Gary G. Taylor, Janus stalwart, died in mid July (see blog). How distressing that so many bright minds and special people leave far too soon. Listeners will remember his avuncular voice which fit, not at all, with his rebel biker appearance, which fit, not at all, with his unique personality.
Sad news for the Janus Company. Jon Lackey, renaissance man, musician, artist, actor, writer, mentor to many and very special person died last month of cancer. He joins Mike Hodel and Bob Young as Janus alumni greatly missed. His loss will leave a part of the universe that can never be filled. Many will miss him, his genius and his friendship more than words can express. But he leaves his remarkable art and his influence and memories that will endure for a long time. A one-of-a kind, unique being. For more details, see our Blog.
Jon Lackey at the Southern California Renaissance faire in the late 90s with his wire strung Irish harp.
There were countless performers with the JANUS COMPANY throughout the years. We (Mallory Geller and Jan McCall Ridolphi Geller) were the founders and producers, as well as writing and directing a large percentage of the shows. We also acted, sung, played instruments and created sound effects. And paid for our own aircheck tapes.
Our core repertory company changed from time to time, but consistent until his truly unfortunate death was Mike Hodel, who hosted his own Science Fiction program HOUR 25. Participating with Mike and us in the musicals were: Jerry Bono, Lucia Chappelle, Mel Gilden, Bill Hunt (who guest starred as Larry Talbot, the werewolf), Jon Lackey, Elizabeth Lewin, Jan Rabson and Scott Wilcoxon. (If any of you are around and want to re-record some of your songs, get in touch through our website!)
Other regulars in the live company were: Martin David, John Hochheimer, Terry Hodel, Jay Lacey (who got us started on his all night DJ show), Aleta Braxton O'Brien, Steve Rosenburg, Alice Shockley, Bill Shockley, Gary Taylor, Tom Thompson, Michael Elliott and many more. If we left you out, call us on it! Our memories aren't as good as they used to be!
Never to be ignored is our crack engineer, Burt Handelsman. He never knew what to expect when we all gathered for rehearsal for the first time the night of the show. But he came through and in excellent humor to boot!
Some of the writers besides us were Mike Hodel, Jerry Bono, Lewis Carroll, David Gerrold, Mel Gilden, Ken Goldman, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Kenn Long, Alice and Bill Shockley, J. Michael Straczynski, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde and a lot who never knew that they got adapted! And don't forget Gustaf Holtz who wrote our logo music!
Finally, there were all the staff and volunteers at KPFK who put up with what may have been one of the oddest programs on a station devoted to the avant guarde and issues of the people. Once a week this troop of vintage radio actors would take over the airways and, because we were live (during at least part of the time, we understand that we were the only regularly scheduled live radio drama program on the air in the United States) they never knew what to expect. Neither did we! But it was grand fun and a great ride.
Now, in 2006, we have to add Dennis Gilmore as an honorary member of the Janus Company Radio Theatre. Although he never heard our shows, he likes our songs enough to record them and play guitar, bass and vocals of the new recordings of the songs. He also does his best to make us sound thirty years younger.
KINGS OF THE SEA IS HERE! CHECK IT OUT.
Now-a-days, we spend a lot of time being Professional Pirates. For folks who did 14 years of radio--all of it recorded on now lost airchecks--it took a long time to finally get us before the mics to record our first album: KINGS OF THE SEA, a 72 minute collection of great pirate tunes. Some we have written or adapted, others are classics. The tracks are as varied as the plots of the Janus Company, the only theme being they have to be about or for pirates. The official release date is September 23 at the Ojai Pirate Festival in Southern California. Advance copies are on sale NOW! You can get one through Janus Company Music (that's us) and other sources. CLICK HERE to read more about it!
Or ORDER NOW, throught PAYPAL. PUSH DE BUTTON! CLICK IT!
ORDER YOUR COPY NOW, ONLY $15, SHIPPING PAID. CLICK ON THE PayPal BUTTON ABOVE.
Influences
Arch Obler, The Shadow, The Mercury Theater/Orson Welles, H.G. Wells, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Mel Blanc, Burns and Allen, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Stan Freberg, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Turnabout Theater, Inner Sanctum, George Burns & Gracie Allen, The Thin Man, The Cisco Kid, Let George Do It, Monty Python, Steve Allen, Walt Whitman, Bob Ridolphi, Ray Bradbury, The Whistler, Lewis Carroll, Thorne Smith...just a few. And:
WORDS AND MUSIC AND THE PERFORMERS WHO MAKE THEM LIVE:
Tom Lehrer, Noel Coward, Billy Barnes, Forman Brown, Sylvia Fine, Gilbert & Sullivan, Danny Elfman, Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weil, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter. Nacio Herb Brown, Rogers and Hart and Hammerstein, George M. Cohan, Kaufmann and Hart, Lerner & Lowe, Irving Berlin, whoever wrote the tunes for Monty Python (guess they all did)...
Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin, Bette Middler, Julie Andrews, Howard Keel, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Marilyn Monroe (yes, she could really sing), Nathan Lane, Ethel Merman, George M. Cohan (again), Fanny Brice, Georgia Brown, Edith Piaf, Gertrude Lawrence, Elsa Lanchester, Noel Coward (again), Mary Martin, Angela Landsbury, Alfred Drake, Yul Brynner, Zero Mostel, Cyril Richard, Gwen Verdon, George Hearn, Len Cariou, Rex Harrison (sure, he couldn't sing much, but he could sure talk a song!), Harpo...
Paul Simon, Arlo (and Woodie, of course) Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, U2, Sting, Bob Dylan, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Spinal Tap, Beatles, Joan Baez...
Kiri Te Kanawa, Bryn Terfel, Samuel Ramey, Mozart, Bach, Schumann, Gustav Holst (with thanks for writing our signature music), Prokofiev, Stravinski, 2 Scarlattis, Charles Ives...and all those with names we probably can't spell...
BOOKS: Something Wicked This Way Comes, Call it Sleep, Flowers for Algernon, Grapes of Wrath, Harry Potter, Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass...
The Dictionary (when possible the Oxford Complete, but settle for just about any one of any kind), Rogets, Words the Rhyme with Words that Rhyme...
Patrick O'Brian, Anne Rice, Laurie R. King, Elizabeth Peters, Patricia Cornwell, Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Mary Stewart, Thorne Smith, Bram Stoker, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Hans Christian Anderson, Brothers Grimm, Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Rice Burrows, Sisters Bronte, Daphne du Maurier, P.G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle...and a whole lot more, some to follow when we think of them.
MOVIES:
Nightmare Before Christmas, Moulin Rouge, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Citizen Kane (of course), Something Wicked This Way Comes, Hear My Song, Dream Child, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean...
The classic Hollywood musicals (Seven Brides, Singing in the Rain, Meet Me in Saint Louis, and on and on), most anything with Judy Garland, Fred and Ginger, Gene Kelly, Julie Andrews (Star, Victor/Victoria), Danny Kaye, Margaret Dumont, Ruby Keeler...
Most anything by Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Busby Berkeley...
The following Sirs and Dames (if they are not, they should have been!): Peter O'Toole, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, Judy Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Deborah Kerr, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers, Vivian Leigh, Richard Attenborough, Ian McKellan...
Johnny Depp, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Jeff Goldblum, Madeline Khan , Liam Neeson, Teri Garr, Gene Wilder, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Marlene Dietrich, Angela Lansbury (once more), Edward G. Robinson, Marty Feldman, Elsa Lanchester (again), the classic Barrymores, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Yul Brynner, Errol Flynn, Robert Newton...
Swashbucklers, "costumers," classic film noir, period films, especially 19th Century, the silents...more...
TELEVISION: Mostly mind numbing. House (for Hugh Laurie), Craig Ferguson and Letterman (for late night zone outs), Deadwood (and The Weather Channel when we are traveling--we don't have cable), Frazer, Simpsons, Classic Arts Showcase... Past favorites: Northern Exposure, The Prisoner, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Show of Shows (for Imogene Coca), Early Steve Allen, Ernie Kovaks, Mystery!, Twilight Zone, Star Trek TNG...
And so ends an odd excercise in free association! To be continued...
Sounds Like
You--or we--never knew. Golden Age radio, obviously. Broadway and Off-Broadway musical theatre for the musicals. Some folk-music. Horror (that was fun), Sci-Fi, British 19th literture like "Dorian Gray," "War of the Worlds," (yes, we did our own--H.G.'s not Orson's), "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Some mechanical automata a la ETA Hoffmann, band organs, griffins, clones, robots, poetry, fantasy, near fact...fourteen years was a long time to come up with ideas. Ultimately, however, it sounded like The Janus Company Radio Theatre.
THE JANUS COMPANY RADIO THEATRE was heard weekly on KPFK in Los Angeles from 1974 to 1989. We presented usually live half-hour dramas of all shapes and sizes. This site is to remember those days, to thank our listeners and all the actors, writers and technical folks who made this shoestring production happen.
Several times we presented musical farces, ie. Radio Musical Comedies. Due to a fire in our house, all of the airchecks (tape copies made while we were on the air) were damaged and except for some surviving cassettes made for friends and listeners they are lost.
Although the tapes are lost, most of the songs and scripts are not. As part of our book And Then We Wrote...and Re-Wrote..." we have published many of the songs (as well as some other, more recent, works), some history of the Janus Company and plot outlines for three of the musicals: "Werewolf! The Musical." "Space Opera." and "Two on the Nile or That Old-Fashioned Mummy of Mine." We are also in the process of re-recording some of the songs. Not the same thing, but better than having them lost forever. From time to time we plan to post some transcriptions of the cassettes we still have, featuring the original casts.
To order a copy of Mallory & McCall's And Then We Wrote...and Re-Wrote... or the upcoming CD of the same name, come to our website:
JAN & MALLORY AT A PARTY CELEBRATING THEIR "NEW" 1906 HOUSE.
Circa 1981
Thought lost, this slightly later picture shows Jan's dress completed. Sadly, it and Mallory's vintage suit were lost in the same house fire that destroyed the tapes of the Janus shows.
"New-old" song added! We took off "This is My Night to Howl" as it is available to be heard on MySpace.com/MalloryMccall. A few years back some of us who hung out on the Flea Market Music Bulletin Board all sent in a cut with uke on it. Everything sent was included and a two CD set was made (still available at DollarCD.com/ukejuke1) for Volume One. We re-recorded "That Old-Fashioned Mummy of Mine," again from "Two On the Nile." Mallory's singing and Jan's strumming. Fun to do and the resulting album is even more fun. The lyrics printed are slightly different as we re-wrote them for another album upcoming. Enjoy. Hopefully, more ukers and other vintage music buffs will learn it.
As Mister Benny would say: Well!
How frustrating!
Lots of new friends and no way to show you all! Many thanks to all of you who have joined in friendship with an obscure radio company that went off the air too many years ago. At this writing we have 29 friends and 24 places to put you! And us, as we are our own friends, too. So we cut it about in half, this time featuring some of the radio and vintage music buffs. So if you are not shown as one of our "top friends" it's simply not true. You'll be there--probably next time you check. (How's that for keeping you coming back?)
In the meantime, we want to get the word out about classic radio, The JCRC, musical farce and all those good things. If you know anyone interested, have them give us a look.
Jan & Mallory
The Janus Company Radio Theatre's Friend Space (Top 40)
It's been a long time since we've Myspazzed. How does your garden grow? I wanted to let you know that we've finished up our album. Please give a listen to the samples on our profile and let me what you're up to. Much love, - Loki
Thank you for being a friend to Unchained Productions . –And being a part of the Global Creative Collective . Stop by our page and browse through our Friends List and see what else is being done creatively around the globe.
Be on the lookout for an upcoming monthly Blog Feature --“BackStage Banter” -- featuring a different artist/creative talent each month with interviews and calendar plugs. Maybe that could be you!
And do keep in touch and leave a note to share you latest creative projects/passions/obsessions so we can support you. We are: Shouting in the Wilderness Theatre; The Scriptorium Publications; Sound Stage Audio Drama; Moving Images Digital Drama; *Shadow Step* Dance Troupe; Gideon’s Sword! Fight Choreography; Footlights Apprentice Theatrical & Literary Instruction and Education.
David Ian Artistic Director & Coordinator Unchained Productions Portland, OR
Welcome Back~The Janus Company Radio Theatre
In 1941, when I was 6 years old, I began singing and acting on Radio in Richmond, Virginia. In 1974, when I was 39 years old, The Janus Company Radio Theatre began airing in Los Angeles, California. I also gave birth to my youngest child in California. The program continued on the air for 15 years~not quite half of her life!
Janus is the god that the month January represents. That is the month of my birth.
So, you see, for all these reasons, I naturally am inclined to look with fondness on this program! Forgive me the trivia! Nevertheless, I am happy to be a friend of this space and all the other friends here.
Peace and all good to you "as time goes by" from St. Francis and me~Mavis, a scottish songbird AYE!
www.LastMinuteTheatreTickets.com has a new Message Board/Forum. All messages relating to Theatre, drama, the arts, or theatre tickets welcome. The forum is at London Theatre
Our Skeleton Crew Pirate Band is having a free concert at Pirates N' Plunder in Whittier, California. It's a bring your own bash, so load up the ship and sail on by!
