Miscellaneous - B-The Buffet Car Attendants

  by Andy Cassidy

published: 27 / 10 / 2011

intro

In 'AC's A-Z Of Music', Andy Cassidy will be looking alphabetically at a different subject in music each month, and moves on to the letter 'B' where he examines an obscure album which is made up entirely of announcements for buffet cars on trains

I’m always on the look-out for unusual records. I have a good friend who shares this pre-occupation, and every year, at Christmas, we share a sample of the previous year’s discoveries. These annual compilations have become one of the highlights of the festive period for me – normally, I’ll pour a drink and try to figure out what I’m listening to. Some highlights from years gone by include Peter Wyngarde’s 'Rape from When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head,' Peter Moore’s 'The Fat Man from Gypsy Creams and Ginger Nuts', Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff’s 'We’re Horrible Men from Bela Lugosi': Hollywood’s Dracula and Rajesh Roshan’s 'Superman, Superman from Bollywood Bloodbath'. No, each and every one of these is a gem, but this year I know that I’ll be victorious in the strangeness stakes. You see, on a recent visit to my local record shop(the excellent 'Big Sparra Vinyl in Glasgow') I found an album that I fell in love with instantly: the Buffet Car Attendants' 'The MMs Bar Recordings' . Allow me to explain. The MMs bar (pronounced Em’s) was a buffet bar which used to exist on Midland Mainline trains prior to the adoption of the much less interesting trolley service. An art school student named Sandra Cross happened to use the Midland Mainline service regularly, and as part of a project called 'What Did You Eat Today' she decided to try to record the MMs Bar PA announcements whenever she was on the train. I say “try to record” as these announcements did not occur to any set pattern, and could happen at any point in her journey. This uncertainty means that the recordings vary in quality, and that some are inadvertently truncated, but this, for me, simply adds to their charm. In essence, the album is thirty minutes of various voices describing the various food and drink offerings available on the service that day: staples such as MMs complimentary tea and coffee, soft drinks, fruit juices and sandwiches. The piece de resistance is, without question, the famous MMs meal deal: a sandwich, a packet of crisps and a “bottle of pop(!)” for a mere £3.50. Bargain! So, why do I love this album so much? Well, firstly, I love travelling by train. There’s a romance attached to train travel which no other means of getting around can compete with. Try listening to Thomas Truax’s excellent 'Stranger on a Train' (which, interestingly, also makes mention of MMs) and not getting excited at the prospect of a train journey. Then, I suppose, I love listening to all the different announcers and imagining their lives – were they happy or sad when they made the announcement? Where are they now? What do they look like? Are they still alive? I love the sheer “British-ness” of the recordings. Somewhere in those voices is the subliminal message that tea and a slice of cake can solve all problems. I love the way some of the announcers are quite obviously speaking in their “telephone voice” when addressing passengers. I think, though, that what I love most of all is the sheer eccentricity of the recording: not only did someone record it in the first place, but someone was prepared to release it on LP and, yet more bewildering, people were willing to buy it! Sadly the MMs bar is no more, having been replaced with a trolley service, but so long as people are listening to this LP (which is a limited edition of 250, so snap it up quickly), a little bit of MMs lives on.