(ahem) Allow me to explain that title.... A few years back, myself and some of the Freeserve guys stumbled across the cringe-inducingly hysterical
Ulli's Roy Orbison In Clingfilm site, a pastiche of
Slash Fiction consisting of a selection of stories involving Roy Orbison turning up unexpectedly, and by increasingly unlikely chains of events, ending up wrapped in clingfilm.
If you haven't read it, and you fancy skirting that fine line between weeing yourself laughing and feeling unaccountably disturbed, go have a look now, and then come back... go on, it's ok, I'll wait...
Back? Good. I'll continue.
"Ulrich Haarbürste" is a nom-de-guerre of
Michael Kelly, whose
Page of Misery is a veritable treasure trove of warped, cynical, misanthropic comedy gold, and has been the source of several viral emails that you might have had at some point (
French Intellectuals In Afghanistan, anyone? ).
Anyway, when we discovered the delights of Roy Orbison In Clingfilm, I felt so inspired that
I set the first story to music, using the Microsoft Agent control to read the text in a Steven Hawking stylee, and using various Cubase plugins (e.g. Voice Designer) to change the pitch and formants of the voices for Roy and Ulli. It was quite a fun experiment, and once I was done, I sent a copy to Michael. He loved it - and so did a growing number of people - if you Google for
"Al Davidson Roy Orbison In Cling Film" it turns up in a surprising number of playlists...
So I'm genuinely chuffed to hear that Michael Kelly has produced a
Roy Orbison In Clingfilm book! You can
buy it HERE - go on, you know you want to, it'll make a delightful coffee table discussion piece, guaranteed to break the ice at parties, and scare off the neighbours' children too!
I should just add that I'm not getting any referral kickbacks off this - I just think the esteemed Mr Kelly's talent deserves all the exposure it can get, and I hope he gets showered with riches and future publication contracts from his book. Tell your friends. And after the week I've had, a bit of warped humour is exactly what I need. Tell the world! Lets see if we can get Roy Orbison In Clingfilm into some best seller lists!
PS - To celebrate the occasion, I moved the song from its previous home onto a more permanent home at last.fm, along with a couple of other self-indulgent noodly guitar instrumentals. I keep meaning to finish off the hundreds of tunes-in-progress I've got kicking around on my hard drive and upload those too, but somehow there's never quite enough time...
