The Beast in the Basement: 1960's sound-effect pipe organ
The guys over at MAKE spotted this fantastic clip of a from the 1960s named Leon Berry who designed and built his own personal special-effects pipe organ, which he christened the "Beast in the Basement." Some of the sounds are done pneumatically, while others are made in a remarkably straight-forward fashion: playing the "Chinese Gong" key, for example, results in the actual hitting of a Chinese Gong. Ingenious, Leon!
It's all pretty awesome, but judging from this gentleman's unnerving mannerisms — the paralyzed arching of one eyebrow, the off-kilter grin, the slow and insinuating way in which he speaks and the slight glistening of pure crazy in his eyes — I'm guessing that Leon's family was just glad he had a basement hobby that didn't involve dipping teenage hitchhikers in lye.
Leon Berry - Beast in the Basement (improved version) [YouTube]
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The joy the host and this crazy chicago based insane man put in their conversation is the best part of all the vid. They speak like they have to be understood by retarded first graders. Is this how they consider the average american ?
Fantastic! Brownlee finally scores the plush BoingBoing gig. Fan of yours from Ectomo and other places I won't mention so you don't feel you're being stalked. =P
Anyhow, who didn't have or need to have an organ in their basement in the 1960s? This guy's organ is just cooler than everybody else's.
A quick Google search for Leon Berry returns a bunch of info, including availability of recordings. Leon was a roller rink organist in the '50s.
"Now if you like bells, we're loaded."
So knowing that Mr. Berry has past on, what happened to the "Beast in the Basement"?
The video doesn't play, but if you actually hit the YouTube link it's still live in YouTube. It looks like the uploader disabled embedded viewing.