It’s a bit hard to understand what all the sudden fuss is about Paul McCartney confirming to Mark Lawson that the legendary unreleased Beatles ‘sound collage’ does actually exist and isn’t urban myth after all. Call me old fashioned, but hasn’t its existence always been sort of confirmed by the fact that it was commissioned for and publically played at a major arts festival (apparently also involving Brian Jones andThe Radiophonic Workshop, though sadly not Pink Floyd’s similarly legendary and similarly unreleased though unsimilarly almost certainly no longer extant sound collage The Farmyard At Dawn/Carbon Monoxide, What Carbon Monoxide? or whatever it was called) and heard by tons of people who’ve written up anecdotal evidence over the years, and listened to and described in detail by Mark Lewisohn as part of his frighteningly comprehensive Complete Beatles Recording Sessions research project, and dug out and remastered for intended inclusion on Anthology 2? Still, that’s [CITATION NEEDED] culture for you.
Anyway, the good news is that for some reason ’Dinners’ now seems extremely keen to get it released in some form, and speculation is mounting on just what it sounds like. While we’re waiting, here’s a list of sounds long rumoured to have been collaged into the finished track:
- Paul McCartney’s phone message from the b-side of Do They Know It’s Christmas?
- Graham Linehan saying “fuckin’ hell”
- Outer Space, the b-side of the Star Cops theme
- Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand phoning up Mike McGear and calling him a ‘Scaffold Wanker’
- Dialogue from King Lear
- thewomb’s cover of Can You Forgive Her?
- Dialogue from King Of The Rocket Men
- A recording of some backwards sitars and a voice asking “is it beatles ben?”
- Ronnie Hazlehurst’s original Only Fools And Horses theme tune, Here Come The Zanies! (Del Boy Theme)
- Dialogue from the King Cone advert where Judge Dredd said ‘MEGA’
- A loop of David Mitchell saying “I’m David Mitchell, and-”
- Nathan Petrelli saying “thsgysnmsBAAAAAARB”
- All of the tracks and bits of tracks left off Belle & Sebastian: The BBC Sessions
- The recording ending abruptly with someone saying “VETOED”
- Roland Rat being hit with a cricket bat
UPDATE!: Whimsicality aside – here’s an MP3 of the real Carnival Of Light!
Its all four discs of The Flaming Lips’ “Zaireeka” played backwards over the top of the original edit of OFAH’s “Royal Flush” and shoved slowly inside a dog. By Alan Driscoll, singer in techno band thewomb. Twice.