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Great Disasters
That Shook the World & Marion
Recorded on a Revox A77 by Mick
Sinclair (as Gain-master Mick) and Prince Kermit (as himself), the
7-track independent cassette release on the Cool-Cat-Daddy-O label
called Great Disasters That Shook the World & Marion was based on
the text of a book published circa 1920s by the Dundee-based publishers
D.C. Thomson, better known of course for The Beano.
The book described various
disasters that had indeed shaken the world, be they the Black Death of
the Middle Ages, the Japanese earthquake of 1923, the first Zeppelin
air raid on Britain or an ill-fated attempt to climb Mount Everest. The
tales of death and destruction were conveyed not only with
sensationalist prose but with the imperialist tone common to mass
market British books of the time.
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Prince Kermit recited
selections from the text and Gain-master Mick added accompaniment on a
variety of musical implements, from guitar played in various unorthodox
styles to partially-filled saucepans being tapped with forks to
re-create the sound of ice picks (as on ‘The Mount Everest Expedition
of 1924’).
The song ‘Marion’ was based on
something quite different but seemed strangely to fit.
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Plans were made for a
sequel and recording began with a Teac 3340 increasing the
recording/mixing options. Subsequently recorded were ‘The Death of a
Thousand Slices’, which was released on a third party compilation
cassette that few people can remember the name of, and the as yet
unreleased ‘The Beggar’s Song’.
While the latter track in
particular features greatly enhanced sound quality, the subject matter,
based as it was on the 1920s texts, continued to be a mix of gore and
jingoism that was easily misinterpreted. Consequently, the projected
CD, provisionally titled Crawling Out of a Nightmare, that collected
bit the original 7 tracks plus the two mentioned above, remains on the
shelf for the foreseeable future.
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