Of Mice, Music and Bears!

 Righto!! We got off to a later start this morning cause we're waiting for the Musical Museum to open at 10 am.

We're waiting for the Mischief of Mice to join us here...

I think I see them!

Yay!!! Let's go in!

How exciting can a musical museum be?? Well... you'd be surprised... we wandered through the displays and saw these "machines"...

But they weren't doing anything (just wait for it)...

They have these rolls of paper which we think let's them play their own music...

It's beary old-fashioned stuff!

Sandy wants to know if Mama remembers these things...

Or these! We're moving through the decades now... Gramma might remember these... they are called Gramma-phones aren't they?

Heh-heh... or maybe it's 78 records?

Ooohhh the RCA dog!!!

Ah, here we go!! An old reel-to-reel machine!! Grampa had one of these!! And Great-Grampa would record long tapes on the goings-on back in the old country and send them in the mail! That's an 8-track cassette in the bottom right... Mama remembers those too!

Does your human remember these things??

And then it speeds up! We've got regular cassette tapes and walkman's!

And then cd's and discman's... we never had a discman...

And then... iPods... we had (still have) one of those!

And now... everything in a phone!

Wow... how music has changed in a century!!!

They had organs....

And pianos too...

And a display on how those paper rolls (that played those weird machines) was made. There was a whole industry for making music paper rolls!

Wow... when you think the industries that history has left in the dust!

Then there's the synthesizers... which are like those old machines... but waaayyyyyyy more... everything...

And this... this is Leon Theremin who invented an "electronic" music instrument back in 1920 in the USSR... it had only one note... but the player could adjust it by waving his hand over these two metal bits... and vary the volume and pitch... It was called... the Theremin (go figure).

That's it there... weird looking thing... it's kind of an early synthesizer... Leon took his device out to the USA and Europe but then was apparently kidnapped by the KGB... He was sent to the Gulag, to a secret lab where he worked on secret things. He created a listening device that from 1945 onwards, hung in plain view in the United States ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to secretly eavesdrop on conversations. It was called "The Thing"... and looked like a big wooden seal... but had a contraption inside... go figure!

OK... that was like a fascinating story!! In case you're wondering what it sounds like... its music was used in cult films like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "The Thing from Another World". Kind of that eerie... otherworldly sound... 

Oh, and in Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys! When they start singing "I'm picking up Good Vibrations" in the refrain! Escept they used an Electro-Theremin where the sounds are controlled by a knob rather than waving your hands around like a mad magician... Watch from 3:33 to see the electro-theremin in action...

Or watch this one... a guy playing Over the Rainbow on a real theremin... fascinating stuff!

But now... we are back to those first machines with their paper rolls... cause they turned some of them on for us!! Most of these were first developed in Germany in the late 1800s... and were placed in cafes where they could be played by inserting money... So, like... an early jukebox!! Ready?

OOoohhhh... it plays all by itself! 

This one was another one... same idea, with the instruments...

In behind... wowzers...

But this one... had a violin that it played!!

The museum had quite a collection of these paper rolls... they have a concert room where they screen silent movies and then their big Wurlitzer plays the music with these paper rolls!

Wowzers...

All that from a little paper roll with holes in it. Go figure.

Do you think these were the precursor to those early computers that used cards with holes in them? Mama remembers them... And then we said goodbye to the mice crew. They had to get back home and had a few buses to catch!

We headed off to Ealing Broadway and saw this nouveau art deco (it's recently built)... beary nice.

And caught the Elizabeth line to Paddington Station!

Oooh... Ben would like Chef Paddington! Maybe not his messy kitchen... but... the outfit is cute.

They have tonnes of Paddington stuff and we bought a bit!

Then we had lunch here...

It's a Lebanese place...  and yes... we've had Thai, Italian, Persian and now Lebanese... we also had Japanese and Spanish too!

We had a Beirut drink...

The bottle had a weird pull cap which is beary strange... not like a bottle cap... but strange.

We had lamb kofta and some focaccia with olive oil. Yum!!!

Then we caught a bus back but had to wait a bit cause some of them were packed to the gills!!!

Whew... massive adventure day and we still have one more!!