I’m often challenged on my ranking, and it’s definitely not the most common one:
I often hear that people would put Life the universe and everything below my large gap
I won't be in every episode, but I am in this first one!
https://rss.com/podcasts/genuine-podcast-personalities/3065044/
It's roughly an hour long, covers some early Douglas Adams influences, tackles a few origins rumors and examines influences or inspirations for some of the major characters.
The RSS feed is the first stop on the publishing trail so if you want the latest updates feel free to subscribe there or listen for episodes. It will be roughly every 2 weeks. A website is also under construction at gppshow.com I am planning to switch out the preview page soon (my laptop is currently hopelessly depressed and reboots randomly roughly 6 to 27 times a day in the middle of me doing work). The website will include a transcript for the episode as well as a works cited for stuff we mentioned on the show.
This was really fun and I'm looking forward to future episodes with the group! If you are interested in suggesting episode ideas, have comments or want to join the show feel free to message me. I'm not the show runner, but heavily involved.
A longer piece, but if you are a Jim Croce or Douglas Adams fan this will be interesting to you absolutely. I also think it's just a fun read, but I'm a bit biased... This is my second published article on Substack. Both are Hitchhikers related, allude to or outright attempt to mimic some of Douglas's better known phrases.
I have posted bits and bobs here lately as I looked through research I already had collected. This is I think the 3rd post that is about Douglas and music (it could honestly be more). To say that Douglas was involved with music, loved music, collected music is scratching the surface. I am working on one more long form article/research paper like this. I mention it briefly in the article.
I'm not sure when that one will be complete... I'm waiting to hear back from a few people and I need to turn my notes into something more formal like this.
Quick reminder for the folks in the New Orleans area! We're doing an end of the earth party for our HHGTTG Chewbacchus SubKrewe.
Am I the only one who can't help but see and hear him as Matt Berry? The loquacious bullshittery. The flawless vocal projection. The questionably deserved self-confidence. The potato-like physique. It's like ol' Doug was describing Berry before anyone had ever heard of him (because he was only 13 when the book was published).
I won't retype my entire facebook post here, but it began with a question to the ZZ9 facebook group and Kevin Jon Davies had the knowledge. So real quick version...
The question was "Did Mike Oldfield ever record a version of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy theme?" First if you don't know who this is... I didn't and shame on me. Why did I even ask about Oldfield? Well Paddy Kingsland mentions him and that he was working on a version of the theme during his interview portion for the Making Of for the TV Show that Kevin Jon Davies edited, did animation for, etc... So straight from the horses mouth to you:
>During the making of the TV series the producer/Director Alan JW Bell wrote to Mike Oldfield (via an address in Denham, Uxbridge) on 27 May 1980 to invite him to record the theme tune, enclosing a tape of the radio show, and said it would have to be a version of JotS, and need to fit their title sequence which was already being produced, so would need to fit the same tempo. He also said he'd talk to Richard Branson at Virgin Records about a tie-in single of the music. Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" was the very first record on the Virgin label, a massive hit launching both the company and the composer.
>Nothing ever came of this, to my knowledge. I bet the restrictions imposed were too much for someone who's reputation was for that enormous worldwide hit, "Tubular Bells" was used as the theme to the massive hit horror movie "The Exorcist". Maybe if Alan had asked Mike Oldfield to create something fresh and new, there would have been more interest... but who knows? Tim Souster (note spelling) had been involved with Hitchhiker since working on the LP from June the year before, so his involvement was a shoe-in. In the end they used his LP theme for the TV version and a single was released of that, by Original Records, who produced the LPs. Interestingly, when Mark Ayres was re-mixing the TV series for DVD, he pulled the tracks apart to re-create the mix and discovered a very very low level hint of the next bit on the LP record just coming in during the cross-fade to Paddy Kingsland's following incidental music cue! He reckons they must have simply used the LP for the TV show mix!
When I was a senior in high school, 1995-96, a few friends and I went and saw him speak at University of Georgia. He talked a bit, and read a bit from Last Chance to See. He was everything I expected. Funny, humble, wise. After his talk, he went off to the side and sat at a table to sign things people had brought for him to sign. I ran up and grabbed the bottle of evian or whatever brand of water he'd been drinking from that he'd left at the podium, and got him to sign it. Later that night on the way home, my friend grabbed the bottle from me and drank the last couple swallows of water that was left in the bottle. He got sick, because Doug had a cold, as he had said that night, to excuse his rough voice while he was reading. Unfortunately I lost that bottle somewhere along the way over the many many moves I've made since then. But I'll never lose the memory of that puzzled look he gave me when I handed him that bottle to sign. King among men, RIP, love you forever Doug.