Gray/Grainer

The Thirtieth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Wednesday.

I see they've brought back Comedy Playhouse, complete with a quick snatch of the original theme music: Happy Joe by Ron Grainer. Which reminded me that I had put 'Gray vs Grainer' as a tag on this blog entry here. And seemed to tie in nicely with the fact that I bought a CD of Ron Grainer's music last week.

And all this confluence of nonsense reminded me of the time I was witness to the Grand Final of the Theme Tune Composer Deathmatch XXIII.

Everyone else had fallen by the wayside: Hawksworth, Hazelhurst, Goodall and the like. Only the two giants were still standing: Ron Grainer and Barry Gray.

Appreciation of the Thunderbirds theme has gone through a phase of kitsch appreciation, but lets not lose sight of the fact that it is just a blooming good tune. The crowd gasped as Gray played it as his opening gambit.

Grainer always had a sense of humour though, and so he ironically replied by saying he hadn't expected that.

Gray simply said that 'anything could happen in the next half hour'.

But Grainer just thought that was a load of old junk.

Grainer was getting cocky - he didn't even bother with Doctor Who, confident in the depth of his oeuvre. But then Gray punched hard with UFO.

Grainer was reeling. He knew he had to finish this fast. First he took the mickey, doing his version of one of Gray's themes.

And then, while The Ron Grainer Orchestra were on fire, they finished Gray off with their own interpretation of the theme from The Prisoner (which for some reason I can't embed from Youtube so I'll have to do a link instead. Here it is).

Kapow!

Grainer wins! Next he travels to New York for the international final against Mike Post.

(PS, as a bonus here are the Japanese opening titles to several Gerry Anderson series)

More soonliest.

Some Truths 02

The Thirteenth of October Two Thousand and Eleven. Thursday.

Kevin Horlock scored in the last minute of the 1999 Second Division play-off final to make the score Gillingham 2, Manchester City 1. Just before the restart, the third official indicated that there would be 4 minutes of injury time to play. I was at Wembley that day and I swear at that moment, despite us trailing, I knew we were going to win. I’ve never experienced that level of certainty - when there’s been next to no chance - before or since. Paul Dickov equalised and we won on penalties.

During a school trip to the Blue John Mines in Derbyshire we stopped off at a café to get a drink. While there, we experimented with putting Dandelion and Burdock into a cup of tea. For the record, it tastes sort of minty.

The first time I ever encountered a can of pop (of Coke in this instance) with the top edge bevelled to accommodate your lip was on Nuneaton station in 1988. I was on my way to Leicester University for an interview for a BSC in Physics with Astrophysics. Prior to then all my cans had been straightforward cylinders. I took the course, but came home after one term ‘cos it was doing my head in.

Before

After

The UK offices of the lift manufacturer Otis are based in Reading.

The southernmost London Underground station is on the Northern Line (Morden).

I have just checked the lyrics to Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen to find that the line is 'I knew life before I left my nursery.' For some reason, I have always sung this as 'I knew life before I left my laws degree'. Which doesn't make any sense - not least the phrase 'laws degree' but I have been content to sing that for thirty years, only challenging it tonight for the sake of this blog.

The problem began with the Worm's Inhuman Form. Or possibly the Worms In Human Form.

The two best theme tune composers are Barry Gray and Ron Grainer.

Stop Press! My brain has just exploded! Just found out that the Ron Grainer Orchestra did a cover of Joe 90 which you can find here.

More soonliest.