The redundant (heavy-metal) umlaut and the missing t in Kränkenkabinet seem like reasonable grounds for wondering whether “Hansel Urnst Grüsel” has ever been further east than New Jersey, never mind Neubrandenburg, and the stage show is similarly fantastic. Check out the video of Tea for two at the end of this post (the MP3 audio file is missing). Are all those wires and boxes functional or simply part of that mad professor thing? (Via Baggage Reclaim)

This is not Bert Gilbert, the actor, wife-beater and adulterer (although possibly solely for the purposes of the decree nisi) who starred as ‘Arry Wilkins in the 1906 demonstration at the Hippodrome of the effects of The flood on London, of which was wrote:

Three hundred thousand gallons of water sweep away the bridges, pull down the houses, and float away everything that will float; while terrified horses and oxen dash down the hillside and plunge into the lake; and men and women are swimming for their lives. A very exciting five minutes, and a very clever piece of invention.

I wonder what scene ii was like.

No, indeed, this is Bert Gilbert, teacher, barrel organ man, drummer and singer, and an altogether more peaceful soul:

Points of interest:

• Bert’s haircut.
  I’m going to invest in a few more wigs, but skinheads are natural organgrinders, politico-culturally speaking.
• The paintwork, details here. Bert writes that “these organs are normally painted in a fairly classical fashion. Sometimes they get a one-colour paint job, and the typical German organs often have flower motifs. I ordered my organ unpainted and in collaboration with [Bas van Duyvenbode at] Airbrush Workshop The Dovecot it has acquired its own identity. The organ is called ‘The Eagle’ so that it is only normal that the bird can be found on it.”
  A popular old organ tune is the Austro-Hungarian military march Unter dem Doppeladler, Under the double eagle, which will no doubt go down well in those parts of Catalonia where people still long for a Hapsburg dynasty. I know a few scenery painters here who might do this sort of job. The cabinetmaker is likely to be more of a problem, but I’m not yet sure what kind of cabinet I want anyway, as Mariano Rajoy said to the undertaker.
• The innards, by Deleika.
  They look shipshape, but I want control from a generic chopped up laptop instead of Deleika’s no doubt excellent proprietary memory storage device. This is to give myself more musical flexibility (I’m writing the arrangements and want to be able to fool around as I proceed) and more (non-musical) input and output options, including stuff like infra-red movement inputs and the mechanical puppets output control I keep going on about. I respect Bert’s faith in cardboard books, but I need to keep weight down if I’m going to ride around with everything on a bicycle.
• 20 notes. On the one hand that’s clearly not enough. On the other, part of the charm of writing for barrel organ is coping with the limitations of the medium. (When everyone still used cardboard books and music was sold by the metre, you had to be careful with arrangements to avoid stuff like diagonal lines of holes that could cause book tears.) Hmm.