The Goons - Best of the Goon Shows 1 & 2 (1959/60) plus bonus 24-bit/96kHz
Comedy | 1972 UK repress/1960 UK LP | Parlophone PMc 1108/1129 (mono)
The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme. The first series, broadcast between May and September 1951, was titled Crazy People; all subsequent series had the title The Goon Show, a title inspired, according to Spike Milligan, by a Popeye character.
The show's chief creator and main writer was Spike Milligan. The scripts mixed ludicrous plots with surreal humour, puns, catchphrases and an array of bizarre sound effects. Some of the later episodes feature electronic effects devised by the then-fledgling BBC Radiophonic Workshop, many of which were reused by other shows for decades afterwards. Many elements of the show satirised contemporary life in Britain, parodying aspects of show business, commerce, industry, art, politics, diplomacy, the police, the military, education, class structure, literature and film.
The show was released internationally through the BBC Transcription Services (TS).It was heard regularly from the 1950s in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India and Canada, although these TS versions were frequently edited to avoid controversial subjects. NBC began broadcasting the programme on its radio network from the mid-1950s.The programme exercised a considerable influence on the subsequent development of British and American comedy and popular culture. It was cited as a major influence by the Beatles, Monty Python (especially Cleese, Chapman, Gilliam, Palin and Jones) and the American comedy team The Firesign Theatre. Wikipedia
More info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goons
Please note: there is some distortion inherent in these recordings.
Track listing:
01. Tales of Old Dartmoor (broadcast February 7th, 1956)
02. Dishonoured (broadcast January 28th, 1959)
03. Tale of Men's Shirts (broadcast December 31st, 1959)
04. The Scarlet Capsule (broadcast February 2nd, 1959)
Bonus:
Decca EP DFE 6396 (1957)
05. Bluebottle Blues
06. The Ying Tong Song
07. I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas
08. Bloodnock's Rock 'n' Roll Call
The Goons: Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers
With Wallace Greenslade, Ray Ellington.
Scripts by Spike Milligan.
Incidental music directed by Wally Stott.
Recorded at the Camden Theatre, London.
EP tracks produced by Marcel Stellman, recorded at Decca Studios, London.
And, last but not least:
Decca single F 5278 (1937) (1972 repress)
09. Reginald Gardiner - Trains
10. Reginald Gardiner - Trains (continued)
This has no connection whatsoever with The Goons but they would certainly have heard it and it may have been an influence.
Reginald Gardiner (27 February 1903 – 7 July 1980) was an English-born actor in film and television and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in Great Britain. His parents wanted him to be an architect, but he insisted on a career as an actor.
He started as a super on stage and eventually became well known on the West End stage. He was also well known to wireless listeners and was known on air for his amusing train and car noises. Gardiner started film work in crowd scenes, making his big film break in 1926 in the silent film The Lodger, by Alfred Hitchcock. Moving to Hollywood, he was cast in numerous roles, often as a British butler. One of his most famous roles was that of Schultz in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. He also performed memorable turns as the spurned "almost-husband" in The Doctor Takes A Wife and Christmas in Connecticut.
In 1937 he recorded a curious and eccentric classic called "Trains" which was regularly played on a 1950s British radio programme called Children's Favourites. This record consisted of Gardiner, sounding slightly tipsy, reciting a monologue about steam railway engines (which he claimed were 'livid beasts') and impersonating both the engines themselves and the sound of trains running on the track. This latter he famously characterised as 'diddly-dee, diddly-dum' to mimic the sound pattern as the four pairs of bogie wheels ran over joins between the lengths of track. (A sound no longer heard since welded rail joins were introduced.) "Trains" was released as a 78 and later a 45, by English Decca Records (F 5278) which remained on catalogue into the 1970s. At the end of the record, Gardiner signs off with "Well folks, that's all: back to the asylum." He was summoned to Buckingham Palace to give a performance in person. Wikipedia.
Technicals:
Knosti RCM.
Michell GyroDec full version.
Funk Firm FXR II Tonearm.
Audio Technica AT33PTG/II MC Cartridge.
Harman Kardon HK990 Integrated Amplifier.
Gold Interconnects. E-MU 0204 Audio Interface.
Recording, split and manual de-click with Adobe Audition 3.0.1
Click Repair 3.9.1
Vinyl transfer by son-of-albion, October 2013