Music (Mike Williams)
Is part of Mike Williams Interview (incomplete)
Mike Williams interviewed by Richard Wallace
Projectionist Mike Williams describes the process of selecting music to be played in the auditorium prior to film screenings.
We used to … you’ll like this, we used to rehearse gramophone music. Note the gramophone, that’s all we had in those days was the non-sync, you know, and on Sunday afternoon we’d go in and Frank Saunders would run through the records we could use that week. We couldn’t use any records that weren’t sympathetic towards the film we were showing. And I brought in a rock n roll because it was rock n roll records in those days, I brought a rock n roll record in one day because we were showing The Tommy Steel Story and I suggested that we play this record and he went absolutely bananas with me. “We don’t play music like that in cinemas! We don’t play vocals in the intermission. Vocals are not on.” And, of course, I don’t know whether it applied to the rest of the country but we weren’t allowed to play music before 5:30 on a Sunday. We used to open the cinema at five o’clock, and had complete silence until 5:30 and then you could put a record on and play. A legal obligation in those days, yeah. Sunday cinema had only just come in, you know, and they’re very chapel around here, you see. And a lot of the chapels came out at 5:30 so it was all right to play music after 5:30 but not before chapel come out. So Sunday afternoons we used to go in, play the music that Frank Saunders thought was applicable and in all fairness it used to work.
Title
Music (Mike Williams)
Subject
music in the cinema
Description
Projectionist Mike Williams describes the process of selecting music to be played in the auditorium prior to film screenings.
Creator
The Projection Project
Source
Interview with Mike Williams
Publisher
The University of Warwick
Date
04/12/2015
Contributor
Richard Wallace
Mike Williams
Relation
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/7970
Format
.mp3
Language
English
Type
Sound recording
interview extract
Coverage
1956-1964
Interviewer
Richard Wallace
Interviewee
Mike Williams
Date of Interview
25/08/2015
Location
Cardiff
Transcription
We used to … you’ll like this, we used to rehearse gramophone music. Note the gramophone, that’s all we had in those days was the non-sync, you know, and on Sunday afternoon we’d go in and Frank Saunders would run through the records we could use that week. We couldn’t use any records that weren’t sympathetic towards the film we were showing. And I brought in a rock n roll because it was rock n roll records in those days, I brought a rock n roll record in one day because we were showing The Tommy Steel Story and I suggested that we play this record and he went absolutely bananas with me. “We don’t play music like that in cinemas! We don’t play vocals in the intermission. Vocals are not on.” And, of course, I don’t know whether it applied to the rest of the country but we weren’t allowed to play music before 5:30 on a Sunday. We used to open the cinema at five o’clock, and had complete silence until 5:30 and then you could put a record on and play. A legal obligation in those days, yeah. Sunday cinema had only just come in, you know, and they’re very chapel around here, you see. And a lot of the chapels came out at 5:30 so it was all right to play music after 5:30 but not before chapel come out. So Sunday afternoons we used to go in, play the music that Frank Saunders thought was applicable and in all fairness it used to work.
Original Format
One-to-one interview
Duration
00:01:23
Bit Rate/Frequency
320kbps
Cinema
ABC (Olympia) Cinema, 67 Queen Street, Cardiff