To some – not least those would would repeatedly seek to elicit a teacher tuttage-occasioning cheer by covertly sketching out the opening notes of the themes from The A-Team, Dallas, Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Star Wars on whatever dust-encrusted identification-averse general approximation of a ‘brass’ instrument they had been entrusted with on account of their ‘proficiency’ which was in reality generally little more than a not especially well-concealed concession less to their actual ability than to their height – the percussion instruments doled out in school music lessons were for the losers, the misfits and the unsalvageably incapable who could never possibly hope to share their harboured dreams of pop stardom like their idol ‘Belouis’ ‘Some’. Those who could not have cared less about brass instruments other than that if given the opportunity they would have brazenly blared out the themes from The Money Programme, Weekend World or Credo as a sort of witty satirical joke, however, could ‘see’ the deeper fundamental mechanics at work in the classroom instrument distribution model. To others they may have just looked like a chime bar where one of the rubber stoppers had come away and tempered the overall sonorous effect with a ‘dink’ that would cause everyone else to turn their heads and look at you accusatorily, a tambourine where two of the miniature cymbals had inexplicably warped and fused and now produced a sound roughly comparable to a milk bottle top skittering across a table, or a wooden stick with cursory bells at either end and the word ‘VICEROY’ mysteriously stamped across it that generated essentially absolutely no discernible sound whatsoever. To those who understood, however, they were a tonal pathway to unconstrained sonic invention and a momentary opportunity to imagine yourself forming part of the percussive wall of chimes and thunks that underpinned Pet Sounds, A Christmas Gift For You From Philles Records or even that unassailable high watermark of musical innovation, the theme from BBC TV’s Jigsaw.

So what became of these aspirant musical expeditionaries and their predilection towards functionally impaired percussion instruments that issued malleable unconventional sounds? Well, as you can find out here, most of them would find themselves too devoted to abstract deconstructed notions of tonality to ever be able to work within the restrictive functionality of a conventional band making unadventurous pop-rock music for ‘The Man’, and resigned themselves instead to attempting to master the chord changes from Blue In Green on a flexatone before giving up on any notions of a career in music altogether. We can only hope in that case that they still harbour fond memories of similarly exotic percussion instruments being literally waved about with momentary thrilling abandon on various BBC children’s shows, and in this instalment of Through The Square Window you can find features on two particular appropriately musically inclined programmes that were never short of an excuse for a quick outbreak of bock-a-da-bock-wielding, as well as a handful of editions of Looks Unfamiliar that even between them only have a tenuous connection to any Children’s BBC show, percussion-friendly or otherwise, at best, but even so it’s a decent enough opportunity to point out that you are quite welcome to buy me a coffee here if you’re not too busy trying to fashion a makeshift cabasa out of the jar. Anyway, with a quick vibraphone flourish approximation of a certain much-loved theme tune, let’s kick off this rummage through the archives by going straight to Misterland – which is, of course, ‘the land of magic’ – where all is most certainly not as it seems…

Looks Unfamiliar: Jonny Morris – What Was Actually In The Dandy?

Despite being a prolific dramatist and as far as I am aware the only individual that Russell T. Davies has essentially urged the entire planet to follow on social media, Jonny appeared a little surprised and possibly even reluctant when I first asked him if he’d be interested in doing Looks Unfamiliar. The minute that he mentioned the existence of a canonically shadowy ‘bootleg’ Mr. Man who has since been erased from history, however, I knew this would be a fantastic show. It was especially enjoyable to delve into our shared memories of bemusement at the casual eccentricity of computer game instructions, old-fashioned ‘serious’ sci-fi adventure comic strips and the old-skool BBC’s seemingly entirely random approach to archive repeats, and even more so to be able to mount a long overdue defence of The Barron Knights, who may not exactly be the most highbrow and sophisticated act in comedy history but do not in any way deserve to act as the widely deployed shorthand for ‘naff’ that they seem to have become. When you consider that even anyone who wants to decry them seems to be able to involuntarily quote some of their lyrics word for word, they clearly must have been doing something right. It’s still very difficult to convince anyone that they had their moments, though, and in fact I later had to write a complaint to a newspaper after a subeditor added the word ‘hideous’ to my casual mention of The Barron Knights, but that’s another story. You can find the full show here and the chat about the very much not ‘hideous’ – well, apart from the odd ‘accent’ here and there – Jesta Giggle by The Barron Knights in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

If You’re Feeling Happy, Tap Your Feet

This close listen to the various wildly disparate commercially released versions of the theme song from BBC’s improv comedy and party games-heavy Play School spinoff Play Away, and why none of them quite match up to exactly what you would have heard on screen at any point in the show’s lengthy history, was very deliberately written with the intention of drawing attention to Top Of The Box, my guide to every single released by BBC Records And Tapes. It was more than just a rehash of the relevant entries from the book, however, as it also involved a look at some of the completely re-recorded and re-edited versions of the theme that found their way onto assorted Play Away albums and theme tune compilations issued by the label, and despite having vigorously asserted at the time of Top Of The Box‘s release that a corresponding companion volume looking at BBC Records And Tapes’ albums would be an act of unfinishable madness, this was one of the first much-resisted glimmers of a notion that it might in fact be both worth doing and doable after all. The fact that this fairly throwaway and cynically conceived feature proved to be consistently and surprisingly popular also did more than a little to test my resolve on this matter. You can find the original version of If You’re Feeling Happy, Tap Your Feet here and a more detailed look at the assorted Play Away and Play School-related singles and albums in Top Of The Box here and Top Of The Box Vol. 2 here.

There Was A Gentleman From Way Up North, And Kije Was His Name

Quite aside from the momentary distraction that it provided from the pen that won’t work on workcard that you can’t write on-facilitated rigours and tedium of actual classroom lessons, one of the major thrills of being allowed to watch schools television at school – aside from pretending to ‘shoot’ the ‘dots’ with that freewheeling AOR instrumental squealy guitar soloing away in the background – was that some of the programmes were almost like ‘proper’ television. Almost, but not quite. A lack of resources and studio time coupled with the associated imperative to educate gave them the feel of a regular programme where the lines weren’t all quite joined up but it was never actually deemed necessary either by the production team or by the audience for them to do so, lending the impression of a regular programme where you could – thrillingly – see the ‘join’ and get some sense of how it was all slotted together in the studio. This was doubtless part of the inspiration for this look at BBC schools show Music Time‘s fondly-remembered animated retelling of Lieutenant Kije, although to be honest I also wanted to discuss it in terms of its usual proximity to the Christmas holidays and how this unwittingly gave the faintest glimmer of hope that a brief but exhilarating couple of days of no school was very much on the horizon. Which does not exactly explain why it was published in late spring rather than early autumn but, well, you can ask Cadet Rousselle about that as he seems to have an answer for just about everything else. Anyway, what really surprised me about this was just how many people stumbled across it whilst desperately searching for confirmation of the existence of the oily Chancellor puppet whose pallid visage had haunted them at night as youngsters even though they had absolutely no idea of what he or even the show he was from was called. You find the original version of There Was A Gentleman From Way Up North, And Kije Was His Name here and a hugely expanded version with much more about Music Time‘s fascinatingly idiosyncratic history in Keep Left, Swipe Right here.

Looks Unfamiliar: Paul Kirkley – The Most Memorable Movie Ferret Sacrifice Ever

You may well be familiar with Paul’s name from Radio Times, Rolling Stone, New Statesman, The Guardian, SFX or one of many other similarly august periodicals, but to a certain audience he is almost certainly better known as a prolific contributor to Doctor Who Magazine as well as his series of books taking an offbeat look at the history of Doctor Who, Space Helmet For A Cow. No doubt a vocal minority of Doctor Who fans were surprised if not indignant to hear us talking about its traditional arch-enemies from ‘normal’ television like The A-Team and Fame!, and possibly even The Saturday Picture Show given that it appears to have never run any Doctor Who-related features, but it was becoming increasingly obvious by this point that the opportunity to discuss ‘other’ areas of interest or in some cases lack thereof on Looks Unfamiliar was both enthusiastically welcomed by guests and leverage for getting some fascinating discussion by allowing them to apply their analytical and comic perspective to completely ‘new’ subjects. For a particularly enjoyable example of this, have a listen to me and Paul talking about Adam Ant’s bizarre horror slash sci-fi tinged comic strip adventures in the short-lived magazine TV Tops, which it has to be said have not featured heavily in documentaries about the New Romantic movement. You can find the full show here and the chat about The Kids From Fame Again in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

Looks Unfamiliar: Darrell Maclaine – The Russ Abbott’s Madhouse Cosplay Kit

I’d been keen to get Darrell on Looks Unfamiliar from the outset, primarily on account of his entertainingly lurid troubled recollections of a ‘haunted’ Coronation Street Christmas Album that he had unsuccessfully been attempting to find proof of the existence of for years by that point. As far as we are aware his is still the only known extant copy of it – unless everyone else was so traumatised by the eerie carols interspersed with festive safety warnings that they are refusing to accept or acknowledge that it ever existed – but he really outdid himself with his other choices, notably ‘piece of plastic that bullied me’ Rubik’s Clock and the baffling novel-length advert for equally baffling compact disc player of the future the Brennan JB7. The bit about the escaping car – which I won’t spoiler if you haven’t heard it – was yet another where I had to edit out about two minutes solid of show-derailing laughter. You can find the full show here and the chat about the Brennan JB7 in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

Top Of The Box Vol. 2

If you still don’t quite believe me about how different the various commercially released permutations of the Play Away theme were, or if you just want to scour the tracklisting of the Music Time album only to find that it includes absolutely nothing from Lieutenant Kije, or indeed want to indulge in speculation as to why all of the other Fame! albums were on BBC Records And Tapes but The Kids From Fame Again wasn’t, then you might well want to tune up your chime bar using Top Of The Box Vol. 2, a guide to every album released by BBC Records And Tapes, which is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Mystery Link! If you want to just go straight to a surprise page completely unrelated to any of the above, click here.

© Tim Worthington.
Please don’t copy this only with more italics and exclamation marks.