Humble Pye

[samkydd]

(smudge @ Jan 12 2006, 08:23 PM)

What's the Sandy Powell picture from ?



Do you reckon old Scuttle was a 'lift' then, like Les Dawson borrowed Cissie and Ada from George Evans' 'gossip over the fence' character? I don't know if she ever had a name, but I've seen GE doing her on TV, and if Les's was an homage, it was spot on !



SMUDGE

I'm not sure what the avatar's from.



I don't know if Scuttle was a direct copy of anything SP did because all I remember Sandy Powell doing was the crap ventriloquist routine. Apparently when he managed a variety theatre, agents kept sending him ventriloquists and saying they were ansolutely brilliant only for Sandy and the audience to discover that they were rubbish, so he decided to do his own parody of them and it went down a storm!



Benny Hill was well known for using others' material though, mainly from European circus and mime acts of performers we'd never ever see over here. Many others famous comedians have done the same and unfortunately still do, so if you see someone's act and you think you've seen or heard some of it before, you probably have!



The biggest problem on the London comedy club circuit is the amount of drama students there are performing. They have to do stand up as part of their course, and although some have real and original talent, others would take a notebook or dictaphone to a club and make notes on, or record performances so that they could cobble together their own five minute Try Out routine at a later date, hoping that no-one would notice that the material was blatantly stolen.



A friend of mine runs a comedy club and he allowed a drama student to come on and do a spot and ALL of his material was nicked! Unfortunately it was stolen from the main act who was due to come on in the second half! Needless to say the proper stand-up wasn't too happy about it and the drama student got a good kicking!

[Fellwanderer]

(Tony Pendrey @ Jan 13 2006, 05:36 PM)

No you are right Mr. Fell. The main Ecko factory was opposite Priory Park and they had another place on the A127 arterial road.

Thanks. I thought it was there as I cycled that way to school and also spent many hours playing cricket on that side of Priory Park. Had no memory of the other site though.

The name lives on. They are part of National Plastics, and NP Ecko still operate on the same site.



They recently had a big exhibition of Ecko memorabilia in the local museum. Sadly I was too busy doing the washing up.

Nice to know the name lives on. Was that the museum in Priory Park itself?



FELL

[Jim]

Those old boxes bring back some memories! I remember in our street that we were so poor that we all piled round this one house in the street on Coronation Day 1953 and took it in turns to look at this small screen. I remember we had to draw the curtains to view the screen comfortably. I also remember another rich person had a sodding great magnifying lens on the tele!!! Ah! golden days (just kidding).

[Tony Pendrey]

(Fellwanderer @ Jan 13 2006, 08:09 PM)

Thanks. I thought it was there as I cycled that way to school and also spent many hours playing cricket on that side of Priory Park. Had no memory of the other site though.

Nice to know the name lives on. Was that the museum in Priory Park itself?



FELL

The main museum used to be in the park but it is now in what was the old library building.



As a point of interest (or not), there was a major discovery of an intact saxon burial just about where we are talkng about, Fell. It was all on a Time Team special last year. The site is now occupied by protesters trying to prevent the whole lot being lost to road widening.



I never played any cricket in Priory Park, but spent many an hour at Third Man just across the road in the Victory Sports ground. And now I live opposite that very place.

[Tony Pendrey]

No nothing at all electrical, and haven't since the 1970's. They used to have presses for the production of TV and radio cabinets so they moved into that area when they could no longer compete with Formosa and the like.

[Fellwanderer]

(Tony Pendrey @ Jan 16 2006, 03:01 PM)

The main museum used to be in the park but it is now in what was the old library building.



As a point of interest (or not), there was a major discovery of an intact saxon burial just about where we are talkng about, Fell. It was all on a Time Team special last year. The site is now occupied by protesters trying to prevent the whole lot being lost to road widening.

I seem to recall reading of that but missed the TT special.



Also spent some time during 6th form summer holidays on an archaelogical dig by the old museum.

I never played any cricket in Priory Park, but spent many an hour at Third Man just across the road in the Victory Sports ground. And now I live opposite that very place.

Brings back memories - Cuckoo Corner and the delightfully named Hobleythick Lane!



FELL

[ollie]

Hmm, I was never keen on Frampton, I can only remember him blowing a bit of plastic pipe in, Show Me The Way, or whatever it was called.

It is called a talk box

A small audio speaker or high end driver is enclosed, air tight, into a metal box with a hole in the top where a tube comes out. The guitar is plugged into an amp, but the speaker output is routed through the TalkBox. Then the signal is routed back from the box into the amp again. So, the sound from the guitar is sent through the box, up the tube to a waiting mouth, where the sounds are manipulated, before being picked up by the microphone! So by this method you can mouth the words while the sound of the guitar replaces the human voice box....hence the name Talk box

also popularised by joe walsh and in recent times by richie sambora, bon jovi "livin on a prayer" all in all a bit of a gimmick really there's (got to be carefull or the apostrophe police will get me) no real substitute for harmonic knowlege.



cheers Ollie.

[ollie]

It used to be rumoured that the talk box could cause throat cancer but i dont know if that was just a myth,i tried one once and it does cause a vibratey feeling in your gutty wutts, not to mention yer choppers



cheers Ollie.

[ollie]

Haitian divorce is a great! tune,and there is a point to be made for the actual guitar sound (including talk box) on the solo, it has a nice contour, but the actual content,for the initiated is just pentatonic wank, a technical term



cheers Ollie.

[ollie]

Favourite van sign (fabled) a firm of asian builders had "Youve tried the cowboys,now try the indians!" on their van



cheers Ollie.

[Tony Pendrey]

(ollie @ Jan 16 2006, 04:28 PM)

It is called a talk box

a small audio speaker or high end driver is enclosed, air tight, into a metal box with a hole in the top where a tube comes out. The guitar is plugged into an amp, but the speaker output is routed through the TalkBox. Then the signal is routed back from the box into the amp again. So, the sound from the guitar is sent through the box, up the tube to a waiting mouth, where the sounds are manipulated, before being picked up by the microphone! So by this method you can mouth the words while the sound of the guitar replaces the human voice box....hence the name Talk box

also popularised by joe walsh and in recent times by richie sambora, bon jovi "livin on a prayer" all in all a bit of a gimmick really there's (got to be carefull or the apostrophe police will get me) no real substitute for harmonic knowlege.



cheers Ollie.

I'm pretty sure that the man who claims to have invented this guitar technique is the one and only Jeff Beck.



He modestly called it "Beck's Box" and used it on the modestly titled "Beck's Boogie".



I have been known to do a "Becks Boogie" after 32 bottles of that german beer.

[ollie]

A talk box is not a guitar technique, it is an electronic device,an effect if you like,i'm a beck fan but i'm not aware of him inventing the device,i thought it came from a company called Heil.



cheers Ollie.

[samkydd]

(ollie @ Jan 16 2006, 06:26 PM)

Haitian divorce is a great! tune,and there is a point to be made for the actual guitar sound (including talk box) on the solo, it has a nice contour, but the actual content,for the initiated is just pentatonic wank, a technical term



cheers Ollie.

I remember Peter Frampton over used the talk box slightly ever so much on his famous late 70s album Frampton Comes Alive. Cher must have used something similar, or a modern equivilent on her big 90s hit I Believe

[ollie]

Cher has more plastic bits than most, probably including pipes, her song was software distortion.

It's called a vocoder,originally hardware, now available as a vst instument (software)



cheers Ollie.

[1tech]

The Pye electrical products you saw promoted were nothing to do with the original Pye. Mistral International Pty were using the Pye wordmark within Australia for a while but not the logo, I believe Philips allowed the "PYE" wordmark rights to lapse in the Australian market and Mistral took advantage of this. Mistral have since discontinued showing "PYE" on their website so maybe they faced legal challenges in their use of it, I don't know. A similar thing has happened in the USA, this time with Funai being the company selling the American "PYE" wordmark branded products, it may be that they lease the use of the name from Philips as Funai manufacture DVD players and recorders for Philips these days since Philips outsourced manufacturing of those items. Today you can still find Pye legacy companies around such as ComGroup Australia in Australia and Sepura plc - digital mobile radio communication, tetra private digital mobile radio pmr in the UK who continue on from Pye's original Telecommunications businesses. Pye records became part of PolyGram and then Universal Music Group. Philips still retain the rights to the Pye name and logo but have sold off most of the original businesses over the years.

[tgunnell]

Pye's main factory was in lowestoft the company was bought by philips who pledge that they would keep pye a british product maker but philips invested no real money and eventually this factory made philips tv's under the pye name.philips were going to shut the factory but it was bought by sanyo.sanyo as stopped making tv's with crt's but now assembles flat screen sets the factory is still going but with a much reduced workforce.also the southend factory was ekco's who philips also bought

[deckard]

name='ollie']A talk box is not a guitar technique, it is an electronic device,an effect if you like,i'm a beck fan but i'm not aware of him inventing the device,i thought it came from a company called Heil.



cheers Ollie.

Gawd! Those were the days Ollie! I remember in my youth, me and me mates in the band made a "talk box" ourselves by pre-amping a little driver speaker and then attaching a plastic tube to it with gaffa tape. Said tube was then tied to the mike and when playing yer mouth went over the tube to get the sound required.....it worked too! erm until the inevitable spittle ran down the tube and fried everthing!!Ahh yep, those were the days! ta ta for now, Decks.

[David Brent]

name='deckard']Gawd! Those were the days Ollie! I remember in my youth, me and me mates in the band made a "talk box" ourselves by pre-amping a little driver speaker and then attaching a plastic tube to it with gaffa tape. Said tube was then tied to the mike and when playing yer mouth went over the tube to get the sound required.....it worked too! erm until the inevitable spittle ran down the tube and fried everthing!!Ahh yep, those were the days! ta ta for now, Decks.

I can remember seeing Peter Frampton in concert back in the seventies and he used such a device frequently.



You can hear the results on his famous "Live" album.



Dave.