I always look forward to my music jams with DJ, but I was especially looking forward to this one, as DJ had promised me a guided tour around the new Theme Traders Production Village ahead of the jam.
I sure wasn’t disappointed. It is a really fun, interesting and unique place. The following video gives a feel for it, but does not show all of the most recent innovations:
On top of all of the extraordinary props, equipment and creative spaces I saw, there were two encounters, or I should say re-encounters, that will live long in my memory.
The first was with this fella:
DJ gave Janie a reclining Buddha just like this one, many years ago, suggesting that we place it in the garden at Sandall Close. We didn’t realise that it was one of a pair.
Our Buddha had mostly returned top the earth by the time Janie moved out of Sandall Close and I can now report that there is no trace of our Gautama left – the following picture taken 22 April showing the site where ours returned to the dust.
But the discovery of that memory-jogging Buddha was the least of it.
More bizarre still was the discovery, when we got deeper into the props collection and looked inside a large old decommissioned safe, inside which they keep, for some reason, an assortment of old gadgets and gizmos.
There in the centre of the middle shelf was a spool of 9.5 mm cine film…
…with my Dad’s handwriting on it:
How an old spool from Dad’s shop has ended up in the Theme Traders props collection is a bit of a mystery. I do know that, when dad was shutting up shop, DJ bought up some of dad’s old stuff. But that was over 30 years ago when DJ was running “the Boffin Shop”; prior to Theme Traders even starting.
DJ doesn’t recall taking much if anything of that “boffin” kind across to Theme Traders back then. In any case, the chances of any item surviving that long – let alone finding pride of place on display rather than buried in storage as part of their giant collection, are minuscule.
It fair made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, seeing Dad’s unmistakable writing. Not only that, but a rare mistake of dad’s too. On the side and on the top Dad had written “The Pawnbroker”, but he also added on the top ‘Shop’, perhaps recognising that the name of the film is actually The Pawnshop”.
The irony of the discovery of that spool and the content of this film – some parts of the Pawnshop depicted look a bit like the Theme Traders props department – was not wasted on me. Well worth seeing the film (below) if you’ve never seen it.
I had never seen the film before, because we had no projector for that old 9.5mm gauge – that’s almost certainly why dad simply disposed of the film as I collected the 8mm items he hadn’t sold. Still have a box of them in the attic somewhere.
The music jam almost seemed like an anticlimax after all of that…
…except of course it never is an anticlimax to have fun making music.
DJ and I tried out my new rishas – plectra intended for ouds but Ian Pittaway has recommended that I use a cut version for medieval music, as they used a quill-like plectrum back then. DJ meanwhile thought the sound would be great for some of his jazz music work.
We mostly played 60s and 70s popular music this time, once I had demonstrated the medieval.
DJ and I bickered as usual as to who should be Major Tom and who should be Ground Control when we have a go at Space Oddity. As usual we ended up both trying each of the roles.
We tried some new material too. We’ll work on Valerie and Jesamine next time – songwise I mean. We also tried Daisy Bell, so that Daisy won’t be too jealous when she finds out about Valerie and Jesamine.
We also ate and drank…as always it was a really relaxing and pleasant evening.