In September 2018, Paul Deacon asked me to dig out whatever I might have left of our old silly tape recordings and stuff.
Sadly, little survives, as explained in my piece on Execution Scenes, recordings of which do survive:
Execution Scenes, Coin Tossers And Miscellaneous Silliness Recorded With Paul Deacon, 12 April 1977
But I did find a copy of a tape which I made for Paul – a fiendish pop quiz named “Free Bonus Brainstrain”.
By all means give it a go. Music from the 1960s to the early 1980s – mostly mid 1960s through 1970s. It’s tough and in two chunks, c10’30” and then c7’30”:
I have the answers and will gladly mark attempts and/or send the answer sheets to anyone who dares to try the quiz and requests the materials.
Paul Deacon – I expect you at least to apply.
I recall that this epic effort was in response to a tape that Paul made for me, which he called “The Free Bonus LP”.
In 2018 I wrote, of that tape:
I recall that I had that tape – I think it was a 4″ spool – when I started my digitisation project but something disastrous happened to it. I think it was one of those (a minority, but a significant number of) tapes that had so denatured over time that the magnetic coating simply flaked off the tape making it inaudible and hazardous to the rather delicate reel-to-reel machinery I was trying to maintain for the purposes of digitising my collection.
I’m trying to recall what was on that tape. I think Paul might have cut some copies of our old silly stuff onto that spool, but it also included some comedy classics. The only one I remember for sure was on it was Bo Dudley, a piece that is so non-PC by today’s standards I almost blush to provide a link to a video of it:
The only other thing I recall about the Free Bonus LP was Paul doing a booming, echoing voice-over saying, “The Free Bonus LP” several times during the tape.
In 2020, however, for reasons explained in this linked piece…
The Free Bonus LP, A Reel-To-Reel Tape Gifted To Me By Paul Deacon, 26 September 1981
…I did manage to recover The Free Bonus LP. It was not a duff tape, but it was recorded at 7 1/2 ips and I now recall that the additional gear/belt that drives my Sony TC377 died before I had digitised that tape. Being 12 years wiser, I realised in 2020 that I could spool the tape into Audacity at 3 3/4 ips and simply tell Audacity to render the digital sound 100% faster when finalising. Result!
Anyway, my Free Bonus Brainstrain emulates the technique but it was not done anything like as well as Paul’s…Paul was becoming a vocal pro, whereas I…wasn’t.
In July 1983, I was doing my regular accountancy summer job at Newman Harris…
I got a job with Stanley, he said I’d come in handy.
…but on the Saturday:
went to Paul for afternoon
I’ll guess that he gave me the Free Bonus LP that day.
More interesting is the entry for 26 September 1983, by which time I had stopped work ahead of my return to Keele:
Lazy day – shopping – taping etc. Paul came over for dinner -> Radio Kings in eve
I think that was the day I gave Paul the Free Bonus Brainstrain.
Of course Paul was already doing DJ stuff by then as a volunteer at Kings College Hospital, the scene of my birth as it happens, on Radio Kings.
I’m sure Paul has many memories of Radio Kings but I wonder whether he remembers much about the evening he took me there and showed me the ropes. I remember being fascinated by it, but little of the detail.
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