Since I have a second fan, I intend to become more prolific with my vanity press.
"What the hell is a gonk?" either of you may say. It's a round toy that was popular in Britain in the '60s. (See the picture--I should attach more pics here!) My family spent a year in mod Brighton in the mid-60s, and we got one of those. They also figured in Gonks Go Beat, the sort of bizarre Swinging London movie where you'd expect Spike Milligan to turn up, but he doesn't.
Why am I talking about gonks? Last night I watched Produced by George Martin on Crave TV. That's a documentary about George Martin, the Beatles' genius producer who left us earlier this year. (He had a head like a sports car!) But he produced a lot more than the Beatles, introducing a sort of impressionism to recording. He once produced a CD of Dylan Thomas' radio play Under Milkwood with Tom Jones doing a musical number: the documentary didn't mention it, but I recall Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show doing an episode about it. The '70s band America was also his project. He built a recording studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat which produced some great music in the '80s--the Police and such--but got wrecked by a hurricane.
Back to the gonks... Early on he produced a lot of comedy records--Peter Sellers and such--and in 1962 came up with Bernard Cribbins' novelty single "Right, Said Fred." (That's also the name of a British band in the early '90s whose one hit was "I'm Too Sexy.") Anyway, they showed a bit of a video of the song with Gumby-type dimensional animation, using gonks! I found the whole thing on Youtube, and looked at it so many times that the tune's going around in my head.
(I can attach links too!)
We've also started watching a Crave TV documentary about Frank Sinatra, another musical genius.
I've booked a room at Goodenough College in London, where I'll be staying in May. (Sending them a scan of their credit card form with my signature turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected!)
Tonight was the history Meetup, where we talked about the frontier and the Little House books. The political Meetup was at the same place (Scallywag's) but started an hour later, so we ended up seguing right into that one!
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