There's not a lot of information online about this unusual instrument, the Serpentone, and much of it is in Italian. Italian wikipedia (via google translate) tells us that it was invented in the sixteenth century and was "used as a low to accompany choirs and chamber music."
Italian wikipedia also tells us that the Serpentone, "is considered the most difficult of instruments, which are part of the family of brass, but, for this reason, perhaps one of the most fascinating."
Since readers seemed to enjoy Bill Haley's "Candy and Women," we now add another of his pre-rock'n'roll songs, which qualifies--by a couple of lines on Native Americans, and a general reckless disregard for human and animal life--for our category of pre-PC weirdness.
"Pappy wound up with four deuces, and the squaw with six papooses."
Would you go to a dentist called Dr. Pain? Would your decision change if you knew he was going to play bagpipes for you as he waited for your anesthesia to take effect?
Unfortunately, the question is moot, since Dr. Rodney Pain, the bagpipe-playing dentist of San Francisco, is surely no longer in practice. (He's probably no longer alive.) A photo and caption detailing his unusual blend of dentistry and Scottish music ran in newspapers back in early 1966. [Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Spokane Daily Chronicle]
I think a study of helium-sniffing singing gibbons qualifies as weird science. Link to the original article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. And you can hear the gibbons singing with and without helium either at eurekalert.org, which has the sound files posted, or in the Newsy Science video below.
In the Annual Report for 1933 of the Zoological Gardens of Budapest a peacock is mentioned which showed a marked preference for the evening concerts, and habitually took up its position in the immediate vicinity of the orchestra. After some time it began to contribute loud screeches to the concerts, with the result that it became necessary to remove the musical peacock.
-Ciba Symposia, Feb 1942, p.1150.
The Budapest Zoo is still hosting evening concerts, almost eighty years later, and according to the Budapest Times, the zoo's peacock still enjoys the music:
The Bolyki Brothers acapella group performed on the first of seven musical evenings being held by the zoo every Wednesday until 17 August. The ensemble is the best-known acapella outfit in Hungary and are not only good musicians but charming, original and highly entertaining. It was a perfect choice as the singers tolerated the competition from the choir of frogs in the lake with good humour. Most of the waterbirds were already sleeping except for a few night owls such as the ducks, some herons and storks. Not to be outdone by the frogs, the birds also chimed in and one duck desperately tried to get into showbiz by continually manoeuvring overhead. A peacock atop a thatched hut was a quiet and dignified listener and no question a groupie. Later I heard from the zoo staff that some birds are well known music lovers and have participated in the concerts for years.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.