The Reminiscence Bump 1 - Blue Cats & Happy Monsters

It's music time on Ravings From The Rubber Room and I've been promising myself to write this post for a long, long time. The power of music to evoke emotions and memories is undeniable, and the first songs or instrumental pieces you really connect with as a child shape your listening choices for the rest of your life. I have a pretty wide ranging taste in music, but initially I was going to write just about a specific LP from 1978 that was a near childhood obsession (some may already have guessed which one it is from a teaser image I posted some time back). The thing is, the more I thought about it and trawled my memories and did some research, the more I realised that I wanted to cover a lot more of the music from my early years. There is a (sometimes vague) connection between those early singles / albums. What was going to be a few words about one record has turned into a multi-part post and is possibly even more self-indulgent than usual. I make no apologies for this - it's been a huge amount of  fun reliving all these sounds from forty-odd years ago, and hopefully it will invoke some memories and raise a smile from some of you out there (or at least a "what the hell were the Brits listening to?" from non-UK readers). This is by no means an exhaustive list of what was around at the time (I have deliberately excluded the more mainstream "pop" records) but it should give a flavour of things.

I'm going to start off with the novelty songs and children's LPs that made the biggest impression on me as a kid...

<<<<< cue wavy lines and a 'wheezing, groaning' sound >>>>>

Musically my very early childhood had been sound-tracked by my parents (and grandparents) choices and the artists they liked and had grown up with - so lots of stuff from the 40s, 50s and very early 60s. I vaguely recall the  LPs seemed to be mostly Christmas compilations of crooners such as Dean Martin or Frankie Vaughn or piano noodling's by Russ Conway, with a massive collection of other stuff (Elvis and the like) existing on tapes recorded on a huge 'reel-to reel' tape recorder the size of a suitcase - that seemed to have a built in oscilloscope for some reason. I clearly remember that one tape had Alvin & The Chipmunks singing "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" on it and I must have driven Mum & Dad  insane, requesting that they play it over and over again. There was also a big pile of 7" 45 rpm singles that sat in the corner of the living room. My parents tell a story of how, long before I could read, they would ask me "put X record on" and I would toddle over to the pile and pull out exactly the right one. Somehow I could recognise each record just by the company logo and combination of shapes on the label in the centre.

(a similar tape recorder - excluding oscilloscope)

I started to have "my" records when family and relatives bought kids albums and "novelty" singles as presents. One of the earliest I can remember was "Grandad" by 'Dad's Army' actor Clive Dunn which was number one in November 1970.  I would have been three and a half:

The following year (1971) it was "Ernie, The Fastest Milkman In The West" by comedian Benny Hill:

This was the first record I owned that "told a story", and one that would have a big impact on things to come. Indeed in 1972, aged 5, I was bought what became one of my favourite albums - the abridged soundtrack to the film "Dougal And The Blue Cat", featuring the characters from the hugely popular kids TV series "The Magic Roundabout".

Now I could write five thousand words on what "The Magic Roundabout" meant to me and other kids in the 1970s - and adults too. How watching Dougal, Zebedee, Brian, Mr Rusty and the others helped form a huge bond between myself and my grandfather (and goodness knows that wonderful man needs a post dedicated to him). The programme was, and remains, a British TV cultural icon. I urge you to go here to read all about it. Sadly the original LP I had is long gone (I tried to clean it with household polish when it got scratched and warped it forever!) and it has never been released on CD. There are copies on eBay but my record player is stored in the loft and - well, you get the idea. Instead let's have a snippet from the film with a song from the lovely Florence...

(very Burton / Elfman - esque)

Also in 1972 came my first exposure to more electronic music, with the number 5 instrumental only hit "Popcorn" by Hot Butter. This was like nothing I had ever heard before and I still think it's fantastic today. It's also another piece of the puzzle that helped define my musical tastes:

Moving through the decade things continued in the same novelty vein with "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree" in 1973. More importantly this was the year when The Simon Park Orchestra sold a million copies of "Eye Level" - the theme to the detective series "Van Der Valk". This wasn't the first time an instrumental track had reached the top end of the charts, but it would be the last for decades. As much as I liked "normal" pop songs with lyrics, for some reason I *adored* this track. I think it cemented my love for TV themes and soundtracks, long before I became interested in movie composers:

1974 arrived with the twin hits of "The Wombling Song" and "Wombling Free" from those furry denizens of Wimbledon Common.  I was beginning to be much more musically aware, as the the mighty Abba had arrived along with boy-band The Bay City Rollers (definitely *not* my thing, but they were everywhere. They even had their own board game. I know this because some family member weirdly thought it was a good Christmas present for a seven year old boy!). Oddly though, my album of early 1974 was an LP of cover versions of those Womble songs plus things like "The Happy Wanderer", "High Hopes" and "Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen By The Sea" by puppet superstars Pinky & Perky.

Yes, two of the best-selling record stars of the 60s and 70s were anthropomorphic puppet pigs that sang in high-pitched squeaky voices and were created by a couple from Czechoslovakia. Pinky and Perky had originally been TV stars with their own show on the BBC between 1957-1968 and then on ITV until 1971, but their recording career lasted a good few years longer. They were probably the UK equivalent of Alvin & The Chipmunks (the same technique of playing original voices at twice the speed was used), so I guess those child memories of "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" played a part. What can I say? I was young. I'm not going to subject you to their musical  delights don't worry.

Of course the other important thing that was happening in 1974 was my interest in a little show called Doctor Who. I've written about the moment I started regularly watching the show here, but my love of fantasy and SF was growing exponentially - and would soon start to influence my musical choices.

By the time 1975 rolled along, the charts were full of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, 10cc, Roxy Music, Eurovision winners Brotherhood of Man and lots of Abba. But amongst this were out-of-left-field hits for "Kojak" star Telly Savalas with his spoken word version of the song "If", originally by American group Bread:

(sunglasses, chest hair, smoking and alcohol - what a man's man !)

Oh and how can I forget the delights of Windsor Davies and Don Estelle - stars of the BBC's situation comedy set in India in World War II, "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" - crooning The Ink Spots 1940 song, "Whispering Grass":

I'm going to end this first post with probably my strangest children's album of all from 1975. Released on the Happy House label, "Happy Monsters" was billed as "Funny songs, sounds and stories about a pleasant adventure into the impossible land of Ooog!". The bizarre story on the A side concerns Bobby and Betty's adventures in Ooog as they meet the Happy Monsters, who talk with klaxon's and squeaks and seem to have a love of the marches of John Philip Sousa! What is even trippier is the B side, where there are cover versions of classics such as "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" but replete with comical bells, parps and whistles. Delia Derbyshire would have loved the almost musique concrete stylings. It's probably from a crazier, trippier time in 60s America, but I just cherished it. Thank goodness we had headphones by that point or I think my parents would have disowned me. Listen for yourself (be warned it's 15 minutes long):

(James Brown would *not* have approved...)

So what have we learnt from this first trawl through my youth? -

• I liked a good novelty song
• I had a burgeoning interest in electronic music
• I had a fondness for songs that tell a story
• I loved science fiction and fantasy
• I am beginning to really like TV and film themes and soundtracks

Next time, things step up a gear when we get to 1976 -  thanks to two Frenchmen, a pioneer from Japan and a maths teacher...