Sidney White’s Electric Coliseum Bioscope & Variety Show. How 1960’s and hip-hip-hippie can you get, eh? Forget The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and/or Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band, this was the real thing.
1967 – the Summer of Love, kaftans, Hendrix, incense, patchouli oil and Sgt Pepper. For me it conjures up visions of long-haired folk in purple velvet loon pants parading up and down the King’s Road in Chelsea and turning on, tuning in and dropping out. For the gilded few this was the way it was, however I suspect our cultural memories of the time have been a bit skewed.
Check out this little beauty and come face to face with Britain in 1967. A gaggle of somewhat sturdy ladies and gents all uniformly clad in drab overcoats, every woman sporting a dowdy headscarf, standing around under a leaden sky crowded around a rather large* fair ground organ which is partially obscured by a tarpaulin. The party is on.
The LP Mammoth Gavioli Fair Organ Gavioli Showtime is basically a large steam-powered organ playing a selection of 16 show tunes. Delivered in 1909 it toured fair grounds as part of Mr White’s extravagantly named travelling show, predominantly in South Wales, until 1914 when the rise of a new-fangled technology called cinema spelled the end of its’ drawing power it fell into dereliction and disrepair before being lovingly restored and repaired in the 50s and going out on tour of all the various steam engine rallies out there. I don’t know its current whereabouts but it was up for sale last year. It’s an indestructible giant relic of a bye gone era, held together by having all its moving parts retooled, replaced and tended to by devoted acolytes; sort of a bit like Lemmy.
But I’m not here to sneer. I inherited Gavioli Showtime when my grandparents passed, 17 or so years ago and it reminds me of them and how much I find myself missing them; in fact last weekend I was close to where they lived in Somerset. Not that I ever heard them play this album, in fact the only LP I can ever remember being played in their house was one of carols occasionally on Christmas morning. When I was offered them I took a couple of LPs of soundtracks from the musicals, a controversial one and this.
Ignoring this LP as a musical entity (which is totally not the point of albums but normal rules do not apply here) there is something quaintly and reassuringly warm about Gavioli Showtime. It harks back to a less-cluttered, less-demanding, more innocent era when folk would turn out in reasonable numbers to see, in effect, a gigantic musical box put through its paces, usually in November in the rain, I’d imagine from the cover. It’s sweet.
What is interesting is that there was clearly a decent market for this type of record in the late 60s. The Mammoth Gavioli Fair Organ recorded, amongst others, Famous Overtures & Marches and Marching With The Mammoth Gavioli, and there were others in on the act, Mammoth Marenghi Fair Organ, the 112-Key Mortier Dance Organ and the Van Der Beeck Organ to name but three. I like to imagine that there was an intense, borderline murderous, rivalry between the Gavioli and the Marenghi – all manner of skulduggery and dirty deeds taking place, a sort of Game of Keys, if you will.
Whether I ever listen to it again or not, Gavioli Showtime is a link to the past for me, my own and a link to a seldom visited cultural corner.
600 Down.
*mammoth, even?
This is a wonderful read! I for one find Calliope music fascinating and very creepy.
Thank you Sarca, I know what you mean it can be a bit ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’.
Great read this is something I had no idea existed TIL now! Haha…love the shot with the baby carriage haha….hippies!
Also, forgot to mention the wonderful guitar-toting Granny. Fab.
Cheers Bruce, I’m rather fond of the old girl myself.
I’ve been toying with the idea of featuring 1967 in 2017. Can I borrow this?
Of course you can!
This is a great post, sir. I find the whole travelling organ music show shenanigans incredibly interesting. A perfect example of the wonder that’s been lost; a place and time just abandoned like it no longer offered anything. A door to a really special time.
… and then there’s the link for you. That’s more special. An LP to treasure, Mr. 1537.
Thanks J, thanks a lot. I almost allowed some emotion to slip from behind my steely-eyed Welsh resolve when I wrote this one too.
Emotion? Well, you go keep that to yourself!
I’m very sorry, it won’t happen again.
This is really awesome. Definitely a curio.
I don’t know that times were simpler. In fact, they may have been harder. Conveniences we take for granted weren’t invented yet, and there were those little things called WW1, the Depression, and WWII. People who get too nostalgic for a century ago tend to be glossing a bit. But it is still really cool that people would come out for something like this, let alone putting it on an LP for you to have a keepsake.
And man, I hear you on missing the grandparents. Big time.
Cool post! Congrats on 600!
Thank you.
” It’s an indestructible giant relic of a bye gone era, held together by having all its moving parts retooled, replaced and tended to by devoted acolytes; sort of a bit like Lemmy.”
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I believe The Kinks’ David Watts was also from the summer of ’67.
To quote the beginning of that track, “This is the milestone”- congrats on #600!
Very nice, Mr. 1537. Congrats on 600!
Thanks a bunch! Only 937 to go and then I’m free! Free I tell you!!
(“Should we tell him that he can check out anytime he likes…but he can never leave?”)
Before the rap rivals of the 90s, there was the steam-powered organ battles of the aughts. There’s something quite nice about that thought.
What a cool reminder of times that no longer exist. Something quite romantic and a little sad about this lovely old beast. Much like the calliope of the early carnival days, when instead of paying a whole band to entertain the crowds you had this steampunk-ish musical monster that played popular songs of the day. These are the kinds of LPs I wish I could find in secondhand shops, as opposed to the ample amounts of Al Hirt and Glen Campbell records.
And it’s on Decca no less. Great post, and a nice tip of the carnival barker hat to your grandparents.
Definitely an East coast/West coast steam organ beef going on in the early (18)90’s.
Thank you, it is romantic and sad – I’ll see if I can find you one on my travels.
That would be fantastic!
Oh, and if you’re in need of any
Al Hirt or Herb Alpert let me know. I can send a crate by ship to you.
I have an album of western themes that my grandparents owned, it take me back to a small terraced house in Kirkby with the smell of coal fires and tea and toast made on the fire every time.
Wonderful post. Grandparents are special.
Thank you, things like this are important. Toast on a fire? magic.
Really nice post.
Thanks Mike – not very Halloween themed, but it’ll do!
Screw the calendar man!
Yeah – who’s the calendar think it is, trying to push me around?!
I’m going to celebrate my birthday tomorrow because gifts.
DAMN THE MAN!