During an… odd few years in my younger life, my friend Dean and I became absorbed in experiments involving a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The brand name which Dean and I both “owned,” in those days when electronics were still manufactured domestically, was “Recordio.” (And yes, all right: we didn’t own them; our fathers did.)
What “odd few years” would these have been? I am pretty sure we first started doing this at around age 12. And — because of some of the “work” we did, particularly our parodies of popular TV shows — I know we must have continued at least to around age 15 or 16.
These experiments revolved around a fictional radio station, call letters CBX. Most CBX productions were ad-libbed “newscasts,” frequently starring the same two people: anchorman “Don Gurky” (played by Dean) and roving reporter “Quentin Frammistan” (guess who). I don’t have any idea how Dean came up with his character’s name; I know where Quentin Frammistan came from, though. The first name came from Quentin Reynolds (author of a series of Landmark Books — history for kids — whom I frequently cited back then as “my favorite author”); the word “frammistan,” which meant God only knows what, often appeared in the text of MAD Magazine.
In addition, two other friends put in occasional appearances. Alan’s character, Harry Two-Seven, had been so named by Dean for (I’m sure) no particular reason. Like Quentin, Harry was (most often) a field reporter; unlike Quentin, Harry tended to get caught up in situations of an embarrassing nature — something like Biff, on the Letterman show.
The other friend came along some time after we’d first started the “station” — yes, CBX endured for more than a few weeks — when we met him later in high school. His name was Tom, and his character’s name was Colonel Tom. Quite independently of us — he lived in the next town, which until we got to high school might as well have been the next planet — Tom had had his own imaginary radio station for a while. During the waning months of both stations’ life cycles, we swapped personnel every now and then.
In addition to the newscasts, CBX occasionally produced Special Events, such as (again, ad-libbed) parodies of Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. From the start, many of these Special Events featured a, umm, well, I guess you could call it a musical comedy troupe with the remarkably unembarrassed name “The Peenie Players.”
Hey, gimme a break: we had barely hit puberty yet. We certainly hadn’t heard of Dr. Freud. No, we chose the name strictly for its sound: nasal and plosive. And the reason this sound was important in the name was that it was important in the Peenie Players’ body of work, which consisted entirely of speeded-up versions (a la David Seville and The Chipmunks) of familiar songs and works of literature. (The latter ceased to be considered literature after the Peenies were through with them.)
Imagine my surprise and, well, delight (?) when a CD of some Peenie Players recordings came to me — delivered (I think) by my brother, from Dean.
More, including some samples, below.
First, just to give you a flavor of the tentativeness of the early Peenie Player experiments, here’s their version of “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In.” The script, as it came out here, consisted of:
- First verse.
- Furious drumming on the desktop concludes the verse.
- One of us — Dean, I think — says, “That concludes that song. Now, for our next song, we would like to sing ‘When the Saints Go Marchin’ Away.'” (cheers, giggling)
- First verse of this non-existent song goes exactly as in 1, above, but with the word “In” replaced by “Away.” (Clever, weren’t we?) Drumming again.
Here’s the clip itself:
After I’d listened to a couple of the shorter tracks on the CD, I started to wonder: Could I slow them down to the rate of our normal speaking voices? And if so, what would I hear?
Part 2 — which answers those questions, and raises some others — coming up shortly. While you’re waiting, pop on over the The Audio Kitchen for some evidence that Dean and I (and Alan, and Colonel Tom) weren’t the only audio oddballs back then.
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