was an Italian British conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature. He worked with arranger and composer Ronald “Ronnie” Binge, who developed the “cascading strings” effect (also known as the “Mantovani sound”). His records were regularly used for demonstration purposes in stores selling hi-fi stereo equipment, as they were produced and arranged for stereo reproduction. He became the first person to sell a million stereophonic records.
Binge
Why am I talking about this? No reason. The name Mantovani just came into my head. It may have been because this morning I watching the BBC coverage of the state visit of Macron to the UK. There were lots of horses and carriages and men with big hats marching around. It was a curious spectacle indeed. I wondered what all these people do when there isn’t a head of state visiting.
Is he inseine? OUI.
All of this was going on while Sir Windy Whistleton or somebody with a name like that, droned on about how the UK Post Office had fucked their employees over by falsely claiming that they had stolen money from the system. Some of them even went to jail for these non existent crimes. I was left wondering how 900 people who were in charge of Post Offices from all over the country could have all conspired together steal money from the till in the same manner. Nobody in the Post Office had even considered that it was odd for some reason.
Did it never occur to the Post Office POS people that maybe the accounting software was faulty? (which it was) More than 10 people committed suicide because of these false charges, yet the POS at the Post Office are dragging their heels paying out compensation for this disgusting episode. Will anyone from the Post Office who oversaw this whole sorry mess, ever go to prison? Seems unlikely.
Slashing the boats
I’m pretty much stuck on the BBC for TV news for now. Australia seems like an unbearable dystopia and I can’t watch anything from there. The US news channels and commercial TV in general, is unwatchable shit. It’s the commercials. If you have been here for any length of time you’ll know what I’m talking about. The “diversity” is perversity, and it’s just propaganda I’m not interested in looking at. The BBC seems to be obsessed with the USA. At least half of their coverage is concerned with what happens here. It’s almost as if they are trying to take ownership of the world with their reporting. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide why they might be doing this.
Showboating the Slash
It’s still fucking hot today. The thermometer has stopped functioning. The doors won’t open because the humidity has expanded them to the point where they are stuck in the fame. It’s unpleasant, yet not unexpected. Sometimes tight things are good, but not if they’re stuck doors, if you know what I mean. (and I’m sure you do)
Paul McAntovani
Mantovani starred in his own syndicated television series, Mantovani, which was produced in England and aired in the United States in 1959. Thirty-nine episodes were filmed. Mantovani made his last recordings in the mid-1970s. During his lifetime, Mantovani did not always get respect from his fellow musicians. When George Martin first suggested overdubbing Paul McCartney’s recording of “Yesterday” with strings, McCartney’s initial reaction, according to Martin, was that he did not want it sounding like Mantovani. Martin therefore used a more classical sound, employing a string quartet.
Fabulous