That would be ‘Otto Palindrome’…played by the late, great character actor (and accomplished jazz trombonist) Conrad Janis. (Think Mindy’s father from Mork and Mindy, for you poor culturally-deprived miscreants who do not know the splendor which is Quark. May the Head have mercy on your pitiful souls…)
Strictly speaking, the character was ‘Otto Bob Palindrome’ – both ‘Otto’ and ‘Bob’ being…well…you know… [:D]
I tried that with radio when I was a kid. I wanted to be a ham. I soon learned about spark transmitters. I had a spark coil set up (combination of buzzer and auto spark coil). I made a little spark gp, a long length of wire as antenna and set the spark generator in series with telegraph. I sent friends home to tune their AM radios to the AM band. The results were incoclusive- the signal so weak I am sure no one else noticed.
Hey I remember Quark! I used to watch that show. There was a character named Ficus that was a plant, though he looked like a human. Groot’s great-great-great-grandfather perhaps? Or maybe Odo’s distant cousin?
In the same vein of cute but short-lived TV shows from the same era, I liked Holmes and Yoyo. As a little kid, I found it funny whenever someone asked Yoyo what division he was from. “The bunko squad. The bunko squad. The bunko squad…”
I remember John Schuck played Yoyo…but I can’t recall whether that was before or after he played the long-suffering Police Commisioner lackey Sergeant Enright on McMillan and Wife. [:D]
I had no idea he played trombone, but so did Riker on next generation. It was an interesting show that came out in a time when for some reason shows were changed every half season for no reason. This meant that you could start getting to like a show and all of a sudden it was replaced.This went on for about two years I believe before things returned to normal.
Werner Kempler also played classical and was a skilled makeup artist. They said his parents fled Germany just as things were starting to get bad and when the part of aCol. Klink was offered him he said he would only accept if Klink was an idiot and none of his ideas worked out.
I think that was a period when there was a revolving door for Network execs…and every time a new guy came in, the pet projects of the previous regime got the axe on day 1…whether they showed promise or not. You can’t start a big-money job like that without showing you can throw your weight around… [proplr]
I got my ham license when I was 13 - dad was an electronics tech (20 years in the AF) so it was kind of a household thing. We had an high gain beam antenna on a tower above the house and 40/80 meter dipoles along the fence. I was a novice (and still am WB6PJZ) I was lower power as a novice but dad had 1000 watts out of the Heathkit and when he would key that (depending which way the beam was pointed) the neighbors would complain and birds would jump off the antenna. I still have a scar from a 100 watt RF burn adjusting the dipole outside for my dad - didn’t hear him say ‘get off, checking swr’ ZAP!
Another fun story - me and a buddy 8 doors down or so got a couple of army surplus field raidios. Turned out his nextdoor neighbor was a telco guy with a pile of 4’-8’ sections of wire. We spent one summer soldering them all together and went through a lot of rolls of electrical tape. Got everything wired up running down the outside of the fences, a few D batteries and a crank and we could talk all night. Winter came and the rains killed us but what a fun summer project.
One neighbor down the street got his kids a walkie/talkie set that was marked with the James Bond logo. We split into two groups heading in different directions and started to use the radios. It wasn’t too long before we got a response, it just wasn’t the one we expected. Their radios happened to have the same crystal as one of our local police departments. We answered their questions and it wasn’t too long before we met a police car at theri house. I never saw those radios again.
Remember the song Swamp Witch and Cow Patti?
Swamp Witch - Jim Stafford - YouTube
JIM STAFFORD - Cow Patti (1981) Original Studio Version! - YouTube
ignore the printed words under the picture.
then there’s always I Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes among others.
You forgot his magnum opi: My Girl Bill and the epic Wildwood Weed.
Yeah, but it has been a long time. I haven’t even played his CDs in some time.
Here’s one, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. Narration by Richard Burton and songs by the Moody Blues. They eventually did a live stage show.
Then there’s Rick Wakeman’s two musical recordings, Knights of the round table and Journey to the center of the earth.
Not familiar with Jeff Wayne…I’ll have to dig that up and give it a listen. (Loved the Moody Blues…and I’d listen to Richard Burton reading out a telephone book. What a voice!)
Used to play Wakeman’s ‘6 Wives of Henry VIII’ album (on vinyl, of course) as an FM DJ back at my college radio station. All hail WUVT, the musical voice of Virginia Tech!
My brothers were 10 and 8 years older. I got all sorts of influence from their record collection. I graduated highschool in 82 so you can figure the music around that time. But I listened to Skynrd, The Allman Brothers, The James Gang, Yes, Grand Funk Railroad, Eagles along with the late 70s and 80s new wave stuff. Oddly enough when Nirvana came on to the scene I was kinda relieved. Don’t get me wrong - there’s some of my generations music I really like but book end that with 70s rock and 90s grunge and I’m more comfortable.
Close to the Edge was one of my favorite Yes albums.
I didn’t know Wakeman did a third album, that means I’ll have to listen to it.
Something else to listen to would be the team called Alien Voices. It was a series of classic S.F. stories from Wells, and other authors that were performed like an an old time radio broadcast with sound effects and performed by members of the Star Trek cast. That was a requirement, you had to be in Star Trek, somewhere. At one point they did a live broadcast of First Men in the Moon and televised it on stage, complete with people doing the effects, right on stage.
Did you know that there was more than one War of the Worlds broadcast done? I watched Orson Wells do an interview and the subject of his radio show came up. He started by saying he didn’t know what troublel was until they did that show and the police walked into the studio. They had no idea anything was wrong until then and had to put a disclaimer on the air to hopefully calm things down. People had started listening to the radio and missed it being a play, didn’t caatch a detail like the radio station in NYC sent a radio truck to the Jersey marshes, some 30 miles or more away using dirt roads, no paved highways back then, with a music interlude of maybe a minute or two until the truck arrived on scene. Then there was the famous part where the radio reporter was stationed on the roof of a building describing the Martain machines wading the harbor and releasing poison gas as he started chocking and dropped from view. It was ah heck of a pre war night.
Some years after WWII, it was tried again in South America, once again ending in panic. The public responded badly, burning down the station and killing almost a dozen people.
In the 60s or early 70s, someone did it again, this time along the Canadian border. Once again the public fell for it. Never again that I know of.
The real reason Pluto isn’t a planet any more?
The dog didn’t want the competition and loss of attention.