Although all the photos will be orientated the same way (up? round?) they all need to be straightened out. The basic approach is to use the text in an image to find the correct skew and then deskew it. Typically, this is based in OCR, where a page of text full of lines can be easily identified and used to find the angle of each line.
There is a library for Python called Deskew that finds the angle.The rotation is then achieved with a couple of OpenCV functions.
Although the deskew is based on OCR it doesn’t actually return the text. I’ve previously extracted label info quite successfully using Power Automate. I can also use Tesseract in Python.
Once the text is read – however that is achieved – various checks can be done comparing the info I have already created ready for the database. There are front and back sides to match up too. In the end, I can’t rule out errors here, but I hope I can detect mismatches on catalogue/library and matrix numbers and flag up those files which need attention.
I may move this to the end of the process as that will make locating the various areas of the label easier. The plan is to avoid reading the un-needed parts of the label – ‘BBC Sound Effects Centre’, ‘Copyright Record’ and ‘LP 33’ – and also avoid the issues which OCR will have trying to find lines of text.
3 & 6 – floodFill
The bucket tool in Paint 3D has a tolerance setting which I hadn’t paid attention to before now. This would appear to be critical to the success of filling only the label. One issue I had with the Bucket tool was that after using it followed by Magic Select I was struggling to select the background, in order to delete it.
Happily, there is a tool in Python-Pillow with a similar tolerance setting.
Another take on this is that instead of filling the foreground label the background can be filled instead. Here I’ve filled the black background of the vinyl with pure white. the tolerance has to be between 31% and 38%. Too low and the indented serrations show up too much, although that might be irrelevant. Too high and the label is flooded too.
Background fill
This inversion of what I did in the previous post has a distinct advantage over the foreground fill because locating the background requires no thought at all – top-left corner will probably work fine.
4 – Magic Select the label
Magic Select in Paint 3D still seems to be the best way to do this. I do wonder if I’m missing something in Pythonland though. Perhaps with some combo of floodFill and posterizing I can lift the label out without recourse to a Window application. Keeping everything scripted would be easier overall. Perhaps I can get a better contour now?
5 – Crop and Resize.
I found out how to crop the image in the second post, but I wasn’t getting good results with GrabCut or other methods of identifying the circular label. Later I found the boundingRect function which relies on finding contours. I glanced at that that before but lacked a way to extract the main contour. Now, this should be easy.
Although I’ve used GIMP to play around with image processing I would prefer to do everything in Python. Hence this method for posterising the image is what I need.
Rather unexpectedly, Magic Select does not take its foreground image untouched.
Here you can see the original and Magic Selected image overlaid. I’ve moved the cropped label around to try and line it up with the original, but it’s bigger. I’ve aligned it so you can see the difference clearly.
Larger Magic Selected label overlaid on the original.
With a bit of experimentation, I found that the Magic Select version needs to be shrunk to 97.5% to get it back to the original size. This worked on the first and last images of the batch. Now I know that, what good does it do me?
If I make the canvas bigger by x1.0256 (3101.5px) then it will match the new size of the image I don’t need to right-shift it and in fact, the foreground image is located exactly where it was before, just larger. If I overlay it with the original and then shrink it by x0.975 it lines up perfectly. Almost, anyway. I can’t have half pixels!
Separation Anxiety
Meanwhile, I came up with a way to separate the label from the reflective vinyl. It’s currently a rather convoluted route although there may be some way to optimise it.
The problem for Magic Select is that the reflection is too close in colour (white) and location to the label to fully separate. It is possible though to easily change the colour of the label. Because the label always has a slight edge, and also isn’t true white, the Paint 3D fill tool can be used to flood it with another colour. With that done, Magic Select has no trouble separating out the label from the reflections.
Filled label ready for Magic Select
Label after Magic Select
Okay, there remains the problem of how to replace the colour. Instead of solving that problem I used it as advantage. I can fill the white area with white, the red areas with red. Below is the quick version of that and a slow manual retouched version, just for the hell of it, because I wanted to see how it came out. I left a couple of cups on the ‘B’ so you can see it as a work in progress.
Label re-filled with white and red
Re-filled label touched up by hand.
Posterize Paint
No, of course I’m not going to do that for every image, but I don’t have to. Paint 3D is handy for some jobs (Magic Select) and completely lacking in many other features. Swicthing over to GNU Image Manipluation Program (GIMP) I can instead apply a two-level posterize process and, ta-da!
Alright, it’s still not perfect. I hope to improve on that a bit more and the better lighting of the photos should help here too. Nevertheless, I’m very happy with the results here. I hadn’t thought of this before but posterising the image is a great result. Why do I really want a photo of a slightly beige, not quite red label?
The other advantage of doing this is that the image files are a lot fewer bytes. The image above went from 1.7MB to 136KB – well over nintey percent reduction. That’s great for speed of upload, download and presentation as well as taking up less space in the world. I reckon It could mean needing about a half a gigabyte instead of 5+ gigabytes of storage for all the images.
Optional Centre Extra
Nothing is ever that easy though. Those discs pressed with Optional Centres (OC) are, as I’ve noted already, not ideal for this kind of processing. That is especially true when because I used a slip mat underneath in the exact same colours. I can and will fix this in the next photographic session though.
OC disc with fill spilling into open areas.
Mask Cut
Another option is to use the perfected Magic Select process to create a mask. This would be done with OpenCV by making a white shape against a black background. The Magic Select image would need to be reduced in size (see above), but that would be a simple job. Then the mask could be used to cut out the original image perfectly. Although I could do this I’ve decided I prefer the posteized process.
Conclusion
Filling in the main red and white areas of the label with another colour makes the Magic Select tool work much better. Noting the reszing of the selected shape this makes Magic Select a good option again. There will have to be some work done on my Power Automate flow to get this working smoothly and integrate Python scripts and Paint 3D. The OC discs will need better photos too. The end result means a cleaner image, due to the post-fill posterisation process and smaller files.
Frustrated with OpenCV and the imperfections of the processes I was using, I decided to see how things worked out using Paint 3D and Power Automate. This was the result.
First pass at Power Automate of 3D Paint
To summarise, I took an initial batch of photos to test out ways of automatically cropping the label of all my BBC SFX 7″ discs. So far I’ve tried using the OpenCV library run in Python and now Power Automate running Paint 3D in Windows.
Paint 3D has an easy and fast way to crop out foreground images from the background – simply hit the Magic Select button on my photo and the label pops out. The animated gif above shows the result of doing this on forty-two images. It’s not perfect either, but for now just focus on the fact that this was done automatically, hands off, whilst I watched something on TV.
Clearly, if I was only processing 42 images this would be something I would do by hand, but with hundreds and hundreds to get through Power Automate is a way to speed it up and avoid the tedium.
The first thing was to set up a folder with all the photos in and another to save the magically selected ones into. Then in PA, create a variable for the and read out a list of all the files in the folder. This is the basis of a foreach loop where for each file in this files list I’m going to cut the label and save it in a new file. At the start of each iteration of the ‘for’ loop, ‘each’ file is cued up.
I wanted the PA flow to open Paint 3D at the start and this immediately created a problem. Microsoft has taken to hiding the executable of their applications so there wasn’t an obvious way of running P3D from the flow. Eventually, I found a hint to run a Powershell Script like so: start ms-paint: /ForceBootstrapPaint3D.
Obviously.
Recorder
Anyway with P3D running the next bit is to open a canvas which I prepared earlier. This canvas is the same dimensions as the images and its background is transparent. To drive P3D the simplest thing to do is to start the recorder in PA and go through the motions. Each button click is added to flow that can then be inserted into the foreach loop.
The only tricky part is that when you are clicking around in P3D you don’t have access to the variable of the file/folder names. The way I did this was to type some dummy text (literally “text”) into the filename box and stop recording. So, after selecting Insert, the last step in the recorded flow was ‘Populate text field in window’ with the text being “text”. Then it’s a doddle to edit the Action and replace the “text” with the variable of the current file, which is the .FullName part of the variable returned for each file in the folder and includes the full path.
Now when running the flow the recorded actions stopped after the action which inserted the photo image. Starting recording again I selected, well, Magic Select. There are some options here to clean up the selected image but as this is automated I just clocked through Done and Next till the background and foreground are separated. Cutting the foreground to the clipboard, selecting the background and deleting that clears the canvas. Then I paste the foreground image back.
At this point, I ran into a quirk of P3D. When it lifts the foreground out with Magic Select it moves it out of position. It’s only slightly off, but when pasting back it is to the left and over the edge of the canvas. To solve that I hit the right cursor key a few times and PA recorded the Action. Saving the image is the same process as opening except I need a different folder to Save As and make sure .png. is the default format (jpegs don’t store the transparent background). I used the same image name for now. The only thing left is to delete the image so that there is a black canvas left for the next image to start with.
Results
Here’s a video showing a single iteration of the foreach loop.
It wasn’t quite all as easy as I’d hoped. My initial attempts failed for a few reasons. I was trying to open and close P3D in each iteration of the foreach loop and that was simply unnecessary. Initially, I didn’t get the canvas and file opening to the saving process right either. Inserting the image onto the already open canvas worked best and took fewer steps overall. I ran into issues because the timing when all this opening and closing of things was going on was wasteful but more importantly fallible. I was finding that running once or twice worked and then the third would miss something. Rerunning it failed on the first cycle. There’s no particular logic to this and I mostly fixed it by trial and error and avoiding loading time as much as possible.
The results can be seen at the top of the post, but here’s two image, before and after for example
Before
After
Problems
Let’s list the problems:
Magic Select is not always a clean crop with the indented serrations and thin line of vinyl reflections being picked up.
The additional size of the cropped labels offsets the images
The larger and offset images sometimes overlap the edges of the canvas.
The spindle is sometimes removed, but not always.
Note that the rotational alignment is something I will fix in another way, probably using OCR to detect what the correction should be.
Conclusion
Overall this was better than the OpenCV approach, but not by a lot. It might be easier overall to program PA though. The real issue is still the lighting on the vinyl being detected as part of the label. Can I eliminate that?
As I explained in the last post, I’m trying to cut out a perfect outline around the label in the photographs I’ve taken. My first experiment with GrabCut was underwhelming though. The problem is that the interlocking serrations (of yes! that’s what they are called.*) were being left in.
As I expected, GrabCut to was not an immediate success. You need a background that has a lot in common and a foreground which is distinct from that. I used this tutorial but hit a snag quite fast. I began by using the bounding box method.
The first image I used to test this was the slightly doctored photo with a larger black border added prepared for the unsuccessful circle method. That meant I could reuse the code for finding the circle around the label to define the bounding box (rect) that would tell GrabCut where the foreground image is. There was a problem with this though. Here’s the probable foreground and probable background inside the bounding box.
Probable foreground (white)
Probable background (white)
The problem seems to be that the extra border I added doesn’t match the vinyl around the label. The bottom right corner is closest to being correct but even there the interlocking serrations (love that name!) are still being identified as the foreground image. This is nothing like as good as the Windows Paint 3D result from the same image though. That was a cinch, so what is going wrong?
For the first test, I only passed through one iteration. Multiplying to 15 iterations is an improvement, but the time started to drag out to a minute or more and the results were not nearly close enough to suggest that a few more goes around would be enough.
Probable foreground – 15 iterations
Probable background – 15 iterations
Masked Hero?
There is another way to use GrabCut. You can pass the mask into the algorithm, and take some of the guesswork out of the shape it’s looking for. I have already found a circle which is very nearly the right size, so maybe if I can use that as the mask GrabCut will fix the rest?
Well, that worked very well. But, that isn’t too surprising. I had removed some of the worst felctiosna from around the label already.
Mask made from Hough circle
Grabcut using circle mask
I also had to increase the iterations to get a better result because the text was being mangled and the letter’s bowls filled with black. It settled out out x4 iterations. And I didn’t quite get there. You can see the problems in this Probable Background mask created by GrabCut. The green circle is the Hough circle and inside that the white areas are identified as back ground. It’s good that a lot of the outer reflections are found, but it’s not perfect.
Probable Background
In fact this is no better and actually worse than just using a bitwise mask. Worse because it’s slow and misidentifies the letter shapes as background. What I was hoping for was that the algorithm would detect the real edge of the circular label, but that was a misunderstanding. The images below show the best result I managed so far with an an original, undoctored, image plus border – four iterations of the alogorithm. Note the faint serrations still visible.
Original image with an added border to aid circle detection.
GrabCut processed image with a border based on Hough circle dimensions
To recap, I had to doctor the image a fair bit from the original photo to get a good result. The main issue was finding the circle – impossible without enough border around it. Then I manually cleaned up a line of reflection between the serrations and the label. This was essential to GrabCut working well. Even with the circle mask the extra noise from those reflections are a problem. Those two issues are not solved in my Python script although adding border will be easy. The only good news is that the serrations can be removed as long as the overall reflections are limited
Conclusions
What I was really trying to do failed. GrabCut is good, but the background is not distinct enough for automatic cut of the foreground and even with a mask there are issues. The real problems stem from the photograph, but can’t I magically deal with them somehow?
In the first part of this blog series, I described how I had photographed a small batch of BBC sound effects singles to test the photographic process. Noting some issues with lighting I will return to that later. Since the photographs were taken I decided to make a start on the processing of the images.
I’ve chosen to use Python scripts to automate the processing of my sound effects discs photos. I’m not going to go into why I chose Python, or what Python is here though. All I will say is that I’m running Windows 11 and I’m using the Microsoft Visual Studio application as the coding environment.
Computer Vision
The other thing I decided some time ago was to use OpenCV, which is an Open Source Computer Vision Library. You can read about it here. The purpose of OpenCV is to provide means to interpret images on a computer. For my project, I need to do two main operations on the photos and do them automatically and in bulk.
Manipulate the image data
Extract data from the image
By manipulating the image data, I mean editing the image in some way. This will mainly involve cropping the image so that only the label is retained and all images are the same shape – which should be a square or circle. It will also require some rotation to make the image straight, but that may be done as a consequence of the second operation. Extracting data from the image primarily means reading the text on the label.
I should note at this stage that whiles the first operation may be applicable to most record labels, the second will be specific to the BBC Sound Effects Singles. Whilst the methods of identifying the label on a record may be largely universal, for round labels on a vinyl colour which is different to the label, finding and correctly interpreting the text will vary. Even amongst the BBC SFX discs, I will probably have to handle some variations.
Crop Circles
I’ve started with the first operation – manipulation of the image data, particularly to crop. For a human, identifying the edges of a circle is relatively easy. Setting the markers on a graphics application to those edges and selecting a crop tool is also easy, although the exact placement on the precise edge of that circle is not something you could guarantee to get right every time. Using a Python script and OpenCV along with some other handy image libraries, I have tried to automatically crop the label from the surrounding image.
There are two main methods of cropping a circle from its’ background. You can find the circle around the circle or you can identify the circle as some kind of arbitrary shape outline against a background. I started with the first method but found that it did not work in a satisfying way. To do this I used the OpenCV HoughCircle function.
Houghing and puffing
My first attempts to outline the label in the image were complete failures. Initially, the Hough function returned far too many circles and none of them for label outline. Then it found one, but that was a circle in completely the wrong place. The lighting issues were a concern and parts of the inner groove (dead wax) were reflected as glare and so I manually removed these to see if it was improved. It was not and the same problems persisted. I solved these gross errors in two ways. The advice I found was to blur the image. This removes noise and prevents some of the incorrect circles. I also realised that if there is only a small amount of border around the label then it would not ‘see’ that as a circle inside the border. The circle was effectively part of the background. As I’d positioned and zoomed the camera to capture mostly the label I manually added a larger border (in black, to match the vinyl) around the image. Using both of these optimisations I was finally able to obtain a circle which circumscribed the label only.
Unsuccessful Hough
Successful Hough
With the circle defined, the coordinates of the centre of the circle, (x,y) and its radius (r) can be used to crop a square – or should I say rectangle – around the label.
Good crop – but…
Imperfect Circle
This highlighted a problem I should have expected. The photo of the label had not captured it as a perfect circle. The top half of the label was almost perfectly outlined but the bottom half was skirted, with a gap between the circle and the label. Ultimately this must come down to the photograph and the precision of the camera alignment. I had done a reasonably good job of getting the camera perpendicular to the label surface yet it was evidently not good enough. Unless the label itself is not perfectly round… although I can probably rule that out. This leaves me with a few options. Either, aim for better alignment of the camera (but how?), correct the image so that it compensates for the (slight) error in the camera angle (again, how?), or accept the error and grab the imperfect circle shape by some other means (I have an idea how). Perhaps two here could be combined.
Making the camera position perfect may not be impossible, but to what degree was it out and how can I be sure when I’ve got it to sit perfectly? Once I’ve set it up I would have to test it and then adjust if wrong. That could be tedious and I might also find it never really sits in a position which is perfect for all labels (allowing for slight differences in how well they sit flat, for example).
Correcting the image is a possibility. I just don’t know how easy that is to do. It would require the algorithm to know when the image was correct though. and that could only be done once the label edge was perfectly detected. It seems that this might be easier done once the existing label edge has been found.
Working some magic
Edge detection is easy in OpenCV with Canny, but that still needs the label to be the only shape on the image. Any other reflection will be edged as well. What I really need is to grab the label part of the image only – something like the Magic Select too on Windows Paint 3D. I have used that and it works perfectly to extract the label. Automating that might also be possible with Power Tools, but I think it might be clunky and I want to try scripting this first.
Using Magic Select in Windows Paint 3D to crop the label auto-magically
The function I need, which will pull out the label and leave anything else, is called GrabCut. The fancy term is Interactive Foreground Extraction. To be clear, this will cut out the label from my photo images in whatever shape that label is. To do this it requires a border in which the shape to be cut is found. As I already have a circle around the label I can probably use that. Only probably though, because I’m worried that on some images the circle will be smaller than the label, not larger. This will need more experimentation.
Once the circular shape has been cut I can then think about correcting it to make a perfect circle. This might be as simple as resizing the image to be a square or I might play around with tilting it.
Conclusion
I have been able to successfully automate the finding of a circle on an image of a label and use that to crop the image. This required some manual removal of glare from the vinyl which I hope to address in the photography. The circle did not completely match the label edge and I suspect I will never be able to capture perfect circles in my label photos. Therefore, I will attempt a different approach to crop the label from the background which is to use an algorithm called GrabCut. Additionally, I will need to investigate if there’s a way to correct the imperfect circle.
This post is arriving out of the blue really. I should have started this a year ago and worked up to this point. Instead, I decided that I’d made a significant step forward now and this was the time to start writing about the nuts and bolts (some of which are not metaphorical) of this project.
The project is to add sound effects records to the website. To date, I’ve added records, cassettes and CDs mainly available to the general record-buying public. I was aware of sound effects discs that were not for sale in the shops though. I even bought a few on eBay. The impetus to really make the effort to add them to the site came from the donation to end all donations (not actually, please feel free to donate) of a set of BBC Sound Effects 7″ singles.
The SFX donation
Skipping past the stage where I sorted out the duplicates; skating over my efforts to establish the complete list of all the 7″ SFX discs and tip-toeing around the 78s and CDs that form the more complete SFX library, I am now moving into the stage where I photograph all the discs I own. This will form the basis of a new discography.
Records, sorted
The first thing I did was have a really good think about how to take the photos for 1584 7″ discs. Scanning was rejected early on for being a) too slow and b) poorly focussed. Yes, focussing is an issue when scanning record labels because they are not flat objects and the scan head is not the correct distance from parts of the label. In particular, the outer parts where the interesting text is. I use a DSLR for photographing LP sleeves but that is something I may give up on because it’s quite the faff. For, much smaller 7″ single labels I decided to go with my iPhone camera. The quality is a lot better now than when I first started using the DSLR.
iPhone photograph
Scanned image – note the blurred text
The next problem was how best to position the camera. What I’ve learned from LP photography was that you need to point the lens perpendicular to the surface as accurately as possible. I would need a stand for the iPhone to hold it in place with some degree of adjustment to get this perpendicularity as good as possible. So, I bought a fairly cheap copy stand via eBay
CS 320 Small Copy Stand with smartphone holder
My next concern was about the positioning of the records during photography. For the LPs, I use a base under the camera tripod which holds the sleeve against an edge at just the right height not to create shadows. This works okay. It’s supposed to make it easier to crop the edges but every sleeve is slightly different I have always had to manually edit each photograph to get it right. For the singles, I wanted something better and with the spindle hole right there I decide to use that to centre every disc in the same position. I knew some rotation would be required afterwards, as well as cropping, so anything that makes the image more ready for this processing is time well spent. I bought a second-hand spindle off eBay and drilled a position where I could locate the camera easily.
The other idea I had was to get a slip mat to go under the disc to protect it. For this, I realised it was quite cheap to get one made with a bespoke design. One Inkscape session and another eBay order later I had this.
Bespoke slip mat
The last addition to the copy stand looks like a bodge but was always in my thinking. The problem with handling hundreds of records is that you want to do it as fast as possible. You may know that picking a 7″ record up from a 12″ turntable platter can be slightly awkward if the disc sits too flat on the mat. You have to get your fingers and fingernails into the right shape to prise them off. Doing that a few thousand times will get annoying. I concluded that the surface under the mat should be a little smaller than the disc. As the mat is flexible pulling the discs away should be much easier this way. Also, my spindle was a little longer than required so I needed this plinth to be just the right size. I was able to find an offcut in my garage quite easily and this is the result.
Plinth
Mat on plinth
With the stand, plinth and mat ready I decided to try a small batch of records and see how well it worked. I immediately hit lighting problems as the stand was casting a shadow. I quickly rotated the stand and added an LED photography light, then ran through the batch of discs.
Lighting on and time to run through and see how it works. (Sound effect added) pic.twitter.com/kK6mkC8MPW
The test worked well in terms of speed and accuracy but the lighting was the biggest failure.
Setting the camera to be centred above the spindle and sitting parallel to the surface went okay. I used the alignment of cross-hairs on the camera app as a guide, but that assumes the table is also plumb. I might see what else I can do about that.
Handling the discs was okay. Taking each one out of its sleeve as I went was fine but would be easier with two helpers. At least placing and removing them was easy and I don’t need to rethink the stand, plinth & mat – at least, not entirely.
Lighting was the most significant issue and needs more work. I only had one light, quite close and angled down. Initially, this was bleaching out the colour of the label so I rotated the disc and it seemed better. It did mean that all the photos were upside down though and I need to think about whether that is a bother or not. Two issues remained.
Some of the labels are slightly more reflective and the text was lost in the glare.
And. as I found later the reflection for the vinyl around the label is going to be an issue for the automatic detection and cropping of the label.
The final problem was something I only noticed much later. Some of the discs have centre push-outs, not solid labels. The cut-outs then show whatever is underneath. That means my lovely slip mat is visible and I’m not happy with that result.
Cut-out seeing-through to slip mat and reflection bleaching out text.
In conclusion, the lighting and the mat need work. That didn’t stop me trying out the Python OpenCV library to automatically crop the images. But that’s another post.
From time to time the BBC Sound Effects Centre (SEC) would commission sound effects for their ever-growing catalogue from their colleagues, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (RWS). In most cases, these were sounds it was not possible to capture in or outside a studio. The weather was a prime target. Being naturally unreliable, planning a recording session would be impossible.
Uncreditted – Were Credits Due?
The RWS were not credited as such for their contributions though, with the exception of ‘Radiophonic Stomach’, which was Bloodnok’s stomach anyway (and even this was more of a gastro-intestinal thing, as I understand it). No effects from any source were actually credited as it was recognised that there was no authorship to a sound recording. This limitation extended to sounds created artificially, although exceptions such as the aforementioned stomach existed. And, it must be said, the copyright of the recording was and remains with the BBC. Although their effects are free for amateur use, any commercial use requires licensing.
Cross Referencing
How then, am I to track down these radiophonic sound effects? Firstly, the RWS tape archive holds many of the answers. They kept their own collection of tapes and a list of them has been available on Ray White’s site for many years. https://whitefiles.org/rwx/rwslib.pdf. I’ve referred to it throughout this review it is an invaluable resource. This file lists many tapes as being made for the SEC. It does not however list the SEC disc number. For that, I need to look in my copy of the 1985 BBC SEC Sound Effects Catalogue, with some cross-referencing with the list of effects for sale from the BBC by Pro Sound Effects (PSE). I can also reference these to the BBC Rewind Sound Effects site, so that you can hear them via that site too.
Special Sound, Specially Created
One kind of clue that an effect was created at the RWS is that the SEC catalogue adds the note “specially created”, in paratheses, to some effects. This is not a guarantee of RWS involvement, however. Effects were created especially for all sorts of programmes (although a lot came from The Goon Show). This designation is seemingly applied to sounds which were generated by some artificial means, rather than recorded solely by sticking a microphone near something real.
Sounds Electronic
Another clue that there might be a Radiophonic provenance to an effect is simply that the sound is electronic. Effects in the Electronic Sounds category of the SEC catalogue can either be a field recording of an electronic device – for example, the hum of a refrigerator – or, ‘specially created’. The special sounds (oh yes) can be further split into three categories: entirely invented for a fantastical or fictional object, such as “Plasma Gun”; simulated, such as weather effects (as we’ll see below); or some that could be either real or as close to real as makes no difference. An example of this type might be bleeps meant to sound like a computer. That computers rarely really made these sounds (there’s a whole essay in this) or that the precise way the sound was synthesized was not how it would happen in a computer (another, shorter but more boring essay) is not important. In these cases, it depends on what you want the sound effect to represent. If it’s to represent a sine wave generator then the selection of sine waves on EC 192J is practically a field recording (unless the speaker it’s coming from and the room it is played in matters a lot). If it’s some other reason you need a sine wave, then the effect is being used artificially.
All of that is to say that if you wanted a sound that was created in a lab it might be because you have a lab to represent or because you wanted something that could not be recorded in the field. And, of course, the electronic sound laboratory that was the RWS was the clear choice when looking for synthetic sounds.
Nothing Special
As noted elsewhere in this blog, the RWS was gradually becoming obsolete as a source of electronic sounds throughout the 70s and 80s. If the RWS tape archive list is to be believed then the last effect provided to the SEC was in 1973. After that, it is probable that such synthesized sound effects could be obtained from other places or by other BBC studio engineers and managers with the necessary gear. There’s a strong example of this below. It’s also possible that the RWS was just too busy to be bothered with the SEC after a certain point. Equally, the SEC may have grabbed effects from existing RWS tapes. This might be the case as there is a tape in the archive simply called ‘effects’. This was a stock of useful sounds compiled together for easy access. There’s every reason to suppose that the SEC would have filched this stock selection and made use of them. I also suspect that as the RWS staff got their copyright act together and because they were being paid for their effects on BBC Records LPs and cassettes they were less keen on giving things away to the SEC for free.
Category Error
Finally, there are a couple of RWS archive tapes which state that they are for the SEC, but which defy easy categorization. As you’ll see, these are not therefore possible to locate as SEC effects discs. Yet!
Effective Dates
I’ve listed the effects below in TRW (Tape Radiophonic Workshop) number order, which is broadly chronological. These can correlate with the broadcasts they were created for, although some seem to have been compiled later for the SEC. Discs were created by the SEC on a different schedule altogether. Dates given for aneffects’ creation need not match when the discs were put into the catalogue. Precise dates for that are not available either. There is a table at the end where I list all the discs covered there in the order they were made, using the matrix numbers. as the index.
Radiophonic Workshop Archive Tapes
Bayeux Tapestry Effects – Delia Derbyshire
First up is a tape (TRW No. 6557) of effects culled from the radio programme A Bayeux Tapestry (TRW No. 6442). That programme tape number includes five reels of effects along with more for speech and the master.
The programme was a tapestry of sound woven together by Delia Derbyshire for producers George Macbeth and someone who would go on to become a long-term Workshop collaborator, Micahel Mason. Their goal was a kind of “total radio” and Derbyshire’s input was essential to not only edit all of the sounds together but also apply ‘treatments’ to voices and create special effects. In particular, a representation of Halley’s Comet was called for. The programme tape was logged in February 1966 and then the effects tape later that year in September – labelled as “For Sound Effects Centre”. The broadcast followed on 13th October 1966.
The Comet Isn’t Coming
The most intriguing part of this tape, from what has been written – and no recording of the programme is in the public domain – is the mention of the comet effect. As they said in the Radio Times, the RWS “enabled…the Comet of 1066 to emit its eerie ‘radio-signal.'”. This “electronic image”, as Mason later called it, is something worth looking for I reckon.
Unsurprisingly, there is no “comet”, Halley’s or otherwise, listed in the SEC catalogue. There are various types of radio signals, but nothing “specially created”. If this cue made it to the SEC it’s well hidden.
1966 And Not All That
Digging through the SEC catalogue for 1966, there is only one disc which flags up an immediate connection with the Bayeux Tapestry. EC 82C. The effects listed below are all dated November 1966.
The dates match. Both historical period and Effects recordings. The subject matter is exactly what you’d expect too. This must be from A Bayeux Tapestry.
EC 82C (front) Period Battle (11th century)
EC 82C (back) Period Battle (11th century)
There seems little doubt that this disc is the work of Delia Derbyshire. It’s just, not the most innovative or interesting example of RWS special sound. There might be more, and more exciting, excerpts from this programme scattered around the SEC catalogue, but for now, this is all that is, more or less, confirmed.
If nothing else, it shows that sometimes the greats of the golden age of the RWS were not creating gold, but getting on with some more workaday sound editing.
One final point is that there’s nothing electronically generated about these sounds. There’s tape manipulation, and you can hear the loops, but the sounds are bread-and-butter foley work. The skill here seems to be multiplying one or two men into two whole armies. Using loops of different lengths and perhaps three tape machines
Sea Effects – David Cain
This tape (TRW No. 6688) was created for Harry Morriss (Organiser, Sound Effects) by David Cain in 1967. To be precise it was logged on 1st July 1967.
Looking for this effect in the SEC catalogue initially came up with nothing in ‘Sea’ or ‘Electronic Sounds: Sea’ categories. Looking a little further though led to ‘Electronic Sounds: White Noise’. Here I found two whole discs of sea effects. EC 129A and EC 129B. All effects are dated August 1967. Good enough!
So, we have a pair of verified David Cain records here. Let’s continue with the search!
Thunder – Dick Mills
Also in July 1967 for the Sound Effects Centre’s Harry Morriss (Organiser, Sound Effects) Dick Mills was making heavy weather. This tape (TRW No. 6701) is also dated 1st July.
It might seem like David and Dick we’re getting some easy summer jobs done, but as Cain was also turning in his Radio Sheffield jingle at the same time (“master cutler stuff”), amongst a number of other productions, that is nowhere near the truth. Perhaps a better understanding comes from the fact that Cain started at the workshop in late 1966 and one of his earliest projects was ‘Outlook: The Unconquered Ocean’ (TRW 6573) around November 1966. More accurately this tape is credited to Cain and Mills.
It appears that most likely Dick was dubbing off effects they had already produced. And doesn’t that seem more likely? Looking for likely sources of thunder effects in the tapes, there are more than a few possibilities from his own projects in 1967 alone, including TRW 6660 ‘Black Cloud’ for External Services (Chinese).
In any case, the effects were destined for SEC disc EC 19E. The list below is in the order that they appeared on sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk
These were easily located under ‘Weather: Thunder & Rain’ in the SEC catalogue.
EC 19E (front) Thunder
EC 19E (back) Thunder
Lightning – Dick Mills
You can’t have thunder without lightning. Described as “Lightning for Sound Effects Centre” for Harry Morriss (Organiser, Sound Effects) this RWS tape (TRW No. 6951) is dated October 1968.
Looking up Lightning in the 1985 SEC Effects catalogue (See Weather: Lightning) I find EC 66F (front), five different 3-second cues called “Simulated Lightning – 1970”. These could be the ones. Even though the dates don’t match up exactly they are close at least.
EC 66F (front) Electrical Radiation
The fives effects are simply numbered 1-5 and can be heard here:
These effects are also listed twice more under the Electronic Sounds category as Lightning and Radiation. This may be a mistake as lightning is actually an electrical discharge, but I’m not here to get into such pedantry.
Under the Electronic Sounds: Radiation section and on the back side, there are listed four cues comprising a Geiger counter, amplifier crackles (from the counter or interference is not clear), “radio interference (radiation)” and a “Wimhurst machine”. The latter is a type of lab equipment used for creating electrostatic and thus sparks. More discharge, not radiation (sorry).
EC 66F (back) Electrical Radiation
This radiation stuff appears to be sound recordings and all are dated Feb 1970, apart from the Geiger counter. Other EC 66 category effects are of a similar ‘radiation’ type.
Note. These lightning effects are not on the PSE site and are therefore not available to buy.
Wind – Dick Mills
Having shocked the SEC with his lighting the previous month, Dick Mills was back with his ‘Wind for Sound Effects Centre’ at the request of Harry Morris. November 1968 is the date given by the RWS tape archive (TRW No. 6963), but there is another mismatch with the SEC catalogue.
Under the category of ‘Electronic Sounds: White Noise’ are five effects sets listed. Two discs of “sea effects” from 1967 (see above), and three sets of “simulated wind” dated December 1969. That’s a year later than the RWS tape, but even if we don’t think this is a typo, it’s still got to be the same thing, hasn’t it?
Assuming that this is what we’re looking for, there are three discs full of Dick’s finest gusts of air. These are EC 129 D, E and F. The effects are listed as “White noise filtered to simulate wind at constant pitch” and numbered 1-12 with increasing pitches.
‘Tones for Sound Effects Centre’ was recorded for the insatiable Harry Morriss (Organiser, Sound Effects) by Dick Mills in November 1971. This tape (TRW No. 7506) must be disc EC 192J which dates its content to December 1971. ‘Electronic Sounds: Sine Wave Tones’ comprises “Ten separate bands of sine wave tones at various frequencies”
Perhaps the similar: ‘Electronic Sounds: Warble Frequencies’ on EC 192G are also from the RWS (see below). Dated May 1970, they don’t match with the ‘wobble tone’ tape (TRW No. 6023) which is dated 1963 and has no ‘composer’. Wobble would be a reference to the Wobbulator.
Not On Disc?
This section covers tapes in the RWS archive which are labelled as being for the SEC yet have no obvious disc in that catalogue. Perhaps they will be found one day.
Square Wave – Signal Generator
As you can’t actually compose a square wave there is, unsurprisingly, no composer listed for this tape. If the SEC asked for such a waveform all you had to do was turn on a signal generator, select a square wave output and record it. On the other hand, there is no square wave listed in any of the SEC catalogues. Sine waves? Yes, as we’ve seen. Warbles, hums, and just plain monotony are all covered, but if you look up ‘square wave’? Nothing. So, this tape (TRW No. 6309) listed as ‘Square Wave for Sound Effects Centre (Central Programme Operations) was recorded in May 1965, but after that, well, it’s a mystery. Market and other town and city squares are, by contrast, available in cosmopolitan abundance.
1965 is early for the SEC catalogue though. It was around this time that the switch from 12” 78 RPM to 7” 33 RPM discs was beginning. This is one effect which might be found on a 78 only, predating the SEC catalogue.
Seawash – Brian Hodgson
This tape (TRW No. 7234) is recorded in that fancy new stereo sound they have nowadays. “Stereo Seawash for Sound Effects” again for Harry Morriss (Organiser, Sound Effects). It was logged into the tape library in August 1970.
There are lots of sea sounds, in mono and stereo in the catalogue, but nothing “specially created”. Perhaps something was converted to stereo, but there’s again nothing suggested in the catalogue.
Ice Cream Jingles – Dick Mills
Here’s another one that doesn’t leap out from the SEC catalogue. Ice Cream Jingles ought to be easy to find and this tape (TRW No. 7483) was created for our old friend Harry Morris in October 1971.
Vans: Austin, Bedford and Ford are covered in great detail, but nothing playing a tune.
Turning to ‘Ice’ I find a note in the catalogue under ‘Ice cream van chimes’. It advises to “see YA section of the Sound Archives catalogue”. What the Cornetto could that mean? There are no discs listed here, but presumably, the BBC Sound Archives held (or hold) one of these chimes. Either created by Dick or perhaps just compiled from field recordings – it’s unclear – this one will require a more determined investigation.
The Sound Archives had a lot of overlap with the SEC as they both were in the business of capturing the sounds of the era. The real mystery, perhaps, is what the “YA section” is. Is that a code or an acronym?
Police Car Sound – Dick Mills
It had been a while, but in May 1973 Dick Mills logged a tape (TRW No. 7790) which was labelled ‘For sound effects dept.’ The effect is called “Police Car Sound” and was realised for Norman Bain. Pre-RWS, Bain was the collaborator of founders Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe, but there’s no information on his work for the SEC or any sound effects department these fifteen years later.
There’s no sound in the many police car effects of the SEC catalogue which matches this description. Nothing was ‘specially created’. I can only suppose that a very specific sound was called for and Bain called Desmond Briscoe and asked for a favour.
(Mostly) Not Radiophonic
As we’re looking at SEC discs I want to address some that appear to be, or in some cases partially are, RWS-related. Currently in my investigations, that means either comedy effects or a set of stereo electronic effects.
Comedy Effects- EC 7A-M
Back to mono for the EC 7 series. These are dated 1967 through to 1972 but in many cases are much older. They are all described as “specially created”.
One entry in this large selection is 100% certainly a Radiophonic effect. On 7K we find Radiophonic Stomach. Described in the catalogue as a “sequence of sounds including explosion, whoosh, bubbling and belch. (Specially created effect). This is the famous Major Bloodnock’s Stomach, created for The Goon Show in 1959 by Dick Mills and Jimmy Burnett.
Elsewhere it’s possible to trace the effects back to the original 78RPM 12″ effects library discs. I know of at least two discs titled ‘Effects For “The Goon Show”‘. The sounds on these are all traceable to the SEC catalogue and 7” discs. As the Goons wrapped up in 1960 (thanks in part to the reluctance of the RWS’s Organiser Desmond Briscoe to support it with effects) these 12″s probably come from no later than the early sixties.
19 G 22 (front) Effects For “The Goon Show”
The enduring mystery is: how many effects did the RWS create for The Goon Show? This mystery and the story of the RWS on 12″ 78s is for another time, one where I can get to that kind of info.
Electronic Sounds – ECS 5Es
Back into the stereo era now with a selection from the Electronic Sounds category. ECS 5E discs run 1-9 with a plethora of effects created from 1980 to 1985. Most of these are “specially created” and could at first sight and hearing all be from the RWS. Not so!
Electronic Sounds – ECS 5E1-5 – 1980
You’d be forgiven for assuming this selection was the work of the RWS. Laser guns, hums, pulsations, automatic doors, bleeps and all manner of computer-y business. This lot has to have come from some science fiction show or shows that passed through the doors of Maida Vale, surely! Before I reveal the facts, let’s just work this through.
Moving just past the dates for these effects there is BBC Sound Effects no.26 – Sci-Fi Sound Effects (REC 420,1981). This compilation from William Grierson contains effects from Doctor Who, Blake’s7, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, all RWS, and Earthsearch. The latter is a lesser-known Radio 4 serial first broadcast in early 1981 whose effects are credited to Lloyd Silverthorne. Silverthorne was at the RWS in the early seventies but by this time he was operating as a kind of in-house Radiophonic Workshop for BBC Radio. He’s often credited with ‘Technical Presentation”, which is fancy way of describing specially created sound effects. Given how busy the RWS was in 1980 with the other three shows it’s not surprising that such a glut of sci-fi shows hitting the airwaves at the time meant that they couldn’t squeeze in another show.
And it’s this production which provides some documentary evidence of the provenance of these SEC discs. In the BBC Enterprises file held on the ‘Sci-Fi Sound Effects’ (REC 420, 1981) LP, a correspondence between Grierson and Lloyd Silverthorne confirms that the Earthsearch effects selected were “in library”. Grierson sends a list to Silverthorne suggesting the effects he wants to use for the LP with references to the effects from the ECS 5E discs 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
That’s not quite the whole story. More effects are used than he proposed, but this is the story of the SEC discs, not the Sci-Fi Sound Effects LP. The point is that the Earthsearch part of the LP was based on entirely these discs.
ECS 5E2 (front) Electronic Sounds
ECS 5E2 (back) Electronic Sounds
This was initiated in March 1981, so BBC Records and indeed the SEC were very quick off the mark. The broadcasting of the first series of Earth Search had only just finished in February. The effects seem to have been cut to the discs and distributed before the show had even been heard to the end.
This may have been almost too hasty. The show was pushed out late at night and may have done slightly better than expected. It was later repeated in the daytime after a favourable listener response. The SEC would want generic effects and nothing too recognisable so they may have chosen this series with that in mind. Especially compared to the RWS shows which were hugely popular. Inclusion on the BBC Records LP may have further watered down the exclusivity of the sounds on their premium catalogue, not that it seemed to prevent them.
As the Sci-Fi Sound Effects LP sold very well and was reissued on CD a couple of times it’s not hard to compare with the sounds on BBC Rewind and confirm for yourselves what I found in the BBC files.
Electronic Sounds – ECS 5E6-8 – 1982
Looking at this selection and the date, 1982, it seems likely that these effects came from Earthsearch series 2. That said. There are some field recordings on 5E8. A Pelican crossing and a mono recording of a Space Invaders game.
In the present day Discogs user Etron81 removes any further doubt stating confidently that:
Track A1 here is the opening theme of the second season of “Earthsearch”.
These effects were not later released by BBC Records, and so they enjoy a more exclusive presence on these SEC discs.
Electronic Sounds – ECS 5E9 – 1985
The final Electronic Sounds disc in the 5E series is number 9. Dated 1985 it doesn’t make it into the catalogue for that year. These effects are recordings of the ‘Apricot portable microcomputer (1985 model.)’ There’s no need for this to come from the RWS and no evidence that it does.
The BBC Record’s final sound effects LP was no.29, ‘Hi-Tech FX’ (REC 531, 1984). That includes plentiful effects of a similar nature. As that was released in 1984, and we know the migration for effects is from SEC to BBC Records and not the other way, we can discount that as a source.
Speculation Section
And so we come to the realm of conjecture.
Army Movements – EC 129C
Joining the gap between EC 129 A & B (sea effects) and 129 D, E & F (simulated wind) EC 129C is listed in the SEC catalogue under ‘Army Movements’
Both specially created sounds in the same disc number set as two pretty much confirmed RWS effects and dated September 1967? Could they be RWS too?
It might just be that these come from ‘It Was a Solid Killing Match’ (TRW No. 6718) for Ray Colley and N. Matthews, recorded September 1967. That would mean it’s by Delia Derbyshire. The tape is missing from the BBC archive. Clips of IWASKM are available here though: https://wikidelia.net/wiki/It_was_a_Solid_Killing_Match
Electronic Monotony
EC 66D (front) Radio & Electronic Sounds
EC 66D (back) Electronic Monotony
EC 66D starts with a field recording – if bouncing radar off the moon is your field. The next three tracks are titled ‘Electronic Monotony’ and are over three minutes each.
At the time of writing the BBC Sound Effects website has these sounds in a bit of a muddle, with seven in all (meaning duplicates) and the moon radar one is mislabeled with another effect. If they fix this later, the links below might break
It’s always nice to find one of these effects in use. The monotony on the front side of 66F will be familiar to fans of Crime Files from the Bob Mortimer & Andy Dawson podcast Athletico Mince. You can check it out here: https://youtu.be/TnmH9JsfZJU (NSFW!)
In terms of speculation, and where these sounds might have come from, there are many possibilities in the tape library for late 1968. There’s something about the obvious use of tape feedback in these effects that suggest Brian Hodgson’s work to me. Listen to his work on Doctor Who: The Krotons (SILLP1371) for similar background sounds.
On the other hand, you can’t rule Dick Mills out of this and he had been busy with SEC tapes in the same period.
Warble Frequency Notes
EC 192G (front) Warble Frequency Notes
Two discs of electronic tones, EC 129G & 192H, but are they Rafiophonic? Similar to the Sine Wave Tones (EC 192J) these are arranged as a list of frequencies, albeit approximately. There are two variations of each frequency and that the ‘warbling’ refers to modulations added to the base (or carrier) tones. These tones are actually called ‘notes’, indicating musical tuning. 192G certainly are close, with 440Hz being spot on.
They are not static either. There are subtle tweaks occurring that alter the modulations/warbling.
Unlike many of the other SEC 7″ discs, which appear on the BBC Rewind Sound Effects and Pro Sound Effects sites, these ones are not referenced in the PSE spreadsheet. Instead, the effects appear on a curious set of CDs which are simply numbered ‘CD55nnn’I have yet to see any physical evidence of these and suspect they were from the BBC Archive, not those sold by BBC Enterprises. Another story…
Moreover, these effects are named with the prefix ‘BBC Historical’. This implies the recordings date back to the 78s era, although it might just mean they weren’t available on CD. Also, many the SEC effects are listed as “from 78 r.p.m. disc”, but not these.
Coming at this from another angle, if these were culled from 78s it doesn’t explain why the SWC catalogue dates them as May 1970. It would perhaps exclude them from the differently-dated ‘tones’ tape I tracked down, though (see above).
The fact that they come as pairs is interesting, I think. That might mean they were stereo, or intended as such, and could be recombined from the two mono tracks. Or, does it provide some other clue?
In the end I can’t link these warbles to the RWS yet. Time may reveal all though.
Table of RWS SEC Discs
This table is ordered by the SEC 7″ disc matrix numbers (f, front/ back, b). I’ve excluded the definitely non-Radiophonic discs and tapes I couldn’t tie to a disc.
Tim Worthington is a writer and podcaster responsible for a wide-ranging contribution to our appreciation of pop culture. A part of the “shadowy cabal” behind TV Cream he did much to bring an accessible and amusing overview of the lost world of British television to droves of early web users eager to see if anyone else remembered that kids’ show made of cotton reels, or if they had hallucinated Mollie Sugden in space. He has written books on radio comedy, Creation Records’ four key albums of 1991 and discography of BBC Record’s singles called Top Of The Box. A prolific contributor to fanzines, magazines, sleeve notes and his own blog, he has also published collections of his diverse writing. Looks Unfamiliar invites guests to talk about the things that they remember, but which no one else ever seems to, although Tim’s encyclopedic memory of such ephemera ensures that there is usually one other person who does! Previous contributors include Samira Ahmed and Mitch Benn. Meanwhile, on ‘It’s Good Except It Sucks’ he is on a hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe aided and abetted by super-powered guests. Both can be found where you normally get your podcasts from. A life-long sci-fi fan, he regularly contributes to Doctor Who Magazine, where he has written about the Who-related BBC Records. Tim is also the inveterate tweeter @outonbluesix, an occasional broadcaster and is officially* TV’s Clanger’s expert. Phew! And I didn’t even mention his expertise on video nasties, love for David Bowie or erm, Ski Boy.
On the occasion of the publishing of Top Of The Box Volume 2 – a complete review of every BBC Records & Tapes album, and more – I sent Tim some questions to which he graciously provided the answers below. I should also mention here that I was very happy to be able to assist Tim in the editing of this book and provide some background research (i.e. this website and blog).
Tim’s deep knowledge of pop culture is a constant source of amazement to me and it’s a great pleasure and honour to be able to gain a deeper insight into how he approached this book and the serious way he grapples with his subject. Of course, I mean serious in the sense of treating it with respect whilst still laughing at the ridiculous and funny – both intentional and unintentional.
How many records are there in Top Of The Box Vol. 2 and how long did it take you to write something about all of them?
I haven’t dared to actually count them but I would say there were over eight hundred in total, including the ‘extras’ and the handful of unreleased albums that I’ve identified. Which is… staggering now that I think about it. One of my original inspirations for the first volume of Top Of The Box was the features that you used to get in Record Collector where a genre expert would write a complete discography of, say, the prog-rock label Vertigo, and suddenly find themselves having to randomly write about something like an Ike And Tina Turner album that they clearly knew nothing about at all, so you’d get this unintentionally amusing entry in amongst all the enjoyably informative know-all reverence where they had clearly at least liked this album that they’d bought for the sake of completion, but struggled to articulate this in any way that related to anything they knew or understood. So that was always what I modelled both books on, but this time around that was even more close to my own experience, and there were more than a handful of albums where I genuinely found myself thinking “what actually IS this?”. I still don’t really know in a couple of cases. Strangely enough, though, those albums were by far the most easy to write about. The ones that I both like as albums and know a good deal about, for example, BBC Radiophonic Workshop – 21 and The Rutland Weekend Songbook – felt weirdly daunting and I left a lot of them until towards the end as every time I tried to write something about them, I found myself struggling. Then again I always say it’s easier to write about the bad Rolling Stones albums than the good ones!
The Rutland Weekend Songbook (REB 233, 1976)
I guess that you haven’t listened to every minute of all these albums. Am I impugning your dedication to the task, or did you just not have access to them all? Maybe it wasn’t the point?
I tried as far as was possible to listen to at least a couple of representative tracks from everything – so in some cases that meant a couple of sound effects – and to be honest I took full advantage of the fact that it’s very easy to track down other collectors who have albums you either can’t find or don’t especially want to find and arrange for them to send you electronic files of them within a matter of minutes. In fact, I managed to get hold of one elusive album – albeit virtually – when I heard a BBC 6Music presenter play something from it and emailed them to plead for a copy. This is how I’ve been able to express something approaching an opinion on records like the Jan Rosol album, which are frankly like gold dust of gold dust – usually because they sold very few copies and nobody much cares rather than because they’re especially highly sought after – but there’s almost always someone who has a copy, usually one that they almost literally pulled out of a bin and thought no more about. I’ll be honest though and say that there are more than a few albums where if you’ve heard one track, you’ve pretty much heard them all. This is especially true of the big band ones – if their versions of songs that you’ve heard of aren’t very good, and nobody else is bigging up a hidden classic anywhere, then the rest of it is invariably not worth investigating!
How did writing this one compare to Top Of The Box, your similar compendium of BBC singles?
It was a good deal more of a daunting prospect – in fact, I had originally insisted I wouldn’t do it – and there were moments when I just couldn’t see the point of it at all, especially while detailing all of the Silver Jubilee tie-ins and the ‘Weekend Sounds’ reissues. As much as I might admire The Goons, chronicling all of the Goon Show Classics releases became a bit tedious too. What more is there to say about them after the first one? The key to getting through it though was to try and find the humour in everything. Once you’ve latched on to something like the lazy re-release covers of for example Parkinson Meets The Goons – what’s going on there… have they murdered him?? – or the weird inconsistencies in the birdsong tracklistings, it’s that bit easier if there’s a joke waiting for you at the end. Where it was actually more fun and interesting, however, was in looking at the Study Series and Roundabout imprints in particular. There’s a whole lost world of broadcasting in both of those and in fact, I was at one point tempted to release some kind of expanded version the Study Series section as a standalone mini-book instead. On reflection, I’m glad I resisted that temptation though.
Michael Parkinson Meets The Goons (REB 165, 1973) – How Did He Get In Here?
What was your first BBC record or tape? Did you have any around the house growing up?
We definitely had Bang On A Drum – Songs From Play School And Play Away – I remember finding the ‘and last thing at night!’ on Brush Brush Brush very annoying indeed – but I’ve no idea what happened to that particular copy. We did have a lot of children’s albums – usually with a bargain bin sticker on – including things like the P.G. Tips ‘Mr. Shifter And The Removal Men’ album and a story record of Sally And Jake, which was an ITV children’s series, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of others in there too. I also had Genesis Of The Daleks, obviously, and got Sci-Fi Sound Effects on cassette as a souvenir of a visit to the Doctor Who Exhibition at Longleat. The first one that I remember specifically asking for was the theme single from The Tripods, and the first one that I bought myself was Something Outa Nothing by Letitia Dean And Paul J. Medford, which I got because I liked the song, and I liked the EastEnders storyline about them forming a band, and I, erm, liked Letitia Dean. I shall say no more about that. Both of those were because I liked the show and the music rather than anything to do with the label itself, though.
Letitia Dean and Paul Medford – Something Outa Nothing (RESL 203, 1986)
Were you ever buying them new or was it always matter if unearthing things second-hand?
There were definitely some that I bought as new releases, including The Best Of BBC TV’s Themes and The World Of BBC TV Themes as they were heavily advertised after some of the programmes featured on them, BBC Sporting Themes (the late eighties version) as it was a cheaper way of getting hold of Soul Limbo than buying the only expensive import Booker T. & The MG’s compilation that they had in Our Price (though I doubt that had as much tape hiss on it!), and a couple of others like BBC Space Themes and Through A Glass Darkly which had been deleted but which you could still pick up in sci-fi bookshops and the like for ages afterwards. This was towards the end of the range though and again I wasn’t collecting them because of the label, just because of what was on them really, so it was mainly second hand.
BBC Sporting Themes (PWKS 648, 1988)
I’ve heard you say you started digging and turning up BBC records more in the mid-nineties lounge-core era when you were DJing regularly. Were you dropping Easy Listening BBC deep cuts into your sets? Was it a more general interest in the era that drew you in too?
Yes, that was exactly it – that’s when my love of soundtracks in the, for want of a better term, pre-Star Wars sense really kicked in, and in those days you could walk into any old charity shop and find the Camberwick Green album, Dungeon Folk, Show Of The Week and Bobby Lamb And The Keymen and still have change from fifty pence. It was a real combination of curiosity and nostalgia – this stuff wasn’t even that old but it already felt like a lost world in a way that I’m not sure anything really can now. Not all of the albums were wall-to-wall showstoppers but slowly tracks like Standing On One Leg and Silence Is Requested In The Ultimate Abyss that deserved a wider audience started to emerge and that’s when it really became obvious that there were a lot of undiscovered moments of eccentric genius to be found on these records. The odd thing was that as the whole ‘Britpop’ scene got bigger, people got less open-minded about the sort of music that had initially inspired it – I’m not even going to blame Noel Gallagher for that as I would normally do, as he was actually going on about Burt Bacharach and The Left Banke and so on, it’s just the public who weren’t interested – and so all of this stuff that really had influenced the whole scene because people like Andy Lewis were playing it in the London lounge/indie clubs just dropped off the radar. I definitely remember trying to ‘break’ things like Jerome from the Ragtime album and just ending up clearing the floor, but then that was true of a lot of things that I thought might take off because it was a bit like what was in the charts. Altered Images and Orange Juice, for example, or Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd – oddly – and anything Glam Rock related was an absolute non-starter for some reason. The theme from Quiller by Richard Denton and Martin Cook always had people coming up asking what it was though!
BBC Presents The Best Of… Show Of The Week Vol. 1 (BELP 002, 1975)
When did you start wondering how big the catalogue was and how did you begin collating this list of releases?
Top Of The Box ultimately has its roots in a daily trivia blog that I ran with my longtime collaborator Ben Baker; we were trying to hook people in with the promise of a couple of facts about a different subject every day but it was way before social media really existed and we just couldn’t get anyone interested. Now you’ll see accounts doing much the same thing getting thousands of retweets every three minutes. Massive overambition on our part really because the appropriate tools for this sort of thing just didn’t exist yet but I’m still very proud of what we did in the six months or so it was around for. Anyway, one day I did something about BBC Records And Tapes theme singles, then later we collated some of the best material in a book so that we could at least get something out of it – I think you can still get that from Ben’s website incidentally – and I expanded it for that into a list of some of the oddest releases from the label. It pretty much carried on expanding from there really. A lot of the credit for these books existing in the first place should go to Ben really, as he always believed it was an idea worth pursuing even when I had some fairly major doubts. Also, that original list just underlines the best thing about BBC Records And Tapes – the more you look into their catalogue, the stranger it gets. The one thing you could never accuse it of being is boring. Although who needed so many Band Of HM Guards albums and why is another question.
Are there any BBC records and/or tapes you still don’t have but would love to turn up in your local charity shop?
I’d love to find an original copy of The Seasons – I doubt many copies were ever actually pressed and the ‘hauntology’ mob have pushed the asking price of the few that are out there up massively. It’s a similar story of the album of the original version of Look And Read: The Boy From Space. In fact it’s mainly the Study Series ones that are spectacularly massively difficult to find, at least out of the ones I’m interested in. I’d also love to get hold of David Cain and David Munrow’s collection of music from radio plays, which I only ever had a tape copy of a tape copy of. It would be nice to stumble across something bland but incredibly rare like Pianorama just for the fun of it though. Most of the others it’s actually quite easy to find if you’re patient,. Even things like Disc A Dawn sometimes sneak through for a couple of quid on eBay if nobody else spots them.
You don’t strike me as an obsessively completist collector, but do you have any ambitions to own any kind of set or series of BBC Records?
Not as such, but I’d like to see more reissues on a ‘theme’. Mark Ayres’ box set of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop albums with bonus tracks and sleevenotes has shown what can be done and how you can make a ‘story’ out of a linked set of albums that most people have probably never given a second thought to. Imagine if someone did the same with the Play School and Play Away albums, or the Acid Folk stuff like Folk On Friday, Dungeon Folk and that Welsh one I’m not going to embarrass myself by trying to spell (Cymanfa Ganu – Welsh Ed.). There’s definitely something to be gained from taking these albums out of their context – or lack of one really – and putting them into a new one. So many more listeners would suddenly pay attention.
The designs used by the company changed over the years. Which is the best label design and why?
Although it doesn’t quite match the version seen on screen, I would have to say the one that mirrored the BBC’s ‘slanted blocks’ logo. That logo will always ‘be’ the BBC for me, and I have very fond memories of seeing it pop up at the end of shows like Mary, Mungo And Midge and Mr. Benn. So for culturally aesthetic rather than design-related reasons – which kind of echoes my approach to the book really.
Which records have the best and which the worst sleeve designs? (I know you will interpret best and worst however you want)
The best ones to me are the ones from the early seventies when they had just phased out the generic sleeves but had no real visual reference materials to hand so had to create their own using elements presumably borrowed from the production office. So you end up with images like the Play School toys all battering a drumkit, or that deeply acid-frazzled still from the Disc A Dawn opening titles, which at the time presumably represented little more than ‘you recognise this’ but now stand as having accidentally captured a sort of pop culture design aesthetic that’s since been lost to time. As for the worst, there are plenty of dreadful sleeve images, including all those Hoots! It’s A Braw Scottish Jingsfest! efforts with a thistle on top of some bagpipes and that George Gershwin one where someone has tried to make him out of a Cadbury’s Caramel, but the ‘best’ worst for me are the procession of illustrated covers for the Hancock’s Half Hour releases where he appears to be gradually melting across each one.
Hancock’s Half Hour – The Scandal Magazine & Last of the McHancocks (REB 451, 1983)
In the book you occasionally say how a particular record is more entertaining than one might think. Was this something you knew and wanted to explain going into the project? Or was it revealed during your research?
It’s always something that you hope you’ll find out, and it’s even more pleasing when it involves something that you weren’t expecting, like for example the album by Grace Kennedy, who to me at that age was just someone who came on and did boring singing when the sitcoms had finished, or the Bertha album, which was based on a children’s show I barely saw due to being way too old by that point. Given that I had originally developed an interest in BBC Records And Tapes through standout tracks on unlikely albums, this was always at the forefront of my thoughts and my main aim was really to discuss these records in terms of their entertainment value – which, of course, was the only reason that they ever existed in the first place – rather than at best some sort of box-ticking exercise and at worst some kind of little world where only the ‘enlightened’ few are both in charge and allowed access. If you’re looking to me to lead a march on ITV demanding the cancellation of The Masked Singer while waving a copy of At The Cinema Organ Volume 2 then I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere. In fact, I’d probably buy an album of The Masked Singer if there was one.
I find listening to the records whose subject matter is of little to no interest to me still throw up fascinating or just quirky nuggets. What interesting knowledge have you learned from BBC Records & Tapes?
Quite a lot, actually. I always wanted to know the background behind the shows and the people involved in them, and it’s always fascinating to find out about these individuals and programmes that meant something in their time but just haven’t imprinted themselves on the popular memory – and that can be for any number of reasons. The early releases, in particular, seemed to lead off in all manner of fascinating directions, whether it was presenters who were actually the first to certain kinds of broadcast but are never really credited for that or schools programmes that once went on-air day in day out – well, schoolday in schoolday out – but are now nothing more than perfunctory titles. More or less anything interesting I found out that actually was interesting found its way into the book, although sometimes that can be a difficult distinction to draw. At the end of the day, if you’re trying to tell a ‘story’ over and above a straightforward reference work, some facts will fit that and some won’t!
After reviewing dozens of bird song LPs, can you now identify every native bird in Britain?
Only those from Sewage Farms, Gravel Pits and Waste Ground.
You have had the experience of writing about or around the dark passages of the BBCs history before, particularly in your book about Radio 1s comedy shows – Fun At One. How do approach that and how challenging was this book specifically?
Fun At One was different in the sense that at that stage, nothing had come out about any of these people. There were of course rumours, and a couple of people that I interviewed tried to drop some hints that there were names that I ought to avoid – without actually specifying any details – but thankfully they were all as good as incidental to the narrative anyway, and one major part of the book involved a comedian who had taken a dislike to a certain Boris Johnson lookalike which culminated in them humiliating him on air. Actually, that happened twice, so that was a real stroke of good fortune. Fun At One coming out coincided exactly with that story breaking and it did suffer a bit as a consequence, but as I was hardly exactly the victim there I’ve never really felt resentful about that. This time around, however, I knew these people would be coming up over literally a handful of albums so my only thought was to acknowledge the fact that they were on there – there’s a sense in which pretending they didn’t exist sort of echoes how they got away with all of it in the first place so I did not want to do that – then give a perfunctory description, mention their present-day reputation and move on. A couple of useful details did come to light, though – notably, the producer of Radio 1’s Speak Easy, who also produced a couple of albums for the label, had given an interview in which he discussed the fact that he had always had some suspicions about Savile but had failed to act on them, while there’s also the case of Angels And 15 Other Original BBC-TV Themes, which once used to change hands for about fifty to sixty quid but now can be picked up for next to nothing, and I don’t think the presence of a certain theme on there is entirely a coincidence. The important thing is to try and make something positive out of the damage that they have done, though, and one thing that really struck me while putting the book together was how certain people that we were once encouraged to think of as the ‘enemy’ just because people found them annoying – Derek Jameson, Paul Daniels, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and so on – actually weren’t really the bad guys after all. You may have disagreed with them on some issues, but they weren’t really causing any active harm – well, I could quibble about the voting record of one of the above but that’s a different argument – and I tried to reflect that here as best I could. You might as well give them the relative credit that they deserve.
Sell through video killed off the tie-in comedy LP: discuss with reference to what we might have had and the lost opportunities.
I’m not sure it did, to be honest – with the best will in the world towards them, I think it was the early Comic Relief singles. You got a credible comedy song on one side, and a lengthy comedy sketch on the other; the comedians got to play out their popstar fantasies, much-needed money went to charity and the punters had about as much as they were prepared to take of a joke that would have fallen flat over the length of an album anyway. If you look at what else was going on even long before Newman and Baddiel (who did at least have a bash at an album with Minutes Of The Parish Council Meeting) started selling millions of videos, it was all getting a bit song-based anyway – Neil’s Heavy Concept Album, the unreleased Raw Sex album (which I would love to hear if anyone out there can help), I Will Cure You, Bad News… I’m fairly certain that even if The Young Ones or Red Dwarf had been let loose in a studio for a full day, they’d have just come out with jokey covers of Saving All My Love For You or something.
Desert Island Discs. We’ll give you copies of The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus All The Words and The BBC Genome database, of course, but what 8 records from the BBC Records & Tapes catalogue would you take with you?
Two books on the BBC’s records now, Tim, singles and albums. Is that it? Could you bring yourself to cover hundreds of BBC Radio Collection cassettes or Radio Play LPs? Some other label, perhaps? Or are you done with this kind of epic discography?
It’s probably time to try something else less ambitious and more out and out fun, but that said I really am fascinated by the early days of BBC Video – or the ‘Video Tasties’ as they called them in that brilliantly ludicrous advert with Tom Baker – so there could be something in that.
You’ve written a number of books over the years – Higher Than The Sun being a favourite of mine – but this one seems to have held the production line up a little. Can we expect more soon? Any hints as to what you have coming next?
Another anthology, definitely, but it’s funny you should mention Higher Than The Sun because I want to do something a little different to what I’m ‘known’ for again, and in fact, I do have an idea that is some way along already. I’m not going to say ‘watch this space’, but it might be an idea to keep an eye on… the galaxy?
Ah, what could that be? I’ll leave you to guess whilst I thank Tim for his answers and remind you that both volumes of Top Of The Box are available through his website timworthington.org where you can also find his other books, the podcasts, blog posts aplenty and more!
Footnotes
Do check out the wonderful, hilarious world of Ben Baker’s writing and podcasting too linktr.ee/BenBakerBooks.
Whilst checking than Jan Rosol album during the editing of this post I spotted that there was one for sale on Discogs for £2.50! I obviously bought it on the spot!
Cymanfa Ganu was misspelled on this very website till I went to check and is spelled CYMANSA GANN on the official charts website.
It must have been a comfort to successive heads of BBC Records to see another sound effects record in the release schedule. These albums of noises were never meant to make a splash in the charts or even get mentioned in the trades, let alone the music press, but they were solid business for the label. After dipping their toe in with No.1 (RED 47) in 1969 and No.2 (RED 76) in 1970, they really went for it with numbers 3 to 6 in quick succession through 1971 (REDs 102, 104, 105, 106). By the end of 1972 the original run of nine generically sleeved releases was complete and with No.10 (RED 120) – aimed specifically at home movie buffs – sound effects made up over 6% of all the labels’ 160-odd releases (excluding Roundabout and Study Series). From there, things slowed a little, but each new record in the series would now have a unique sleeve. In 1975 No.11 – ‘Off-Beat’ – (REC 198) was the only SFX record for two years. Another run of sound effects releases began in 1976 though and the numbering started wandering about a bit. The 13th instalment was clearly assigned for something in particular though…
Why were BBC Enterprises even releasing sound effects records? Firstly the BBC had a trove of top-notch effects. Record compiler Rosemary Davies wrote on the sleeve notes of No.1 that is was acknowledged as the most comprehensive in the world, comprised of some 6000 sounds. With this supply of practically free material, the other as yet untapped side of the business equation was the demand. Sound effects records were nothing new. In 1958 Decca released ‘A Journey Into Stereo Sound’ featuring both music and field recordings demonstrating the exciting new possibilities of sound from two speakers, and providing an authoritative introduction for cut and paste DJ producers to sample 30 years later. In the same year, EMI put out the less flashy ‘Stereophonic Recording Demonstration Test Record’ with a similar remit, but foregrounding the effects on the A-side with such scintillating audio as table-tennis, road drills and swimming baths. Stereo demonstration records continued practically as a genre of their own well into the 70s, but they dropped the field recordings and focussed on the kind of sounds people would actually listen to on their new stereo Hi-Fis – music.
Across the pond, the Audio Fidelity label started releasing a series of records in 1960 under the prosaic title ‘Sound Effects’. These volumes were chock full of every kind of noise, but seemed to have no purpose other than a sense of gee-whizz will you listen to this! Audio Fidelity’s eclectic collections were in competition with one of the giants of the record industry. Jac Holtzman founded the mighty Elektra records in 1950 and in 1960 started a series of sound effects records. He personally oversaw the ‘Authentic Sound Effects’ records and these were also licensed to the PYE Golden Guinea label in the UK. On the US Elektra releases a service is offered for sequencing effects into a tape to your specification. This was offered to “non-commercial users” and “theatre groups” and there is a stern warning against making your own tape. The purpose of these sound effects seemed clear, but the practical application was being limited by that old chestnut copyright law. Assuming anyone paid attention to the small print, of course! All of these seem to owe their existence to the pioneering Cook record label. Cook was set up in 1952 by Emory Cook and set new standards for the quality of the recordings. Quick to capitalise on the possibilities of tape recording, one of Cook’s earliest releases was ‘Rail Dynamics’. This field recording was not only an early, perhaps the earliest, record for train buffs, it was also incredibly exciting for audiophiles. It seems that mere music was not the ultimate demonstration of a hi-fi system – performances being artifice – and a field recording was what was getting these geeks into a lather.
The BBC didn’t have a record label till 1967, so British sounds weren’t available to the record-buying public for another 10 years or so. When the BBC Radio Enterprises imprint started ideas must have been floated about all the possible sources of exploitation within the corporation. The sound effects record genre was well established and in the same year EMI had started a ‘Sound Effect Record’ series (another determinedly descriptive name!) and they were allowing legal use for all amateur dramatic and private films. Around the same time, the Soundstage label started issuing 7″ singles with specific themes, such as weather or sirens. As noted above, the BBC had sound effects in abundance and if it was working for EMI and the material was already on hand, why shouldn’t the new label have a go as well? Well, this might have caused a bit of (British*) tutting over at EMI! Or, they may have already lost interest in the genre, because they didn’t continue with their series and the field (no pun intended) was more or less clear for the BBC to monopolise from then on. The ‘BBC Sound Effects record’ became the de facto example of this genre.
*British Tutting was issued as a sound effects record by the BBC; alas only available in the town of Scarfolk.
In common with the other effects records series, the first few BBC Sound Effects releases were a gallimaufry of noise-making things and atmospheres. No.3 was big on watercraft, but not exclusively. Then, from part No.4 onwards, each record was themed. Although the basic sleeve design stayed the same, each now focussed on a particular subject so that you could choose from two sides of effects perfectly suited to your am’ dram’ production. These were:
No.4 – Victorian Atmosphere
No.5 – Road Transport
No. 6 – Town and Countryside
The BBC records were being marketed directly to the theatre world, as this advertisement in Drama magazine shows.
Advert from Drama 1972 Autumn: BBC Sound Effects (August 1972) (c/o Theatrecrafts.com)
n.b. Samuel French publishes plays, so that’s where you go to get scripts.
All the first six discs were presented in mono, which seems surprising given the stereo effects in the market already, but from no.7 BBC Records decided that it was time for the switch to stereo. That meant going back to the classic variety pack of sounds, although no.7 (RED 113) was quite transport-heavy. No.8 (RED 126) went back to the thematic approach with Warfare and No.9 (RED 164) was the final part compiled (and edited) by Rosemary Davies as well as the last of the iconic grid sleeve design.
With the exception of the double-album gatefold-sleeved ‘Essential Sound Effects’ (REFX 448, 1982) each record would now have a specific theme and its own sleeve design. No.10 was put out un-numbered before No.9 and later retconned into the sequence. ‘Music & Effects For Home Movies’ was actually more specific in its intended purpose with a selection of vacation-appropriate foreign hubbub and music. Perfect, assuming your movies are indeed holiday reels and you go to one of the places included (bad luck if you went to Bolivia or you stayed at, er, home (hello from the CV-19 era!).
Another special interest the BBC as a whole was supporting was home animation. Many will remember fondly Screen Test with its annual animation competition and fewer will recall ‘The DIY Animation Show’, from 1974. This clip from the BBC Archive features a selection from the BBC Sound Effects series introduced by Ron Geesin. He mentions the “splendid range available on BBC discs” although he’s there to show you how to make your own. And doesn’t he just! A masterclass.
Sound Effects No.10 was produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Brian Hodgson, for some reason, and No.11’s comedic ‘Off Beat’ selection was put together by Roy Maynard. The idea now seemed to be to find a theme and someone available to produce it on an ad hoc basis. They also apparently started to lose count as ‘Off Beat Sound Effects’ was again left un-sequenced. Retrospectively, the order of releases and catalogue numbers and sequence in the series was all over the shop and they seem to have become confused themselves. They were also starting to branch out beyond the core demographic of community theatre and Super-8 or Bolex owners. ‘Off Beat’, with its smashing lightbulb photo sleeve and wacky “F/X” was clearly of interest to kids of all ages, as was the next instalment!
Strictly speaking, the following BBC Sound Effects release was no.14 (REC 220), but as I just made clear, this sequence is a mess, so I’m going by the series numbers and it’s no.12 (REC 225) next. That release was again not advertising its true place in the series (can you tell this is annoying me?) but ‘Out Of This World – Atmospheric Sound And Effects From The BBC Radiophonic Workshop’ was also appealing to amateur sound editors and a wider record-buying market, although we are by definition now a very long way from… umm, let’s say ‘Laughter – Hearty, 30 People’. The Workshop’s Glynis Jones produced an all-star Radiophonic line-up and this was the first time the ‘special sound’ that had been created at this unique facility had been made available. Two albums of Radiophonic music were available by this point, but sci-fi and fantasy fans – starved of much to see them through between never-to-be-repeated (sadly, quite literally in some cases) Doctor Who series – were sure to be picking this up along with whatever comics and magazine catered to what wasn’t at the time called ‘fandom’. More than a few electronic music enthusiasts would have been happy to get hold of anything as cutting edge as this too. I’m not saying there was no call for these sound effects in practical applications, but tracks like ‘Time warp start, run, stop’, ‘Goblin’s lair’, ‘Firespitting monster’ etc. and that sleeve design could not escape the attention of record token totting teenagers either. As the American Cook label had issued a record of the same name in 1953 I wonder if this was a kind of sly nod to their forebears. As it wasn’t released in the UK and was 23 years old by then, I doubt it.
All that is to say, when BBC Sound Effects Vol.13 Death & Horror (REC 269) was released there was already a wide market for sound effects LPs sustained and developed by BBC Records. Not only was this edition of the series numbered with the unlucky 13 (the chance to taunt any triskaidekaphobics too good to pass up) it continued the programme of themed effects produced by a new pair of hands and a striking sleeve design. It was also only one of two parts of the SFX series to be called a volume and not a number. The haphazard numbering was just not confusing enough and inconsistent naming was also needed! Anyway, following on from a comedy and a sci-fi-fantasy record, horror was a natural choice when going for a young market, right?
Horror movies were at a creative and commercial peak in 1970s Britain and television was in on the action too with a succession of notably creepy and scary children’s dramas. Halloween wasn’t anything like the big deal that it has become from younger children now, but back then high school kids were being subjected to a campaign of terrifying culture never seen before or since.
Doctor Who was going through a particularly gothic patch in 1976-77 too. Plucking keywords from the story titles we have: Fear, Deadly, Evil, Death and Talons. A genre that had hitherto been an adults-only, late-night, X-rated thrill and was now primetime Saturday teatime fare was a canny choice for a sound effects record. Because all the theatres and film-makers were tapping into this zeitgeist too, of course.
Mike Check
Death & Horror was produced by label stalwart Mike Harding, a seasoned producer who worked on many diverse records for the label from 1973 onwards. Unfortunately, in various writings on BBC Records and Death & Horror, he is most often misidentified. Even when they don’t credit the wrong person entirely his role is misunderstood or he is assumed to be something at the Radiophonic Workshop. I don’t have anything near a complete biography for him but I can at least put most of the relevant and correct details here. He is a soft-spoken Scot and is assuredly not the other Mike Harding from Lancashire with a funny tale and a song or two. The Rochdale Cowboy is another person entirely.
Prior to being a BBC record producer, this Mike Harding was a late-night Radio 1 presenter, introducing ‘Sounds of the Seventies’ one night a week. Mike sneaked onto the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1972 as part of a scratch BBC rock-n-roll group ‘Pete Drummond & The VHF Band’ (geddit?) celebrating 50 years of the corporation. The record – ‘Rocking at the BBC’ – was released by Warners (for shame BBC Records!) with Mike on lead guitar (of course, this was the man who had a guitar solo slot on his show) alongside Paddy Kingsland (by now at the Radiophonic Workshop, but formerly a studio manager at R1) on bass.
Mike Harding doffing his hat with the VHF Band on TOGWT 1972.
By 1972, Harding was introducing ‘In Concert’ on Radio 1 and from there he made the move to the BBC’s record label. Whether this had anything to do with all the concerts that were cut to BBC Transcription Discs I can’t say. In 1977 he was part of another BBC band, this time celebrating the ten year anniversary of Radio 1. ‘Radio Active’, as they were called, appeared on the BBC Records spin-off pop label Beeb with ‘Ten Years After b/w Alltime Needletime Loser’. A b-side which neatly combined the Musicians’ Union rules on the amount of recorded versus live music to be played on the radio with the vagueries of the rock music business and getting a good education. Or some reference to heroin use amongst punks perhaps?
Anyway, Mike Harding is also credited with devising Death & Horror, his first sound effects LP. That means he was not simply called in to see an idea through to manufacture, it was apparently his brainchild. Quite appropriate for an axe-wielder!
Scream Team
Mike Harding was assisted by studio managers Ian Richardson and Lisa Braun; the Radiophonic Workshop’s own sound effects maestro Dick Mills and there was also a contribution from BBC Records wildlife favourite, Eric Simms.
Simms had turned in 11 out of 13 parts in the BBC Records’ Wildlife Series. These collections of sounds from animals and birds preceded the sound effects series, starting in 1969. Simms would produce his own sound effects record. No.17, ‘Birds and Other Sounds of the Countryside’ (REC 299), in the same year as Vol.13, but BBC Records had really covered a lot of the living world with the Wildlife series so anyone needing the calls of the Black-throated diver or a ‘Hungry Lion (London Zoo, 1938) was well catered for. For sound effects Vol.13, he provided recordings of (naturally (pun intended!)) bats.
Back in the comfort of the BBC’s radio facilities, the Studio Managers Ian Richard and Lisa Braun were handling anything not already on tape. Both were radio staff and Braun later went to work on The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – where she met her future husband, the late great Geoffrey Perkins. Richardson had already popped up on BBC Records in 1974 as part of the “technical team” for the radio version of Dad’s Army. As the radio producer John Dyas notes, that lot “soaked themselves in gallons of water, squelched, marched and drilled incessantly around the studio floor, opened doors, fired guns and provided every sound effect the Walmington-on-Sea platoon could ever need”. The home front seems to have been the perfect preparation for Death & Horror then, and that LP was produced by (of course) Mike Harding. Richardson later moved on to freelance television and film sound recording work and ended up winning a Welsh Bafta for his work on the revived Doctor Who. At least, I think that is the same Ian Richardson. Along with Mike Harding and Roy Tempest, mistaken identities seem to haunt BBC Records.
Satanic Mills
Dick Mills’ CV will be covered more extensively elsewhere on this blog; suffice to say that he was a veteran of putting the willies up BBC listeners and viewers, having been around for the early days of the Radiophonic Workshop’s Special Sound era of radio drama nightmares and mental breakdowns. He assisted Delia Derbyshire on the original Doctor Who theme and became the show’s sound-effects maestro when Brian Hodgson left in 1972.
Dick was asked about the D&H LP in an interview with Dutch radio station KRO in 1981.
“It was BBC Records’ idea, but when we found out that they were doing Death & Horror sound effects records we said ‘would you be interested in any of our sounds that we’ve already done for Doctor Who? Giant spiders; mad scientists laboratory, The Phantom of the Rue Morgue – the organ playing – and things like this’. And our contribution to that record is types of sounds that couldn’t have been produced in the normal sounds effects way.”
Rauhfaser – Brom en Ruis – afl 162/1v2 – ‘Radiophonic Workshop BBC’ – 7 jan 1981
When it was put to Dick that you’ve “got to have a bit of a morbid mind, to think out things like that” he quipped “not with some of the people I work with!”.
“If you’re in a creative department, and you don’t know what you’re going to be asked to do, you’ve got to be able to visualise any situation; any dramatic situation”.
Rauhfaser – Brom en Ruis – afl 162/1v2 – ‘Radiophonic Workshop BBC’ – 7 jan 1981
A crack team then. What did they come up with?
‘Art Attack
Well, before you even hear what terrors are in store there is a visual assault in the form of the record sleeve to negotiate. I mean actually negotiate with an adult if you were underage. It is quite conceivable that more than a few kids had the LP snatched from their grasp and replaced in the racks by concerned parents. As lurid a montage of death and horror as anyone could imagine in a fevered state of possibly drug-induced psychosis. Hyperbole? Well, the sheer number of bizarre, shocking and unpleasant things going on is tempered only by the cartoonish painting style. The most disturbing part might be the woman’s screaming face contorted in a circular mirror at the centre. Is she dreaming of the surrounding nightmare? Is she seeing it through some sort of portal into hell? It doesn’t matter. It’s brilliantly horrid. Gross and silly. Weird but patently untrue. I can only imagine that Mike Harding told designer and illustrator Andrew Prewett to go all the way and keep going. The more extreme the better. One reason it’s so over-the-top is the idea of including everything that’s on the record in the image. The older pop-art sleeves got this right by showing that there was a potpourri of noises contained within. Death & Horror’s sleeve gleefully presents a tableau of total carnage and fear. You were warned! Or invited in, if you dared.
Happily, Prewett’s reminiscences are recorded on his blog
I decided that a graphic illustration was need to enhance the product that had up to then been sent out on tapes and some in plain record sleeves. So I set about illustrating some of the content in a gory way, (tame by modern standards but this was 1978). It was an amazing success and took us all by surprise, some press featured it and the then self- appointed guardian of British morals sent a very strongly worded letter to me suggesting that I was corrupting the minds of young people with evil images. Sad to say it only fuelled the sales and further records followed, some with more of my illustrations and designs
Oh yes, D&H was controversial in some quarters as we’ll see.
Breaks, Beatings and Scratches
Execution Style
Side 1, Band 1 gets straight down to diabolical business. As the record title promised death and horror, it’s called Execution & Torture and makes no apologies. Limbs are chopped, broken and sawed; stakes are hammered in or burned; very hot things applied to flesh and projectiles find their mark. Although, the arrows only hit wood, which seems a bit off target here. Finally – Oh no! Not… – ‘The Pendulum! Umm. What? Yeah, I had to check this one, but it was more of a swinging axe that got closer and closer. This one is probably the work of Dick Mills. He would have made short work of this (modulated filtered white-noise) with the EMS VCS3 synthesizer, a machine dedicated to making simply sounds rather than music. As Ian Richardson explains on the sleeve notes the harmless white cabbage stands in for human bodies and gets all the abuse that the medieval torturers could dream up. Chopping stabbing and even the sizzle of red-hot pokers are courtesy of the brassicas. If you’ve seen the excellent Peter Strickland film Berberian Sound Studio starring Toby Jones as an effects man working on a gory Italian ‘Giallo’ flick, this will come as no surprise. And if you haven’t, you are encouraged to seek it out.
Cabbages & Killings – Toby Jones in Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Richardson says that most of the effects are from the BBC library or Radiophonic Workshop, but as well as the details of cabbage mistreatment he describes one other effect in detail. “The Guillotine was a heavy metal bar sliding down a coat rack edited to a cabbage chopped into a basket with straw inside”.
Monster Mash-up
Side 1, Band 2 lowers the heart-rate one notch with mere implied peril and threat from Monsters & Animals. All the gang are here. Wolves and Werewolves, Hell hounds and the aforementioned Bats by Simms. Snakes get a couple of tracks and a generic Monster Roaring. The least concerning might be the cat hissing, although this could lead to a nasty scratch. Is Dracula a monster? I suppose so, which is why he’s here getting into a flap. Most famously the murderous menagerie is heralded by ‘The Mad Gorilla’. Not King Kong, no, another one. Setting aside the twin crimes of perpetuating myths about gorillas (see Fossey et al) and trivialising mental health issues, this is not a field recording. Eric Simms was apparently unable to supply such material, so it was back to the library or the recording studio. No, they didn’t get Guy the Gorilla from London Zoo into a rage they just got a bloke to pretend. Sometimes the real thing isn’t really what you want anyway. ‘The Mad Gorilla’ made it back to Hollywood and gave voice to Slimer in the original Ghostbusters (1984) movie.
I first learned of this in conversation with a chap working at Vinyl Resting Place in Manchester. On Twitter, @RealFloppyLion says he spotted this in the cinema at the time! He also caught a bit of ‘Electric Storm’ by John Baker from Out Of This World Sound Effects during the scene where the containment unit is switched off and all the ghosts escape. This anecdote really underlines that youngsters would listen to these LPs over and over till they could identify the effects in use even when they are non-specific swooshes or roaring.
Grave Dangers
Continuing the downwards trend in fearfulness Side 1, Band 3 is given over to Creaking Doors and Grave Digging. Thoughtfully, the latter is provided in both dry and wet ground (so annoying when that isn’t done right). Coffin lids are nailed shut and then (ahhh!) creak open again. Doors open and close ominously and a portcullis slams shut to end a handy selection of boring sounds elevated by their context into chilling portents.
Step In Time
And now for a musical interlude! The final band on Side 1 is split between Musical Effects and Footsteps. What separates musical effects from just music? Length, mostly. The first cue is called Phantom of the Opera. As this record pre-dates the Andrew Lloyd Weber behemoth by nearly ten years the reference here could be to either of the three film adaptations of the Gaston Leroux novel or even the lesser-known stage musical by Ken Hill, which was performed in Lancaster in 1976. Or even a nod to the Phantom of the Paradise movie. Actually, as Dick mentions above, perhaps this was originally from The Phantom/Murders in the Rue Morgue. In 1968 the BBC broadcast a TV dramatisation of the Edgar Allen Poe thriller The Murders In The Rue Morgue starring Edward Woodward. This Verity Lambert produced programme was part of the Detective anthology series which ran from 1964 to 1969. Although there is no record of the Radiophonic Workshop providing anything for that episode, Dick did work on another edition of the series in the same year. In any case, these generic doomy notes are more redolent of horror movie soundtracks to my ears. The next two tracks are titled Ghostly Piano chords and those who know that the Radiophonic Workshop had a dismembered piano frame might wonder if Dick was using that here. Quite possibly, although several have definitely been played by functioning piano keys. After some gongs and chain clanking the first side comes to an end with Squelching Footsteps. It’s definitely squelchy, but footsteps don’t come immediately to mind. Dick Mills has talked of using the sound of Swarfega hand gel being squished about and then slowed down for some of his most satisfying sounds. This effect is clearly looped (a Radiophonic basic) so I’m going to call this one of his too. He may have already had it to hand (I’ll take that pun, cheers!) from a Doctor Who session.
Dick Mills with EMS VCS3 at the Roundhouse in 2009 for a Radiophonic Workshop concert (c/o whitefiles.org)
Scream Hearts
Side 2, Band 1 is dedicated to sounds created from within the human body whilst going through some sort of ordeal. That’s different to the Side 1 Band 1 sounds, which were notionally made by the human body whilst undergoing some external attack. It’s important to get these distinctions clear, I think. One strangulation followed by a whole lot of screaming, sobbing and breathing. I assume that these aspirations came from the BBC library, rather than being vocalised by Ian and Lisa themselves. Similarly ‘Lunatics Laughing’ (more dubious mental health attitudes of the time, I’m afraid) could be the pair of them, or something already available. Heartbeats of the human variety are followed by both Electronic and those of Frankenstein’s monster. The difference between these two is that the latter are doubled up. We can assume Dick Mills was behind all of these.
Thunderbolt and Lightning, Very Very Frightening
Side 2, Band 2 is titled Weather Atmospheres & Bells and is the final section of the disc. Bad weather of all kinds is laid on including both ‘Eerie’ and ‘Weird’ wind. Bells toll and more gusts are included, this time ‘Howling in Ship’s Rigging’. We start though with the thunder. One of the most famous (through over-use) sound effects of all time is ‘castle thunder which was created in 1931 for the film ‘Frankenstein’. You will hear that used in movies and TV shows right through to the 90s without irony, but is now generally deployed only for genre parodies and cartoons. The thunder here though is what I think of BBC thunder. The third clap in particular is the one. I read somewhere that this slightly implausible sound was used so much because it was better to use something that viewers and listeners instantly identified as thunder even if it wasn’t what that actually sounded like. That gorilla from earlier needs a setting and therefore we have ‘Jungle at Night’ and there’s a ‘Tropical Atmosphere’ to warm us up, after all, that perishing wind.
Release The Sounds!
BBC Sound Effects Vol.13 – Death & Horror was released early in 1977. An exact date is hard to come by, and some of the accounts seem muddled. Apparently, Roy Tempest left the label in 1976 and soon Alan Bilyard was conducting bevied up sailors on the Ark Royal in his new role as label boss. As we’ll see though, Tempest was still in charge in 1977. Whatever the release date, by the 23rd April Billboard magazine in the United States had picked up on a story. Under the headline ‘Horrible Sounds Lure Beautiful Sales Action’ they reported that BBC Records were shifting 100,000 records a week and had broken into the top 100 chart. It’s a measure of the size of the market in those days that such a large number of sales was only a top-100. Chart archives are only available for the top 60 now, and it didn’t make it that far. Nevertheless, 2-3 weeks of this ‘action’ would make for a gold disc! Label MD Roy Tempest told Billboard that, if it continued, D&H was on course to beat the all-time best seller. Which was? Another sound effects record!
The real interest in this news story though was the condemnation of the record from so-called moral guardians. Chief amongst them was, naturally, Mary Whitehouse. The head of the Viewers and Listeners Association may have been straying a little out of her remit though. She accused the BBC of having a “sense of utter irresponsibility”, but as this was a record and not a broadcast she was mistaken in pursuing the line of argument that here was another example of that old saw the ‘waste of licence fee’. BBC Enterprises’ commercial exploitation of existing material paid for itself, as did any additional production work. It only takes a moment to realise that these LPs were not being given away to licence fee payers!
Whitehouse’s criticism of their “lack of responsibility” was the only charge worth answering. Tempest had this defence:
“It is important to point out that this the latest in a series of sound-effects albums we are putting out for a specific market of amateur dramatics and home movie people. It is not something just put out for a laugh. We had many requests for errie and horrific effects for stage thrillers.”
Billboard Magazine 23rd April 1977
Hmm! Well, I have to point out that it was also “put out for a laugh”, wasn’t it? I mean, they knew it was going to have reached buys beyond the stage and screen amateur. As I already pointed out above, there was a market for sound effects records amongst kids and they must have known it. A more honest answer would have been that they were going for a crowd of younger people too, but weren’t responsible for other people’s children and the sleeve design made it very clear what was going on. Do I also need to point out that you don’t sell 100k units per week to drama clubs and budding John Carpenters? Despite the protestations of innocence and boasts of gold-disc selling figures, them upstairs were initially rattled by the uproar. Recalling the events for the BBC Music website, Alan Bilyard relates what happened when the Beeb took fright at its own record:
“We had to suspend the record, but ultimately I got approval to put it back on the market and it sold about 20,000 copies due to her.”
As they were selling 100,000 a week it’s unclear how that 20,000 was calculated. Perhaps they estimated that was the boost that Mary Whitehouse had given them.
Hi-Fi Weekly Demo
As noted in Billboard, the 2nd April 1977 edition of Hi-Fi Weekly presented a free 7″ single with excerpts from Death & Horror. This disc was “exclusively produced with the co-operation of the (sic) BBC Records & Tapes” and contained “Hi-Fi Weekly’s Choice of Humour Effects”. Well, at least they thought it was a laugh, eh Roy? These were “Selected from the BBC Sound Effects Catalogue of albums which includes the latest ‘Sound Effects Vol.13 Death & Horror’. All the hits are here: ‘Mad Gorilla’, ‘The Guillotine’ and ‘Arm Chopped Off’ and a few from numbers 10 and 12 too. I hardly need to point out that this was marketing the sound effects series to the wider record-buying public.
You will have noticed that I’m giving Roy Tempest a hard time about his comments to Billboard. The reality was that Mary Whitehouse was an absolute pest and the BBC her favourite target. Her attack on the commercial aspect of the release was off the mark and easy to deflect. The censorious moralising – “won’t someone please think of the children” – was, I think, harder to ignore. In some ways, the pop culture of frightful gothic chills was slightly getting out of hand. It would take a few more years, but either because the fashion changed or they just got the message that kids were sick and tired of being creeped out or scared witless, things were calmed down. That doesn’t mean Whitehouse was right either.
A Japanese Werewolf from London
Death & Horror was released in North America, Germany, Australia and New Zealand in 1977. These were fairly straight reissues with the same sleeve design except for an updated record company logo. In the early 80s Spanish label Diapason started issuing the Efectos Di Sonido series and in 1982, amongst half a dozen of the BBC’s LPs, volume 13 appeared with a slightly doctored sleeve design under the simpler title of Horror. The year after release Teichiku Records Co. of Japan put out a few BBC Sound Effects records and for Death & Horror decided the original phantasmagorical sleeve was either too much or maybe not enough?
To be fair, they identified the one monster not depicted in the original and made the missing werewolf centre stage in their slightly calmer if no less (pseudo?) naive style tableau. The lycanthrope is joined by a tired-looking vampire and pensive Frankenstein’s monster, but he’s drawing most of the attention with a goblet of blood a good proportion of which has dribbled (or spilt) onto his arm. What a mucky pup!
If there was any moral outrage in the export markets I’m not aware of it. In fact, in America sales were still going strong years later thanks to adverts like this one in Fangoria magazine. Clearly, not having “a laugh” though.
More & (Even) More!
The horror genre loves a sequel and as you can see from the advert above, Death & Horror’s success led to two (erm) more compilations.
More Death & Horror was released in the year after the original and took its place as number 21 in BBC Records & Tapes continuing series of very serious sound effects LPs. Not that there were eight more released between 13 and 21 – numbers 14 and 15 had been issued in 1976 – but the labels were very busy with SFX discs. Disasters took the 16 spot with a similarly terror-related theme; 17 was given over to birds and wildlife; 18 Holidays; 19 Doctor Who and 20 Sporting Sound Effects. An eclectic array of audio material, but they were baying for more blood. So much so that for some of the pressings the very vinyl itself was red with it. Not just cheap vinyl that glows red when held up to the light either. This was blood-red coloured vinyl with a silver hype sticker on the sleeve to draw your attention to it. Whitehouse be damned, it seems.
Mike Harding was still in charge and takes over the sleeve notes, introducing his accomplices and explaining that each band is presented as “little montages”. The effects were this time all created for the record, so no gems were proffered by the Radiophonic Workshop or genuine wild animals. The second half of the sleeve notes come from Peter Harwood who along with Paul Hawdon and Anne Hunt was responsible for the sounds. I’m pleased to know they used a Neve 24-channel:4 group mixing desk (to create sound effects that were not even all in stereo) and the teapot used for one sound was a “BBC teapot”, but the rest of the techniques are not that amazing after the original revelations about cabbages.
The sleeve is another depiction of a wild night, taking in a returning Dracula with a distraught maiden in his clutches who, it can’t be ignored, has had a clothing malfunction. Did the local rep and the film club at the village hall ask for that? Well, anyway, there’s torture in progress and what appears to be a throwback to the original 1958 version of The Fly (see track 1 side 1 ‘Death Of The Fly”), a witch(?) and I’m going to say a lizard monster.
If anything, More’ D & H ups the ante with some scenes that go beyond Halloween chills and supernatural spookiness and into just unpleasant and some that definitely wouldn’t pass these days. It’s a mixed bag though and a ticking bomb and some wind are a bit more, if not fun, at least lighter in tone. In the end, what comes across is More Death. And horror.
The first edition of Death & Horror remained available in the catalogue for many years, yet this one was only popular enough in Spain to keep going till 1990. Still, it seems to have sold well enough in 1978 to keep the second-hand market afloat to this day. The Japanese market got this one too, probably at the same time as the original, but kept the same sleeve design. They did add that all-important obi strip though, with mad eyes motif and some poor soul drowning in a swamp (side 2, track 1).
Even More Death & Horror
Sound effects releases continued for the next four years albeit at a slower rate. 22 was actually music, for silent movies; 23 is essentially an ambient music album from the RWS called Relaxing Sound Effects and was the other volume, not number; 24 was a bit more compelling for fans of D&H being all sorts of Combat sounds; 25 was the sounds of speed (vehicles, you understand) and Essential Sound Effects was a compilation and didn’t take a number. And then, some four years since the previous one, it was high time for another disc of Death and Horror. This time prefixed as ‘Even More’, Mike Harding and Peter Harwood were still presiding with an expanded team of Studio Managers and the return of the RWS. It may be that these effects were all from the library and not created specifically for the record. The selection of effects were covering familiar territory with the same regrettable, not really fit for humour stuff in the ‘Intentional Death’ section contrasting with more innocent thrills of a sleeping dragon.
The sleeve design is a break from the previous visual assaults with acrylics. Instead, we get a photo vignette of a record (which can’t be this one because BBC records always have a strict text-only label design policy) that a monster is placing a needle on. Nice meta touch! When you realise that the silent era woman pictured on the label is screaming at the clawed hand, it’s all clearly been very well thought out. The headshell is a rather unusual design and the rest of the record deck is not in evidence, so what ought to be obvious is a little obscured, but hey, it works!
There we only two more original selections of sound effects pressed on vinyl by BBC Records. Part 28 saw comedy making a very late entry for what seems an obvious choice of subject matter, although Off Beat makes a claim for that. And finally, the clunky push-button machinery of the early days was finally wheeled out be replaced by a whole LP of Hi Tech sound effects (But ssssh! Don’t tell everyone that this is another secret Radiophonic Workshop LP, with a whole side of music and ambient textures that stretch the sound effects template a little). That was it though… for now!
Essential Death & Horror
Vinyl’s death knell (Check which LP this is on. Ed.) was sounded around the start of the nineties and whether you prefer to think that it never died or became one of the undead, it was dropped as a format by BBC Enterprises. BBC Records were switching to mostly cassette-only audiobooks and radio shows (and wondering whether to switch names to BBC CDs and Tapes presumably). Although there was definitely less music being released it was more or less business as usual in the exploitation of the Beeb’s back-catalogue and the clamour for sound effects had not abated. Hence, most of the Sound Effects series was repackaged and recompiled as CD releases with new artwork. The catch-all title for this run was Essential and so Essential Death & Horror was released in 1990 in parts 1 and 2 – CD 822/823 – These were 87 (and 59) “terrifying treats from the BBC’s Sound Effects Library”.
Both parts had the same sleeve design sporting a simulacrum of the original horror show paintings in much tamer and more comic book style.
I’m not sure if these were ever deleted from the catalogue, but it says here that in 2010 BBC Audio Books changed names to AudioGo and in 2012 reissued Death & Horror with an updated booklet design and the same cover image. There was an additional tagline now too “Are you brave enough to listen”? As AudioGo ceased trading in 2013 the BBC’s reign of terror finally came to an end here after 36 years. Or did it??
Yet More Death & Horror
A few years before the general public got their hands on CD versions of D&H professional sound editors got access to digital sound effects from the BBC. This set of CDs was issued by BBC Records & Tapes who marketed them squarely at recording studios and the like. Initially a 10-CD set the full complement would set you back nearly £230 in 1987. In that first set was SFX 008 ‘Comedy, fantasy and horror’, which contained a smattering of familiar cues from the back catalogue.
In fact, this superseded the vast set of some 4000 7″ records from the BBC Sound Effects Centre. A complete catalogue of this jaw-dropping collection has not come my way, but I expect a lot of the effects found on the three Death and Horrors are on these two. It was these discs with generic labels and sleeves only that I believe Andrew Prewett was aiming to replace. A case of overkill, really.
Back from the dead
The normatively deterministic Demon Records saw to it that the hitherto unbroken run of availability for the BBCs horrific sound effects didn’t remain that way. Demon not only specialises in the reissue of back catalogue records but are now owned by BBC Studios, the current commercial operation of the corporation. In 2016 BBC Sound Effects Vol.13 Death & Horror was reissued by Demon on blood-splattered vinyl. Thanks to this new pressing D&H is still widely available and this undying classic from the BBC Records sound effects series is creeping out and delighting horror fans to this day, courtesy of the BBC itself. Like the recurring monsters and seemingly immortal bogeymen of the horror genre, these sound effects seem destined to keep coming back from the dead.
In late 2019 I was invited to contribute a Listener’s Choice edition of the radio show Charity Shop Classics. I accepted with alacrity and the resulting 58 minutes (plus intro and jingles) is available here on Mixcloud (via Facebook, because WordPress’s Mixcloud embed code isn’t working).
What a treat to play host to this Listener's Choice show. A splendid selection of music on the BBC Records label & offshoots.
Charity Shop Classics is broadcast on All FM, a community radio station Manchester. Thanks to the magic of internet radio and Twitter CSC has a reach far beyond their Levenshulme base. All FM won the national Comunity Radio Station of the year award for 2019/20, and was praised for being ” possibly the most inclusive, diverse station I have ever heard and is a wonderful example of what Community Radio should be”. As I’m based in Leeds you might wonder if I’m really allowed on, but the Listener’s Choice slot was invented to widen the scope of the presenters and get records out of chazzas from all over the country onto the programme.
The show was an interesting challenge for me because I had to limit myself only to BBC Records found in charity shops. In theory that would be easy, as I do buy a lot of BBC discs in those place, but in practice, I had to exclude a lot more records from my collection than I first thought – those from second-hand shops and eBay make up the bulk, it seems. I was very strict with myself and didn’t cheat in what I selected, even though, for reasons of quality, I didn’t always play the track from the same disc that I’d bought charitably. I also wanted to show the breadth of material available on BBC Records and be entertaining in the selection and programming, so I had to pass over a lot of the charitable purchases. I have plenty of ball-room dancing records and language LPs from BBC Publications which weren’t what was needed at all either. Then there was the stuff that just isn’t suitable for broadcast at 11 AM on a Sunday. Lots of the comedy records are just too bawdy and adult for the slot. Even those you would think would be fine! Happily, I have been sent a quite few absolute gems found in charity shops by my pals on Twitter so once I’d reviewed the pile of possible stuff and made some decisions about what I wanted to showcase I was ready to record.
I haven’t been on the radio since student days, and that was as a duo, so it was quite daunting to have to speak into a microphone and ‘carry’ the whole thing. I’m not shy, but when you know every syllable has to be right and it’s all going to kept and played over and again it’s all very uncomfortable, to begin with. What even is my voice on the radio supposed to be, anyway? In the end, I decided on a quite loose script and accept the umms, errs and slip-ups and try and sound as natural as you can when talking to yourself in an attic. I got better as I did more, but you can probably spot the joins.
The selection of tracks is a deliberately wide-ranging mix of almost over-familiar and totally obscure. I chose to embrace the obvious big-sellers because that’s what you do find in charity shops, as well as the crate-digger delights which only turn up on when your luck is well and truly in. I was also keen to use some of the odder bric-a-brac to create interesting segues and a little more interest.
Trying to find the right amount to say and what to leave out was also a consideration. I could have talked for another hour about all the records, the programmes they came from and whatnot, as well as the story of BBC records, but I was content to leave that at a minimum and get more tracks in. But there’s always more to say, so here it is.
You need to start strong, so I decided that if I was going to play this one it might as well come in as the introduction. I do like an unexpected theme and the Breakfast Time signature tune comes in right at the top. Not the original version though, no. This is played presumably by the Mike Towned and ‘The Green Goddess Band’. To be specific Trevor Bastow and/or David Firmin on “key-boards” (sic).
Then it’s a few firm words of warning from Diana Moran, The Green Goddess herself and she’s into the cat position.
Just a bit of silly to get things started and the intro has nothing to do with the show and everything to do with the joy of BBC Records.
No messing about now. Let’s tick off the selling points on this one. Funk; Synths; cover version you weren’t expecting; amazing sleeve art; Les Hurdle on bass; Music Though Midnight; Stevie Wonder; 1975.
More funk and synths whilst we’re about it and this time the theme to the sunk without trace spy thriller Quiller staring Michael ‘The Valeyard/Peter Guillam (not in Smiley’s People though)’ Jayston. BBC Records gave Quiller a good push at the time, for them, but nothing much happened. I think you’ll agree it was worth a shove, but probably wasn’t really pop enough to chart well. The TV show fell flat and has never been seen of again but D&C would be back with a run of BBC Records & Tapes singles in 78/79 that bore more fruit.
Landmark mid-eighties Dennis Potter fever-dream mixed up narratives musical thriller hospital historical comedy-drama, with iconic Max Harris theme. Accordion heavy and gumshoe lightfooted, wistful and jazzy, late-night and smokey. Just a perfect theme. Harris had previous form with Porridge and Open All Hours as well as numerous less well known and less Ronnie Barker involved shows, such a ‘A Horseman Riding By’, which was released as a single by BBC Records & Tapes in 1978.
The Singing Detective soundtrack LP is a familiar, moustachioed, gun-toting, smoking, behatted face in charity shops and the sales were so good that another album of music tied to the series called The Other Side of The Singing Detective (REN 708) was issued. That was simply the flip-sides of all the discs used to make up the first.
The oldest piece in the show by far, but somewhat appropriate to the era of the previous one. Heath was the great man of British Jazz in the post-war era and who picked up where Glenn Miller left off after his tour here. Bakerloo Non-Stop was written by Heath’s lead trumpeter, another giant of Britsh Jazz, Kenny Baker. A bit of a stomper, eh?
The album is one in a series of music selections (and The Goons) made for the ‘BBC Presents – 50 Years Of Broadcasting’ set of records. The distinctive golden sleeves with fish-eye lensed photos in the centre make an attractive set.
The gran signore of Italian soundtracks with a reworked oldie flipped from B to A-side gets a near-miss at the top of the chart for BBC Records & Tapes in 1981.
The BBC’s use for Chi Mai was in the opening sequence to ‘The Life & Times of David Lloyd George’, which is largely forgotten now, but was a hefty BBC Wales drama production from 1981 relating the story of the last Liberal prime minister. That association was enough to drive massive sales of the single and it still turns up time and time again in charity shops.
Chi Mai seemed to be everywhere in 1981 (at least I have a very strong memory of it) and it was only held off the number one spot by Bucks Fizz with ‘Making Your Mind Up’ (a worthy opponent!). In the end it spent 10 weeks in the top forty and prompted a cumbersomely titled LP of music by Morricone. Chi Mai Theme From The BBC TV Series “The Life And Times Of David Lloyd George” and more music by Ennio Morricone (REH 414). The single was re-released in 1983 to coincide with the BBC One repeat run of the TV serial, to much less success, but a mark of how popular this tune was.
You know, I’d never really looked up what the original version of this was from, which is highly remiss of me – so here it is. The original of Chi Mai was written for the film Maddelana (1971), which is a saucy tale of temptation from Italy. The versions on this single were recorded for a single called ‘Disco 78’. That was released in France in (you guessed it) 1977, but the copyright note on the BBC issues is 1978. Confused? Well, I was till I looked all this up. Anyway, the disco part is on ‘Come Madellena’, which, logically enough, was the A-side to ‘Disco 78’ and the B-side to the BBC release.
It took BBC Records a decade to release their first hundred singles. Just five years after the chart smash of Chi Mai though they’d released another hundred! They had bothered the top-forty again in 1981 with ‘I Wanna Be A Winner’ by Brown Sauce from Swapshop, Orville’s Song reached number 4 in 1982 (in a tough Christmas market) Glenn Frey’s ‘Smuggler’s Blues’ from Miami Vice went top 30 in June 1985 too, but a lot went nowhere at all or scrapped the top 100. They threw a lot out but very little stuck. The LPs sales were better, as we’ll see, but singles were not big business.
1986 was the year though. The Grange Hill Cast’s ‘Just Say No’ got to number 5 in April, with 5 weeks in the top 40. Claire & Friends ‘ It’s ‘Orrible Being In Love (When You’re Eight and a Half), got to 13 and onto Top of the Pops too. Then enter Simon May. The EastEnder’s theme hadn’t done much, peaking at 76 in March 1986, nor ‘Howard’s Way’ or ‘The Holiday Suite’, but this was just an overture. The very next release after Claire and Friends was the another run at Howard’s Way, but this time with lyrics! Marti Webb was the singer and again they were on TOTP and again at 13. Bang, the next release after that was the same trick with the ‘Stender’s theme. Angie Watts herself (Anita Dobson sang Don Black lyrics and TOTP were on the phone with two weeks at number four the prize. After a run of the usual so-so BBC fare, Eastenders kids pop band plot threw up another record (what are the chances!? written by Simon May? Get away!). Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean) and co-star Pal J Medford (who played Kelvin) scored a number 12 with ‘Something Outa Nothing’. BBC Records & Tapes were cool with the kids now. So, what next?
‘Every Loser Wins’ followed ‘Something Outa Nothing’ immediately in the catalogue and this time they were destined for the topper-most. Technically a spin-off from the previous release’s plot and not intended for the charts the song was played so often on EastEnders (thanks to Lofty’s breakdown cassette rewinding) that a single was hurried into the shops. Wicksy at the piano in the Vic was transported to Nick Berry (in a video) at the piano on TOTP and finally a number 1- for three weeks! They had to get extra pressing plants involved to cover the demand. Yes, it’s just a soppy ballad, I suppose, but if you were watching EastEnders and invested in the characters or even if you just thought Nick was a bit of a sort, it was catnip. It’s not that bad either, as ballads go.
Liberty Bell
The Band of the Welsh Guards from Music On Command – REC 121 – 1971
Enough with the hits; lets get back to some bread and butter BBC Records; and it doesn’t get much more sustaining for the label than The Band of the Welsh Guards. Music on Command was their first LP for BBC Records and seven more were to follow, plus a couple of singles for good measure.
Liberty Bell is a quick march written by the marching band major domo John Philip Sousa from the US and a. It’s probably best known for being the theme tune to Monty Python’s Flying Circus where it was chosen for its total lack of association to the rest of the show and for being a cracking tune. That version was edited for levity and brevity, but worst of all it was a version recorded by the Welsh Guards arch-rivals (I mean, I assume they were…) the Grenadier Guards.
It was pure coincidence that although I was playing this track due to it’s familiarity from Monty Python it turned out to be broadcast in eth same week that Terry Jones passed away. So, it worked as a kind of tribute by mistake.
Ballroom dancing was another genre that BBC Records covered extensively but ‘Learn To Dance At Home’ was an early release, from 1970, and they didn’t return to it until 1977. This one is instructional, so let’s see what we can learn from Jill on the subject of ‘Pop’ dancing.
I make no apology for going all-in on the most popular BBC Records & Tapes releases. These are the Charity Shop Classics. The Kids From Fame was a total monster selling record. Huge. Some chartity shops will have more than one of these, but most will have at least one. And if not, go back next week and they will. It’s ubiquitous.
Hi-Fidelity is from that episode where Bruno’s dad, the poor cab-driving father, broke one of Bruno’s synthesizers. Luckily not the $7000 one, but he still feels so bad that his son left another very expensive synth in pieces and powered on, inviting disaster, that he insists on buying him a newer, very expensive, Yamaha. Whilst in the shop trying out the new keyboard Bruno and classmate Doris instigate a performance which takes over the entire store. Yay!
(Not the Todd Rundgren song, no, but we’ll be back to him later) I’m also unrepentant about playing more funk and this is fun-ky. Play School may be the backdrop and the simple fun of banging a beat out on whatever comes to hand the pre-school friendly notion, but this ditty is as funky as a mosquitoes’ tweeter. Coldcut got there early and sampled it for a bit of outro breakbeat fade on their ‘7-Minutes of Madness’ remix of ‘Paid In Full’ by Eric B & Rakim. The original song is, unfiltered, an absolute banger though! Rick’s gentle vocals, more folk than soul, the piano riffing and that beat, all perfection. I’m surprised no-one’s covered it, but could it really benefit from being any other way?
The LP was issued originally on the offshoot Roundabout label. This was BBC Records’ home for children’s releases in the early seventies, but for some reason, they started putting out Easy Listening on it and the after-dinner gentlemen’s chit-chat of ‘The Many Voices of Peter Ustinov’. Playtime for grown-ups. And then Roundabout was gone. Like someone suddenly found out that the drunks were mucking about in the fairground after hours and closed it completely. Which was all a bit strange.
Gangsters
Chris Farlowe & Dave Greenslade from Gangsters – Beeb 022 – 1978
Speaking of odd: Gangsters. Birmingham set crime-drama which at the end devolved into fourth-wall-breaking capering about, which had this jazz-prog-funk affair as its theme. Chris Farlowe made his name with the number one ‘Out Of Time’ in 1966 but here we are, 12 years later with a performance that’s impossible to categorise. Is it male or female? Dave Greenslade packs a lot into the backing track and is no less eccentric including a bit of talkbox scatting for the heck of it.
Beeb was a pop music sub-label of the main catalogue which also put out albums on Super Beeb.
Few artists on BBC Records releases are as fascinating as Delia Derbyshire. She was a genius with sound and found her home at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop where her facility with maths and music gave her the tools to take the craft of electronic music up a level or two. Doctor Who (1963) is her monument, but she was to go on exploring and expanding possibilities for the BBC on TV and radio for another ten years.
Amor Dei is part of a set of four ‘Inventions for Radio’ which Derbyshire collaborated on with Bermange. The love of God is relatively light compared to the spooky The Dreams, which is really quite unsettling. Still, they all stand apart compared to almost anything else you have ever heard.
I chose this one because it’s so extraordinary and such a favourite of mine, but also because I just happened to have found it in a charity shop and its religious subject matter made it ideal for a Sunday morning broadcast.
The rest of ’50 Years of Religious Broadcasting’ is probably only of interest to religious scholars or the supremely devout, but this excerpt of experimental inventiveness makes it well worth owning because it’s the only official release of any of the ‘Inventions’.
Dr Jonathan Miller’s landmark documentary about life, medicine and well, the body complete with an actual autopsy, was scored entirely by Peter Howell of the Radiophonic Music Factory, sorry, Workshop. By the late seventies the tape and, err, sticky tape, techniques of the sixties had been largely replaced by the kind of synthesizers that Bruno Martelli would be proud to have his dad pay thousands of dollars for. In this case, Howell had to hire a Yamaha CS-80, but did such a bang-up job he shamed the BBC into buying one for the Workshop.
Greenwich Chorus was written as the soundtrack to a section about clocks and features the vocoder with Howell’s wordless vocalisations making the chorale. Switchboards were jammed and a single was released in response.
The ’21’ album was an anniversary presentation of the classic, swinging musique concrete sixties and synthesized, multitrack wonders of the seventies at the Workshop.
The day in question being 15th December 1971. ‘Ones On One’ was a collection of number-one singles released to commemorate the first 25 years of Radio 1. No Nick Berry (loser), but they did include Bucks Fizz. Hmmm. Anyway, inside this double album was tucked a seven inch single with recordings from the nation’s favourite’s first day and this whole day. Jimmy Young is being “irrepressible”.
An atypical Todd Rundgren hit played atypically on the harp? It happened and Paddy Kingsland, moonlighting from the Radiophonic Workshop, was helping out with some synth lines.
(See how the religious-themed title of this chimes with the previous two spiritual themed Radiophonic Workshop numbers and this also has a RWS link but is a total change of style? Well, I was pleased myself, and now I can share that with you!)
Sing A Soppy Song
Tracey Ullman & David Copperfield as Dollop from – Three of a Kind – REB 480 – 1983
Poor Dollar! But do you know what? When I posted about this record on Twitter, the official Dollar account liked a mention of this send up! And it’s a very good parody of the Trevor Horn produced ‘Give Me Back My Heart’ and hilarious anyway. I’m pretty sure than I remember enjoying this lampooning when I was a kid because I really didn’t like Dollar back then. Now though I can enjoy both versions!
Eileen was a one-woman fitness industry in her day and had been with the BBC since 1954. This was her first album for them when the commercial arm was called BBC Radio Enterprises (TV being still just a fad presumably). Another five albums were to follow, making her one of their most bankable stars, with the last one in 1980. I suppose The Green Goddess usurped her, but Diana Moran didn’t endure quite as Eileen had.
