Macca gem in a sock drawer
QUESTION What is the most valuable vinyl record in the world?
The original demo acetate of Buddy holly’s That’ll Be The Day, recorded in 1958 by The Quarrymen — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George harrison, John ‘Duff’ Lowe and Colin hanton — is the most valuable vinyl recording, worth between £150,000 and £200,000.
The B- side is In Spite Of All The Danger, one of the first Lennon and McCartney songs.
The recording took place at a shop in Kensington Street, Liverpool, owned by Percy Phillips, who sold electrical appliances, bikes and batteries. he had a soundproof recording room where local skiffle and beat bands would make demos of their songs at a cost of 17s/6d (88p).
The story goes that when The Quarrymen were rehearsing, Mr Phillips put his head around the door and said: ‘Get a move on, boys, 17s/6d doesn’t mean that you can stay here all day!’
The original acetate was believed to be lost, but was discovered by John Lowe at the back of his sock drawer in 1981. he contacted Paul McCartney, who offered to buy it from him for an undisclosed sum, rumoured to be £12,000.
McCartney made 50 acetate copies, 25 on 45 rpm and 25 on 78 rpm, which he gave to family and friends. These are valued at £10,000 each. The original recording was released in November 1995 on The Beatles Anthology Volume One.
The Beatles & Frank Ifield Onstage, released on the Vee- Jay Label in 1964, is the holy grail of Fab Four recordings.
A copy of this album in the original cellophane wrapping, unopened and never played, sold at auction for £15,000.
It was released under the title Jolly What! england’s Greatest Recording Stars and its cover featured a caricature of a man in a Beatles wig.
Vee-Jay was horrified by this and quickly replaced the image with a painting based on a photograph of the band promoting their first single, Love Me Do.
The title of the album is a misnomer as The Beatles and Frank Ifield never appeared on stage together. however,
The Beatles were the support act for one night only when Frank played in Liverpool while touring the UK in 1962.
Michael Brooks, Kendal, Cumbria.
QUESTION Why were sausages banned in Germany during World War I?
ThIS was because the material normally used for sausage skins was required for the manufacture of airships. A rigid framework covered with fabric provided a streamlined shape. The inside was almost completely filled with gas cells containing hydrogen for buoyancy.
In the absence of modern plastics, it was difficult to keep hydrogen in a balloon. This gas has the smallest molecule of all the elements so leaks through most materials.
The first hydrogen balloons in 1783 were made of varnished silk. Later varnished linen was used. These materials were adequate for short flights of an hour or so, but something better was needed to conserve the expensive hydrogen and to make longer flights.
In 1883, it was discovered that goldbeater’s skin was ideal as it was almost completely impermeable.
The name refers to its use in the production of gold leaf. The outer layer of the large intestine of cattle and thin pieces of gold are interleaved and beaten until very thin.
The skin is only available in small pieces of 10 in by 40 in, so has to be joined together to make sheets large enough for a balloon gas cell. Up to seven layers were required.
During World War I, each of the airships produced in Germany required the intestines from 250,000 cattle. The Zeppelin company manufactured 90 airships with another 20 being made by Schutte-Lanz.
A report on balloon fabrics by Captain L. Chollet for the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1922 described the systematic collection of cow guts during the war. Agents exercised strict control in Austria, Poland and northern France, where it was forbidden to make sausages.
Denis Sharp, Littlehampton, W. Sussex.
QUESTION Why is Stephen King’s novel Rage
out of print? RAGe, which features a high school shooting, was the first novel published by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1977.
After it became associated with copycat incidents, King allowed the novel to go out of print in 1998.
In Rage, student Charlie Decker is hauled in front of the principal for threatening a teacher. he takes a gun from his locker, kills two teachers and holds an algebra class hostage.
Over the next four hours, Stockholm syndrome kicks in: the teenagers begin to identify with Decker, nearly killing the lone student who holds out. After he releases them, Decker attempts suicide by police.
The book has been implicated in a number of high school shooting incidents. Jeffrey Lyne Cox held 70 students and teachers hostage at San Gabriel high School, California, in 1988 after reportedly reading the novel.
In 1993, after his english teacher had given him a C-grade for his essay on the novel Rage, Gary Scott Pennington, a pupil at east Carter high School in Kentucky, shot and killed her and a caretaker before holding a class hostage.
Barry Loukaitis, aged 14, shot dead his algebra teacher and two students while holding a class hostage at Frontier Middle School in Moses Lake, Washington, in 1996. It was believed that his comment ‘This sure beats algebra’ was based on a line in the book.
In December 1997, Michael Carneal shot eight fellow students, three fatally, at a prayer meeting at heath high School in West Paducah, Kentucky. he had a copy of Rage in his locker.
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