! Ken had to find a dry cleaner for them, first thing next morning, as we had sweated through every inch of the fabric!

Given a decent sized stage, Peppi could put his circus background to use, as he would return to take his call in a succession of somersaults and cartwheels, which shook everybody rigid. Where he is today I have no idea — I remember spotting him on a Two Ronnies show as one of a comic troupe of Morris dancers, but that's all I have seen of him in all the years since then.

6th June, 2009

I confess I had never wanted to go to Germany. Brought up during WWII, I had been subject to all the usual propaganda, and I had a mental picture of beefy great frauleins in blonde plaits and dirndl skirts… so it came as a great shock to see how elegant and frankly tasty the local girls were! Frankly they were streets ahead of what we saw at, say, the dreaded Rink ballroom, in Nelson, Lancs. I began to warm to the place right away… As we travelled around I marvelled at the beauty of the country, with its valleys and forests. And birds…

Frankfurt-am-Main still showed the traces of conflict. The imposing main line passenger railway station was pitted with bullet and shell marks (all of which had been filled in when I next went there in the early 1980s). We stayed at the Münchner Hof, a small hotel out at the end of the No 1 tram route, on the Ginnheimer Landstraße. Each night artists would return from various engagements and make straight for the bar, which seemed to be open at all hours. Show talk and gags flowed, as did the falling-down water, and a convivial time was had by all…

We also spent a week based in Kassel and another in Bayreuth. The Bayreuth accomodation was in what had been the Gestapo HQ, just behind the Festspielhaus. Our room had been the billiards room and you could still see where the players had chalked their cues, in the whitewash on the ceiling. Outside the window was a blood-stained, bullet pocked wall. It was the time of the Wagner festival, and we could easily hear the rehearsals from outside the opera house, which was a fascinating experience for me, although I don't know about the others.

After our month in Germany it was back to the US bases at home. We learned 10-pin bowling, poker and craps from GIs we got to know, and after playing snooker, we found their little pool tables pretty easy going. One troop in particular used to bum a lift to London with us, and we had some great card games with him in the back of the bus — I just remember him as 'Bart'.

We played several Rock-and-Roll tours, backing visiting performers from the US — these included Del Shannon, Dion (late of The Belmonts), Freddie Cannon, and Gene Vincent. Our vocalist, Dave Devon, took to doing 'Be-Bop-a-Lula' on our own gigs, as an impression of Gene, who was one of the original medallion men — Dave accomplished this aspect by suspending a dustbin-lid on a chain around his neck! Our first show with Del Shannon was at the Albert Hall, of all places. I had a recording session, and couldn't make the rehearsal, which put Del into a bit of a spin… I had the solo, originally recorded using a small organ, in 'Runaway' — and the relief on his face was almost funny when I breezed through it. He wasn't used to working with sight-readers! Del was a nice guy, as was Dion di Mucci. There were some spirited sing-songs on the tour coach — in particular a trio version of 'Money', a song that was new to us, belted out by Del, Dion and Buzz Clifford. Dion and his girlfriend liked to imitate the Hanna-Barbera cartoons (which hadn't reached here as yet) featuring a camp lion called Snagglepuss. As they got off the coach at night Dion would declaim 'Farewell! Exit left!' and she would lisp 'So long, even!' I suppose you had to be there…

28th May, 2009

That DECCA contract I mentioned earlier saw one record released: An old Andrews Sisters hit, 'I Didn't Know The Gun Was Loaded', backed with 'My Guy's Come Back' written by Benny Goodman, Ray McKinley and Mel Powell. Class material… Decca's Studios in West Hampstead had recently acquired an Ampex four-track tape recorder, and a control desk lashed up from Dexion and gaffer tape, which was all pretty new to the engineers. This was several years before EMI at Abbey Road moved on to multi-track.

One critic wrote 'Good sound, good beat, good chance for the charts', which just showed how much he knew about it. After one or two plays on Radio Luxemburg it rocketed into obscurity. Later we played an audition of sorts, in Norrie Paramor's office, and subsequently made 'Bushfire' written by our two guitarists. Someone knew a chap from Bahrain, named Mizra Alsherif (I think!) who played industrial strength bongoes on the session, giving it a fair head of steam. A few years ago I heard it on Brian Matthews's (The Wart) Sounds of the Sixties, and it didn't sound all that terrible. Still, the sheet music was published, which must have meant somebody thought it worthwhile. That someone was bandleader Denny Boyce, and when I worked for him later I wrote an arrangement of Bushfire for his band.

We began a weary routine of schlepping out to USAF bases at RAF Bentwaters, RAF Woodbridge, and all the other US enclaves, where we played four hour sessions in enlusted men's clubs. It was at one of those gigs that we opened with Duane Eddie's 'Dixie' — and the club erupted. Whites on one side of the room, blacks on the other and knives drawn… we had no idea that there was bad racial tension on the station… it was the only number we played that night, which suited us, as we stilll got paid! We tried it at the next club gig, but it didn't work. Obvously things were more harmonious there, and we had to play the whole evening.

A welcome break in all this was a three-day stint on a film set. The film was a run-of-the-mill police v. racketeers film noir, called 'The Frightened City', and was partly set in a night club managed by Alfred Marks. The club band's numbers had been recorded using Fender guitars, a sort of pseudo-Shadows sound, and we had those matching Fenders — so we were hired to be the band seen on screen. There was no sax on the track, so they rented a vibraphone, and yours truly mimed on that! At eleven quid a day, as 'special extras' we made more than we made in a month on the US bases, and we got to rub shoulders wih Alfred Marks, Olive McFarland, Herbet Lom and a young hopeful called Sean Connery. Wardrobe gave us hawaiian shirts, made, I noticed, from the same material as the knickers the show dancers were wearing! It was worth getting up in the middle of the night to get to Shepperton, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The bells, the flashing lights, the cries of 'Action!', the poker games going on behind every part of the scenery, the evening-dress extras playing nightclub customers, dancing in their socks and stockings, because two of the stars were recording dialogue on the dance floor — all very exciting and a bit of a giggle for us.

We were sent on a tour of US bases in Germany, under the auspices of the fearsome Gisele Gunther (Himmler in corsets) Kunstleragentur. Every act had to demonstrate what they did before a panel of service judges, before being despatched to various clubs. It was then we discovered that we had been sold as a comedy act. Since we obviously weren't, Gisele cut our money! In order to comply with the contract, I hastily cobbled together several gag routines, with the generous help of one or two of the comics who suggested material, and we went down very well, in Kassel, Bayreuth (where we stayed in what had been the Gestapo HQ), Mainz and Nancy (yes I know it's not in Germany!). Our money, cash being deliverable by postman, followed us around, and for three days at one point, we starved…

20th May, 2009

The magazine that comes with my Sunday paper has a page populated with little squares showing the web-sites of advertisers. Lacking anything more interesting to do, I actually bothered to read some of it today.

I get a strong impression that these are not people who understand that, to misquote Vince Flanders (of 'Web Pages That Suck') a man from Mars should be able to look at a web page and tell, within a maximum of seven seconds, what it's about. The raison d'être was not always immediately plain. In addition to which, if they were to read the things aloud, they could perhaps make the meaning clearer.

For example, one says "For a short time only beautifully restored antique baths were £899". OK, so what? Below it says "Now from £499". So for a short time they were over-priced… or do they mean that for a short time the prices have been reduced? Or was it only beautifully restored baths that were overpriced, while ordinary ones weren't? Search me.

Another: "Pictures speak louder than words". OK, I'm listening… but that's all it says.

An industrial-strength dominoes game ad tells us "Hollywood stars are already hooked on…" Again, so what? Does being what passes for a film star these days make you an authority on gaming? Or are we supposed to associate the game with lavish cocaine-fuelled soirées in Hollywood mansions? It's only dominoes with extra whatever they are called, tiles, pieces, whatever… for some reason it's headlined 'Mexican Train'.

Finally, the SKY TV on-screen programme guide truncates the titles of programmes in order to fit them into the grid, and sometimes hilarity ensues… some time ago, a programme was announced called "The Joy of Pain" — hmm, I thought, sounds kinky… nah, it was about painting pictures… Now I see we can watch "Agatha Christie's Po". Oh well, that's no worse than my habit of thinking of the programme as "Agatha Christie's Parrot".

Damn, I'm easily amused…

17th May, 2009

The worst thing to happen to my hopes and aspirations as a musician (such as they were) was the advent of the dreaded Rock 'n' Roll (as it was all too often spelled). By the time it arrived on the shores of this sceptered isle I was 17 — the ideal target you might think. Ah, but, by that time I had already happily mis-spent much of my early teen years in smoky jazz clubs, playing on my father's old simple-system clarinet, and this new stuff sounded far too tame… later, when I was playing dance-band gigs with the MEAF Band in Cyprus and East Africa, it mostly came down to making a lot of noise, squealing and honking, while doing silly things, like riding on the shoulders of another saxophone player — I have no idea why, but it seemed popular with the punters, so… Music as such didn't have a great deal to do with it.

After de-mob from the RAF Music Service, I found myself in a pro dance-band, as mentioned elsewhere in these pages. After about a year of it, half of which was spent in provincial Mecca halls, I got the hump, partly with the job and partly with myself, and decided to 'get a proper job' back in London. And I did… but then came a telephone call, from a chap who was managing a group. He happened to mention that said group had secured a DECCA recording contract, which sounded interesting. So I went along and had a blow with them at his home. The manager was one Frank Maher, and you will most likely have seen him, without necessarily knowing it, if you have watched The Prisoner, or perhaps The Avengers, among other shows. Frank was a stunt performer and arranger, and was Patrick McGoohan's favourite double.

The group was called The Cannons. Why? Who knows… Somehow a set of matching Fender guitars was procured; only the second, I believe, to arrive in the UK. Some outfit called The Shadows got the first (and I think most of the available strings, too). I was still doing the day job, although it wasn't working out too well. The idea had been that I would chase up export orders on the factory, nut instead I spent my days writing conciliatory letters to the poor sods of agents waiting for goods in the far-flung outposts. I wasn't allowed to harrass the factory, who were six months behind with the orders, in order not to cause industrial unrest… So when it was decided that The Cannons were to go pro., it wasn't too much of a wrench to relinquish respectability and lob in my notice.

The first pro gig was… wait for it… a week each in two parks in Birmingham! We were to back Johnny Worth, a songwriting singer who had written hits for Adam Faith, and play our own set. Also appearing, were a double act called Christmas and King, and The Dagenham Girl Pipers!

To be continued…

13th May, 2009