Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

Twelfth Day, More Masters, and Music

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Well, we've had the twelve nights of Christmas, and now it's the twelfth day, so we really should take down our decorations and cards - it's supposed to be bad luck if you don't. Not that I'm superstitious! But I rather like the little angels, and we've got three different ones. Let's keep them up on the mantlepiece.

Alice has finally got the hang of downloading Kermode and Mayo's film review "podcasts" (what a profoundly silly name that is!) from their Radio 5 website, to our iTunes, then "synching" her iPod, which she links to the sound system, so we can listen to it either in the sitting room or the kitchen while we work away. That was some clever wiring she did when she was still young and carefree, and used to have parties...

It would be much easier just to listen to the radio on Friday afternoon, but then she's either at an oldies' cheap matinee showing at our favourite Arthouse cinema, or reading a Shakespeare play with her U3A cronies. Now she's sniffing at me. Sorry, I shouldn't have said "oldies", I mean "Senior Citizens" of course.

The Holly Man, one of characters from a Mummers' play, carrying a wassail bowl. (Original photo by Dean Ayres)

Today is traditionally the day the Three Kings arrived to see the baby Jesus. It is variously celebrated, often going back to more heathen traditions, with maybe wassailling and mumming, or even cooking a special fruit cake. There's lots of wassail songs, and recipes to try out online. Just Google away for more.

Where were we, before all this Seasonal stuff took over? Ah yes...

Meetings with Masters 2: The Master (the film) 

If you scroll down to the end of 20th December 2012 (or leap to it here) you'll see that we met with Yoda, the Jedi Master, to start off this Masters theme, before Alice was struck down with a bug, then overtaken by The Festive Season and all that entails. Sounds a bit like road traffic accident? She says it felt like it.

So now: the film! Well, despite the mixed reviews, we thought it might be worth a go. Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't exactly your typical heart-throb star, but as "The Master" of The Cause cult, he was as brilliant as he always is. He plays a dubiously sincere charismatic leader. Who they all tell us is not meant to be L Ron Hubbard, since the film is not really about Scientology. Which is a weird religion-cum-therapy, having both ardent adherents and fierce detractors. (You can read even more details at Ex Scientologist or Bare Faced Messiah.)
 
But Joaquin Phoenix was pretty awful, in my opinion. He spent almost the whole time with his fists on his hips, thumbs back, so he looked like a kid's impression of a squawking chicken. Alice says that may unfortunately be true, but nevertheless he did do a good job of playing a very tortured individual, who temporarily falls under the spell of a Master, yet never quite manages to become the ideal disciple. See this enthusiastic review by the Guardian.

Alice thought it was psychologically both enthralling and horrifying to see the sort of mind games inflicted on the followers. I'm not that much into psycho-babble myself. However, if you want an excellent movie about a cult, then we'd both go for Martha Marcy May Marlene any time.

Meetings with Masters 3: a little history

It was almost the Solstice, and guess where I was?

 

The next photo gives it away.

OK, that's right - it's an original wind-up gramophone with horn! It belongs (now) to our Harvieston friend, who got it from eBay. 
 


This is more of a side view, so you can see the needle arm.

What a beautiful object...

It's a windup! Well, it was, actually, as he said it needs a bit of repair.

More of that later.
Do you see the HMV logo on the side?

That's His Master's Voice!

Which takes us to the little bit of history.
If Alice can cut down on her endless surfing, that is.
And why Surfing? I thought you did that on the sea, not the web, or even the "cloud".

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Trust her! She's just Googled that, and came up with this answer from Yahoo! Answers:

Imagine surfers on a beach: When they catch a good wave (site) they ride it as far as they can, until, one they reach the shore, (get bored) or two they wipe out (can't find anything). Then they go back out into the water (web), catch another wave (site) and do the same thing, over and over, that's surfing the ocean (net).

The cartoon, by the way, is by ShoeboxBlog. And, yes, I had to laugh, even though it isn't altogether part of this tale, but a typical Alice digression. What, me! Digress? Never...

Now, can we get back to the main story, please?

HMV

His Master's Voice was one of the best known companies involved in the production of records and the means by which to play them, and their logo is still famous. The dog was a real one called Nipper, and his owner, Francis James Barraud was a painter. The Nipper painting to logo story is quite a saga.


Nipper was re-created for Christmas 2012, to put a zing into HMV's seasonal advertising. They added a new character - an animated Gramophone, somwhat reminiscent of Wall-E, methinks. (That was a super film!) The set of brief videos are at Nipper & Gramophone’s Christmas Tales (also on YouTube). Great fun!

But did you know that before we had Sound Systems, Hi-Fi and turntables, there were a host of other attempts at recording sound for playback? And objects called Phonoautograph, Phonograph, Graphophone, and Victrola, were manufactured.  See here.


How about our friend's antique gramophone?

Well, it didn't actually work as such, but he has also aquired one of those "Turn-your-old-78s-&-LPs-into-CDs" machines.

So Alice brought along a precious family heirloom. It certainly played all right, and you should have watched the delight spreading over her face.

You see, it's a private recording, made in 1948, by her father's Skiffle band, The Bunkhouse Boys.

But when we had a go at  converting it, Alice mucked about with the controls, as she didn't want to use up a whole blank CD on just a few minutes of track. So it didn't work at all, and then it was time to trundle down the Harvieston drive for the bus back to town.

But we'll have another go soon.

That's Alice's Dad in the check shirt on the left of this photo, with the washboard. He was very keen on playing music, usually the drums. He had a huge collection of Jazz records, too, and taught Alice to appreciate the Blues. But that's another story. And in case you're wondering, she's no idea who the little boy was.