Topless Cranking vs Modern Music to Attract Young People
The recent posts on MMD (Mechanical Music Digest) about the need of "modern music" to attract young people to the hobby pales when compared to the need to have more Topless female organ grinders! In order to placate "peer pressure" some believe that modern music is what is called for. It is as though the organs were crying out for gang banging ghetto HIP HOP http://www.streetgangs.com/ with backward facing caps, baggy low slung pants, and attitude! On the other hand you could ask the question of WHOSE "modern" music is needed? In USA we have a very large Hispanic population with their own "Modern" music. In England there is a very large Muslim population with maybe their own "Modern" music. I know that the Hispanic community has a rich history of involvement with mechanical organs, infact you still find them be operated from Cuba to Mexico to Argentina and Chile. So who do you cater to? Female topless organ grinders would appeal to many! OK OK maybe the Muslims would take great offense...... May I remind the sexually squeemish that exposed female boobies have a rich history on the fairground! YES look at any group of historic photos of Gavioli, Marenghi, Limonaire, Bruder organs and what do you see..... you see what the Church Carvers did Saturday night! Yes they carved topless girls for the fair organs! Thank you Mr. Demetz! In the USA, carnivals of the 30's, 40's, and 50's regularly had "gal shows" featuring strips and skimpy clad exotic dances. Sort of a traveling burlesque show. SO....Angie, maybe you are on to something. Maybe you have started a trend! I know one thing.... you have created a stir!

Topless or not, adding "more entertainment" in the form of Can-Can dancers is a good idea. They do a good "girl show" at Widnes, accompanied by a large organ, and there is live action of other sorts at other UK rallies.

I'm all for a Pirelli-type calender here. BUT purleeeez don't even think of those "passion dancers". The younger generation you are trying to attract know what good looking women look like and giving them the "passion dancers" is like having a maiden great aunt giving you a "jazz mag" from the 1940s. Bleughghgh! If you want to see what kind of women might attract a hip hop hip audience ...turn on MTV. The "passion dancers" have "a face for radio" - I never hang around to watch them as it makes me feel quite ill. There's nothing "English rose" about them either - just English rhubarb. I am at a total loss why people persist in publicly declaiming how sexy they find them when they are obviously as sexy as any bag o' cold chips if we are being honest. When they do the can-can they prance around clumsily shreiking whilst waving Bridget Jones-style / Mrs Slocum knickers around - it's all thoroughly unerotic and is actually the opposite of everything it tries to be. Why not hire 5 lap dancers from London for the weekend if you want to draw the crowds and not make them puke. I'll even chip in!

Modern Music on Fair Organs
Recently there has been a push to put contemporary music on fair organs as though it was the "magic pill" needed to create interest. In my opinion more nudity would do the trick or am I just attacking the premis of the argument as to what attracts people to mechanical organs? Well let me explore why some people feel the need for contemporary music on mechanical organs. Most of the posters desiring "modern" music are in their teenage years when peer pressure predominates. Such people are driven by a strong need to conform or risk being ignored by their peers or worse yet being viewed as nerds or odd balls. Thus they seek to dress the same, look the same, and listen to the same music. And who sets the contemporary trends? For most the world it is Hollywood and the American entertainment industry and also certain British pop culture. The problem is that such conformity for the sake of peer acceptance is often manipulated by the promoters in the entertainment industry in much the same way as propaganda is used to shape public political opinion. It takes a strong willed person to look at what is going on and see it for what it is. In my opinion, fairground organs will ALWAYS have a following if they are playing in tune with well voiced pipework and are playing good arrangements of melodic music. Such music is thrilling to listen to on such mechanical instruments. For example, the music of WWI is now far in the past and yet it sounds great on a fair organ. I can still remember the electric thrill I had when I first heard some of this music on Saunder's brass trumpet Gavioli. The fair organ design follows that of a concert band. A fairground organ does not follow the musical instrumentation of a heavy metal band or hip hop rap chants, etc. The key -*test*-('") to musical success of a selection on a fairground organ is to see if it musically good when listened to by a person who never heard the original modern hit performance of the selection. Much contemporary music fails this -*test*-('") on a fair organ, street organ, etc. Why is this important? Well the fact is most current hits do not last and become forgotten very quickly. A perusal of the hits of the 70's, 80's, 90's tells you this. Most of the so call hits of these years rose and fell quickly with only a few having any lasting impact. If the musical arrangement on the organ can stand on its own without listener knowledge of the original hit song then you have success. One of the reason why much contemporary music does not fit a mechanical organ is that the instrumentation used in the original hit is much different than that of the organ, the music is not melodic, and/or the selection is too dependent on vocal performance. To simply cater to the teenage need for conformity is a mistake because as a person matures their horizons expand and their tastes are driven less by peer pressure. The enjoyment of the good sounding traditional libraries of the fair organ is a horizon expanding experience. Much of the music I now enjoy was first played to me on a mechanical instrument. The historic libraries of music found on books, cylinders, and discs act like time capsules. And when you really get into it you soon discover that much of what was composed years ago is so much more enjoyable and entertaining than anything being written today. In my opinion the contemporary music scene is drastically lacking in a melodic sense resulting in a musical desert where as the traditional libraries of well arranged vintage music are an oasis of enjoyment!

Music
Wallace, I grew up during the prime of the acid rock, hard rock, era and remember vividly the peer pressure and rebellion of the time. It was also during this time that I discovered the enjoyment of vintage music. On the entertainment scene, such music was condemned as being "Lawence Welk" stuff. I discovered the "old" music on the rolls of the Tangley Calliaphone which I restored in the early 70's. I restored the Calliaphone during high school. I soon ordered more "A" rolls from Ray Siou of Oakland, California. During that period I also acquired a Wurlitzer band organ. It came with a number of rolls with songs I did not know. I soon grew to like a lot of the tunes from Barney Google to the Billboard March. For me the music was sooooo old it was NEW! During this period the movie the STING came out and I discovered the Ragtime music of Scott Joplin. Today I regularly take out my 43 key Hofbauer Violin Pan with Percussion. I have had a lot of music arranged for it by the organ world's top arrangers. When I play it I am always surrounded by a crowd of people from ALL age groups who enjoy listening to it. And most of the songs played are old songs that are MY favorites. The organ is chromatic except for the 9 bass notes. The arrangements I have had made are extremely well done and use the full potential of the organ. I have simply not felt the need to go "modern" with the music. In fact I find that the people I play for seem almost starved for a good toe tapping melody line!

I have simply not felt the need to go "modern" with the music. In fact I find that the people I play for seem almost starved for a good toe tapping melody line! ...and there I was sat in the square at Williamsburg VA last night listening to the USAF band playing Sousa marches, Wagner's Meistersingers Prelude, Olympic fanfares, modern power ballads from various movies, new compositions and more patriotic fare. Plenty mix, plenty toe-tapping stuff, plenty modern stuff also. And yes, there was a very very large attentive audience of all ages! Maybe what we should do is really quite easy : just take a look at repertoire lists for what modern-day concert bands are playing. Owners of large mechanical instruments in effect are in the same position as the musical director of any large concert band playing to the public if you think about it. regards Adam PS why don't English organ owners get some more Sousa marches done : try "Nobles of the Mystic Shrine" for something different or what about "Imperial Edward" written specially to honor the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 - Sousa with an English connection! We don't have to just have "El Capitan" and "Washington Post" ad nauseam ya know! There are 100+ other good 'uns! Interested arrangers may dowload band parts from the Library of Congress entirely gratis. No excuses.

I quite agree with Tim when he say's that a young persons musical taste changes and matures as they get older. Mine certainly did and I think most peole would agree on that one. There is no need to cater for the younger audience in an endeavor to get them interested in organs. If they don't like organs, no amount of "modern" music will change that. Organs are just not designed to play a lot of modern stuff, anymore than a piano is designed to play Hendrix. Personally, I find a lot of the modern music played on mechanical organs very dreary. Not much of a melody, the same bass note repeated time after time. The music lacks movement and interest. The same can also be said of many classical pieces, another musical subject the mechanical organ isn't entirely suited to. However, anything with a good melody, harmony and bass line is worthy of attention, whatever period it was written. Arrange music the organ is suited to, and you're onto a winner. In any case, young children don't differentiate between old and modern. They haven't been around long enough to know when any of it was written. And youngsters, as all organ owners will know, are fascinated by organs playing anything beaty and melodic. Just watch them dancing and tapping their feet. And if the oragn has a keyframe or roll player, they will stand for ages entralled by watching the music going in one side and out the other. No, we don't need to cater for the youger generation. They are interested anyway.

Two points I would like to make are, you can play anything on an organ if it has enough notes available to cope with that particular tune, I was listening to Kelder's Victory organ at Evesham during the weekend, and every tune it plays, old & modern (grace kelly by Mika and meatloaf, Queen etc) all sounds fantastic because it has the notes available. I've heard other organs attempt to play other modern tunes and because they have to miss notes, although the organ itself sounds great the tunes they play just doesn't sound right. Also, you either enjoy mechanical music or you don't. If people would rather go to the beer tent instead of watching an organ play, then surely it proves that going topless would only mean that they come to see the person not the organ which rather defeats the object of getting more people interested in mechanical music. Seeing boobs doesn't bother me, but I fail to see why I should consider degrading myself by grinding my organ topless just to get more attention. My organ (mechanical) sounds so pretty people always stop by when I play it anyway, and I can't see many mums allowing their children to dance in front of my organ and feed the monkey if my plentiful boobs were doing the dancing! Anyway in this day and age, why do we only have the can can girls and "Passion Dancers", why cant we have a male version? and surely when the men at steam rallies are more interested in engines, commercials etc, perhaps it ought to be the male grinders with their bits dangling out for us ladies to have a giggle at - but I suppose that would be seen as far too perverse wouldn't it!

Topless Cranking
Naturally in my Topless discussion I was being FACETIOUS (see below definition). Regarding what is played on mechanical organs, I still prefer well arranged vintage music that fits the ability of the instrument. Sadly so many smaller organs are not chromatic and the music has to be "fudged" to play on them. And then there are certain German fair organs with the mixture ranks that have a difficult time with popular music. Regarding late rap, rock, tunes etc. Many are vocal and rhythm based and if you have NOT heard the original tune, the fair organ rendition of it sounds out of place. Selections with a good melody line will adapt well if the organ is chromatic enough. Such selections stand on their own and do not require the listerner to have heard the original rendition. facetious Main Entry: fa·ce·tious Listen to the pronunciation of facetious Pronunciation: \fə-ˈsē-shəs\ Function: adjective Etymology: Middle French facetieux, from facetie jest, from Latin facetia Date: 1599 1 : joking or jesting often inappropriately : waggish <just being facetious> 2 : meant to be humorous or funny : not serious <a facetious remark>