CONSUMER RESEARCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 22

CONSUMER RESEARCH

T is years since I listened with half a mind to the ZB Request Session. It made a pleasant background to convivial gatherings; one could count on an agreeable atmosphere of light balladry, John Charles Thomas and Paul Robeson singing their famous numbers, with sometimes Gracie Fields singing hers, "The Lord’s Prayer’ and "The Isle of Capri’; almost certainly, the Tchaikovski Serenade for Strings, and a Strauss Polka or Perpetuum Mobile, and The Inkspots and the Mills Brothers for those with lighter tastes. What would it be like now, in the postatomic age? I thought of dazzling combos, Calypso and Rock ’n’ Roll; eccentric popular idols like Elvis Presley giving their contorted works, and noisy hottings-up of famous orchestral pieces. After an hour of listening I decided that whatever else the atomic era may have changed, ZB requests remain unflawed by the years. John Charles Thomas and the Mills Brothers are still singing their old songs, Mario Lanza the "Drinking Song" from The Student Prince;\ even the Tchaikovski Serenade is there, though Kathryn Grayson now sings it in a little coloratura pipe to words of marvellous banality; mo combos, a couple of eccentrics, one of whom, Jones McGann, amused me vastly with a wedding ballad punctuated by bursts of maniacal laughter, and only one new idol, Tommy Sands, British, 19 years ‘old, sounding exactly like Johnny Ray. -I can only say, that from all unlikely quarters, the ZB Request Session gives a promise of wholesome stability in a tormented world.