Click HERE to download 3rd Act of the Brain Opera from this page
This is an MP3 file of a piece that the Bonzo Dog Band did for the John Peel Top Gear show which used to go to air from 3pm to 5pm every Saturday afternoon on Radio One in England. It was recorded probably in 1968, give or take a year or so.
The Bonzos were regular guests on the show and most times they did the songs from the albums. However, sometimes they did specials for the show - this was one. It was a well known, or certainly intimated, fact that John Peel was a vegetarian - he still may be. Quite why this inspired TWO bands to write songs on this topic is a mystery but I am sure that this was the inspiration for the track.
If you listen about 5 minutes in you will hear a band member say "Look, John, people must eat and people have got to live - life goes on don't it (woah-oh)" (PS note the "pun" on Obladi Oblada by the Beatles). This, and the rest of the script about such topics as vivisectionists, butchers etc, is surely a very friendly "dig" at John Peel's way of life.
Just so that you know I am not making this up, I have a track from the unlikely named band Blodwyn Pigg (sic) recorded at about the same time. Mick Abrahams was lead guitar (he was lead guitar on the first Jethro Tull album before this). Anyway, the track in question was "Up and Coming" off the first BP album. Only, on John's show it became "Mr Green's Blues or Mr Blue's Greens".
In the middle Mick does a recitative including the following words "... and even my best friend John Peel, he got the blues, he got more than the blues, he got the greens, in fact his whole life been the greens all the time, he don't eat no meat whatsoever ... mind you, it's only a little joke of mine, ya'all"
Nuff said :-)
Anyway - the recording ...
Saturday arvo was when I used to sit glued to my old valve (!) radio and at one point it was rigged up so that the speaker output could feed the old reel-to-reel tape recorder we had - I was 18 at the time and radios didn't have Tape Recorder Line Out ports back then.
Subsequently this and a few other Top Gear gems were transferred to another tape - subsequently transferred to cassette 5 years later - rediscovered 20 years later and then remastered with noise reduction software. This MP3 was made from the final WAV file.
I know the quality is shocking - it is the best I can do - at least you can hear everything that is being said and that is the main thing! I hope you enjoy it.
My web site:
http://modemss.brisnet.org.au/~mlevoi
All publicity is better than none <grin>
This page and its links were last updated on 2nd October, 1999
