Human Beatboxing – Jimmy Castor?

Back in the old days of Radio Lancashire’s “On The Wire” programme (see earlier post), Steve had lots of carts (Wikipedia, Repflug, The Cart Guys) with sound effects, drops, fillers, jingles, theme tunes and other such radio audio paraphernalia.

For years and years through the 80s and 90s they were stored in a large box in the studio with a bit of paper plopped on top of them “On The Wire carts”.  I last worked on the programme regularly in 1999, and before I left I took copies of most of them, which I transferred to minidisc.  At some point after then, I think, the box was lost or whatever, and times change and in this digital age the studios don’t even have physical cart machines of the like of the Sonifex any more (although the ancestry remains in the digital replacement: the computer application often presents a “cart wall”).

Anyway, back to the matter in hand.  Many of the drops were taken off records, and there was one in particular I asked Steve about one time.  It’s a human beatbox thing, that goes on for about 40 seconds.  Now Steve reckoned it was from a Jimmy Castor record, but if it is, I haven’t found it yet.  But at least one other one that we used certainly was: the intro to Bertha Butt Boogie (“Bom bom, bobba-dom, baaaa bom-bom bom, bobba-dom”).  If you listen to some of the other track excerpts on Jimmy Castor’s discography website, you might recognise several others: King Kong, It’s Just Begun, and so on.  Many are listed on the web pages.

But I’m still stuck on identifying my 40 seconds of human beatbox.  A dirty copy of it is here.  “Yam *phh*-*phh*, yam *phh* *phh*; Yam *phh* *phh*, yam *phh* *phh* …)

Denver lyrical

A few days ago I was discussing the odd lyrics to an old 80s Radio One jingle.  While I was poking around on t’Internet (in fact to listen to the JAM Song again), I found reference to the package from which presumably that Radio One jingle originated, which was produced for KIMN Denver.  You can hear it here, the lyrics are:

“Show me a show you can hear at D.U.,
Washington Park and even the zoo;
Show me a show that’s the best show of all,
And I’ll show you the best show in Denver.
The best show in Denver, KIMN!”

As a sidenote, it is always odd to hear old familiar radio jingles with different lyrics for different stations: the nature of the jingle business is (was) that a package gets written for a client (or maybe no client in particular), and then is available to be re-sung for other stations that might want it.

Glasgow lyrical

Who remembers this:

“Send a request we can play on the air,
From Cardiff, Belfast or Glasgow Square;
Ask for a song that’s the best in the world,
And we’ll play it just for you.
The best sound in Britain, Radio One!”

Although who knows what “Glasgow Square” is supposed to be; there is no place of that name.  I suppose they could mean George Square which is in the city centre, but I suspect it was just a case of finding a rhyme.

Of course the other famous mention of Glasgow in a song is from Abba, in Super Trouper:

“I was sick and tired of everything,
When I called you last night from Glasgow;
All I do is eat and sleep and sing,
Wishing every show was the last show.”

Writing in The Telegraph, Neil McCormick appears not to be enamoured with this lyric:

“Has any song used a reference to “Glasgow” less convincingly than Super Trouper, where it is shoe-horned in just to rhyme with “last show”?”