Dear Doctor, apart from Hedy Lammars rolls did any other piano rolls help win the war?
Reading of the passing of pianola roll developeur extraordinaire Hedly Lammar I feel duty bound to inform you of the recent sad passing of a similar sub standard footnote to wartime history, Miss Ida Threebles of Forest Gate, London who passed away at the age of 97. During the Blitz master-spy Helmut Wagner wrote down plans for the invasion on the back of a 65-note roll of Beethoven’s Fifth. His absence for several weeks on covert spying missions prompted his landlady to conclude he’d done a runner and so she pawned all his possession at Miss Threebles shop. Miss Threebles, unwittingly, played the spy’s secret roll on her Angelus Duplex player. Too fat and lazy to swap spools around she played it back to front upside down and was astonished to see plans for the german invasion front line instead of the german composition’s metrostyle line. Pedaling ever faster in her excitement she collapsed before the end of the roll, fell off the piano stool and knocked herself out on a case of black market condensed milk. She was discovered on the floor by her sister Dolly the next morning and the two contacted Scotland Yard with the roll. Invasion plans were thwarted, Britain saved, Wagner secretly executed at the Tower and Churchill had the BBC broadcast Beethoven’s Fifth so Germany would know the game was up. It was speculated but never proven that Wagner got the spying/music idea from a George Formby movie and his failure to grasp English “humour” led to fatal flaws in his plan and his subsequent downfall. Miss Threebles died in obscurity leaving no children and very little money due to decades of taking pledges on unsaleable items such as 65-note rolls. Her flat was full to the ceiling with items completely priceless;- namely old newspapers and jam jars she was apparently “saving” all of which readers will be pleased to learn have been left in her will to the sole benefit of the Musical Museum at Brentford. The museum is unsure whether to store these until they acquire some price by virtue of age or to dump the lot.
Dear Doctor, how much suction can the average player supply. I am very interested to know.
Quite a jolly amount infact! I was recently perusing some holiday brochures when I hit upon the eco-friendly idea of utilising suction power for locomotion. I mounted a spare Aeolian treadle pump with some old bicycle parts into an old pedalo from the local boating lake. The theory was that suction power would drive the turbines round. Sadly I fitted the flap valves wrongly. My treadling sucked in water, the boat sank and I nearly drowned. I felt just like Icarus must have! Back at home a week later I fitted the unit with wheels and brushes and now ride it up and down my hallway as a ride-on vacuum cleaner. I got the idea from Amateur Gardening looking at lawnmowers funnily enough!
Dear Doctor, I have a few Audiographic rolls. What is the history behind these?
Dear Reader, Audiographic rolls were conceived to educate simple minds in the art of music. This was doomed as simple minds are more easily engaged watching the keys go up and down and twiddling with the control levers than paying attention to a roll. There was a Braille version which proved hopeless and in the 1970s the concept was rehashed as “scratch n’ sniff”. This was novel but required users to scratch and sniff various printed pictures on the roll with the metrostyle pointer. It’s scope was limited due to lack of suitable songs for adaptation. Commercial failure was hastened as collectors prefer rolls to smell like musty old books. The venture ceased when someone sued after getting a pointer jammed up their nose.
Last Saturday I’d been picking my allotment runner beans but it was a chore to slice them. On Sunday morn I went to a local bootsale and engaged in conversation with a boot-holder about music. He said he’d visited Beethoven’s grave and was so moved that he had “remained an hour there weeping over the master’s demise”. He was quite genuine about it. I thought it odd as the fellow looked like a window-cleaner’s assistant not a classical connoisseur. It started to rain and I went home musing the paradox of a window cleaner’s assistant’s emoting over Beethoven’s mortality. At home an old organette (truly an unmusical box) caught my eye. Why do folk fawn over the rubbishy organette? I’ve personally never heard a nice one yet. The music is the pits. It’s usually torn to bits. They’re an excruciating way to spend an afternoon that’s wet. I saw in the organette an allegorical window cleaner’s assistant; a lowly instrument aspiring to greater heights. After pondering the argument from all possible angles for a considerable period (a considered minute) I resolved that the organette, instead of aspiring to Beethoven, was better suited as a metaphorical window cleaner’s assistant. Seizing a file I sharpened the brass reeds razor-edged, re-inserted them upside down then cranked the runner beans into the mechanism. Success! Incidentally, as I am contractually obligated to report my experiences of any mechanical music mishap I am duty bound to inform you that I nicked my finger slightly on the file.
I am still a bit too dazed this evening. There were so many rolls on my piano the lid was starting to bow under the weight. I decided to put the less interesting tunes into the loft. My loft, as you may imagine, is rather full. I eventually got most of the rolls up the ladder but a space hopper I’d put up there in 1982 was taking up valuable extra space. I threw it into the black darkness and reached for further rolls to stack in the space left. Unfortunately I must’ve thrown the space hopper too hard as it bounced back knocking over the large stack of rolls I’d already placed in the loft. With a calamitous dim rolls, space hopper and I tumbled out of the loft hatch onto the landing. The space hopper then bounced down the stairs coming to a halt at the bottom. A falling 65-note roll fell onto it with such force that it popped. Needless to say I was very sad, all things taken into account.
If you are born within the sounds of a Violano bow and Seeburg nickelodeon bells it is possible you are a pianola cockney. It’s as irritating as an Edinburr but here are some examples. Coat & hood: John Broadwood. Steam traction : roller action. Rajah of Bong: Kashmiri Song. Haitian wax doll: pianostyle roll. Bird in the hand; Aeolian Grand. Chairs and tables: meloto roll labels. In common parlance pianola cockney is as obsolete as Cornish, phew!
Dear Doctor, I am a woman and consequently think only of matters chocolate. What role has chocolate played in the evolution of the player piano?
Dear Readerette, Chocolate wasn’t invented until 1925, not uncoincidentally the same year Aeolian introduced their Audiographic series. Prior to this was Fry’s Fondant Crème (invented 1902) before which Victorians pretended to enjoy spooning dry cocoa powder into their mouths on society occasions. A lot of piffle was recently written on the internet about Welte’s recording piano and I’ll tell you why. In 1903 Edwin Welte took a Charabanc trip with his maiden aunt to Fry’s Chokalaktigeselleschaft Gmbh and there observed a machine capable of recording 5 simultaneous flavours of fondant crème. Welte immediately realized the potential of this device. With each colour being recorded by a single finger Welte figured the fondant crème recorder could be easily adapted to recording music. Thus was born the Welte Mignon. Fry’s latterly using punched paper to select the fondant crème flavours. Fry’s ceased making “5 Centres” in 1993. Welte ceased everything in 1939.
As a part of my mission to spread the Themodist gospel unto the young I recently took my player on an 18-30 holiday to Playa des Pianolas in Ibiza. I hired the games room at the hotel and ran an evening concert. To add the Ibiza touch I engaged a bongos player and a skinny girl with a whistle to accompany me. It was all very well received with 2 people attending, many of whom were youngsters. There was a third man who stayed later than the rest so I kept the tunes coming for him. I had to stop when my arms got sore from changing rolls. I was most apologetic but it fell on deaf ears; he’d overdosed and was stiff as newly recovered exhausters with cardboard stiffeners.
I recently had the willies. A very large consignment of piano rolls had been delivered. That night, snug in bed with my hot water bottle, I awoke with a start when I heard the sort of awful noise that strikes blind fear into the hearts of men. Quivering with fright I hid whimpering under the bedsheets until the light of day. On entering the music room next morning I discovered the hitherto teetering mountain of rolls had partially toppled during the night. I piled them up and went about my daily business. Again at night the queer circumstances repeated themselves and I lay in bed frozen with dread until the break of dawn. Quite clearly the rolls were haunted. Using sheer ingenuity I made some holy water by stirring a hymn roll in a bucket of cold water, then flicked the damp roll at the haunted pile. I slept like a baby that night and awoke to the sun streaming through a chink onto my rosy cheeks, and a damp mattress. I let the blinds flick back and have been demon free for a good fortnight.
There I was sat on the bus listening to the driver whistle “If I Only Had a Brain” from the Wizard of Oz. And I thought to myself : to save the environment I could recycle all my old thoughts instead of expending resources creating new ones. In a metaphorical flash my new pianola “Blogola” was born!
